I Teeter on the Brink but am Shored up by Engagements «

I Teeter on the Brink but am Shored up by Engagements

Tuesday 24th November 2015

Last Monday was a horse drawing show in Duke Street St James. I was asked there privately by a friend of Connor Cadeaux’s with the aim of exposure on Dainty Lady TV. Actually the animal drawings were superb. Jilly Cooper herself was not present but had supplied comments hailing another Stubbs. Michelle McCullagh is the artist. Do get hold of one of her drawings at any price – although they are low cost. She does other animals as well and her husband was Olympic Gold medallist for clay pigeon shooting in 2012. ‘That must have been nerve-wracking,’ I said. ‘It was,’ he said. Now he runs a stud farm which he described in gruesome detail. Basically it’s a brothel with wash-and-go sexual relations. The PV was small but Alan Duncan was present and suddenly David Blunkett appeared with dog and minder. He made a speech before returning to the Lords. His dog was quite woolly. Funnily enough Genevieve Suzy had pointed out his mistress – that American woman associated with the Spectator – at the Somerset House ice rink preview the day before. So there’s another coincidence.

The next day I boarded early by official car, with Aunt Lavinia, for the funeral in Oxfordshire with the afterwards at one of the Downton locations where we sat beneath the Gainsborough. We were greeted enthusiastically as family, although I don’t know them very well. She had been lost for some time to vascular dementia and was a don’s widow so braced against the chasms by brains and rigour before dementia. Mountaineering had also featured and strangely (I hope not to be misunderstood) we all felt much better for the funeral. A funeral is a drama in which one is caught up regardless.

We regained the capital in time for my evening engagement which was a charming supper intime with Ralph Kitto (rarely seen) beneath the Damien Hirsts in South Kensington with a head of fixed income and media lawyer who had heard of Patrick Lockyer (the one who is always on the phone to the Caribbean, where they require injunctions with extraordinary frequency). It was an all-male gathering. José Matilla did all the cooking, but Ralph said he’d done it. The moussaka, he insisted, was in fact fish, a new kind of brown fish just like mince. The head of fixed incomes has got a ballet dancer staying (a famous one) who is incredibly flexible in the drawing room. There’s trouble overhead in the Kitto/Matilla apartment because filthy families have children who crash about and the landlord removed the carpet without reckoning on grand gays below, ready with court orders from the best legal firms. Now a single gentleman, light of foot, has moved in and they’re thinking of inviting him for a drink. For years, Ralph has fought push-chairs in the common parts. Ralph got a filthy look from Prince Edward when he tapped him on the shoulder at a charity function to ask where the hostess was.

So Wednesday was blank and Thursday was a film premiere while Friday was an Official lunch followed by a home concert in the largest known (to me) private house. It’s in Westminster. Not to mention the weekend….