Wednesday 20th August 2014

Last Wednesday we came once again to Cortona, across the plain from Lucignano. Cortona has been threaded through the years of Tuscany. Here in ’83, Robert Nevil was required to park the handbrake-less vehicle in the vertical street and wench that same car up the dirt track to one of the early Tuscan villas at the back of Cortona, passing another residence on the way which later turned out to have associations with Blanche Spain herself. So a different web was forming. Germaine was nearby too but never known. On the ’83 visit, Anthony Mottram and I were not on speakers at all, possibly because of the pasta-pie which took days to make and had to be cut with a power-tool when complete. Robert Nevil was the conduit for communication. The next year, Val was of the party along with Twirly Godfrey, who later became a theatre critic, and his wife, Misty. They’d all been ‘up’ together. Twirly did imitations behind his back of the way Val subjected the pieces of bread at breakfast to ferocious inspection before flinging them back in the basket. Misty bought oven-ware for a few lire in a desperate bid for domesticity but there was never any hope of getting it back unbroken even to the villa.  Twirly departed every cafe at least 70% water-marks from where, in the toilette, he’d attempted to clean the latest spillage.

Now by another thread in the web, it just so happened that Commander Jonny Webber,  these days a friend of Prince Dmitri’s through a swimming bath connection but also ‘up’ with but only remotely known to Val and Twirly, was of the villa-party last week. So imagine the thrill of being able to show him, in Cortona, one of the cafes where Twirly poured his drink over himself.

Cortona was not seen again until ’94 or so. At the St Michele Hotel (4-star and so cheap in those days) the great ‘It isn’t hot anyway!’ incident took place in the vast empty dining room. The ancient breakfast maid dropped an entire tray of coffee etc. Middle-class English lady and husband, only other breakfasters, were so concerned maid might have scalded herself. ‘It isn’t hot anyway!’ the Gay Mother shouted across the room. Here also the Gay Mother took the lamb cutlets at La Grotta restaurant the like of which we have been in quest of ever since. This lack, plus the lack of really hot drinks, have plagued the Gay Mother’s life.

When first known, Cortona was a rustic town of great charm. Now it is full of horrible art galleries and tourist shops. But if you look up, it’s just the same. La Loggetta, the restaurant we seemed to be able to afford in student days, is still there and still the best. Thirty years ago, travelling down to Tuscany by train, I explained to Laura Malcolm how Anthony Mottram evolved the idea that the Queen’s handbag contained an incinerator and if you looked carefully you could often see a thin plume of smoke trailing out of it. ‘A bit mysog,’ I said to cheer her up. ‘What an outfit being injected into Tuscany,’ she said.

La Grotta Restaurant, Cortona, where the Gay Mother took the Ideal Lamb Cutlets in the Early 90s

In Fact it’s Still Called ‘La Loggetta’. Cortona’s Top Restaurant Which We Penetrated in Student Days Even

The Very Cafe Where Twirly Godfrey Spilled His Drink Over His Person

Cortona Today at Eye Level

But If you Look Up, Just the Same