Thursday 2nd July 2015

Last Tuesday, before dear precious Mrs Nevil’s funeral which was this Tuesday, I boarded for Vienna with Reggie Cresswell, the world’s leading Ghanian ceramicist, for a five-day visit to culminate in Harry Rollo’s perf. We were recognised at Heathrow by Piggy Hislop, who once courted Laura Malcolm.  Now he is a fixture on ‘Have I got News for You,’ a programme loathed by the Gay Mother. Extraordinary that he was in Economy too, so that cabin was more celebrity-packed than any is likely to be ever again, yet few or none on board appeared to realise it. Our conversation, open to all ears, was of Reggie’s private ducal visit in Northamptonshire to look at the Poussin. Sharing the taxi from the railway station was a lady close to the Queen, of her Bedchamber no less at one time. The driver got lost. ‘I think he’s from Bombay,’ the Bedchamber lady said, ‘or thereabouts.’ Otherwise she was tremendous fun, unstuffy, really crammed in the taxi, owing to a over-weight household name forcing entry, and loving it, and quite penniless.

Before we knew it, we’d gained and were in the Hotel Altstadt. I held my breath. What if Reggie didn’t like it? We’d end up spending all our time on the pavement outside other hotels, craving admittance. But Reggie did like it and almost at once Harry Rollo was round from appointments to do with his perf and Vienna began. Fold upon fold of whipped cream – little did we know then what riches were to come. Reggie had never been there before.  That first afternoon he found a frontage by Plečnik (it’s just taken me 10 minutes to work out how to do that accent).  It must have been then that Harry Rollo first mentioned Sisi. At once I was entranced but not yet bewitched. She’s got a whole museum devoted to her, which Harry pronounced ‘Rather poor.’ He’d been in residence in Vienna for six weeks and done everything. All the same Sisi was an Empress and mad keen on losing weight. She started the whole weight-losing movement. How could one resist?

Rare Plecnik Frontage in Vienna – I’m Not Doing that Accent Again

The House without Eyebrows, Seen by Me in Vienna in 2013. This is the First Building of Modern Design in Europe and Hugely Important