Saturday 2nd January 2016

Happy New Year to you all, Poor Little Rich Gays, here and throughout the World. The central image of my Norman New Year (I gained Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver’s chateau fragment on Tuesday then forged on to Giles Ullerston and Frankie-Doreen’s Manoir Desmesne the next day) has been the long table laid for 12 min, only momentarily still, at once the scene of riotious assembly. Laura flung out a dinner for 14 on Tuesday evening. ‘If you’re late, the canapés have gone,’ she said to the late guests. Her menu was superb: Nigella’s poulet au fennel and orange followed by her Lemon Curd Pav. ‘I’ll never get Lemon Curd in Norm,’ Matt Driver had said. But she had.

Ivo Driver turned up in quite a few designer clothes for the journey out to Norm from London in the Official Car with Xenon driving lights. Thankfully its tyres didn’t burst (a worry after banging the front left twice in the far, far West on Christmas Day). Nor did it assume ‘limp mode’ again as portentously it did when travelling to the Mine opening in September. The worry is greater with a young person on board – the humiliation. But there’s the return journey yet to be accomplished. Anything could happen. Ivo is now a prize-winning young man, likely to be mega. He’s going into the EU. Naturally at the other end of life there is bitterness. We’ve had our chance. Ivo wants to see the gap between rich and poor narrowed but is open to reason.  We’ve mentioned this matter before, you may remember. Anthony Mottram of Prague briefed me that misleading statistics have been put about concerning this gap which is comforting although one doesn’t want people to be low-paid of course. Nor does one want anybody to be richer than one.

So the huge fête got underway. It was important to bring out the young people. The Flank-Rollers had brought their children, Roscoe and Rosacae. Roscoe received a birthday card from David Cameron, I learned, and campaigned on his behalf in the recent election, receiving abuse in certain quarters. Rosacae you will recall from the summer, when she made a quail egg holder in wood with a hollow for the celery salt. She was head-in-book at the table. ‘You’re 13, I hear,’ I said. ‘Are you terribly difficult?’ Well, she wasn’t in fact, just awfully bored by 8 hours studying ‘Pike’ by Ted Hughes at her school. I suggested that Ted Hughes had rather had his day. How much is there to say about nasty animals? Finally she flew free enough to ask the difference between Grinder and Scruff, a subject on which I was able to enlighten her having been briefed by younger friends, such as Joshua Baring and Patrick Lockyer. We got out Grinder and viewed the offerings. Matt and Laura couldn’t believe that there could be Gays just behind their hedge. There was an idea that Rosacae might join Grinder as the only girl looking for a boy. Roscoe’s girlfriend, Zinnia, is lodged in Bournemouth studying animation but the heating is always breaking down in the shared flat.  The ‘lead-tenant’ says she has informed the landlord but she hasn’t. They go for days and days. Now she suggests that they club together to buy a new boiler – for a rented flat. I had a sudden flash: ‘She’s got Münchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy – she’s harming you through caring for you.’