Thursday 1st September 2011

Oh dear, Val’s fallen in his kitch while excessively keen and has been carted to hosp with a broken hip.

Cruelly, I’m just furiously angry…for the time being. We could have gone to Great Dixter, or to see the Royal Wedding Dress.

Instead I shall be hovering at the foot of a bed on the 100th floor of the Charing Cross Hosp while Val states his requirements from the head.

In the meantime, here are some cheering pictures. Robert Nevil and Joshua Baring are busy laying art’s hand on the untamed Scotch moors.

Just look at the results!

Robert Nevil and Joshua Baring Fecit: Classic PLRG Improving of Sea, Land and Sky

Gumboot Placing by Robert Nevil and Joshua Baring: Styling the Scottish Wilds

Wednesday 31st August 2011

They’ve gone North. The Head of Sotheby’s is joining and they’re having self-plucked grouse (see graph below), a unique island-grown violet cauliflower and pink champagne. Blanche Spain is there and has done 25 flower arrangements.

No ideah Scotland had so many colours. Although violet and pink, come to think of it, figure heavily in heather mixture.

Heather is seen in Scotland, if you’ve never been there.

But Joshua Baring has just this minute flashed through to say that the Scottish landscape is much wrought with sculptures; art’s hand is seen. They’ve visited in addition a deeply private art gallery.

So there you are. Do not indulge any notion that Scotland is as nature intended.

Meanwhile, I sadly am denuded of Tuscany. The Multis are still there, with Prince Dmitri, Elsa Hodgeman, Lady Newell, Adelaide Hodgeman. Marcus Cargill, England’s leading clock-mender and his partner, Hamish McCory, have also now joined. I’ve heard no word of their doings.  I expect they’re flat out. The Photo Multi has sent bank account details. I’m to transfer a tip for the maid. I thought something in the region of £40,000 would be reasonable. In fact that’s what I’ve conveyed.

I can’t believe they’re still there. Yesterday I went to John Lewis and bought a bed-base with drawers. It’s being delivered. I’ve texted Val to start thinking about dressing beds. I don’t want a dreary cotton valance.  Val will have to run something up. I think we’ll go to those Indian fabric shops in Southall.  I’m also  looking at wooden clothes drying racks.

Other plans include: The Royal Wedding dress – must see; the Serpentine pavilion, also to view, Great Dixter, final viewing of the year,  and boarding for Romania for Angus Willis’s 50th Birthday.

I might also go on as Violetta at the Met.

I seem to have slotted straight back in to the rich groove of London life.

And there’s that other long-promised item –  don’t think I’ve forgotten – my great meditation on the kitchen theme, arising from a week with Arjan Bose in the apartemento near San Giminiwhinny.

Coming soon.

Joshua Baring Plucking Grouse on Northernmost PLRG Holiday: He Can Also: Brief on How a Nuclear Power Station Works, Book Any Table at the Ivy, Tell You Where David Beckham's Last Underpants Are Buried

Violet Cauliflower, Unique Scotch Island-Grown

Robert Nevil and Joshua Baring's Scottish-Style Tuscan Villa

Monday 29th August 2011

…not, I hope, for the very last time but certainly after three very happy weeks and knowing beyond doubt that it is in a very much better state than when found. Only on Thursday, Captain Blond Multi insisted that handle of the swimming pool fishing net, unfortunately protruding into view from the pool lounging area, be moved out of sight.  For the Farewell/Welcome dinner (farewell to me, Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver; welcome to Bruce MacBain and Tancredo Viamare), the Photo Multi achieved miracles with candles and placed chairs before the unswitch-off-able electric lights to subdue them.

Captain Blond was much exercised all the day as to how a Greeting/Farewell dinner could be menu-ed. The Photo Multi thought a flambé might express the explosive joy of arrival as well as the burning tragedy of departure. In the end his symphony of candles in the baronial courtyard of the villa where the dinner was set was festive with sombre undertones.

The Multis have been marvellous this holiday, their provision and lavishment beyond compare. £4000 on fayne waynes alone, we reckon; and no price to pay, really no price to pay. Unlike loathed Smallmeal and Limpney, former friends,whose Glyndebourne, Covent Garden, Ivy, Tuscan villa and weekends at Massivebury were carefully aimed through the sights of a rifle. Execution might occur at any moment and, in my case, did.

The thing is, after the farewell/greeting dinner, we got through to the beyond, or tried to.

As I mentioned, Carol Earle had gained from one of the great museums of New York a day or two before. Conversation acquired a new rigour. We had topics. You’d have been astonished had you been there, which you weren’t. Adelaide, Elsa Hodgeman’s daughter, explained the iconography of Lady Gaga: the idea is she’s quite plain and ordinary, but look at her! Look at how she’s elaborated and made something of herself. Her fans do not worship from afar, but are embraced and given treats. Other topics included: why women live longer than men, what the new generation takes from the old and ….inheritance tax. This was fielded by Matt Driver, the media mogul and husband of Laura Malcolm (Laura and I, Adrian Edge, her gay friend, work together as necessary, to supervise him.)  He wants it at 100%. Captain Blond and the Photo Multi agreed. They’re all hideously self-made. I put my handbag arm forward and said: ‘This is state socialism by any other name,’ which is what Margaret (I’m swaying more and more towards her) said about the 1983 Labour Party manifesto. The Photo Multi’s reason was that those who inherit money are more likely to be Leftie. He pronounced this then was overcome with mirth. I should mention too that there were a considerable number of lemon squeezers in his bedroom, bought at the Co-op for the attractive colours.

Anyway, Bruce MacBain and Tancredo Viamare arrived at the villa on Thursday evening. They’d been all over Italy in a Smart car looking for mini Mozzarellas. Of course, Bruce MacBain turned out to know all the same people as Elsa Hodgeman and her mother, Lady Newell (she was a bit naughty about the topics; her iPod always seemed to require attention as one was underway).

After the Farewell/Greeting dinner, I was going to bed in my suite when Tancredo Viamare came banging on the door, proposing a séance. ‘Can we get Granny back?’ I cried. But no, only the spirits of the house apparently. We sat around a table, holding hands. I thought: if I nearly fall asleep (it was 1.30 a.m) maybe I’ll believe in it enough.

But no spirits were forthcoming. Bruce and Tancredo made out that they get through to the beyond on a regular basis. I don’t believe a word of it.

It’s all a tremendous hoax.

So, the next day, Matt Driver and Laura and I, Adrian Edge, boarded at Florence for City airport. By luck, and on a non-paying basis, we managed to occupy the whole of Premier Plus Class, which was no different from the rest but at the front. Matt sat alone in the absolute front row with that air of stillness and head in papers (although there were no papers) that business greatnesses in transit have. People were looking and wondering. ‘This is what I’m used to,’ Matt said.

Now, I’m back in my sacred homeland, and Tuscany is so far, far away.

Ugly Lights Defeated: the Photo-Multi's Styling for the Farewell/Greeting Dinner, Tuscany

The Farewell/Greeting Dinner: Styling by Photo Multi

Lounge-Area Spoiled by Poles

Protruding Poles: Re-Styling Required

More Pole Misery in Pool Lounge-Area

Gloriously Pole-Free in the Lounge-Area

Lady Newell at Luncheon Buffet in Luncheon Outfit

Lady Newell: Luncheon Outfit: No Chance of Escape

Getting Through to the Beyond: Bruce MacBain and Tancredo Viamare's Brilliant Hoax

Wednesday 24th  August 2011

Carol Earle is to gain from New York after all: so that’ll be two important curators of New York museums encountered by me, Adrian Edge, this Tuscan season.

I’m still hoping to go deep. Don’t worry: I’ve not forgotten my long promised meditation on kitchen love (see glossary), inspired by talk and experience at my apartemento near San Giminiwhinny last week. Poor Little Rich Gays often take, house and provide for  a heavenly boyish lover, perhaps Brazilian.   On the whole, the kitchen stays the same age, while the Poor Little Rich Gay gets older.

It’s being called San Giminiwhinny is to do with Anthony Mottram’s (my oldest and closest friend, now estranged) mother’s dog. In fact there were about four dogs but they were all called Ginny and they were all Bedington Terriers, which is a blue dog going brown at the extremities with age. When calling for Ginny, Mottram’s mother would go: ‘Ginnyminiwhinny…ginnyminiwhinny…ginnyminiwhinny….’

Then there’s Tuscany itself. Why Tuscany? In July 1976, Anthony Mottram, now estranged over the kitchen question,  and I didn’t think twice. The Molino di Castagnoli, near Gaiole in Chianti, was advertised in The Times at £40 a week. As it turned out, no running water and  a river opening up in the kitchen (or more properly, chicken) when it rained, which it did often. But it was enchanting; roughly converted by some people from Oxfordshire, deep, deep, low down in the wooded valley, but with views and glimpses of other, mysterious dwellings in the hills.  Then there were the Cortona days in the early 80s, then glorious Il Poggino in 1995, the first truly lump-sum Tuscan villa of the Poor Little Rich Gay era. Anthony Mottram had a good wheel-barrow full  from his first ventures in ‘consulting’ in the Central of Europe.

But really our life in Tuscany has changed little in 35 years, it’s just got more expensive. And Anthony Mottram’s not here any more.

Change – water-colour memories – a little trip down memory lane won’t do any harm. But Laura Malcolm, who achieved the villa on Monday, with Matt Driver, congratulated Lady Newell, 82, mother of Elsa Hodgeman, the Gertrude Stein de nos jours, on her modernity and not looking back. Lady N’s got an iPod and makes videos.

Somehow they’re all going to blend into one: the kitchen question, the Tuscan memory lane; change, what has changed, if anything, what the future holds.

But to the present: we’re a big party now and expanding with more robustness than the stock prices. The Multis have backed a winner in terms of attendance: also in is Elsa’s daughter, Adelaide, now 18, whippy in figure, delightful, clever, likely to convert a jaded Poor Little Rich Gay of a certain age if anyone is. Bruce MacBain, my private architect, and his partner, Tancredo Viamare, dock on Thursday. Then we will be 13 in the house possibly.

This morning breakfast was taken in the gloomy dining room with the windows sealed, not outside, owing to some ludicrous vaporisation of wasps going on in the villa park. There was an atmosphere of a girls’ school. Captain Blond Multi (Laura Malcolm has pointed out his resemblance to those absolutely splendid boy officers of the 1st World War) was planning an attack, on the phone, according to Matt Driver, to the Geological Map Society of Chianti to arrange a visit. Actually I think it was a wine-tasting. Later Lady Newell,82, who was complaining at breakfast about men with no hair, was seen driving out in the Multi, hired convertible swathed in at least 8 scarves all anchored by a huge sun hat. It could have been Lady Hester Stanhope or Gertrude Bell. Back at breakfast, the Photo Multi was promoting a new nun-made honey, bought directly from the nun outside B&Q Montevarchi (well, Italian equivalent), whence he had gone yesterday to buy an inflatable dolphin.Meanwhile, Laura Malcolm was doing her imitation of a veiled Muslim lady (achieved with only one napkin).

Last night we went to that Cameron-blessed restaurant. Captain Blond said to me, Adrian Edge: ‘Do you think your readers will stand any more of Cameron?’ Well, probably not. They didn’t have a single table for nine, so the women sat at one table and the men at the other, this having, purely by chance, been the seating arrangement in the bar downstairs as we waited to go up to the restaurant. It was decided to continue with it to see what would happen.

That was why Laura was tending to a veiled condition, you see. Other diners were astonished, also by our picking at each other’s food to get the beauty of as much of the menu as poss. Lady Newell’s huge steak was devoured in a coarse way at the men’s table, she not wishing to take such a hunk.

The Cameron table was occupied outrageously by a Scand family who had all been plunged into desperate lobster-crisis by the sun. Their weg was sitting in the PM’s seat. After they’d gone, I occupied it myself, of one last time, and recited: ‘Palmerston, Disraeli, Gladstone, Sir Winnie, Margaret….’

It means something to me. Laura said, ‘If you want to sit in his seat, you want to have his babies.’  She also said something unrepeatable if fantastical about what you might find deposited where someone has been sitting.

So that’s the end of Cameron. Captain Blond announced at breakfast that a visit to the actual Cameron villa, also a vineyard, is not possible. They’re harvesting for the next three weeks.

I did take a wine-tasting on Monday and, do you know, I didn’t crack open with boredom. It was at Castagnoli. I couldn’t believe it. Where that Molino was, and still is. I looked out of the window while  the barking wine guide was explaining about wines with fur overtones  and that the sangiovese grape is ‘aggressive, not an easy grape’ (just like Poor Little Rich Gays). There it was, far in the distance, way down below, blind walls and a roof, tiny windows – the Molino di Castagnoli, where Tuscany was first transfused into Poor Little Rich Gay veins 35 years ago.

But it’s not going to come off: I’m not going to have time to make that spinach omelette cake with tomato sauce and perhaps a bechamel, laboured over for days at the Molino in 1976 by Mottram and me. The recipe was in a crazy book in that house called something like ‘Bitter Leaves and Honey in Tuscan Kitch.’

Now I think of it, Mottram and I were fabulous non-speakers when trying to re-create the pasta pie at Cortona in 1981 approx (sweet hot water pastry case, tortellini, stuffed, within, in a complicated meat ragu), We’d read about it in the Sunday Times Magazine.

I should mention that the food here is going well.  Lamb legs with saffron and balsamic. Two legs from the macelleria in Gaiole in Chianti, Euros 74. Lunch yesterday also: melon superb from verdura in Gaiole. Prince Dmitri wore his lederhosen.

The hot nighttime dinner cooks emerge from the kitchen into the park to find what looks like a blazing pyre in the distance: it is the dinner table, styled by the Photo Multi with 40 or 50 night-lights and anti-mosquito torches.

As we speak, Prince Dmitri is bashing and cursing his way in the kitch. to a tiramisu. He doesn’t like wasps but is nolonger in lederhosen.

A Kitchen Meets Its Fate

The Molini di Castagnoli: Taken by Anthony Mottram and me, Adrian Edge, for 3 weeks in 1976: £40 a week

Sacred Pyre: The Villa Dinner Table at Night

Honey Nun Outside B&Q, Montevarchi: Help Save Her Nunnery

Imagine if This Were Your Drawing Room: Rocca di Castagnoli, Wine Tour

The Old Italy: Gentlemen at Castagnoli: Villa in Background Went for $8m

Just to Prove I Didn't Make It Up: Report of Cameron's Visit to Osteria di Montegonzi in Italian National Newspaper

Montalcino Wayne Taken by Cameron: That's Enough about Him

Dawn at the Villa

Sunday 21st August 2011

Yes, yes, yes! Last night we took the Osteria di Montegonzi, where Cameron consumed his last supper before boarding for the riots. We sat at the table where he sat. Lady Carmichael, the Blond Multi’s mother,  sat in the place where he sat; the Photo Multi sat in the place where Sam Cam sat.  The waiter, Samuele (lovely kitchen; also dropped the welcome glasses of prosecco so the heart bled even more ) was not overly perplexed by our intense interest: where did they park? where did the security guards sit? did they use the toilets?

Lady Carmichael fought with the Photo Multi for a less expensive wine and lost.  Poor Little Rich Gays and their mothers, or mothers-in-law – many learned papers have been written on the subject.

Actually we had serious conversation: Connor Cadoux, of the Australian Poor Little Rich Gays, who joined earlier from visiting nearby rellies, said: ‘Look what happened to Japan! Why should we be any different?’ I didn’t find this helpful. But gloom was general. The Blond Multi’s sister, Cecilia Voile, who dines in highest investment circles, had nothing encouraging to report.

Ten years, they’re saying. The Blond too.

At lunch time Connor Cadoux arrived at the villa. Lady Carmichael had not seen nipple rings before but took to them quickly and even suggested that they could be combined to good effect with  Prince Dmitri’s lederhosen – i.e no shirt. At breakfast this morning she was overcome by the exceptionally bollocky swimming trunks worn by Connor.

Connor himself thought that the Multis had got grand having a security guard but it was Prince Dmitri in a shirt left over from the Korean War.

This afternoon the Photo Multi continued his work of re-styling the villa.

The Actual Cameron Table, Where We Dined Too

The Chair He Sat In: Cameron Sat Here

The Chair She Sat In: Sam Cam Sat Here

The Actual Cameron Table: Overview

The Osteria di Montegonzi Where Cameron Took a Last Supper

Connor Cadoux: Nipple Rings

Prince Dmitri: Assumed a Security Guard by Connor Cadaux

The Photo Multi Instantly Seized this Image and Graphed: This is His Graph. The Sculpture Could be by Yoko Ono or Kusama. The Balls Are for the Blond Multi's Play, as is the Frisbee (Not Shown)

The Photo Multi Re-Styled the Mugs in the Villa Kitc Today

Photo Multi: Sunglasses, Freshly Bought

The Photo Multi: Holiday Shoe Cupboard: 14 Pairs

The Multis' Villa Twin

Saturday 20th August 2011

Also, dozing in bed, ‘feral cricket’ came to me. What could it be?

Last night the Photo Multi suggested an incredibly simple dinner, after the six-course lunch, at a German camp-site, as he called it. I saw what he meant: chalet-type building in pine wood, windows divided with small panes of glass, not Italian at all. Waitresses from Latvia finished the effect. If only Prince Dmitri had known, he could have worn his lederhosen.

The Blond Multi, whose whole life is sun-bathing at the moment, ordered a pizza margherita. ‘But I don’t want the tomatoes or the mozzarella; I want it with an egg, sausage and speck.’ ‘But that’s not the margherita, that’s the Rhinemaiden,’ the waitress reasonably explained. His mother, Lady Carmichael, who pretends to disapprove of the miraculous freedom of the Multi ways, was just as bad and insisted that the panna cotta was combined on the plate with the chocolate cake.  But she was pointed in her praise of the low prices. This was a hint. Once she told me a Multi-funded dinner had cost £800. ‘To me, that’s a holiday.’  We came in at 20 euros a head. This is often the way with a Gay Mother: having created a Poor Little Rich Gay she’s just a wheeny bit cross about the result.

The Photo Multi and I were intent on a peculiar screen in the middle of the restaurant: what or who was behind it? David Cameron? We’ve got that man on the brain. Tonight we dine in the restaurant where he took his last supper before boarding for the riots the week before last. I crawled up to take a sneak graph. See result below. The Photo suggested coming back in the night to burn down the screen.

Departing, we were unsettled by a strange Edward Hopper-like figure posed on a neighbouring balcony (odd in the middle of a wood anyway), with an indoor standard lamp beside him, apparently reading a book: I was not convinced by this reading.

I dreamed last night that D. Cameron arranged for me to see a specialist doctor in Norway. I wrote a letter saying I would come at 10 a.m. I was waiting a long time in a waiting room. Nothing happened, so I went in anyway. Cameron was sitting in a circle with some students and the doctor, who said he’d been waiting for me. I said: ‘Silly old Cameron didn’t read my letter. I said I’d come at 10.a.m.’ Cameron, now in morning dress before boarding for London,  slaughtered me with his denial and my lack of gratitude. Then he carried on with some kind of group activity with the students. It was in Norwegian and of aching tedium.

Bavarian Hiking Restaurant

Uncalled-For Screen in Bavarian Restaurant: What Behind It?

Massive Revelation: What was Behind Screen in Bavarian Restaurant

Strange Edward Hopper-like Figure on Balcony Neighbouring Bavarian Restaurant

Friday 19th August 2011

Well, he let the handbrake off. His mother, Lady Carmichael, told us all about it. She’s with at the villa, you know.

She was in the chemist’s at the time. This was years ago.

Don’t worry: I’ve not forgotten about my great meditation on kitchen life (see glossary), after last week in the twin with Arjan Bose. It’s still forthcoming. Awfully hot here. Brains quite fried. The Blond Multi, today, is looking incredibly trim; yesterday he was in sensational white swimming shorts by this outstanding new house, Orlebar Brown. Today he appeared in a pink pair. Orlebar or Brown or both are personal friends. The short is £120.

This villa, or small town, is hill-top; the level  is as follows: if you seek breakfast provision poolside but find none, all you have to do is tack on through the park in the sure and certain that it will laid in at least one of several other possible venues. The location for evening drinks must change daily: last night a trolley rattling with champagne bottles  was wheeled with great difficulty into a bumpy olive grove in order to connect with the working part of the estate. In England no Landed Gentry would take sherry in the cow field.

Today there were visitors for lunch: the Photo Multi’s light menu was: rocket, bresaola with parmesan shavings, three kinds of ravioli, melon and parma ham, serpent beans with roasted tomotoes and garlic, grilled aubergine with pesto, tomato and mozzarella salad; plums and pears with vanilla, cantucci.

But you want to hear about the early life of the Blond Multi: his mother, Lady Carmichael, was in the chemist, buying some early version of disposable nappies. In the car outside remained her latest baby and two toddlers, one of them the Blond Multi.  She sent the chemist out in advance with the nappy package. He came back and said, ‘Your car’s not there!’ Bystanders explained that they had seen it careering down hill with a toddler at the wheel. It was the Blond Multi. ‘He had excellent legs – very sturdy,’ Lady Carmichael explained proudly.  The escapade was brought to a halt by the side of a bus. ‘I remember the people having to get off the bus, looking very annoyed,’ the Blond Multi said.

If you ask me, this is the making of a Multi, in several ways – the fearlessness and entrepreneurial adventure of the Blond (he had seen his mother pull the handbrake up; he knew what would happen if he pushed it down) and the magnificent calm of the mother: no unnecessary hysteria or fuss at such a turn of events.

The Blond Multi: Trim in Orlebar Brown Swimming Shorts

Prince Dmitri Hersov's Lederhosen: 300 euros: Bought in Vienna Last Week

Rich Mahogany Hues At Brolio

A Hulk: Will Explain Another Time

Thursday 18th August 2011

It’s more of a village, actually: indescribable, massive heaven. Hill top, just a wave of the hand commands several mountain ranges : last night we dined in the courtyard: huge ancient wooden door at one end. At any moment armed horsemen with spears might have thundered in with the latest on the Pope. You can see it, can’t you? The prancing, snorting steeds, steam coming off…

Just graphs for the moment: we’re in a rush for the PRADA FACTORY SHOP. Lady Carmichael is here, the Blond Multi’s mother.

Such revelations re: the early life of the Blond: come back later for more.

And they’ve been moving furniture in the villa and they went to the restaurant when Cameron dined before boarding in the middle of the night for the riots.

Trouble with the bedside cupboards not being the right way round…. see if you can grasp it.

Also that hedge at the apartemento swimming pool: after the Multis left on Monday, I mentioned to the owners  that they recommended it down or reduced for the sake of the view. It was lopped at once.

Corner of Kitc at Multi Villa after Re-Styling: Boxes and Boxes of Junk Have Been Removed to an Outhouse

Po-Cupboard the Wrong Way Round in Multi Villa: Photo Multi has Noticed

The Multis Had it Down: Hedge by Apartemento Pool Lopped Down: The Multis Only Had to Mention in Passing

Sunset Tuesday Night

Tuesday 16th August 2011

The Multis lunched yesterday at my apartemento: we were pool-side and undisturbed by sharers so there was the illusion of  massive Tuscan height: the full villa with estate but actually managed for £400 a week. The Multis were divine in pink and wanted the pool-side hedge out for an infinity-edge effect bleeding directly into the vineyards. The Photo Multi got to the airport on Friday; no camera! but just enough time to buy another airside for £3000 plus.

Sonny Hammond went back to Rome in the morning (he came up to the apartemento on Saturday). He modelled at tiny Gucci kerchief and plans to scatter opium poppy seeds in the Roman forum. His new apartment is to overlook and he needs to garden.

But oh! the talk. In Tuscany we feel free. We talk and talk. I’m building up to a great mediation. The revelations! The thoughts! The relationships, so richly configured. Arjan Bose, the pseudo-kitchen who returned to London on Sunday, was superb on the kitchen syndrome (see glossary). You must come back to hear all about it.

On Sunday, Sonny, Arjan and I took an outstanding pecan-pie party at Casper Vilheim’s blissful fastness: he’s owned  the whole valley for 40 years and is 8 months there and 4 in New York (‘I kept the apartment in the City,’ he growled Brooklynesque, ‘so Madoff didn’t get it.’  Is that how you spell ‘Madoff’? I mean that one who stole everyone’s money) Peter Ainger, who was at my apartemento Thursday and Friday, went on to Casper’s and kindly introduced. They were dining that night with tycoons. They really were. I’ve not made that up. Tycoons who are known and not liked in England.

Come back later for less name-dropping.

The Multis' Boarding Companion on the vol to Rome

Pecan Pie Offered at Casper Vilheim's Tuscan Ravine Fastness: Self-Made

Poor Little Rich Gays in Tuscan Pecan-Pie Party: Sonny Hammond and Me, Adrian Edge, Lui-Meme

Casper Vilheim's Tuscan Ravine: Self-Owned Completo

The Beloved Multis in Holiday Wear Amongst Vines

Hedge by Pool at My Tuscan Apartemento: the Multis Want it Out to Create View

Saturday 13^th August 2011

I haven’t had a moment: Peter Ainger, Virgil Grayson’s architectural historian (also of Michelangelo and Borromini), came up from Rome for two nights and produced two greatnesses from New York (oh, high, high in the museum world) with whom we lunched at Le Logge in Siena (soy sauce now in Italian cooking).  Tomorrow, we’re to be used at Volterra. Now  Sonny Hammond, of the Australian Poor Little Rich Gays, has gained, also from Rome: we’ve been picking over Princess Diana by the pool.

Not a minute to make that spinach omelette cake with tomato sauce (and does it also have a bechamel? I last made it in 1976 and the recipe book was in that villa at £40 a week with the water supply washed away) nor even to get the beans in soak for the Tuscan bean soup. But at least Angus Willis, international food stylist, has texted through the recipe.

It’s quite new for me, to be diarised abroad. I’m radiantly on the up escalator.

Peter Ainger knows everybody, including, it turns out, Beatrice and Flint Cantor and Seth Vaughan.

Tiny world when you’re at the top, as I always say.

And now I find there’s another floor.

Where to begin: so many aspects. Arjan Bose and I have been in the twin, so the extra guest has their own room. This is to practise for kitchen life, although of course, Arjan is only a pseudo-kitchen (see glossary). He shakes his head emphatically and for slightly too long and has a certain way of eagerly looking up (he’s quite small) which recalls a very young person. But, next thing, he’s saying, all doctor: ‘You need to get your calcium levels checked.’ Soon he’ll be a GP with a vast salary which will be very convenient for Robert Nevil and myself.

In our strict twins we discuss small domestic improvements: should the shower curtain be differently managed? Did anyone remember to water the basil plant? Arjan is often asleep during most of this.

In Siena on Thursday (we took it two days in a row) I attempted the proper manner of the kitchen-lover: this is the Palazzo Publico, it’s the 13^th century (hoping for the best). Not even sure if it is called Palazzo Pubblico, let alone how to spell it. But Arjan would linger in the less important rooms: ‘Who’s St Bernard?’ he asked.  No idea. ‘Who’s that with a baby on his shoulder?’ I say: ‘He’s holding a fish. It must be St Peter. That baby’s the Baby Jesus.’ (Well, I was fairly sure there). We buy a postcard of the fresco: it’s St Christopher. After lunch, I launched into an elaborate explanation of how porcini mushrooms are dug up by special pigs: ‘You’re thinking of truffles,’ he says.

But I’m not going to give up on kitchen life at the first hurdle.

In Siena we saw a restaurant where I lunched in the pouring rain with Anthony Mottram, now estranged, in 1976 and again in 1992 with Robert Nevil and Sebastian Archer.

So I trip down memory lane as well.

Not St Peter: Arjan Bose Made Naughty Remark about What Baby Jesus Might be Doing

You Could Unite with Your Kitchen Here: The Marriage Room in the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena

Arjan Bose: Too Hot to Iron in the Laundry Shed: Iron in the Twin Instead

My Favourite Section of the Campo in Siena: These Shutters Have Been Shut for 35 Years

Rare View of Siena Cathedral: Get Rid of That Tree, Arjan Said

Le Logge Siena, Also Going Back Many Years in Poor Little Rich Gay Life

Modern Italian Cooking at Le Logge Siena: Stuffed Courgette Flower But Described as Tempura

Restaurant in Siena Where Lunched with Anthony Mottram in 76 and Robert Nevil and Sebastian Archer in 92: 'Memories, Water-colour Memories...' Can't Remember the Rest of It