Sunday 3rd August 2014

Eddie Sedgewick, that great maverick and self-invention, who was at school with Robert Nevil, took 60 years last Sunday. Rather, aided by frockage and alignment of the will,  he flung 60 years from him and carried on as before.  He’s not changed in the 38 years I’ve known him, not one bit.  It’s more than likely that he’s changed very little in 60 years, apart from the interlude of being a baby.

For his birthday function he was dressed as he would have been in the Sixties in purple drain-pipes and a Bridget Riley shirt. I gained the function direct from Normandy. Ronnie Ronnie, the cabaret artist, was already featuring substantially in hippie garb with a huge imitation drug joint. ‘It’s the first time,’ he said, ‘that I’ve worn a costume from a time I can myself remember.’ What does it mean when one has become one’s own costume? Other names present were Simpson Passmore, the MP for Whirly and Lorraine, Eddie’s live-in, although naturally Eddie’s not there all the time, Lionel Moore, now 95, and Robert Nevil, who rocked up late in embroidered muslim draperies to suggest the cheesecloth of the 60s, now no longer obtainable, thank the Lord.

We sat down to a delightful Italian buffet. Mercifully could sit down. Ronnie Ronnie’s buying an old Presbytery in northern France (extraordinary development). Its village is crowded with incident. There’s a clog museum and a taxidermist. The great event was in 1905, when  the church tower was struck by a balloon . He was much questioned about his hair which was worn very long and very blond for the occasion, like John Lennon after he went to the bad (although not blond). ‘It’s all my own,’ Ronnie said. ‘I can show you the receipt.’ Someone asked Lionel Moore if he’d ever known Marlene. No, but he’d once conveyed a cake baked by Marlene from Manchester to Marlene’s daughter. Marlene loved the domestic arts, especially scrubbing floors, so naturally she baked a cake for her daughter.  Her intimate friend, the vendeuse at Balmain, was to ensure its delivery, it would seem. Whether the vendeuse wandered aimlessly in northern towns looking for someone to take a cake baked by Marlene to Marlene’s daughter in Hampstead, I don’t know. Such luck, though, that she happened upon Lionel, who was able to champion the cake for London.

What conversation! You can imagine I was in Heaven. Then came the speeches. Robert Nevil rose to his tiny but exquisitely formed feet. Now, he’s been in the doghouse recently after refusing my offer of a completely free week in Tuscany because he simply must attend Mrs Westmacott’s Lectures on the Impact of Buddhism on Norfolk January 1805 to March 1810 (this is as far as she’s got, I assume). But, as it’s turned out, Val boarded for Tuscany, de-bottled and boarded. So there wouldn’t have been a free week in Tuscany.

I digress – Robert Nevil rose to his feet at his oldest friend, Eddie Sedgewick’s 60th birthday. What would he say? Would he break down? (unlikely) Well, Robert Nevil was a sensation. I couldn’t have loved it more. He said, Down with marriage, up with Friendship. Friendship, friendship, friendship’s the thing… How the occasion was falling perfectly into shape. It only remained for Eddie himself to read his own poem – veer not from Now, but screw the courage to step back enough to see it. New friends, he said, as well as old. New, new, new.

Thrilling.

Ronnie Ronnie Trifles with Illegal Substances at Eddie Sedgewick’s 60th Birthday Function

The New! A New Friend at Eddie Sedgewick’s 60th Birthday Function

Eddie Sedgewick: Not Changed One Bit in 60 Years