Tuesday 28th January 2014

At 8.20 am the Poltizei knocked on the door and said there’d been a break-in at Number 27, across the street. So reassuring. Coming up the stairs after breakfast, I notice a little pile of white debris at their foot. I glance about, trying to fathom. Has a burglar been in here? Then I notice something not right with the stairs. A gap has opened up, a gash, a split. On the angle of the first landing…I look in the cupboard underneath. A wedge holding up the staircase seems to have broken.

Last night, just as estate business was going well, it was biffed back. People are flying all over the world in some kind of emergency. On Sunday, on the phone, Cousin Monica said we’re related to George Osborne. Quite closely as it happens. His grandmother was Granny’s 1st cousin. John Aspinall we already knew about. That same 1st cousin was his mother, but a different father. So she spawned two Satans. The week before a leak sprang in the ceiling of one of bedrooms in the night – creepy because the ceiling was not even wet, but water dripped through. The week before that a radiator pipe leaked but not badly.

Oh – and the washing machine’s thumping and banging in spin.

If only we’d known about the Osborne connection in the 80s, when one craved Osborne and Little, we could surely have got a discount.

Otherwise the light programme of engagements has continued. Last week, Tuesday was ’12 Years a Slave’ with Fergus Strachan and Angus Willis. Thursday I dined with Aunt Lavinia after fabric shopping with Val, Friday Merle Barr dined here. Saturday was the show-piece: Prince Dmitri Hersov’s delayed 50th Birthday party in a unique Greek Taverna at Maida Hill.

As it happens, Bruce McBain, my private architect, this morning produced at once some hefty Poles, not Miroslav who I didn’t feel was specialist enough, and they bolted the stairs back into place. But then I could not find dear Sheila’s clematis catalogue. An absolute Bible. I needed it to confirm which clematis are which and what their pruning regime should be. Hunted high and low. Checked every pile of books and leaflets all over the house. Nothing, nothing, nothing. How could it have disappeared? The one catalogue I can’t be without and now irreplaceable because Sheila has evap – retired or died or both.

So, slogging through putting the contents of the cupboard under the stairs back after the bolting, sudden inspiration. What about the heap of stuff on the Empire chair in the dining room, embroidered as it happens by George Osborne’s grandmother’s aunt? Yes! Oh blessed! There it was.

So that which was lost was found.

Happily also Robert Nevil has regained from Malta.

That Which Was Lost Was Found: Dear Sheila’s Catalogue was Wrongly Filed in the Dining Room