Wednesday 15^th June 2011

Contrast defines. The Heterosexual onslaught at the Bath Abbey wedding highlights the glaring splendour of the Poor Little Rich Gays, or from the point of view of the correctly dressed City men (waistcoat, blue shirt with white collar, tie, tie pin, morning coat, all laid neatly upon one another with not a crease in sight) and their tottering, near-nude women, the utter horror and wrongth.

We must face it. Not everyone, if anyone, would want to be a Poor Little Rich Gay.

I’ve such antics to report. My summer scarf was the least of it. And the Best Man’s speech, with its description of Gay Life, from that point of view! Absolutely thrilling.

But I am moved first to mediate upon the Wedding address, given in the Abbey. It was spoken by our private family Vicar, who came in especially from our own county. He did not say what I would have said, so I was not inclined to listen. Of course, it’s our subject, one about which Poor Little Rich Gays have a great deal to say – what makes an enduring relationship? And even – are enduring relationships necessary? Shall we make anew a different configuration of relationships?

Fricka, as we know, fearsome, shrieking, narrow, repressive Goddess of Marriage, is ghastly. Our personal vicar – full marks – certainly did not mention respect. I can’t bear respect. On Any Questions (Do you ever listen? It’s a radio programme of unlimited pomposity) they’re often asked: ‘What’s the secret of a happy marriage?’ ‘Respect,’ they trot and whimper. What rubbish! Couples don’t sit about respecting each other once the excitements of romance and sex have worn off. That’s not what binds.

Can you imagine the dreariness? Why not marry the Oxfam committee?

‘Don’t bore each other,’ our in-house Vicar said. That’s more like it. But how not to bore? Some of our Poor Little Rich Gays are terrific hurlers of kitchen knives, callers of the Police, but they do not part. This is more real. It would be very surprising not to find, after long intimacy, some part of a person that wasn’t completely repulsive.

A Vicar can perhaps be forgiven for not pushing this line in a wedding address. All the same, I would have made it more thunderous. Marriage, whether official or not, is a place of terror, a furnace in which we are brought to true recognition of ourselves and the other one – or not, in which case they fail.

For some, even amongst the Poor Little Rich Gays, relationships are where they hide, gambolling in delight like spring lambs. But in fact lambs are oily, wiry creatures that bite. I know, because I’ve been on Robert Nevil’s farm.

This brings in the question of happiness. ‘Marriage is a work of art,’ our Vicar said. I like this but I would have brought out more the struggle to create, the persistence required, the likely horror of our fellow human beings, the rarity of joy, which should not anyway be the goal. We hear too much about happiness. You’d have to be half-baked to be happy. Not being happy need not mean despair. The truth and making are the glories. Where there was no outfit, no decor, suddenly there is. Relationships too are our creation. At the finish, we will want to say that we wove, did not give up, knew, and made something.

This morning I discovered by chance the Tweets of dear Alain de Botton, which are aphorisms. I met him when he was 24 and already hailed. How things conjoin! There must be a design.  One was wrong: “To show ourselves ‘as we truly are’ – a terrifying treat we should spare most of humanity, especially anyone we claim to love” Another was not: “Modern romanticism: we go in search of one person who will spare us any need for other people.”

Here is an alarming other perspective altogether: perhaps no ‘marriage’ at all? Or ‘marriage’ for certain times of life but not others? Or unnatural to be glued in with only one for company, machining ‘friends’ through the diary on a six-week cycle as some of our lesser Poor Little Rich Gays do, particularly where the partner is green, has not been in the furnace, and has his claws in?

Only the whole life will tell, and probably not even then.

Tuesday 14th June 2011

I’ve been knocked out. ‘Please Be Upstanding for the Bride’. ‘Please be upstanding for the Groom.’ The Bath Abbey wedding. What a scene! The lady sitting next to me, from a university background, said, ‘A strange convention, these wedding speeches.’

Very male, many guffaws. How was my summer scarf, separates and lack of tie received, despite the near nude Bride?

By tomorrow, I hope to have recovered sufficiently to describe. Then we have the Gay Mother’s early morning recipe mania, and, at last, at last – my new car.

Thursday 9th June 2011

Not interested in Norse myth? Barely heard of or can’t bear Wagner? Rather be at Prada? Don’t go away. This will be visionary and completely new.

You remember some weeks ago, we saw Die Walküre cast live from the Met. It’s part of The Ring cycle of four operas which last a total of 14 hours. I’ve seen it before but never realised it’s all about Poor Little Rich Gays, despite every appearance to the contrary – such as fearsome Viking helmets with horns, grey sack cossies and rough timber the only known wall finish.

Now, if you’ve never heard of Wagner, don’t let that impede. It’s enough to know he’s awfully important and lends greatness to the Poor Little Rich Gay project.

The main person is a God called Wotan. Awful name. He’s not really a God, more of a Chief Exec Officer (huge power, with limits), so an immediate parallel with PLRGs, who, as we know, drive straight to the top. You won’t believe this, but he’s got the builders in! Just as Poor Little Rich Gays have the entire time. Huge project to build Valhalla, which was to be the dream home of dream homes. Heavenly ethereal motif in the music whenever it is mentioned.  In fact it never quite seems to exist, although it was built apparently, which is exactly as the Poor Little Rich Gay home is – just out of reach, but always yearned for and the search never ending.

Poor Wotan, just like Poor Little Rich Gays here and throughout the world, arches high but can plunge as low the other side. There’s one terrible moment when he longs for obliteration so awful is the ghastly tangle of obligations he’s got himself into re: the building of Valhalla. So Poor Little Rich Gays know the tragic burden of their calling: we must blaze with glory but never forget that in the end we are nothing. In the monumental scene with his daughter Brünnhilde ,who has been disobedient, he unleashes his devastating power. But Brünnhilde stands up to him, tells him a thing or two. He recognises the searing truth of what she says, sees his own weakness and vulnerability. As we know, Poor Little Rich Gays take Kitchens (see glossary). They want someone to care for, nurture and tend but not always, unlike Wotan, do they know the limits of their power.

Then there’s Wotan’s private life. He’s got a wife called Fricka who’s the Goddess of Marriage and the most ghastly old harridan and Mrs Grundy figure. Wotan’s wandered and got children all over the place. Two of them have fallen in love. Wotan is convinced the consequent love-child is the only hope for the future, but Fricka is fuming: ‘It’s incestuous,’ she shrieks. ‘Your trouble,’ Wotan tells her, ‘is that you never predict the unexpected.’  Marvellous. Fricka! She is marriage as conventionally known – absolute yuck! Neat little units of two in a fully equipped domestic setting with morality – never! For the Bath Abbey wedding on Friday I visited www.weddingshop.com (wedding list solutions) and paid for two dinner plates at £50 a piece. It’s still going on, you know, all of that. Laura Malcolm was on the phone, contemptuous.

In our Poor Little Rich Gay world, we have some Civil Partnerships, quite a lot of wandering about which we think little, although there might be a terrible drama at the time, and some very extreme configurations, where one half is away for months living with someone else or just away.

One thing we do know, more or less, as much as we know anything: sex, in the home, does not endure or, after a time, is not required.

But don’t misunderstand. I’m not against intimacy. In the best lives there might well be one and only one to whom you are completely known, with whom you are absolutely at home although frequently seared, harrowed, wracked and maddened. Let’s hope that’s the one you are married to or at least near married to. It might well not be. For me, that person was Anthony Mottram of Prague, first met by me in September 1970 at our minor Public, Barrowborough. But for the past 17 months, he has been keeping me in Abu Ghaib and I’ve had to manage without. I must ensure I do not turn bitter.

Wednesday 8th June 2011

My great meditation on Wotan and marriage has been delayed. It won’t come right. I’ve suffered a loss of power.

So instead, I reveal my Bath Abbey wedding outfit. On the whole I am unhinged by weddings. It appears that I imagine I am the bride, which is odd. But I’d rather have the wedding if the subsequent marriage could be foregone.

Diamonds have been sought. In fact every Countess in the land has been applied to to lend. But none have big enough masculine diamonds. Joshua Baring has worked tirelessly through the Earls’ wives for which much thanks. He is a very coming young man with fingers in every pie.

So: the final version. The stone Prada slacks have been dropped, after Lord Arrowby and Nicholas Taudevin (strangely similiar views) denounced them as chinos. Miss Portia Barker was also not keen. She mentioned Dress-Down Fridays in Venture Capital offices. Instead will be the Niccolo Ceschi Berrini pearl grey slacks (already in stock), even though they have no belt and don’t stay up so well. I can’t graph them because they’ve been held back at Jeeves of Belgravia for ironing. They were returned to the shop unironed from where they clean. The fabric has metal in it and the instructions say ‘no iron’. But the manager says they must be ironed and to hell with it. There’s a tiny danger they might rust.

The other new addition is the Dries van Noten summer scarf in cotton and silk, bought in triumph last Friday at 8.30pm at Liberty’s. 30 per cent off. So down to £108.

The other aspects will be the Topman ‘tuxedo’ jacket with sateen binding, the Paolo Pecora white shirt, also with sateen trim and a tiny grey band inside where the collar joins the main body (Val knows all the right words) and Prada glace bootees.

So it will be separates – and a summer scarf. It will be new.

The only difficulty: because the trousers don’t stay up so well, during the Wedding ceremony I will come untucked. Somehow I will have to manoeuvre the Gay Mother, so I can tuck in unseen, before we process out of the Abbey. I might resort to safety pins.  Laura Malcolm will stay, ‘No-one will be looking at you.’  To which I say, ‘Then something will be desperately wrong.’

The Final Bath Abbey Ensemble minus Pearl Grey Trousers

The Bath Abbey Ensemble - Final Version

Tuesday 7th June 2010

This absolute evening – in fact carriages have only just been called – the Multis dined in the gallery in honour of Kusama who did not gain from Japan. Next year is her retrospective at Tate Modern. In fact there’s eight months to scheme how to get in to the Opening. On the other hand, if the artist is herself too grand to attend…. I am quietly at home, preping for the Bath Abbey wedding on Friday. But I go to the Kusama Private View on Thursday.

Tomorrow will be my great mediation on marriage and how Wotan (from Wagner’s The Ring ) is a Poor Little Rich Gay.

A Work by Kusama, Shown This Evening for the First Time at Trenton's Gallery

Completely New Work by Kusama: You Saw It Here First

The Dinner Setting at the Gallery in Honour of Kusama, Not Herself Present

The Kusama Dinner 1st Course: We Hope not Rejected Cuc from Spain

The Kusama Dinner: A Sample Main: Exclusive View Only For Readers of Poor Little Rich Gays.Com

Sunday 5^th June 2011

I’ve been telling the story backwards and never quite getting to the heart of how Lord Arrowby, my part-time love interest, turned down the invitation to visit the Tom Stuart Smith garden in Hertfordshire on June 19th, with the result that we are now more intimate than ever.

On May 10^th I texted Lord Arrowby: ‘Will you attend opening of Tom Stuart Smith garden at St Albans?’ No reply. 18^th May, I go: ‘I’m hurting, Lord Arrowby.’ ‘Why?’ ‘You blanked me.’ ‘But I ignore that text each year – it’s mostly because I don’t like car journeys, especially in summer. You should see my new blouson.’ ‘You’re impossible.’ ‘Oh dear. I’m sorry.’ ‘Talk about poor little rich gay.’

So I was quite firm about attending with Lord Arrowby on the next Saturday morning at Borough Market. That’s when he said, ‘Do stop hitting me.’ He also said: ‘I didn’t realise it was an invitation,’ ‘It sounds as if you sent it to hundreds of people,’ ‘It’s not properly expressed.’ ‘You’re really rather cross, aren’t you?’  ‘I felt battered.’

He was being battered actually, on the left side, just then.

But poor stricken Lord Arrowby! Oh the stricken look on his fine youthful face. He said, ‘I’m no good at texting.’ Me: ‘Well, get better at it.’ It’s nonsense anyway. He’s a first class texter. I said: ‘You’ve got to diarise me, you know. It shouldn’t just be me diarising you all the time.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ he goes, ‘I see. Maybe we could go to the theatre.’

I said: ‘But we went on a car journey, and in summer, years ago with Robert Nevil.’ He said: ‘It was going back to Prep School, in the car. Stopping again and again for me to be sick.’

Prep and Public: they’re kinds of boarding school. Many Poor Little Rich Gays were dispatched at the age of seven. Boarding means you sleep over in term time, never see the home for weeks and weeks. Just imagine, Mr and Mrs Arrowby, with little Lord Arrowby in the back, bowling along towards Normanhurst. That was his Prep. Later he was at Chillingborough. Only the best. Of course he wasn’t yet Lord Arrowby, but I’m sure he had many of the characteristics. ‘Now then, Lord Arrowby,’ Mr Arrowby would have said, once the trunk and tuck box were unloaded, ‘you be a brave little chap.’ Going down the drive in the Humber Snipe, Mrs Arrowby might have dabbed with her hanky. Best not to show the boy you were distressed, would only make it harder for him.

What was little Lord Arrowby to do? All on his own, with awful decor, rock-bottom bedding, filthy food, even at a top Prepper. Not much choice really, but to become a Poor Little Rich Gay.

Anyway – screen goes wonky, dissolve – back to the present. We parted at Borough Market. Lord Arrowby said: ‘We’ve been together for two hours. It hasn’t been too bad.’ I said: ‘We’re getting used to each other.’

Saturday 4th June

Lunch at the Multis. Amazing air and light. Might have been on a yacht in the Med. Their artworks, min. price £10,000, banging in the wind. Lady Carmichael, the Blond Multi’s mother, really rather naughty. Is looking for a Gay chef.

The Islington Gardening Group  visited my home at 3.30. Just wanted to be competitive about plant names and vent their conservatory worries.  Might have been anywhere. Unrewarding.

I’m a little frail after covering every frock shop yesterday. But the big news is, the Bath Abbey wedding outfit is settled. I’ll tell you all about it. And Lord Arrowby, of course.

I seem to have stained my new Prada stone slacks after two wearings. Spot cleaner not making progress. Jeeves of Belgravia £25 only hope.

Thursday 2^nd June 2011

Today is the 55^th Birthday of Robert Nevil, biographer of the Pony Club. Tuesday was the 16^th Birthday (that’s an estimate) of Arjan Bose, of the doctoring world.

Actually I’m somewhat criked. The tasks! My gardens are being shown on Saturday. I’m scratched to bits by my roses trying to get them in place. I’ve been besieged by seedlings for the third phase of planting for late July, Aug and Sept. Nowhere to put them.  I think I’ve an allergic reaction around the eye from plant matter biffing. So just as the most diarized weekend ever known looms, I’m grotesque.  Thanks so much. I can’t believe I’ve been in this house 14 years and never had coat pegs. Coats have been slung over the banister, spoiling the most important view of all – the one gained on entrance, also concealing a gracious newel post.

I’m trying to source a reclaimed white coat-peg board from Angus Willis who usually has such things in stock. As for the phone wires trailing on the drawing room floor… At lunch today (we’d been at the Silver Vaults in Chancery Lane for wedding presents for that Bath Abbey wedding: there’s another thing: I’ve nothing to wear. Silver prices have rocketed), Aunt Lavinia said she’d heard a motto: ‘A clean house shows a wasted life.’ So wrong, but I didn’t say so. Actually she has a cleaner.

Last night Connor Cadoux, of the Australian Poor Little Rich Gays, dined at the Multis. He has recently joined a massively known financial house, says it’s fearful hard work. I said: you try should running the home and getting outfits bought for an important wedding.

The Photo Multi took us round the wraparound terrace. He said: ‘I like that spider there.’ He meant, it had styled itself well into its position. He gestured to the far hills of Sydenham or wherever. ‘I want a sign on them, like the Hollywood sign, saying “Hills”.’ The thinking seemed to be that people would go to see the letters and then get a good view of his penthouse atop the riverside tower. If they had binoc they’d see him and the Blond leading their unimaginable terrace life.

But there’s talk of the Multis buying into central London and using the Penthouse as a weekend retreat.

As far as I can see, I can only allot six hours to shopping for the Bath Abbey wedding outfit.

It’s desperate.

There’s no hope of anything more than the present near-engagement with Lord Arrowby, my part-time love interest, given the state I’m in. I just haven’t the time for anything more.

Look, I’ve not told you how it all came about and the astonishing affair of the invitation to visit the Stuart-Smith garden in Hertfordshire on 20^th June. Lord Arrowby is coltish, gloriously difficult, and really rather boyish.

You’ll have to make do with this graph for the time being.

The Important Part of Lord Arrowby, my Part-Time Love Interest

Tuesday 31^st May 2011

Don’t forget – my great meditation on Wotan and marriage, the other PLRG terrace ducklings (Peter Acharya to pamper them this week while terrace owners on cruise), Lord Arrowby, my part-time love interest, all to come.

On Saturday, I was at L’Anima, near Liverpool Street Station. It’s supposed to have Michelin stars but doesn’t. Absolutely honed environment. The Photo Multi enchanted by way the marble was done in the lavs – no grout between the slabs. Also marvellous curved marble wall leading to the display wine cellar. No grout there either. The Multis strike up with the staff in the Poor Little Rich Gay way: the Blond to the Latvian Maître d’: ‘Who owns this restaurant?’ ‘Is he here now?’ Where does he live?’ ‘You don’t know. You’d better find out. Could be useful.’

The Multis are expanding: they’ve been lunching with more banks to gain something called leverage. As you recall, their economy is about the size of a small town’s but it’s just for two Poor Little Rich Gays. They’ve also been on some country visits about which the less said the better. I’m storing for another day.

Sunday, I set out, with Robert Nevil, for Sandringham St Kil, where youngster PLRG Joshua Baring is establishing a res. Collecting RN, I’m left sitting in his drawing room – awful dread feeling it might be nicer than mine.

It occurs to me for the first time that the reason why people live in their own houses and not mine is that they like them better.

We stop on the way at a nursery near Cambridge (no garden centres for us) and buy rare varieties of rare plants. Robert Nevil wants garden string. I say: ‘There’s a lovely big ball there.’ ‘Oh no,’ he arches, ‘I only have green – so it can’t be seen.’

In the car – the one I’ve been keeping quiet about, but its Xenon driving lights sweep all before – we discuss our intimate lives. Many fallings-out and scenes – Poor Little Rich Gays are volatile, of course, and we love difficult people – but we’re agreed that marriage is absolutely finished, near-marriage much to be preferred.

Then we gain St Kil – my God, it’s in the Fens! Fabulous air of menace and all the inhabitants sinister in a way you can’t quite put your finger on. But it’s an architectural gem. So brilliant of Joshua Baring to home in. Soon it’ll be looking very new indeed. 18^th century merchants’ houses heeped up beside a muddy river-bank, a great mass of buildings arising apparently out of nothing. I was reminded of Venice’s Riva dei Schiavoni. Unique effect.

As my private architect, Bruce MacBain, is always pointing out when we take a walk and he briefs me, many 18^th century facades are as pared down, minimal and ‘abstract’ as any Modernist structure.

Joshua is queening his house, of course. It’s beamy and woody, which I’ve condemned.  But now, and with Angus Willis’s outstanding Hastings Tudor House, I can see I’m going to have to re-think.

So, yesterday, Monday, I ram the rare plants in and tend my three gardens. So much to do before this visit from earnest Islington gardeners on Saturday.  In the evening, Prince Dmitri Hersov, top world accountant, dines and I try to reproduce the veal with pistachio ragù the Blond Multi had at L’Anima. There was some weird mystery ingredient eluding me: finally, via those ice-creams launched last week by Angus Willis, I have an idea: could it be rose-water? Rose-water with mince? I dash, shattered, to Waitrose. They’ve got it. With the Prince we experiment and taste and decide to risk it. It was good and, I’m fairly sure, what was in the L’Anima version.

Well done to Waitrose for being open at 6pm on a Bank Holiday and having rose-water.

L'Anima - Fully Honed

The Display Wine Cellar at L'Anima

The sepulcre-style PDR at L'Anima: Note Groutless Walls

Paint Samples at Joshua Baring's Res at Sandringham St Kil: This is the Way to Select Your Colour

The Other Wall: Joshua Baring at Sandringham St Kil. A Detailed Approach

Saturday 28th May 2011

Dropped off on the sofa after luncheon of chicken liver. Took a little red wine because they were one day past the sell-by date – to disinfect. But have not vomited.

Dine tonight with the Multis at L’Anima: it’s the Italian one in the City which should have a Michelin star but doesn’t. Last night the Multis took Heston and the night before Marcus Wareing at the Berkeley. I hope they’ll be recognisable.

Tomorrow Robert Nevil and I set out for Sandringham where Joshua Baring, our youngest PLRG, is establishing a residence – in my new car, about which I’ve been keeping very quiet. It has Xenon driving lights

So my great mediation on how Wotan is really a Poor Little Rich Gay woven with my thoughts on marriage (on BBC Breakfast TV they said it’s finished in the modern age); also  the amazing antics of Lord Arrowby, my part-time, highly-wrought, massively challenging love-interest, not to mention the other ducklings which are being pampered on a Poor Little Rich Gay terrace and next week tended by Peter Acharya,  will have to wait.

I can just manage Chelsea: we were uplifted. By the way, I wore the separates outfit planned for the Bath Abbey wedding, the sand Prada slacks and Topman ‘tuxedo’.  Aunt Lavinia, grandmother of the Bride, thought it would be good enough for the Abbey.

But still I’m to shop all week. I see a suit in mushroom or champagne with the faintest sheen.

We were uplifted: Best in Show garden was enchanting, apart from yellow wall. I also thought the grass grown in stoops and teamed with box in the hanging garden (didn’t think much of the hanging bit about which there’s been endless pub) was completely new.

How happy we were at Chelsea in the late evening glow, in outfits, looking at creations: Aunt Lavinia, Pavel Marincek, former kitchen of Anthony Mottram of Prague, fresh from brilliant raid on Topman,  and me, Adrian Edge.

Best in Show Garden by Cleve West: Would Have that Crumbly Path if Could But Not the Yellow Wall

Best in Show Garden by Cleve West: Triumph

Stoops of Grass Well Used in 'Hanging Garden' at Chelsea

Look at This Horror

British Heart Foundation Garden Liked by Carol Klein: WRONG

Aunt Lavinia Thought They Looked like Brains: a Japanese Garden

Clever Idea: Integration of Pool with Garden: Dodgy Execution. Why Does it Have to Be Blue?

Liked this Japanese Water-Feature