Friday 20th November 2009

I can’t be blogging night and day. Tomorrow I go to Brighton for Marcus Cargill’s 50th. Mottram is coming over. They were at prep together, you know.

That Royal College of Art Opening was high. Huge surprise. Canapes surging in waves – again; champagne. Priscilla Carluccio (friend of Angus Willis, known to me) seen in distance in heavy quilted red and white striped coat to the floor. Older art women on the whole in impossible, tormented frockage. Laura Malcolm, herself in pink satin 6 inch heels (couldn’t get down stairs), much taken with kilt, violently clashing loud check jacket, black tights, silk flowers, scarves and GLASSES ensemble – the glasses very radical throughout. We spoke to Jasper Joffe, Chantal’s sister. You remember he was all over the papers some months ago, selling all his possessions because his girlfriend had left him.  He is plainly thoroughly bad and hugely alluring. Had a good painting on show – do buy him. The Multis’ piece by Chantal was prominently displayed and labelled. In their apartment there is a gap where it should be but no label with photograph of the work and sign saying ‘ON LOAN’.  A man approached and said, ‘I’m the Rector of the College. Who are you?’ I was terrified. Was it a challenge? We’ve been found out, I was thinking, We’re not the Multis. We’ll be escorted from the premises. But actually he said, ‘I was at school with you. You look just the same.’

Rather thrilling! Not true of course. I have gipsy blood; the look is strong but fading, I can tell you. Last week in that Chinese restaurant the photographer Multi’s graphs show me with a huge hole in my hair – thinning on top. Who’d have thought it.

Still, each stage is interesting in its way – and new, of course.

Kelm, Laura’s son, on his phone throughout, brewing up to go to Soho.

We roared back to Laura’s Bruce MacBain-designed living space for a simple three-course supper. Matt Driver had been working at home in a burglar outfit – track-suit bottoms and intermittent woolly hat. He showed me his new Media Room with what he called ‘mega, top, top TV’ and surround-sound. Not very classy. Not at all gay. He said the vital thing is to be a ‘C Suite Executive’. I thought I’d grasped it at the time, but now I’m not so sure.  I think it’s that you’ve got to have something beginning with ‘C’ in your job title, such ‘Chief’ or ‘Chairman’. I wonder about ‘Classroom Teacher’. Mottram is self-appointed ‘Chairman’ of Mottram Corp. I think ‘Trustee’ is quite good. I am a Trustee – but not of the Tate Gallery, unfort.