Monday 22nd July 2013

Yes, Harry Rollo, tending more and more towards music, shattered the world once again with his performance at the London Bowl. Not all the performances, in fact, were of Harry’s devising, although dear, darling Guy Bostock, who was said by Lord Arrowby at Lord Arrowby’s party to be fated to expand in muscularity indefinitely, thought otherwise.

The first performance was like a huge piece of Meccano, with many angles, commanded by Harry to turn in on itself or tend in severely contrasting directions without ever falling apart or wrenching or lurching. A balancing act, really, daring and thrilling. The second perf was children dropping stones into a well, but other echoes never heard before. But Rufus Pitman said it was as if contrived by Mrs Thatcher and by the end the forces of oppression had been overcome and people could open their own businesses. To me, it was more like bunches of flowers opening while someone almost had a nervous breakdown.

Then there was Harry’s own presentation. Absolutely massive. Really I can’t do better than repeat the critic in one of the great National newspapers, who said, ‘A near-hysterical intensity, expressed through mad hyper-complexity or glacial stillness’. The subject was Death and there was no comfort yet it was Art.

Well, now I’ve got to leave for Das Riengold (sorry, no time for spelling) with Rufus Pitman….

Come back later for the After-party and Lord Arrowby, my former part-time love interest, at the foot of the Greatness’s stairs. The last thing he had said to me previously was, ‘Now you’re leaving me.’ Said plaintively. True, Robert Nevil was there too. We were departing his party which apparently continued into the next day, with one or two of the less experienced guests requiring the attention of Finn Magnus, the fab boy doc, who was conveniently at hand.

Anyway we bickered fabulously in front of the Greatness and later Lord Arrowby got mauled by a poet.