Saturday 7th May 2011

Staggering developments on the Multis’ wrap-around – terrace, that is. A duck has been nesting in an important ornamental grass. What a choice! What a milieux, and the pot containing the grass £600 from Pots and Pithoi! The only drawback: the terrace is on the 7th floor. No foxes but  how, once de-egged, would the wingless minis gain the Thames, sixty feet below?

They do require water for swimming, you see, for their development.

This week, hatching in the grass, three fluffy ducklings suddenly present on the wrap-around. The Photo Multi called a nearby urban farm. A team arrived and after much palaver rescued the darlings. Some of them had fallen under the ravingly priceless stone slabs of the terrace and had to be tweaked out.  The Photo gave them a bottle of Bollinger each and £50 – the farm personnel, that is, not the ducklings.

The great sadness is the Blond Multi: away in Australia, as before, should you recall – on official business. He had grown attached to the duck; he’d been peeking into the nest every morning, while dressed in tailor-made garments with massive jewelled cuff-links and astonishing footwear; he couldn’t wait for the ducklings to appear – but now he’s missed the whole thing .

The Ex-Duck Nest on the Multis' Wrap-Around

Ducklings and leur mère at home at the Multis

Pert Duckling Rescued At Last

Wednesday 4^th May  2011

I had planned rare sight-seeing in Rome, but it didn’t come off. I was lolling in bed on the Sunday morning, so missed Sant Ivo, which only opens then. The Bramante cloister that Sonny told me about (I’m a bitch for Bramante: little idea who he was) was chuiso lunedi. We whizzed past San Carlo alla Quattro Fontane on the motorino but I failed to return when it might have been open.

Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of these places. Take it from me, they’re rare. Sight-seeing should be rare if it occurs at all. Don’t mill with the general. Arrange to be shown round by the director after hours. This can compensate for the annoyance of the place not being for sale or the price even advertised and the irritation of other artists drawing attention to themselves. As masters and shapers of our persons, surroundings and narrative line, we don’t like this.

But I did see the Palazzo Farnese, whose rare, rare opening spurred me to board for Rome in the first place, apart from the chance to be with Sonny. Within is the painted ceiling by Annibale Carracci of ‘The Loves of the Gods’, described either as ‘the second ceiling in Rome’ after the Sistine Chapel or the first.

It was a once-in-a-lifetime op to see it.

As it happens, I’d never heard of Annibale Carracci but I was thrilled with his ceiling. It’s like Michelangelo but none of those lumpy figures who’d fall over if they tried to stand up. The great glory was its Poor Little Rich Gay theme, the thoroughly unsatisfactory conflict between ‘erotic’ and ‘spiritual’ love, Eros and Anteros, never apparently resolved despite the central panel showing the so-called ‘Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne’, he being the most frightful good-time boy and she ghastly agonised little goody-two-shoes.

The parallel may not be exact, but in a general sense the Poor Little Rich Gay embrace of superbly riven and conflicted human nature, our rejection of the simple procession of ‘marriage’ as commonly understood, our forging of a new complex web of relationships, where the permanent partner, if there is one, may not necessarily be the sexual companion, was well grasped by Annibale.

Well done, Annibale.

The Farnese Ceiling, Showing 'The Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne'

The Farnese Palace Ceiling by Annibale Carracci

Detail from Farnese Palace Ceiling

Sunday 1^st May

Today is the actual birthday of the Photo Multi.

Samuel Beckett wrote a play called Happy Days. In the first act Winnie is buried to the waist in sand, in the second to the neck. She talks a lot. Sadness after sex, she can understand, but sadness after song is too crushing.

I’ve had Sadness after Wedding. I keep turning on the TV for a vestige but there is none.

Thank the Lord for the Photo Multi’s birthday dinner under the arches in Maltby Street, Bermondsey. You may remember a set-menu restaurant pops up there every Friday, given by the sons of the Monmouth Coffee House Chief Executive Officer, whose headquarters, where the Multis have this winter become intimate, is next door.

Maltby Street otherwise is to be the new Borough Market, now that that place has been contaminated by tourists and fraudulence.

So, we foregathered on the concrete apron outside the arch, with a corrugated iron and wasteland backdrop and the railway line above. Top people abounded: the BBC’s Head of Sport, from the Art World, Elsa Hodgeman, the Gertrude Stein de nos jours, her mother, Lady Newell, adjusting to the location, Beatrice Cantor, Seth Vaughan, Flint Cantor; from the Money World, Prince Dmitri Hersov and  Sinclair Silverwater.  Merton, his wife, was dressed by Alexander McQueen in the most plunging manner ever seen. ‘What about your bra?’ Laura Malcolm, the novelist and expert in French ways, said on being first introduced. We have met Merton before. She attends trunk sales, which are previews of the preview, at the design houses twice a year. Working with her husband, she manages a very considerable frockage budget. She told me that they now use the PLRG term – as did, by the way, Hannah Betts in the Daily Graph yesterday. ‘Opinion was divided regarding Pippa Middleton’s McQueen ensemble: gorgeous frockage…’

‘I’ve been dreading it,’ the Photo Multi confided. ‘I can’t bear attention to be drawn to me.’ So it is for Poor Little Rich Gays here and throughout the world. We are condemned to receive, throw open the home, arrange and diarise although temperamentally quite unsuited to doing so. For this reason, in part, we feel so close to the Monarchy whose sublime head, Her Sacred Majesty the Queen, is in exactly the same position.

On my left at the dinner I had Laura Malcolm: no, she hadn’t liked the bridesmaids and why had Kate Middleton never had a job? What kind of message was that for feminism? These are difficult questions which I will keep for another day. What is the reality of human relations? What is marriage? The Palazzo Farnese ceiling, my account of which is still held up, comes into it, you know. You wait and see.

On my right, Flint Cantor, the artist, very wicked and well-publicised brother of Beatrice, scrubbed up, re-haired, bronzed, altogether ravishing. He explained that having had sex with the same woman for many years, he now thought he would try a range. The trouble is very few of them have any pubic hair. It’s a new trend. He likes blondes with matching pubic hair. I suggested Civil Partnership, so thrilled was I by this talk. He said: ‘Have you got a flat?’ I said, ‘A house.’ He’d been painting Hitler all day.

O! The Poor Little Rich Gay life. The unexpectedness!

I must publish the menu for this dinner. It was absolutely outstanding.

But it’ll have to wait.

So finally, finally, I quite forgot that Joshua Baring mentioned on Friday while we were viewing the Wedding at Robert Nevil and Sebastian Archer’s that a virtual member of the Royal Family would be giving him an Abbey-and-Palace-fresh perspective next week. And Peter Achyra sent me a message from Mauritius where he is presently villa-ed: ‘I told you Alexander McQueen had taken the apartment next door for a secret purpose, didn’t I?’

Indeed he had, many months ago. And I told you.

The Setting for the Photo Multi's Birthday Dinner

Merton Silverwater's Exceptional Evening Bag

Friday 29th April 2011

Speechless… the procession of Foreign Crowned Heads was one thing (no sign of the Spains?).

But the Bride’s entry and procession! The Monarchy was forged anew before our eyes.

What we couldn’t see on TV were the diamonds. She would have been ablaze. So commanding herself with the humble, nun-like veil, the excellent sister in stunning white shift and yet the picture so touching with the tiny children, the little dignified band, when seen from above the perfect pear-drop shape of the train, making its slow way to the altar.

To think, at other times, those same people might mill in a crowd, but now re-invented by garments, jewels, flowers, place, occasion and themselves.

One of those bridesmaid’s – her grandfather, his son the underwear model married to Laura Parker-Bowles, is known to the Gay Mother, her grandmother, who was an Astor, used to be out beagling with Aunt Lavinia. Lord Arrowby was of course present in the Abbey. We didn’t see him.  Was he grouped near the Elton Johns, who were surely more shown that anyone else, all the gays together? Joshua Baring was in the party at Robert Nevil and Sebastian Archer’s, spotting away like mad. He was at Eton, you know. One person lurking behind a pillar he claimed was disreputable.

Now, only sadness after wedding.

What next?

I tell you what’s next – the Photo Multi’s Birthday Dinner under the arches in Bermondsey. 6pm for some reason. I must re-face and re-frock at once.

Thursday 28^th April 2011

Once again my thoughts on the Farnese ceiling by Annable Carracci (I penetrate to the core of Poor Little Rich Gay life through the ceiling) are delayed, this time because of the greatness of events.

The Royal Wedding is upon us! This evening on the way back from Harrods I passed by the great throbbing, thronging heart of our nation, the Palazzo Buckingham and the Great West Door of the Abbey itself. A procession of Foreign Crowned Heads swept up Constitution Hill under police escort. People are encamped by the roadside, there’s a great crowd pressing against the railings of the Palazzo on the right-hand side. At the Abbey too, a festive attendance, many strolling in high holiday in the middle of the closed off roads, the mood quite unburdened by the 15-hour overnight wait ahead, orderly, a murmur of expectation as if the blaze of Royalty might occur at any moment, not all little awe, a sound never heard elsewhere.

Lord Arrowby, my part-time love interest, will be in the Abbey in the morning at the special invitation of Camellia Parker Bowles (as was). I wonder what he will be wearing. Last time I saw him he was astonishingly arrayed in a complex web of designer wear and jewellery.

At the time of the Royal Wedding, in 1981, I was in the care of pernicious mind-specialists: I was worried then about my outfit for the wedding. They said, ‘You think you’re the bride.’

Nothing wrong with that. We were born to aim high.

In the end I had a white shirt (or blouse more in those days) and trousers in royal purple sateen from that shop opposite where is now Osborne and Little. I can’t remember what I wore for the very second-rate Fergie wedding but my menu was Vitello Tonnato. This time it’s not been made easy by this sudden warm weather which isn’t as warm as it seems (and of course rushing into summer clothes not allowed), the new need for separates, the Photo-Multi’s Birthday Function, the additional forthcoming Wedding at Bath Abbey in June,  Easter, being away, not a minute for the shops.

But you can rest assured – I was saved by the late opening of Harrods (did you know you can shop there every day until eight?) even though H Nicks are being bitch about taking back those Balenciaga slacks that ripped. So no nice base mulch of money to fund non-sale purchases.

If you want to know what’s in my Wedding shopping bags, you’ll have to come back. I expect you’re also dying to hear whether my champagne cardy got through its wash.

At 9.30 in the morning I leave for Robert Nevil and Sebastian Archer’s where I will view the Wedding on their enormous council house TV. They are polishing up a silver salver and will be offering suitable morning drinks, such as Madeira, Sloe Gin (but not the Bullace horror gathered by Robert Nevil from Midland hedgerows) or Harvey’s Bristol Cream, accompanied by dry biscuits. For the viewing, I’m going to repeat my Easter Day separates outfit but the shirt will be  my shimmering silky grey Paulo Pecora with the celebration ribboning over the buttons. I might continue that ensemble for the Photo Multi’s birthday shed dinner in Bermondsey in the evening.

Once you’ve got new clothes, there’s no need to wear them. They revive the existing wardrobe quite wonderfully.

By the way, that Head of an Oxford College on Sunday evening ! You remember the Gay Mother and I were bidden by her neighbour at the last minute: high-minded musical display to be provided by the Oxford College’s Head after dinner. Well, you wouldn’t believe it! We Googled him afterwards – or rather I did. 85, strings and strings of trusteeships, high up in the law, all the Inns of Court, Harvard, not just Oxford.  In person he combined fearful distinction and grace with not being at all well-behaved. Said nobody would want to listen to classical music, surely people knew Noël Coward. Launched into ‘Nina from Argentina’ and ‘A Bar on the Piccola Marina’, accompanying self on piano. Really ought to have been preserved for posterity as a cult feature. Can never have been anything like it before. Voice quite 85 years old, but tremendously musical, had the architecture and the line; then the sensational ambiguity of such a figure singing such songs. His last number was ‘You’re Sensational’, his version more honed and rare, more donnish yet more beautiful,  than Sinatra’s.

What I’m most looking forward to tomorrow is the procession of Foreign Crowned Heads.

My Wedding Shopping Bags Seen Outside Buckingham Palace This Evening

The Scene at Palazzo Buckingham This Evening

Outside Westminster Abbey This Evening: In the Background the Queen Elizabeth 11 Conference Centre, Site of the old Westminster Hospital from where the Gay Mother Viewed the Coronation in 1937

Sunday 24^th April 2011 Easter Day

My account of my rare Roman sightseeing is ready but won’t be released just yet because of the Resurrection whose terror and glamour are in every way to be preferred to the simple-minded nursery syrup of Christmas. Last summer at Sansepulcro we saw Piero della Francesca’s great painting of the Risen Lord forging out of the grave, the guards quaking in mortal dread. A baby, however well-haloed, can’t hope to compete. The Easter story, from the entry into Jerusalem, through the Agony on the Cross to the impossible, self-creating conduct of Christ in the tomb, speaks directly to the hearts of Poor Little Rich Gays, whether believers or not, here and throughout the world.

Absolute black mark against any Poor Little Rich Gays not having lamb on Easter Sunday.  The Gay Mother and I had to take our Easter lamb last night. Today we visited Aunt Smidge and her daughter, Cousin Smurry, who let it be known some time ago that lamb is off because of their dog (don’t ask). It never stops bouncing.

I didn’t tell you how I visited two butchers yesterday. In the first I asked for cutlets (the pinnacle of the Gay Mother’s lamb experience was some cutlets taken in Cortona in ’94) but, after delay and much hacking backstage, got chops. In country shops I don’t like to cause offence. The crushing could be fatal.  So I bought them (£7.82), plotting meanwhile to try the other butcher where, after detailed description of the Cortona grail, I acquired what appeared to be at last the True Cutlet – French trimmed Best End (West End?) (£15.63). The Gay Mother pronounced them flavoursome but the tenderness of Cortona not regained.

Separates are going to be big this summer. In fact, I’m wearing separates today, not a suit. I’m wearing the Nicolò Ceschi Berrini black jacket and the Paul and Joe (now without risotto stain) herringbone tweed slacks. I’ve a big wedding at Bath Abbey in June. I’m going to wear separates. I’m also going to wear separates at the Photo Multi’s birthday party in that shed restaurant in Bermondsey on Friday. What with the Royal Wedding (I haven’t brought it in yet but it is upon us – such complex thoughts: on the whole I prefer a funeral to a wedding. Nevertheless I shall be glued) that only leaves Wednesday afternoon to buy separates that tend more towards summer.

Now we’ve a last-minute at the neighbour QC’s who is offering a musical entertainment led by the head of an Oxford college.

This is the quiet country life.

My Easter Seperates: Separates will be Big This Year

The Gay Mother's Good Friday Penance Fish: Raie à l'orange

Saturday 23rd April 2011

I can’t think here: I’m in the Gay Mother’s local town, in a café, in an outfit – Prada pink shirt, Lindberg black waxed jeans and the suede jacket that had to be air-lifted back to Japan for cleaning, Prada bootees, five years old and broken inside, but don’t tell anyone.  There are people in flip-flops making a noise. At least I’ve managed to get the right cut of lamb. You remember last year the Gay Mother, now 87 (as we speak doing the flowers in the church), took against the cutlets from the organic butcher. Now I’ve got Best End, French-trimmed. Let’s hope it will recall at least remotely those never-to-be-forgotten lamb exquisions she took in Cortona in ’94.

She has tried to get broadband and failed.  A crane passed in the lane as soon as it was switched on and tore it down.

For the Good Friday fish penance yesterday she offered raie à l’orange. She condemns the present hot weather: ‘Quite wrong for April. I’m against it.’

So no let up in the country.

Come back later for my rare sight-seeing in Rome. I’ve had to Google for hours to check the spelling. I’ve such thoughts…

Wednesday 20^th April 2011

So back to Rome.  I was there at the weekend. It was a city mini-break.

O Rome! Always a great favourite with Poor Little Rich Gays from 1979. Why? More colours than Florence, amazing melon shades, more shopping and luxe but also not pimped for tourists. Real city. Romantic, run-down, unexpected.  Suddenly, round a corner and you’d be in a country lane, right in the middle of the crashing town. The Campo dei Fiori was a food market: in those days, the Northern European had never seen anything like it and it wasn’t put on like Borough. All the produce appeared to have been transported from the market garden without interval – the quiet, soft gleam of real freshness, not the glare of those polished red apples arranged in rows by arriviste vendors ! Centuries of expertise in greengrocery and fishmongery were at work. The neighbourhood around was virtually in ruins.

But now! I could bewail. It’s been smarted up, the residents driven out; the restaurants have gained that air of menace offered by the fixed-price menus in English.  Piazza Navona, Piazza della Rotunda, Piazza del Populo unspeakable: trash sellers, debased pavement art, tourists in lumps of never less than forty wearing (can you call it wearing?) the classic boil-washed leisure rags of today. Why did I bother with my outfits? Rome, especially in Spring and Autumn, was smart. What’s happened to the Italians? In all Italy we used to wonder at their elegance and beauty. There was never a lapse of taste.

Why don’t they make visitors to important cities submit their outfit plans in advance? What better use of the Internet?

The last straw was a sign outside the Tré Scalini in Piazza Navona. Once it was a grand café, which we managed to penetrate years ago (cheaper if you stood at the bar) in order to have the famous tartufo, a bitter, frozen chocolate block on the verge of being an ice-cream. The sign said, in English, ORIGINAL TARTUFO.

How could they sink so low?

That’s why, you see, you need a private roof terrace from which to view. I mentioned it before. It’s easy to slip into the Hotel Raphael, behind Piazza Navona. You acquire the air of a resident and forge straight to the lift behind the reception desk which goes direct to the roof. And there it is. Your private view. The Roman, mad village-like hubbub of roofs and TV aerials, with St Peter’s rising in one direction, and some slab of countryside or seeming countryside in the other. See graph below.

Do you know? – I fairly sure there was always rubbish going on Piazza Navona, even in the 80s. Dubious luminous fun-items being sold in the evenings. The Campo dei Fiori is a loss: T-shirt sellers now. But there it is. We must have Rome back. If you look up or sometimes even across, it’s all still there. Returning from dinner on Saturday night I was nearly knocked down by the Palazzo Farnese (of which more soon) springing out from behind a wall. What a facade! Fierce, with great blank, modern spaces. Is it beautiful? On Sunday suddenly, in the street between Campo dei Fiori and Piazza Farnese, there was the spire  of Sant Ivo spiralling above the rooftops… But I didn’t graph. Fool.

On Saturday Sonny and I went on the motorino to Palazzo Colonna to see Bronzino (rare sight-seeing) and gain décor tips (see graphs below). He was in YSL smoky brown velvet bomber, I, Paul and Joe Prince of Wales check slacks (now without risotto stain) and the petrol-sheen Prada coat. Terrifying but thrilling to be whizzing along so precarious. We must have been a sight. Then on to the shops: at Prada I made them bring out all their summer slacks but bought none. Sonny was a bitch for a summer scarf: he found one by Lanvin for 90 euros. Also espadrilles at Bottega Veneta. He’s going on a gulet round Turkey in July with some of the other Australian PLRGs. 17,000 euros for 10 days.

That’s new – a summer scarf.  Like Blanche Dubois’s summer furs, although not inexpensive.

Vital this summer.

And yes! Nicholas Taudevin is right. Shorts are everywhere. We’ll have to give in.

So Rome was all right! All still there and rich in décor tips,leading in fashion.

Come back soon to hear about my specialist sight-seeing. I’ve kept quiet about that, I know.

The Unexpected Rural Aspect: View from the Roof of the Hotel Raphael, Rome

Palazzo Farnese: How to Describe that Facade?

Sonny's Bottega Veneta Espadrilles for his Cruise Later in the Summer

Their Bag

Shorts Being Tried on at Prada

Model at Genti Via Babuino, Rome. Note the Summer Scarf

Shorts at Gente: Prep School Style

Prada Shorts at Gente, Via Babuino, Rome

Palazzo Colonna: Why not Hang your Chandelier or Other Lighting in the Window?

Palazzo Colonna: Why Not Paint Your Mirrors?

Tuesday 19th April 2011

…but I’m too tired. I can’t get Rome quite right and functions are piling up. I’d thought to have two pre-paschal nights at home alone but this evening Virgil Grayson, the world-famous archtect whose home on the Côte I stayed in last summer, accepted to dine but he didn’t want to be late.  He’s actually of some age but still competing to build museums. He bounds back and forth between our major towns. A Greatness was over from Rome. That was the occasion for my dinner. Confusing, I know, me having just been in Rome.  Bruce MacBain also dined. I said to Virgil, ‘Come at seven, we can be seated by 7.30 and I can get the service over by 7.35.’ Rather like dinner at the Court of George V. He said,’7.35? I’ll have to leave early in that case.’

But a brief dinner is valuable and perfectly possible. Poor Little Rich Gays, braced for achievement, cannot linger. Besides, before the War, dinner was always over by ten and lunch was forty-five minutes.

My menu was satisfyingly spare, pared down, in pale greens and yellows: leeks steamed, with chopped egg, parsley and vinaigrette, then chicken pieces grilled with preserved lemon and oregano. Finally a Passover cake made without flour or butter. Once Passover coincided with Easter, so, as far as I’m concerned, it will do for evermore. No cream, no cheese, no chocolates.

Preparation time: 1 hour.

Virgil left at 9.30.

And now Peter Acharya has come up with Private View tickets for the Miro Show at Tate Modern tomorrow. No champagne or canapes though. I said, ‘Let’s bring our own.’ Apparently Miro is not liked, but  a Private View is a Private View.

Somehow, I’m to get away to the Gay Mother’s on Thursday, lunching on the way at Bath.

But come back tomorrow: I’ve lovely Roman thoughts and news and style tips brewing up. My graphs with the new camera as well – I’ll make you feel Rome.

Monday 18th April 2011

In a mad dash – so much to do in Rome. I thought I’d been coming here often in recent years, but it turns out I haven’t. Full of wonder and sudden joy. It’s best to be elevated. Sonny’s got a millionaire roof terrace. So has the Hotel Raphael, which I penetrated yesterday. There’s a way of entering great hotels when you’re not a guest. Here are some graphs of the private views. You need private views. I’ll tell you why later.

I’ve got a new camera.

I’ve been in outfits too and, great merciful Lord, have known a high outfit satisfaction rate. On Saturday I showed my Prada Red coat with the petrol sheen of slubbed silk (artificial); yesterday I gave that Jil Sander grey shirt with the black trim (just a wheeny bit Nazi) which I lurked near for weeks in H Nicks until it was slashed and re-slashed in price.

I’m staying with Sonny Hammond, one of the Australian Poor Little Rich Gays. They can be even more terrifying that the European ones: ferociously critical of any tiny flaw in a finish or lack of champagne and more wildly in need of pills should they career off the rails. Sonny’s not quite like that; he’s more in touch with the painful side. He said: ‘We’ll take the motorino.’

It was a Vespa, a motorbike-lette. Utter terror, down the hill to the Piazza Venezia. I was thinking of the wrecking of all that designer frockage should we crash.

Come back tomorrow: there’s so much to tell – rare sightseeing, in fact. I know – I’ve kept quiet about that.

Exclusive View of St Peter's Rome from the Roof Terrace of the Hotel Raphael - Better Picture

Sonny's Private View of the Back of St John the Lateran: Weird Stone Creatures Stalking the Earth