Tuesday 16^th March 2010

Still no word from Papers and Paints.

Prince Dmitri Hersov has been in Moscow, distantly his homeland, where he encountered Tiramisu a la Russe. You see it below, shaped and dusted, not the usual slab, but recalling all the same the great Tuscan tiramisu war of last summer. That, and the immense grandeur of Lord Arrowby installing himself at Claridges on Saturday night to avoid the possibility of a noisy party in his apartment building (yes, it is warehouse-style), is all we have to cling to at the moment.

The Prince, in his rolling Russian way of the steppe, is gloomy. At his grand firm of accountants personnel are being slashed. The Multis are adamant for double-dip recession. Miroslav, the Polish builder, is falling to pieces. I don’t think he’s got enough work. What a riot we had a few years ago, Reggie Cresswell, myself and Laura Malcolm, as he re-built our homes for the most glorious prices. The awful wrench of the job being done and him gone, utterly bereft in the Pole-empty home. Now, I send him across the road to a neighbour to do some jobs: she is disgusted.

Usually we rise above the outside world. You’ll have noticed I never mention the economic crisis. I was in Tobago at the time, Oct 08, with Anthony Mottram, Vladmir Alexov, Peter Acharya and Ned Czernowski, crouched in the TV room at the villa, watching the red crashing markets with that summer-of-1940 feeling, barely able to breathe.

If you don’t know, that’s the Battle of Britain, our darkest hour; Granny put flower-pots at the end of her street against the German invasion, rumoured hourly to be imminent.

Somehow we seemed to recover. Last Spring I burst forth with the blossom into shopping again. Now, there’s a lurking, crumbling dread, a low dull sickly flame of anxiety. My only hope is that RBS shares will reach 80 pence and I can sell and make £2500.

But the Blond Multi says that might never happen.

Money, as you know, matters.

And we’re declining on the inside too. Claude Purcell died. An astonishing number of couples are splitting up; I have my great trouble with a certain person resident abroad.

But we must not forget: Poor Little Rich Gays know better than most what it is to disintegrate and re-form by the minute, making the most tremendous fuss while enduring. We are accustomed to living in extraordinary configurations and several dimensions at once . No Mummie and Daddy Woodentot and two little Woodentots for us.

And we’ve got more money.

Prince Dmitri Hersov's Russian Tiramisu - with chocolate-rendered-necktie garnish