A Round-up of March «

A Round-up of March

Monday 30th March 2015

Almost March’s last day and it has been a month. Through the vale of death the lunches, dinners, outings and pre-dinner drinks have bulldozed on regardless. On a Thursday I ascended an improvised lift up the side of the Battersea Power Station to where a show flat had been parked in a box at the top. Here Royston King was having a Trustees’ Meeting, with a fund-raising party afterwards. Lady Ribalt was expected but didn’t show. Some Royal gardeners were present who refused to say what are Majesty’s favourite flowers. Royston complained that too many guests were unlikely to contribute funds but were younger Gays in outfits. One youth had on a suit that was barely a spec for a doll although his broach was conspicuous. He had met on Gaydar 3 years ago a larger young man also on view. I thought another looked familiar and on closer inspection found one of Lord Arrowby’s friends from the telephone world now admirably filled out, nolonger a slip of a thing. How he came to be there, Lord alone knows.

The next day was an early start for Glyndebourniana with Aunt Lavinia. It was Members’ Open Day. Our lunch was a school-trip-type bag with a hommous sandwich and a tangerine and flapjack, eaten in the windy loggia. We toured the backstage area, a huge cavern full of head-dresses in the form of trees, and the costume and prop department like a school art room. How is summer Glydebourniana to bloom from this intriguing muddle ? But it will.

The City of Mahgony at the Garden the following day, I found a curiosity but I can’t say I was thrilled by it. As Anthony Mottram, ‘consultant’ of Prague, said, the Alienation Effect is so alienating. It wasn’t until the following Thursday, after a there-and-back-in-a-day to the far West for my own Trustees’ Meeting, that I was once again bolt upright at a home concert in a Westminster mansion. The concert was given by the nephew of the house and by coincidence a nephew of Anthony Mottram’s on piano. They’re all at the Royal College and very gifted. The concert was held in the 1st floor drawing room. Then we ascended for a seated dinner for 30 on the floor below. Then we went up five floors by lift to the rooftop penthouse kitchen and entertaining area for the ice-cream course. Conversation was largely confined to the decline of the elderly.

Over the weekend, Frankie-Doreen gave a dinner at which gossip that would rock the Nation if it got out was supplied by one who herself throbs at the core of our Nation’s history. One item concerned David Cameron and the other Alex Salmond. On the Sunday Genevieve Suzy had her birthday lunch in a restaurant at which we all admired each other’s outfits. When the pudding came, Genevieve didn’t make as much fuss as she might have done about the blonde hundreds and thousands on the rhubarb Ils Flottante. ‘They’re crumbs,’ she screamed, ‘not hundreds and thousands.’ Fortunately during lunch, Lord Suzy, Genevieve’s husband, continued to sell pictures although at lunch. Afterwards in his gallery, whence we retreated, he sold more pictures although it was a Sunday. One buyer, living over the gallery and indeed allowing on one occasion his bath to overflow into it, seemed to cause a stiffening in two of the birthday luncheon guests. The second he was out there was an outpouring and the bitter story of the sacking. A customer trembled through the door. ‘Have you got lots of money?’ Genevieve Suzy bellowed. The customer quivered that she was hoping for a framing facility.

I forgot to mention that I had low outfit satisfaction at Glyndebourniana Members’ Open Day. I was wearing my pink bobbly jumper by Paul Smith. I didn’t feel up to it having been ill. I wore it again yesterday in Hastings and loved it and me in it.

Oh yes! Hastings. Huge developments as well as a kidney dinner.