Friday 28th April 2017

Monday was Harry Rollo’s great performance. If a bomb had dropped on the performance area such a swathe of vital Poor Little Rich Gays would have been wiped out.  It was so darling, darling before.  Names, names, names. What a garden! `Kernow Hellizon was accompanied by one so close to the Throne he is as good as on it, at least one buttock. There was Reggie Cresswell with Mercy Applause and Lord Arrowby in the reversible mac by Dries – the plain fawn side  for government wear, the paisley for later. Magnus Finn, the hot boy doc, as always, was with. They were charming to Prince Dmitri apparently, sat just in front of them. Rufus Pitman was released from an Austrian clinic for the occasion, substantially reduced in scale, possibly re-grown in a petri dish in fact, with Raj Zoroaster glinting at his side, cooking up naughty left-wing schemes, no doubt. My inner party was Sebastian Archer, looking more and more like God or Tolstoy, Robert Nevil (unspeakable, of course) and Anthony Mottram of Prague. We also had Archie Armitage and Fabien-Boris Claude both gleaming after many Iron Man contests and mountain cycling programmes.

It was all so darling. There was a detectable rustle as we entered the performance area. People always know even if they’ve no idea who we are. I was in the Zara military coat with gold buttons.

What a coincidence! A massive figure was right in our row, the one who booted out the Trustees of one of our greatest Statelies in a blaze of publicity and before that was ragingly entrepreneurial on the national scene and a tremendous intimate and former colleague of Sebastian Archer’s. Incredible that we should all book the same row.

So the performance began. Even by the interval, any cruelty and trouble of the Poor Little Rich Gays had fallen away. Robert Nevil, even, was transported. But the performance was the Poor Little Rich Gay life to perfection: the endless longing to rest at last on the sofa, the complete impossibility of doing so, somehow impelled, yet choosing a higher path. How could breakfast be served anywhere but the dining room? Coffee is never stirred with a teaspoon, only a coffee spoon. Later on there was such a risk of vulgarity but oh, Harry is marvellous. There could have been a religious revelation. There could have been a visit to Lourdes. Healing, resolution, everything making sense – all these horrors are superbly dangled and drawn away from. Nobody is anything definite, so liberating, and the only thing is we must sing our song when called upon to do so. Fail to sing and things will go terribly wrong. A curse will fall upon the Earth and paralysis. But even then there is a chance of going back, finding the place where one failed to sing and the second time round not missing one’s cue. So in the end it’s all worth it although without apparent purpose – the hair, frockage, make-up, flowers, menus and decor, the appearances, the gardening, the words uttered. We must give and give. Only giving up is fatal.

Upstairs, afterwards, at the private after-function, Poor Little Rich Gays have never been more radiant. Lord Arrowby with deep tan and glow rivalled the best lighthouses. Rufus Pitman was telling, how, in the clinic, an inmate had escaped and had a schnitzel. But the massage was her undoing. ‘Whas is zhis?’ the masseur exclaimed. The schnitzel could be detected by expert hands even from without. ‘I’m taking two more performances of the performance,’ Reggie Cresswell announced. I think I, Adrian Edge, will too. Like a fool I missed a vital bit, of such rarity and not because I wasn’t paying attention as usual. Robert Nevil was seen talking to a world-class English tenor whose singing has greatly improved after lessons. Probably Robert Nevil was arranging an evening of English song for a whole row of ladies over 90 in woolly stockings and other ‘art’ hand-woven garments. . ‘I only take 6 minutes for lunch,’ Lord Arrowby confided. ‘I can’t let the Nation down.’ ‘But you’ve done so much for the Nation,’ I said. I could have added that it’s in the National interest that Lord Arrowby has a proper lunch break. Conrad Matheson and I had a superb semi-quaver passage on the subject of mansplaining which is what I claimed to be doing re: the performance in talking to Mina Ermine and Sybil Barnes of Brockwell Park. ‘No, you’re not mansplaining,’ said Conrad, mansplaining. ‘Allow me to mansplain. Mansplaining is a man telling a woman qualified in a certain field all about that field because he knows far more about it of course.’

How happy we were. I called the Uber before it was too late.