Friday 6th November 2009

Frockage! Speeches! Oxford!

Where to begin!

Poor Little Rich Gays have run up a monumental extension at the Ashmolean. Well, not exactly, but our friend Rick Mather is the architect. I travel up by second class rail, with Bruce MacBain, my architect and an old friend of Rick’s. Robert Nevil and his itinerant partner (shortly to depart for New York again, for health reasons: possibly liposuction), Sebastian Archer, also with. They are supposed to be the brainier, book-writing end of the Poor Little Rich Gays, but tonight they’re massive scarves, a Paul and Joe suitlette for Robert Nevil, a similar $19,000 tweed doll’s get-up for Sebastian Archer, who, incidentally achieves the premier PLRG moment of the evening: ‘I’ve lost a £900 pair of glasses,’ he says, with just the merest flicker of irritation. ‘Oh dear! Where?’ He slices back with the required perfect blend of finality and insouciance: ‘Locanda Locatelli.’

It’s all in the tone of voice. You must practise it. You must get it right. It says: ‘Of course I was there, it’s nothing extraordinary and don’t make a vulgar fuss.’

If you don’t know, Locanda Locatelli is a terribly top restaurant. I went to it once with the Multis; they paid.

Next week, by the way, Robert Nevil brings out a book. The launch is on Wednesday. Read all about it here.

We gain Ford, not seen by me for twenty years. We see the back door of Balliol, where Anthony Mottram, who I’ve been ‘with’ in a manner of speaking for forty years, ‘read’ Philosophy and also rat studies (psychology), not liked by him. But at Philosophy he was absolutely first class, tutors on the floor with praise etc.

I wouldn’t have given forty years to a second-rate mind, I can tell you. Although, when it comes to kitchens (see glossary) you might feel that Mottram’s thinking goes awry.

But the bollards in the back entrance to Balliol are the thing. I should have crossed the road to inspect them. Thirty years ago they were the subject of voluminous correspondence between Mottram, sec. of the Balliol Sunday Night Concert Society, and the college bursar (Brigadier someone or other) re: getting them lowered so that Ossian Ellis’s harp could be heaved in. It would have been more straightforward to re-stage the entire Second World War.

To this day, whenever we see a bollard we always look to see if it is retractable. In Madrid the other week there was a road sign which said: ‘Bolardos Retractiles’. If only Mottram could have been there to see it.

I’m reminiscing. Oh, the heavenly Oxford days! Not actually. What Mottram most looked forward to in his Oxford day was gazing at the window of a shop in the Market which sold trunks and dog biscuits.

Now, do get on with it. At last, we forge into the Ashmolean Museum for the party …and are knocked out with thrill at the new building. Bruce explains the rhythms, the complexity, the superb melding of old and new. And the drama! A vast atrium with extraordinary stairs waving down the side. Bruce and I are on the floor with our I Phones, seeking angles for our graphs. See inadequate result below.

Off the floor, we run into Rick Mather himself in the porcelain gallery. He is full of how the founder’s ashes are secretly contained in a jar there. Can we guess which one? This, as well as filling in David Mabberley, Keeper of the Herbarium at Kew, not seen since 1987, on twenty years’ of gossip, quite distracts me from congratulating him on the stunning building.

Then there were the other guests – and the speeches. Oxford, you know! Most likely to be overheard: ‘I’m a Trustee….’ ‘If you’ve sat next to the Senior Side Mumbler at as many committee meetings as I have…’ ‘My assumption that gowns would be worn when the Vice Chancellor is present appears to have been erroneous.’ (Indeed it was: London club gays had got in, their idea of ‘cocktail dress’ as per the invitation being studded belt, tight jeans and novel-looking white cloth shoes, not exactly trainers).

Laura Malcolm would have had a field day. She does a brilliant impression of a blinking lady don, saying ‘I have a minorish quibble.’

Finally the speeches… I mustn’t be cruel. I’ve gone on long enough. These speech-making men (they were all men) had got this marvellous building built. But, oh dear! The thanks, the jokes.  When Mottram was ‘up’, in the 70s, he overheard, lodged as a paid musician in a high gallery above a dinner at Lady Margaret Hall, a speech given by Harold Macmillan, then the ancient Chancellor. Or rather didn’t hear – there was just a low groaning coming through, gradually getting louder until ‘Nearly as old as I am’ rumbled forth. It was the first climax.  Roars of smug laughter. Then the whole process repeated, several more times.

That’s speeches for you!

Rather, I’m sorry to say, everything that Poor Little Rich Gays are against, but the building itself, the new Ashmolean extension, absolutely what we are for.

The Outstanding Rick Mather Staircase at the Ashmolean

Superb Rick Mather extension to the Ashmolean Museum

Craft Items at the Ashmolean Liked by Robert Nevil and Sebastian Archer

Major Scarf worn by Sebastian Archer at the Opening

Second Class Railway Carriage in which PLRGs Conveyed to Oxford