Tuesday 15th December 2009

The Multis’ Pub Lunch on Sunday for friends and family – you can’t wait to hear. They reveal a new vista in Christmas gatherings. We all must follow.

But my own dinner is in two and a half hours. Ed Jasper, the bed linen expert, is coming and Lady Newell,  mahogany-voiced mother of Elsa Hodgeman, the Gertrude Stein de nos jours, as well as Elsa herself – and I haven’t swept the front area. What will they think?

But I did get a pomegranate – will it be nice with sea bream and green tahini sauce? Sea bream might be a way forward – one fillet per person, only £20.07 for eight. Not too sure about the Ottolenghi orange cake though. I got into a total muddle with the Magimix. Which one is the cake-making paddle?  Ended up hysterical putting the flour in before the eggs and the caramel top hasn’t worked and the man came round from Standard Life.

Now Elsa’s party is on Friday. Just a few of her intimate friends – names, names. Grayson and Mark and Lord Clue, the Law Lord, Paddy McPherson, the QC… then on Saturday it’s Lord Arrowby’s party.

And I haven’t got near my cards. What am I to do?  At least a hundred to go out.

But Sunday – the Multis took over a pub for a lunch for 40 family and friends of the Photographer Multi, who live in the Midlands, near Lichfield. Listen carefully because next year you must do the same. I drove up with Val, who, as you know, is not unknown to a drop but still can blaze forth with the old glory and did on that day. We fetched Lady Newell from her Elizabethan manor house near Oxford. At Lichfield she complained that the cathedral was dirty and enquired of the guides what they were going to do about it. Nothing apparently. It’s built of sandstone and washing would wash it away.

We gained the pub. Slight Multi-fication had taken place in the form of welcoming glasses of champagne. The mother of the Photographer Multi told me that the Blond Multi had been often on the phone to the pub re: colour of napkins, condiments to be placed on the table etc. Condiments – now there’s a word. Not very sure what it means.

The challenge of Christmas for the Poor Little Rich Gay is that at no other time of year are you so likely to meet normal people.

Can you imagine? And in normal surroundings too.

So the pub lunch preceded. Excellent roasts, bread and butter pudding etc. We were delightfully crammed in, Val marvellous when a waitress dropped a knife down his back. ‘Oh, your knives have got round handles. That’s why they roll off the plates. Mine are the same.’ Now if it had been the Ivy or La Pont de la Tour, where Val and I have often been guests of the Multis…Then we heard the landlord had fallen over and banged his head. A marvellous lady from the village who later turned out to have daughters said she had once been to a restaurant in Birmingham and everything was going beautifully when the chef came out with half his finger chopped off.  She was planning to do some cheesecakes to give round the village for Christmas. Much discussion of who had what plates to put them on – and grease-proof doilies.

These daughters were the only Poor Little Rich Gay element. Their Christmas lists are completely out of control. They can’t rein in their budgets for required presents to anything below £1000. They submit lists to their parents with little pictures of the necessary items downloaded from the Internet – an Apple book (£600), a grey top by Vivienne Westwood (£550).

We did love it. Just couldn’t believe the friendliness and warmth of normal people. Have never seen anything like it.

What’s more, the blond Multi tells me it was all brought in for approx. cost of dinner for 4 at La Pont i.e. one thousand pounds.

So surely well within sight even for non-Multis. Surely! Surely!  We must all get booking for next year.  Every pub in the country on the Sundays before Christmas must feature Poor Little Rich Gays receiving their family and friends in this manner.

Thank you, Multis, for  your boldness and newness.

I took Val back to his flat in Hammersmith and barked my shins on a prie dieux he’s got parked behind his front door.