Friday 5^th March 2010

Returning from Claude Purcell’s funeral on Tuesday, I sank low. But at least, Miroslav is here. He is builder to the Poor Little Rich Gays. Reggie Cresswell, Laura Malcolm, we’ve all had him. He speaks English, but it is quite new.  This is right for Poor Little Rich Gays, now I think about it. While at Reggie’s he became the father of ‘twinks’. He informed Laura Malcolm that, in Poland, he is a ‘very urgent person.’

Can you establish the true meaning?

What better time, and with the spring coming in and after the harsh winter, what better antidote, than to refresh and renew the home?

Without quite realising it, I began last week, while at the Gay Mother’s. My Indian cut-work bedspread has been in restauro since Christmas or rather lying around waiting for work to begin. The organdie backing tears easily. So I was on the Gay Mother’s drawing room floor with nail scissors snipping out the damaged sections and stitching on tiny new pieces.

Now it needs washing but Miroslav’s ‘boys’, as he calls them, have got the downstairs laundry bathroom into a Beirut-like state. Only renewing the bath panel which was bowing and splitting – for the third time incidentally – but you wouldn’t believe the bombed-out look. Otherwise they’re dealing with a few bits of rotten wood outside, replacing some window panes, some cupboard doors, re-painting parts of the stairs that have got scuffed, trying to get their pointing, done a few years ago, a bit less of a mud-pie – nothing exciting. But the whole house covered in dust and my hands through to the bone from the Flash and the mopping and wiping. Of course Laura Malcolm would have none of it. She just wouldn’t bother. Between you and me, back in the 80s, she never dusted the back of her telly after builders, never, ever, all its life long.

To renew there must first be suffering, the home prized open, a great wound  – and of course drama. You forget, between times, what it’s like. I phoned up Papers and Paints. It’s a very superior paint shop in Fulham – historic colours, 5000 off-whites. Do you get the picture?  I said, ‘The last tin of HC92 (it’s Wedgewood Green actually) I had from you isn’t the same colour as the other HC92 you sold me. Would you…’ ‘Oh no,’ this horrid pinched, stuck-up toff lady voice said, ‘out of the question.’ She started up about legislation, pigments having to be changed, something to do with preserving fish stocks. Enormous length, no idea what she was talking about, any attempt by me to speak at all treated as impertinence. Well, I just flew at her. How dare she! Unbelievable! It’s the wrong colour! I was only phoning to ask if she absolutely insisted on the receipt seeing as it’s a unique product, could only have come from her shop.

The superciliousness! The grandeur! The vile, pecking, upper class voice! It was Val and the Baronessa Von Rezzori all over again. Once we stayed at her tower in Tuscany. Paying for it, but treated like the lowest of the low. ‘Bring out the guillotine!’ Val said. ‘I’ll be in the front row with my knitting needles.’ Wrong country, but never mind.

Funny how Poor Little Rich Gays, not exactly without privilege, are possessed of revolutionary fervour on occasion.

That arse Papers and Paints duchess told me to send in a sample. It was a concession, but you’d never have guessed.  I’ve done it. Got out the paint tin, prised it open, found a piece of card, painted it, waited for it to dry, then, envelope, accompanying letter, photocopied receipts, stamp, round to the post box, paint tin shut up again, hammer, wash brush…

I’m going to get them.