Friday 17th February 2012

It is breathtaking: forget the Ivy, where I lunched on Wednesday with some career women just back from Barbados whose heads were excellently hard re: men. No sentimental nonsense. Forget even the Alice Temperley Show tomorrow, with Cinnamon Club after; forget the Harry Rollo perf tonight; forget (unimaginable) Robert Nevil in the gloved clasp of Majesty on Tuesday (she was in pistachio).  Forget Götterdämmerung !

The Angus Willis Home Store, Hastings!

Exactly… words do not fail, they have no place.

The Graph is to feature over 3 pages: this is quite simply the most important store opening in decades.

Four years ago Angus Willis bought a perfectly appalling property in Hastings High Street – Georgian but twee-ified and rendered pustular with moisture-retaining blue fur carpet.  And now….how has he done it?  A complete transformation and as always with any Angus Willis interior, everything absolutely right.

The feeling is 1950s ironmonger but reaching further back to the 1890s, a coal-fire: almost Beatrix Potter: a shop in a home. Bare wood, racing green and chocolate, doors bashed up cream straight from the reclaimers’ yard banish any hint of story-book prettiness. But really, there’s nothing like it. It’s unique. In fact, illiteracy is called for: it’s completely and utterly and totally unique.

You can shop there too! I bought tea-towels, a wire-brush, 12 church candles for £22.50, a bath plug, and a milk jug for £37.50. At last I can style plastic milk bottles off my breakfast table. It’s taken 36 years to achieve.  If you wanted you could get a whole set of Beryl or Denby ware. Angus offers one-off vintage: sets of china, furniture, linens, glass, garden implements, manly tools, as well as steady lines.  Everything for the home.

A gay couple bought an old alarm clock while I was there for £140. The one who picked it out had a breakdown when Angus demonstrated its ring, but the other one drove the purchase through and gave their day shape and meaning.

Angus Willis Home Store, Hastings: Back Shop through to Front Shop

Angus Willis Home Store, Hastings: Back Shop

Angus Willis Home Store, Hastings: Ladies' Restroom

Angus Willis Home Store, Hastings: Glass and Linen

Angus Willis Home Store, Hastings: Bathroom Department

Wire Brush, Tissue-Wrapped, from Angus Willis Home Store, Hastings, £4.50

Angus Willis Home Store, Hastings: Milk Jug £37.50: Similar Still in Stock: One-Off Pieces

14th February 2012

Valentine’s Day we’ll overlook. I’ve some more love thoughts brewing after Götterdämmerung (yes! umlauts), cast live from the Met on Saturday. Jeanette Winterbaum (we don’t like her) is rambling all over the Guardian today: ‘Let’s replace power with love.’ She really hasn’t the first idea. Any run-of-the-mill Poor Little Rich Gay could put her right: the two aren’t separable, for a start.  Power, and its attendant, money, are routinely despised, and Love loved. But in The Great Gatsby wealth, glamour, celebrity are not entirely corrupt but still contain some glimmer of ‘the last and greatest of all human dreams’ experienced fleetingly by the Dutch sailors on seeing for the first time ‘the fresh, green breast of the new world.’

Wagner has a thing or two to say: as we shall see.

But my theme today is monarchy. Her Majesty has made the huge mistake of inviting Robert Nevil to her Buckingham Palace for a reception in aid of Charles Dickens this evening. These book types… does she know how they behave? How they knock it back and back-chat?

I expect she does.

I’m moved by Jubilee thoughts to reaffirm the perfection of the Monarchy, or rather its absence of perfection which is somehow just right. Thank the Lord the heart of our Nation throbs in the bosom of a elderly lady whose only slender claim is inheritance and who, unborn to regnancy, would have been a modest, reclusive country woman, and still is that person in many dimensions while imposing Majesty in others. The utter fragility of the Monarchy is its glory: its dependence on the approval of the public, on the right person being born to King or Queenship, that it has not been sought.

Just imagine the horror were Sir Wilfred Self the President, or Deborah Orr or Jeanette Winterbaum. We’d end up with far more arse and shut-out than you get from Her Majesty. The drab theorists of equality never understand. The Queen, only there by chance, clinging on, an amateur really,  does far more to deflate the pomposity and self-importance of those seething just below her, the great and the good, the heads of this and that, than any Head-of-state-on-merit ever could.

The worldly, unearned splendour of the Monarchy works round to being  a kind of inclusiveness. Inequality is  a fact of life;  inheritance is an inevitable product of productive, wealth-generating societies. Bloody wealth-stripping revolutions have only produced  rigidity in the other direction.  Her Majesty in her person embraces the unfortunate rich, those stricken by inheritance , the necessary rich as well as everybody else.

Our Nation has changed, has had numerous silent revolutions in the last 150 years, without slaughter or disruption because of, not despite, the Monarchy.

Sunday 12th February 2012

So Kusama boarded today; her new work is on show at Trenton’s Gallery. The PV was on Thursday and once again she was wheeled out; people like to crouch before her and grasp her hand while addressing. I have to say I’m in crisis about the new work; the critic in the Graph thought: a bandana to wear at a rock concert? But where’s the terrifying mental disturbance? Maybe it’s all right though because she already did greatness earlier.

On Friday I gave a dinner; it’s killing me because Peter Acharya, who was been impersonated in Trinidad, knew Princess Anne’s hairdresser and used to meet Stephen Hester in the lavs at his workplace (nothing improper), came out with an absolute classic but I can’t remember what it was. He’s trying to book for the Jubilee but won’t pay £700 a head for riverside view and dinner. Then his boiler conked and the woman on the phone at boiler headquarters said he should try re-pressurizing by crawling underneath it and turning a tap. He went mental and did not put the phone down for some time.

Meanwhile the Multis have been enjoying hotel life at Ananda, the health spa in the Himalayas; Matthew and Casey, the matching Toronto gays, have been replaced by Susan and Merle, a lady with large handbag and the Dalai Lama  who showed them his iPhone (see graphs below).  They’ve gone into skirts, but above the waist are the City tailored look with twist as always – huge ties, huge cuff links,bigger checks and stripes than normally seen, the overall creation astonishing.

Tomorrow they leave Ananda, I believe, for a general tour of India.

The Dalai Lama Shows iPhone: An Intimate Moment with the Multis as They Participate in Hotel Life at Ananda, Himalayas

Kusama at Trenton's Gallery on Thursday

Merle and Susan at Ananda, Himalayas

Lady with Handbag at Ananda, Himalayas

Hotel Life at Ananda, Himalayas

Tea-Service at Ananda, Himalayas

Well-Staffed Wall in India

Ananda Buggy, With Cover On: Ananda, Himalayas

Good Poor Little Rich Gay Definition of Love on Ananda Menu, Himalayas

Unadorned Himalayian Scene

Wednesday 8th February 2012

It was so easy in the end. At the door I simply said, ‘I’m the Photo Multi,’ and swep in.

Tip: how to avoid forking £10,000 for PV access at the Tate. ‘Hostesses’ on door all have the same guest list and strike off names but they don’t cross check. So the same person can arrive several times, if you get my drift. However, within, someone from Trenton’s gallery, who champion Kusama and have their own show of her newest work (PV tomorrow), told me something rather awful. I can hardly bear to think of it.

Do you know Kusama? Well, you’ll have to go to Tate Modern to see. She’s 82, has been self-institutionalised since 1977, has hallucinations, had a New York phase in the 50s and 60s, including ‘obliteration parties’, sad0-machocistic filmed events, and the creation of frockage pre-dating Madonna’s cone-bra by 20 years.  She also does multiple phalluses in silver standing on a tray, as if ready for the oven. I first heard of her two or three years ago at Trenton’s Gallery: there was a colourless rectangle, possibly flat, possibly not, of something like frogspawn but opalescent, not just a pattern or merely a thing of great beauty and exquisite execution but undefinable and never seen before. That’s when I saw the point. If you had it, it would make perfect sense to spend £250,000 on this extraordinary item.

The show at the Tate is overwhelming and difficult. I couldn’t justly report. Kusama herself has never been seen in this country. She has not left Japan for 12 years. But I was privately informed by the gallerists that she had gained Heathrow on Sunday with an entourage including someone who films her at all times.  Then word went round – by the lifts, there was a flurry. The full range of cameras, microphones on long sticks; a bizarre figure in wheelchair with bright red wig. It was her.

I had to dash though: Angus Willis (I’ve still his brilliant Hastings shop to bring out) summoned me last minute. He’s been graphing M & S party food for their catalogue: it’s pre-release material, not yet on general sale, so more rarity, more special access. He gave me a Luxury Salmon and Asparagus Terrine to take home.

By the way, Robert Nevil says that the Lucian Freud Private View at the National Portrait Gallery has been cancelled: too much riff-raff trying to get it.

I know it’s silly, this mania for Private Views.  But, there’s no getting away from it, do admit, it’s a driving force through all humanity and a day brightener to contrive entrance and then achieve it! Just that little something extra can’t do any harm! And, I quite forgot, the awful thing I heard…at the Tate PV, I was told that you only have to pay about £150 for membership and you can go to all the PVs, at both Britain and Modern.

I just can’t believe it . And won’t.

Kusama Gains: But Are We Sure It's Not the Widow Ono?

Kusama: Work from 2009

Issey Miyake Worn at Kusama PV, Tate Modern

M & S Luxury Terrine: You Won't Find it on the Shelves Though; Not Yet

Luxury M & S Terrine: Pre-Release Material, Not Available to the General Public, As Yet

M & S Luxury Terrine: Interior: Interesting Green Inner Surprise: I 'Ate Off' The Top Decoration, So It is Stripped Down to the Basic Block

7th February 2012

It’s not absolutely certain, but entry should be gained. Shan’t breathe until in, though. The Kusama Private View, I mean. At Tate Modern. Kusama herself has gained from Japan.

There was a crisis last night. I heard of a Lucian Freud Show at Nat. Portrait Gallery. So it looked like another Private View not used at. I was all set to take against PVs in the big public galleries completely. Robert Nevil was texting in fury: ‘I want to see art, not rich people.’ I was developing a line. You might call it thinking: PVs are at heart of corruption in English life: toadies, cronies, the great and the good lording, while ordinary public have to pay. PVs are cruel and wrong.

Now am almost in to Kusama, complete change of view, of course.

Well, it’s true. You may not like it. Call me trivial. But it is thrilling to throb at the core, to be there, privately.

Reggie Cresswell, the Ghanaian ceramicist, Harry Rollo, Kernow Hellizon and Lord Arrowby will be at the Lucian Freud PV, you can be sure. Lucian was very near to PLRGs, you know. He even painted some.

So I will be there through them, rather than striving mightily for actual presence. Which could give rise to over-exposure.

Otherwise, I’ve been enmeshed in a rich web of buses for most of the day. My official car, with Xenon driving lights, had to go over to Acton, West London (that’s Achtung) to get new tyres at knock-down price. So I thought to work in a visit to house-bound, hip-snapped Val  who took an over-sauced fall, after sipping, back in Sept. At random, I mounted a 266, no idea where it was going. Somehow managed to get off  before it veered in wrong direction. Then ventured onto an E3, a rare bus, I should say with a name like that, despite discouragement of veiled lady at stop not wanting it. It ran wildly through unknown streets, skimming lamp-posts, nearly taking my eye out in front upstairs seat, then burst through of a sudden into familiar terrain. No other passengers. I just couldn’t believe it. I inquired of the driver. Yes, he was going absolutely in the direction of Val’s premises; as it turned out, to the door.

I was radiant; in the sunshine, with Kusama getting nearer, near ecstasy. Val and I picked over the mystery of Her Majesty’s bust, as displayed in Hello magazine. We revised Hello after lunch. The pudding was 1881 mince meat, shortbread biscuit broken and cream. Half way through eating, Val exclaimed: ‘It’s a de-constructed mince pie!’ He received a man who wanted a Yamamoto boiler suit copied in a fabric made of corn starch.

I showed him the pictures of the Multis in India, at Ananda Health Spa. ‘They’ve spelt ‘dowry’ wrong.’ He was straight onto it, fishing out the Scrabble dictionary from under his chair.

The Multis go on at Ananda: tiny meals; prayer meetings by the Ganges.

The Multis' Scrabble Board: 'Dowry' Spelt Wrong, Val Points Out

The Multis Suite at Ananda, Himalayas

The View from the Multis' Suite at Ananda, Himalayas

Ananda, Himalayas: Lounge Area

Oh Dear!

A Vigorous Programme of Activities for the Multis at Ananda, Himalayas

Monday 6th February 2012

Poor Little Rich Gays ignored all warnings and surged forth in their machines at the weekend. Prince Dmitri Hersov: his Porsche tobogganed downhill in Wales and he was nearly a goner. He only regained control and hope of continuation with his blue-chip accounting outfit at the last min. What a mercy, for the merest dent in that Porsche costs £1900 to repair! We know after Marcus Cargill, England’s leading clock-mender, reversed into it at the Alpine Pizza Hut in Tuscany last summer.

Oh for summer days!

Now look, I’ve no time. Majesty is on TV at 9pm and I’ve a chicken to roast before. So much to tell about Angus Willis’s Home Store in Hastings: newly opened and absolutely outstanding: it’ll go way beyond Ottolenghi or C. Lloyd’s exotic garden as a small space having a massive world impact, you can be quite sure. The originality is total. The Telegraph are to feature in March. You wait.

I went down on Saturday, but I didn’t stay at Angus’s Tudor House, which is his other great project and brilliant achievement in Hastings. We were lodged in another back-up house Angus has got near Battle. It seems Fergus Strachan, Angus’s partner, lacks the dedication required for full Tudorisation. He wants TV on and to loll on a three-piece.

Entre nous, Angus is Hastings

So yesterday morning, we awoke to a snow covering. Magical, but no Poor Little Rich Gay could leave it alone for long. We had to style it out of the way so that Angus could forge forth to open his shop; it has a coal fire.

Then, on the way home, my machine, with Xenon driving lights, gained a flat tyre. Somehow, hauling luggage out of the boot so that the rescue man could get at the spare wheel, my cream outfit, cap a ped, Fabrizio del Carlo web knit and M. Jacobs cream jeans, got smeared with grim.

I’d only worn cream to match the snow. I had it planned and packed from Saturday. As you know, this winter I’m taking summer colours into winter.

What of the Multis in the Himalayas, at the spiritual health spa, Ananda? Well, the Photo Multi took a cup of hot water last week for a soar throat. A ‘soar’ throat is quite a different thing from a ‘sore’ one, don’t you think? How transforming. The latest is worrying: they’ve been seen at a prayer meeting of some kind by the Ganges.

I’ll put it out of mind: what I’ve not mentioned is the Kusama Exhib: tomorrow is the Private View at the Tate. I’m going right up to the wire, trying to get in. It’s agony. But I just couldn’t, I couldn’t visit as an ordinary paying member of the public.

If other dodginas and dubistas, and freeloadianas are allowed not to be ordinary members of the public and to view free of charge, why not me?

The Scene in Sussex Yesterday: I Wore Cream Cap a Ped to Match But Had a Flat Tyre and Somehow Got Besmirched

Cup of Hot Water Taken by Photo Multi at Ananda, Himalayas

The Ganges, as Seen by the Photo Multi on a Stroll from Ananda, Himalayas

1st February 2012

I said there had been developments. I said there was a sensation. We’ve known about it for some time but the implications are only just ramming home.

The Multis are at Ananda, the spiritual health farm high in the Himalayas. No sign yet of any chanting or strange burnings or wafting of powders over the body to gain aboveness from the material. But just look at their portions! No pudding allowed at lunch. The 1st course two mouthfuls, the main the glory of three.  Can you imagine!  That Miami-style apartment building  (see graph below) full of starved persons in pyjamas. Anything could happen, especially in the afternoons.

Now the massive news is: the Blond Multi’s given up. Work, that is. Just left. The business was sold. He had to work out a period. Whether he’ll still use his former business partner at Glyndebourne remains to be seen. Lady Carmichael, his mother, can’t believe it. The Blond’s so keen, so dedicated. Never a minute to idle by the water fountain, always late in the office, then home to take a piano exam. ‘What’ll you do now?’ his mother inquired at her lunch the other day. ‘That’s what everyone says,’ the Blond replied. ‘But how about you? What’ll you do?’ he joshed. It can’t be denied that the mother must be over 70 if the son is to be 50 in March. ‘Why do I have to do anything?’

I don’t believe it. Poor Little Rich Gays are always tormented into doing something. How they are wrenched, self-whipped on the work course, glorious, but with an eye on leisure although knowing, once gained, they will not endure it long.

Unless, of course, half-starved and delirious in the Himalayas, the Blond Multi turns spiritual.

The Blond Multi's Spiritual 1st Course at Luncheon Today: Ananda, Himalayas

The Photo Multi's 1st Course at Luncheon Today: Ananda, Himalayas

An Ananda Main! Reduced to the Minimum

An Evening Pudding Structure at Ananda, Himalayas: Pudding Only Allowed in the Evening

Fellow Guests at Ananda: These Must be the Spiritual Pyjamas

Ananda, Spiritual Health Farm, Himalayas: the Main Block

Ananda, Himalayas: the Gardens

Tuesday 31st January 2012

What about Sir Goodwin? Or rather Mr…

Well, the Multis have been incarcerated… at Ananda. It’s in the Himalayas. The regime is mud and salt but also Ayurveda, Vedanta and Yoga.

Actually it’s not a prison; it’s probably well over a £1000 a day. But that high up and that far away, what possibility of escape? They’re in for two weeks.

I’m thinking the Multis are already members of one cult – the cult of Margaret. It’s so easy to switch to another, therefore.  They’re cult-prone. What is this Vedanta? Or Ayurveda?

Let’s hope they come back as Gods, mounted on trays, held aloft and covered in flowers – rather than any menacing Bhagwash, Mentmore-style

There’s something I’m not telling you, though. There’s more than meets the eye.

Monday 30th January 2012

It’s intensely dramatic. The Multis have left the country! For India. I went all through lunch with Prince Dmitri at Ottolenghi (he took the day off from his blue-chip in the docklands); we talked about cleaners – his dusts the needles right off the pick-up arm of his turn-table (yes! he’s a vinyl freak, rare bands, only to be played on trad. record player) and dumps his rubbish all over the neighbourhood provoking near-suing letters from the council. Only afterwards did I remember: it’s Prince Dmitri’s birthday! My iPhone told me on Saturday. But then it went clean out of.

Such a thing would never have happened if  the Multis had been here.

They never forget a birthday. They would have lavished, booked Heston, had menus personalised.

Will they ever come back? What about their jobs, or rather their enterprises? Have they abandoned everything? They’re to take a mud and salt health farm for two weeks in the Himalayas. Pyjamas are issued on arrival to be worn for the duration. There might even be group therapy or at least opportunities to become emotional. It’s unthinkable. The Multis are not exactly normal, nor are they glazed and glossy like the Earls Court Gays. But they forge on, like Margaret. ‘I fight on, I fight to win.’  Fracture and fear are tossed out of the way.  What will India do to them, these blindingly entrepreneurial, property and company owning Multis? They could come back as Bhagwashes.  Or Gandhi, only eating salad and no outfit, craving the Poor.

It’s very worrying.

Only two weeks ago I lunched at Lady Carmichael’s. As you know, she is the Blond Multi’s mother. Her home is probably the most immaculate in England, even though she’s got dogs. It is an unshakeable oaken crucible (yes, it is half-timbered) of English comfort, from which the Blond Multi emerged. There are three sisters and a daughter-in-law, all dynamos, all unflappable. Pergola Trehair, the youngest sister, flowed thus: don’t re-inflate the breast-implant women on the NHS; I’m not killing the pig just yet; yesterday my husband was shooting in Connecticut; today he’s back and slumped; New York’s looking up; there were two shoot suppers before Christmas, one high, one low.

This is the cradle that made the Blond Multi. But what will India do?

Pergola Trehair: Her Pigs, Tulsa and Kelly

Look Who the Multis Found in Delhi!

Delhi Dyes: Just Like Home Really

The Multis: Delhi Tea-Party

Graphed by the Photo Multi: He Says It's an Early Shard

Friday 27th January 2012

The Multis board for India.

The captain came through to inform them in person of the flight length…. but did he have safe name as normally issued to pilots i.e. reverse of Wildblood, Thorneblizzard or Cleave? Good pilot names are: Coombes, Fairwave or Pleasantgrass.

The Multis Board for India