Friday 17th July 2009

Robert Nevil and I are at war in the cave bathroom. We are lodged at a two-star at Shiroka Luka, you recall – own rooms but shared facilities.  ‘You should shave then shower,’ he snaps as I do the opposite. This was before he went into paroxysms because I left my pants in the cave without me in them. But when he uses it, he points the shower at the lav and turns it on full blast, drenching the entire room. Afterwards I have slave away with that kitchen paper I bought yesterday, mopping up.

I can’t abide a wet lav.

 At breakfast I compliment him on his fine pale blue linen shirt. He peers in my shirt. ‘I can see what it is,’ he says. It has ‘Miu Miu’ written all over it in tiny letters.  That’s it. No further remark.

We have higher things to think about – the orphans. But it is rather galling. His outfit is from UniQlo and shows off his exquisite tiny form to perfection. My Miu Miu, by contrast, is a bit much. At least no orphan was wearing it too, unlike yesterday with the appalling Marc Jacobs clash.  

We visited a vast creepy underground cave with water roaring through it where Orpheus went down into the Underworld, possibly. I never knew that Orpheus came from this part of the world but he did. ‘We must be sure to look back as we come out again,’ Robert Nevil said to Anthony Mottram, jerking a thumb in my direction. He was casting me in the Eurydice role but wrong. Orpheus was absolutely supposed not to look back as he led her back to life. If he did she would be returned the Underworld. Mottram and Nevil were shaking with glee. I said to Mottram: ‘You pretend I mean nothing to you. Don’t leave it  ’til it’s too late. Don’t leave it until my coffin is being lifted from the bier to be struck to the floor with grief, never to rise again.’ ‘I think I’ll be the first to go,’ he says. It’s true he has high blood pressure and considerable girth. But the Prague doctors have declared him not overweight – although, since they’re private doctors, that’s what they’re there for, I should imagine.  

Oh, to be left alone amidst the alien corn, weeping at Mottram’s grave! Next year will mark our 40^th year of quiet and not so quiet bickering.

Somehow Robert Nevil managed to buy some gay floral tea in the cave. Lord knows how. He pranced near the edge, taking pictures, in danger of becoming unco-ordinated with the little bag of tea and the camera straps and so on . Would he topplie to his death in the cruel waters two hundred feet below – all because of some gay tea?

It is said that the water crashing through the cave emerges in the valley lower down but any object put into it in the cave is never seen again.

The evening was given to the orphans. There was a football match and another little show for them, given by a visiting English school party. I had word from London of a brilliant party given by my friend Laura Malcolm, the novelist, for her husband’s 45^th birthday, attended by the Riverside multis and a very famous television personality. The Multis also sent a photo of their marble dining table piled high with glassware and napery for a dinner of their own. I sent back a picture of the huge white fridge in my bare little two-star room.

My room in the two-star

Both events I would have attended, had I been in London. So I am sacrificing something for the orphans.