I Complete the Pre-Christmas Run, Intense on Both the Public and Private Stages «

I Complete the Pre-Christmas Run, Intense on Both the Public and Private Stages

Tuesday 24th December 2013

Arabella von Gardendoor gave a party: I lost my trousers, plastic Prada. ‘Gary Lineker’s a mate,’ said an old friend of the Blond Multi’s. No shred of truth in the shagging stories. I couldn’t have been happier. Enjoyment at parties has come to me late in life. I give and give and am given to in turn. Had a wale of a time discussing fashion and body shape with a hot straight boy. The next day Bruce MacBain gave an intimate dinner at which it turned out that Robert Nevil and Sebastian Archer had loathed the Lord Lucan programme. Actually loathed it. Said Rory Kinnear not a bit like. I couldn’t agree. But Poor Little Rich Gays know what they think, of course. I loved the Lord Lucan programme. It was so much more than a ‘what really happened to Lord Lucan’ effort. Curious tone; one was appalled but oddly neutral. Participants shown as animal-like in the true sense of the word – running on powerful instincts, without conscience, in a pack, weak and easily led. So in the end you felt about them as you might about animals.

What is less often mentioned is that John Aspinall, key-player in the Lord Lucan affair, was a rellie. Oh yes! Granny’s 1st cousin, although never met by her. Speaking of connections, at last night’s Carol Service (my 2nd so far), aristocracy were present. I gained the Gay Mother’s through storm and rain yesterday and we went to the private chapel of a nearby Stately for the service. I had quite an amusing exchange with our land agent, also the agent for the family of the chapel, in the pew behind about £25 million of insurance cover that is required. I used a fairly loud voice.

Then last Thursday there was a second Private View for Eddie Sedgewick’s Retro Show, this time for Society ladies who are also artists. Much botox, fierce ‘Art’ jewellery, alternative unaffordable eye-wear. Mahler’s Grand-daughter was present in black. I haven’t heard of her for years, since the 80s. She was Mahler’s Grand-daughter then. Eddie and I teamed up with a lady who knew Brit Ekland and travelled back with her on tube. Now she’s in acupuncture. At Knightsbridge she suggested an evening at a Holborn Buddhist cell as well as a visit to the flat of someone who writes for Okay! magazine.

So in the New Year we’ll do all that. How nice to have something to look forward to.

Finally my private stage as Christmas hurtled nearer. On TV I watched Nigel Slater cooking a vegetable casserole so revolting I felt queer. When he put, at the finish, the redcurrant jelly and mustard in I retched. But odd that all the ingredients in the Riverford Farm box for that week. In cahoots? I thought: ‘Dammit, I’ll make it just to prove that it’s repulsive.’ It had carrot, swede, parsnip, mushroom, dried porcini mushroom, chestnuts. The base was onion with juniper berries and rosemary.

Do you know, it wasn’t too bad. But I won’t make it again.

I’m pleased to say I found different Christmas cards this year – at the Geffrye Museum. One is by one of my private artists. Others by Eric Gill, Elizabeth Blackadder and Eric Ravilious. His son the Gay Mother knew. He graphed corrugated iron a lot in the rural by-ways. The Gay Mother loves corrugated iron.