Friday 17th January 2014

Last Saturday, as I said, Robert Nevil and I dined with one of his old boyfriends and a vicar in Maida Vale. I should mention that Robert Nevil faces a week in Malta from Monday with his mother at £242.69 for the week each, flying out from Mingham. It’s a package.

The old boyfriend said, ‘Nothing’s changed in thirty years.’ He meant Robert Nevil and me. It’s not quite right because it isn’t thirty years since he saw us, although it is thirty years since he was Robert Nevil’s boyfriend and was a frequent nighttime visitor at my flattie off Portobello Road (the one with the avocado bathroom condemned as ‘rather smelly of damp’ by Frankie-Doreen May) where Robert Nevil was lodged in my back bedroom. ‘No more mature,’ the old boyfriend declared. Robert Nevil and I had been bickering about that Lord Lucan programme on TV which he completely refuses to re-visit or re-consider his verdict. Then Robert Nevil said, ‘Your blog’s pure arse.’ ‘Thank God for that,’ I said, re: maturity. ‘Maturity’s ghastly. So much better to be silly.’ On the other hand, Poor Little Rich Gays must not get set in their ways or, even worse, turn into sclerotic old bores. There is a danger of that, with age. Poor Little Rich Gays are always fresh and new, impossible but miraculously able to change course or open into a new vista. Never for them the narrow self-importance and bleaching out of suffering of the bleached white teeth of the Earls Court Gays.

So I was back-to-back dinner and lunch with Simeon Bond’s catered lunch the next day. I was barely able to stand. Simeon’s home is huge and stripped back to distressed floorboards with massive custom-built sofas in bright velvets. It’s also a kind of commune with spaces for mediation. There are meetings.  I didn’t realise that Stephan Jaëger, who hoops and whoops on the stage, gives and gives, so many perfs, is a frequent guest when in London. He was at the lunch. ‘There are usually advisors here,’ he said. ‘Teams of plumbers, a feng-shui expert.’ Simeon was himself worried about falling out with his designer over the cladding in the massive studio room but he couldn’t pick up any spiritual force from me this time. Not like the other time in the South of France. Maybe physical and spiritual are more linked because I was very weak on Sunday.

Stephan Jaëger had such a tale to tell. He can’t get into London. Property prices so vicious. All his décor love is un-channelled. It could go bad. What is to be done? Someone must step forward with funds, someone who loves talent. Or make a Will then die. Apart from that, a straight man has left his girlfriend, siddles up behind Stephan all the time, massages his neck, strokes his hair – but oh no! He’s straight, couldn’t fully or even partly remove his trousers.

I don’t know. Maybe this is the new way. Maybe this eternal suspension is more delicious and more proper than a full normal relationship. Is anyone defined nowadays?

In the meantime, Angus Willis, the international food writer and stylist has got to graph an M and S Victoria Sponge for a small graph to appear on the packaging. The cake is to have a slice cut out of it and left there. Straightforward enough you would have thought but look how many cakes Angus must have to get it right – see graph below. The trouble is, if the slice is the one you actually cut from the cake, its curves will merge with the main cake and the cut slice won’t show up properly. So you have to use a slice cut from another cake with different curves. But it mustn’t be so differently curved as not to look possible that it came from the cake in view.

M & S Victoria Sponges: More than This Were Supplied for Angus Willis’s Cut Cake Photo Shoot