Wednesday 25^th May 2011

Val, one of our most precarious yet spectacular Poor Little Rich Gays, set out on an Easter jaunt to Glasgow, not entirely upright, in fact likely to lurch at any moment, got half way down the street, realised he’d left his glasses behind, returned to his flat, sat down in a chair and didn’t get up again, except to refill, for two weeks.

But now he’s back. He was at Die Walküre, cast live to the Chelsea cinema from the Met the other day (I haven’t forgotten about my great mediation on Wotan and new configurations of relationships etc. It’s all coming together for me as it always does – Wotan, the Injunction scandal, some fascist who’s written a book claiming marrieds are happier).

Well, Deborah Voight, as Brünnhilde, was revealed in a bright red wig. ‘Typical older actress’s wig,’ Val flashed, ‘giving warmth, height and movement. In other words, Bar-mitzvah red.’

At half-time he produced self-made wiches or sandwiches. I mean, self-made bread: ‘Normally I do a free form loaf. But for wiches you need shape.’ His loaf shape, as shown in slices, was professional standard.

Then last Tuesday he took Frogmore with me and Aunt Lavinia. It’s a rarely open Royal residence (except no-one lives there) at Windsor. Royston King, Chair of something huge, graphed recently with Camilla Cornwall, told me about this very, very rare, barely advertised opening. So we had to go. The garden perfectly nice but without atmosphere. Best bit was the Royal graves: Wallis Windsor is buried before the Mausoleum containing Queen Victoria. That wasn’t open. But all that Lanvin, Cartier and Mainbocher now purified to a plain slab. No more frockage worries for her. Peace at last.

Graves never fail me, I find.

The house was more interesting, inside. Queen Charlotte, consort of George III, had acquired it for the Royal family as a Wendy House. In other words, just go there in the day-time and paint flowers on the walls. Queen Charlotte: Val nearly knocked Aunt Lavinia and me down with his declaration: ‘One of her grandparents was the off-spring of a manumitted slave and a papal bastard.’

The Graves of Wallis Windsor and Edward Windsor at Frogmore: Still in the Corner, Even in Death

Mausoleum at Frogmore Contains Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.Foreign-Looking. Lesser Royal Graves Before.

Rarely Seen Frogmore House, Windsor. Royal Wendy House

Indian Item at Frogmore, Windsor, of Limited Use

Wednesday 25th March 2011

I know, I know – I’ve such a back-log and today is the Chelsea Flower Show. I gain at 5.30.

But that State Banquet gown is troubling me. It was by Tom Ford apparently. Looked very bolted on, great thick bandages over the shoulders and across the embonpoint, and I can’t take a halter neck. What about the pit-length gloves? We haven’t seen them in years. It all looked rather awkward to me. As for the day-outfit, the little ratty bolero-jacket I took for a cardy on TV but I see it was in fact silk. Both ensembles had full skirts, but, for a tall person, wouldn’t a slimmer line be better?

Monday 23rd May 2011

Before I get onto the burning issues: I’ve had impeccable private information. They’ve got the wrong person. Both The Sunday Herald in Scotland and John Hemming MP have got it wrong. It’s not Ryan Giggs. As always, Poor Little Rich Gays in the know, direct line to the throbbing core of our nation.

Now: Ed Jasper and Roland Mainflower’s fridge. You must look. I dined there last Wednesday. They were bringing on some younger Poor Little Rich Gays who threatened to be far too straightforward in their choice of garden plants. Ed described in detail his bed linen routine: sheets changed every three days, boil washed, ironed to crisp glaze but why, oh why won’t cleaner fold the pillow cases four times, why only twice? Also Ed’s mother, 70, has had make-up tattooed on by a Russian on a beach in the Greece neighbourhood and is not fit to be seen.  ‘It’s fading slowly,’ Roland said soothingly. He is a  Jaguar-ed vet.

Mothers, as we know, are massively central in Poor Little Rich Gay life: usually they started it all, then they are to be out-done.

Last Thursday Angus Willis, international food writer and stylist, launched his summer ice-creams, set to be the Poor Little Rich Gay signature serving for Summer 2011, following the fennel crostini of last summer.

The flavours are:

Rose Petal and Turkish Delight

Fig and Honey

Pistachio Ripple

Cardamom, Coffee and Chocolate

Fresh Spearmint

All are outstanding but the Fresh Spearmint is completely new.

Ed Jasper and Roland Mainflower's Double-Fronted Fridge-Freezer: Top Shelf on Right Goes Up and Down Electronically

Angus Willis's Utterly New Ice-Creams: Signature Summer Dishes for Poor Little Rich Gays This Year: The Fresh Spearmint is the Green One

Sunday 22^nd May 2011

Were I under the Doctor, I’m sure he would order a light diary (all right, she). I’m in danger of  übergadiarisengesmacht as the Germans call it. I notice Her Majesty the Queen is in the same predict: not a minute back from Ireland, and it’s get the State Suite vac-ed for President Obama and the First Lady.

Nothing worse than having visitors immediately after you’ve been away.

Well, my light diary came to nothing: I had three last-minutes, four if you count the Thursday whirl round to Angus Willis, the world-famous food stylist and writer, and Fergus Strachan’s, to tidy away the remains of an M & S shoot (Angus also launched some sensational ice-creams: you’ll see). Then there was my chaperoned summit with my part-time love interest, Lord Arrowby. That was scheduled for Borough Market yesterday morning, and took place.

We’re just astonishingly intimate, that’s how it is, despite all appearances to the contrary, such as never seeing or hearing of each other for months on end. ‘Do stop hitting me,’ he said playfully. On parting, he declared, ‘We’ve been together for two hours; it hasn’t been too bad.’

I see an ‘understanding’ looming within the next two years at least. It’s a question of combining a firm line with lovely soothing encouragement. As we know, Poor Little Rich Gays are perfectly impossible in intimate life, requiring complete freedom as to décor, choice of hotel, restaurant and frockage, on top of not having a minute to spare because of intense diarising, empire-building, entrepreneurial activity and glorifying of the life: The Poor Little Rich Gay arches for significance beyond the domestic.  Even though the home is vital, as much as possible, it is set on the international stage.

Anyway there’s a great deal more to say about that. What with one thing and another, I’ve now got a backlog of nine items to cover, and Chelsea Week is upon us, new events are coming into being hourly. Pavel Marincek, ex-kitchen of Anthony Mottram, arrives from Prague on Tuesday for the Show. That night there are TWO PVs, then the Show itself on Wednesday, always demanding though thrilling, requiring trudging and parting of crowds while in celebratory frockage and mood.

My greatest diary challenge is the weekend after next, when on the Saturday, I lunch with the Multis, and the Blond Multi’s mother, Lady Carmichael, on a rare London visit, regain my home at 3.30 to show my gardens to some earnest Islingtonites;  then out again to dinner with Dhirren Dutta, who wrote that novel about improved hygiene in India (oh India – my God, there’s that to cover: Robert Nevil has introduced yet more elements); on the Sunday, lunch with Aunt Lavinia who is fielding the designer of Glyndebourne, then tea with Ludovico Colnaghi, then ‘Candide’ at the Barbican as part of Robert Nevil’s birthday celebrations, in the evening.

We must glory in the wracking abundance, the riven delights of Poor Little Rich Gay life, but don’t be surprised if I have to be carried on a stretcher to Tuscany for the August retreat.

Here is Royston King, of whom we will be seeing a great deal next week, as the Chelsea Flower Show gets underway (yes, I will be there), wielding a fork with Camilla Cornwall and her ex-husband Andrew Parker-Bowles at an important opening recently.

So much to report: our visit to Frogmore and Val’s recovery from catastrophe and reassumption of sandwich making. Also forthcoming, my great meditation on how Wotan is a Poor Little Rich Gay, Ed Jasper, the bedlinen expert, and Roland Mainflower’s fridge, and how Marcus Cargill, England’s leading clock-mender, is taking octopus on Lesbos at this very moment. Ducklings have hatched on yet another Poor Little Rich Gay mega high-rise terrace. These ones are a rare breed, so there have been stunning developments. There’s live footage to come.

In the morning I see Lord Arrowby, my part-time love-interest, who is being perfectly impossible. He and Nicholas Taudevin have thrown my proposed Bath Abbey wedding outfit into doubt. Luckily there’s three more weeks in which to re-think and for Lord Arrowby to arrange a subsciption Gala to raise money for back-up frockage. Joshua Baring is getting nearer and nearer the masculine diamonds I require, every day and in every way.

The Multis, meanwhile, have gone into the countryside for the weekend.

Royston King, Camilla Cornwall and Andrew Parker-Bowles Showing Their Forks at a Recent Opening

Wednesday 18^th May 2011

I can see readers haemorrhaging (look at that spelling!) if I meditate on how Wotan is a Poor Little Rich Gay.

You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?

But he is. You’ll see.

So today is frockage and what you’ve all been aching to know – what was in those shopping bags I laid (temporarily)before Buckingham Palace on the Royal Wedding eve?

I went to Prada in Harrods. Separates, you recall, were my object. That’s jacket and trousers, like a suit, but not matching.

Separates are huge, this season. Sonny Hammond and I got that clear in Rome, while whizzing from Yves St Laurent to Prada on the motorino.

I’d seen something in Rome Prada but they didn’t have it in stone. By miracle, at Harrods it was in stock. In Rome, they’d given me the numbers. Complicated. So I forked. Terrible price but a trouser in a fine skin-like fabric with such seams – the whole suggesting a beautifully-made lizard glove or shoe.

I’d also got that Bath Abbey wedding in mind. The Gay Mother and I are to join the Grandmother’s procession. That’s Aunt Lavinia. I’m to be in separates although ‘invite’ says ‘Lounge suit’. Joshua Baring, who knows everything and can do anything, is looking for some important masculine diamonds for me to wear.

Then I thought of a black summer jacket.Prada offered another miracle for £680. So I went downstairs in Harrods and got, at Topman, a black tuxedo (what they’re calling it) with satin edging, really nicely made for £85. It has trousers, also with edging, for £35. Got them too.

At The Library, Brompton Cross (it’s a frock shop), they had double, slash, slash late, late sale on, so I got a Fabrizio del Carlo knit in white for £100 – investing for the coming winter. Also sister to the champagne cardy, also Fabrizio, brought there in the Jan sale,  which got snagged in the Tudor House AND was touch and go as to washing.

You’ve been longing to hear about that, too.

Yes, you have.

It came through all right. Except the sleeves are quite a bit longer, but when on seem to go back to the right size. Anyway, Val will solve. What that slightly tilting greatness doesn’t know about fabric management….

'Tuxedo' by Topman: Stone Slacks by Prada: What I Bought on The Royal Wedding Eve for the Bath Abbey Wedding in June

The Separates Look: Huge This Summer: 'Tuxedo' by Topman. Note Exquisite Satin Edging. Stone Slacks by Prada: Delerious Price

White Jumper by Fab del Carlo: £100 Late, Late Sale at The Library. Buying In for Next Season, Always Wise and Life-Enhancing

My Champagne Cardy by Fab del Carlo: Sleeves Longer After Washing but Val will Know What to Do

Sunday 15^th May 2011

All right! All right! I know you’ve hardly been able to think of anything else. Who was there? What names? Above all, the inter-galactic Greatness as mythic easily as Diana Wales, Elizabeth Taylor, John Lennon or Mrs Onassis.

The thing is, Kernow Hellizon’s novel is all about perfectly awful things that really happened, to him mostly, in an upper-class setting with money whirling like feathers out of a burst pillow.

All that rather swept out of the way by the names.

The night before Robert Nevil, author of the history of the Pony Club, was giving out prizes for pony books at a dazzling Mayfair venue, wearing an important lent pony brooch by Cartier. Quite a different thing. Afterwards (or ‘after’) we went to a Japanese canteen-type establishment in Frith Street, Soho, directed by Joshua Baring, our youngest Poor Little Rich Gay, who knows everything. I didn’t tell you that the other day he briefed me about how nuclear power stations work. Now he is looking for suitable manly diamonds for me to wear at that Bath Abbey wedding in June – each stone must be size of pigeon-egg min.

We were a jolly,simple party.

But back to the names – the next night at the Hellizon launch. If I tell you that one corner of the room for a few magical moments was occupied exclusively by three household names…household names! What a phrase!

To start with it was Richard E.Grant. Not in the corner. This was earlier. I thought little of that because I’ve seen him before, superb as he is with eyes so blue. Then on the balcony overlooking the square with Harry Rollo, feeling a little conspicuous in full view of the public, because he’s a name, of course, his graph plastered all over New York etc, I say: ‘Look, it’s Lady Magnesia…’ For it was she, coming along on foot below: Lady Antonia Fraser.

After that, inundated. Only one question: are you a name or aren’t you? Helen Fielding, Mariella Frostrup, Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Tracey Emin, Diana Quick, Alain de Bum… until, finally, finally, beyond belief, the moment you’ve been waiting for: Sir Mickland Jagger.

Yes!  Sir Mickland Jagger. Accompanied by a stunning giantess in a leopardskin coat, unreal for early summer, he a tiny person, spider legs, springy of body. For a second he turned in my direction, and there was the familiar hideous-beautiful now late-Audensque face but a scorching inexplicable cloudy blaze from the eyes, either amethyst or grey. This is it. When you see them in the flesh… it’s all to do with the light, as with Royalty and their diamonds, which never show on TV.

They do have something, these enduring stars, they must do. If I’d looked for longer it might have been different.

Again, on the balcony with Harry Rollo, we see the departure: BMW 7 Series, blacked-out rear windows, a chauf and minder, glancing about. Quick word on the doorstep with Alan Yentob, for some reason burdened with rucksack, then away.

What of it? So fleeting and, do you know, I’ve only ever heard one song of the Rolling Stones. But never to be forgotten, that glimpse.

Otherwise it was hard not to feel the wing of death. Was it bitterness or envy, Adrian Edge on the edge? Or just the noise, the impossibility of sustained conversation? Perhaps in such concentration, the names themselves lock and freeze into their names. They tend to be introduced to one another: ‘Name, do you know Name?’ ‘Oh Name! Been longing to meet you. So admire your work etc.’ It might have been a relief had a man in an orange boiler-suit come in to mend a dripping tap or something of that kind.

Helen Fielding told me she’s taken to Twitter, hasn’t written anything for years, 7000 followers. Still I was gawping rather. Diana Quick v. friendly. Made a film of another of Kernow’s books.  My best conversation was with the young, good-looking, not at all self-full editorial assistant from the publishing house but now I think about it that was mainly me talking.

But, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

Saturday 14^th May 2011

Tomorrow will be my account of Kernow Hellizon’s launch: he was actually there – a world-figure more enduring and as high as Diana Wales or Mrs Onassis. You won’t believe it. You won’t believe the other names either.

But Rufus Pitman’s dinner for the dedicatees of his novel, Buns and Bums at the Seaside, endures more as does the exceptional work. So far it has endured and not gone bitter, as perhaps the other might in the strange mind of a Poor Little Rich Gay, since 14^th April.

I hope you know this novel. It was out in March. I couldn’t agree with it more. It’s not directly about Poor Little Rich Gays; its Gays are neither rich nor poor. If they were it would be even worse. But they’re not normal. Nobody is of course, except those with something seriously the matter with them. But I won’t have it any other way. Gays are not as others, Poor Little Rich Gays doubly so … and still subject to the attentions of Neighbourhood Watch.

Read Buns and Bums. You’ll get the idea.

What about its dedicatees? Great list of them, some married up to a point, high proportion Poor Little Rich, off and on their heads at the same time. Lord Arrowby, that austere Governmental figure from the highest of power’s corridors, made a late bronzed contradictory entrance, displayed in a complex web of designer clothes and eyewear: sand trousers by Paul and Joe, sequined dun T-Shirt by Dries, aubergine evening jacket with damask pattern from an exclusive Indian line, man’s silver necklace. He had an absolute grasp of his labels. After that he was not seen by me. I sat with Reggie Cresswell, the international Ghanaian ceramicist, who was suffering from nervous strain brought on by having Miroslav, our adored nightmare builder to the Poor Little Rich Gays, in attendance in the home. But he was approached by a fan which made him delighed and uncomfortable.

Reggie and I agreed many years ago that we would never know another good night’s sleep after Miroslav. (By the way, I hear that Rufus has got builders in. Can’t wait to hear more. We love building work, as you know.)

On my other side was Valèry Duplessis, almost unique amongst the PLRGs in having regular employment. He told me his brother is getting married but has no suit. Valèry has had to lend. He and Conrad, the disease expert (also present and a dedicatee), are to attend the wedding then retire to a boutique hotel at some remove.

Rufus himself veered superbly between high and low. One minute High Table, the next Hello! magazine. He is one of the few left with conversation.

You’ve probably been screaming – WHERE? Where was the fucking dinner held? Naturally Rufus homed in on the only place with any height in the dingy student and one-night-cheap-hotel quarter near Gay’s the Word Bookshop, Bloomsbury, where he had made a pre-dinner appearance. It was the Norfolk Arms, Leigh Street, greatly liked by the party.

Rufus’s fume, if you have not studied the comments department, was Pour Monsieur by Chanel.

Now I am leaving for Die Walküre which is being cast live from the Metropolitan Opera New York at 5pm UK time in what will almost certainly be the greatest live performance of our lifetimes.

Thursday 12th May 2011

You won’t believe the height! The saturation of greatness! At one point the corner by the window was occupied by three persons only, all of them world figures. I refer to Kernow Hellizon’s launch last night. All today I’ve been wrenched to a halt every twenty minutes: to think that he was actually there. I actually saw him.

But it’ll have to wait – for first I must go back. I’ve done a terrible thing. How could it have happened? Rufus Pitman, author of Bums and Buns at the Seaside, a riveting novel daring to show Gays as they actually are, held a dinner for the dedicatees of that work, a bizarre crew of greatnesses and leading Poor Little Rich Gays, including Bruce McBain, my personal architect, Reggie Cresswell, the world-renouned Ghanaian ceramacist, Conrad Matheson, the disease expert, Valèry Duplessis, a gorgeousness with a proper job, and Lord Arrowby, that stern governmental figure who stalks the highest corridors of power in a backroom capacity. This last, by the way, is my part-time love interest. There’s shortly to be an announcement. But no final decision has yet been taken as to whether Alexander McQueen or some new talent.

Somehow, boarding the next day for Rome, the Farnese Ceiling, then Easter, then the Wedding, then the ducklings, I was overwhelmed by events and failed to cover the Rufus dinner. Now I’m just waiting for him to confirm his perfume  before launching in.

Wednesday 11^th May 2011

I know, I know – you’re dying to hear what was in those shopping bags I laid before Buckingham Palace (temporarily) on the night before the Royal Wedding; you’re nearly extinct with the strain of waiting to hear about my champagne cardy. Did it survive its wash? What about the summer modes, the dominance of separates? What about Val, our drunk Poor Little Rich Gay? Where’s he?

But all must give way to my great meditation on marriage and modern relationships, inspired by the Farnese ceiling, the Royal Wedding, other developments you don’t know about and Harry Rollo, newly sprung from a Civil Partnership, forged anew in the Poor Little Rich Gay manner. He, by the way, has been in Sicily. We can’t wait to hear about that.

As always, Poor Little Rich Gays have surged into new danger zones, casting aside the lies and beastliness of marriage as commonly known: so-called exclusive relationships, enduring for ever and ever, until Kingdom come. As it happens, Frankie-Doreen Gunn and Giles Ullerston gave a lunch (42 seated in their home) on Sunday for their daughter’s 18^th birthday. I sat next to a married lady: married for 25 years, she thought, possibly more. ‘Surely long enough?’ I said. She didn’t disagree.

Not that I’m against people staying together. Don’t misunderstand. But they must renew, re-group, re-configure at regular intervals.

Usually they do stay together, where there is companionship and understanding, one party enduring perhaps rather more than the other. Jane Austen was right about all that. Sex and romance and passion are very well, but the lasting bonds are elsewhere or begin with that but evolve into something else.

I imagine Elizabeth had rather more managing of difficult, awkward Mr Darcy than he had of her.

There is also of course the Kitchen question. See glossary. Or rather don’t. A Kitchen is a younger lover of a Poor Little Rich Gay (the Kitchen stays the same age, circa 22, while the Poor Little Rich Gay gets older), perhaps from Brazil or a disadvantaged background, requiring assistance, able to be brought on. Money, of course, makes the Kitchen possible. Not all Poor Little Rich Gays tend to Kitchens, but many do.

So, the Multis, that excellent partnership and companionship, neither given to kissy-kissy handy-holdy nonsense. In company they are blazingly each his own person.  They don’t cling or murmur. An outsider might think them unacquainted. In matters of the emotions, Poor Little Rich Gays are clipped, brave, like the Wartime generation before them. They might be thought cold.

Last week the gorgeous Blond Multi, who in appearance immediately suggests a re-moulded, entirely new Brideshead Revisited, was summoned at the last minute to Australia on secret business. The Photo Multi was left alone in the penthouse for seven days with the duckling drama, the Blond to return on Sunday morning.

At 5.30 on that morning the Photo Multi was woken by an aeroplane over the penthouse. He seized the binoculars. It was Singapore Airlines. He wondered. Then, four minutes later, the Blond texted from the cabin. He’d just landed at Row. So the very craft the Photo Multi had seen was the one, arching direct through the air from Singapore in this time of peace, bringing his Blond Multi back to him.