Sunday 13th February 2011

I think it does. In the Banking Crisis Poor Little Rich Gays were in Tobago (some of them), glued to the TV and gnawing as their investments crashed. But then we were booming.

But now…..

The Multis have mined that stilton to the very edge. There’s hardly any eating left on it. Not like last year when there was a good half inch before the rind. In Milan the Blond Multi’s Hotel was 90 euros. His employees in the Milan office were thunderstruck.  ‘New policies,’ the Blond said. ‘Expenses are reined in.’ ‘By you,’I said. ‘You’re i/c expenses.’ ‘I know,’ he said. Lord Arrowby says that nobody is to go First Class ever, in Government circles.

It really is the end.

We’re having a day out in the country -Val, me, Lady Newell are visiting with the Photo Multi’s Mother north of Birmingham. Val and I have developed a new look – the semi-country or demi-ville.

I feel I’m wearing too much honey-beige.

Thursday 10th February 2011

Thursday 10th  February 2011

The Photo Multi announces that their ex-Christmas stilton rind is ready for collection by me. Unfortunately I am not quite as poor this year as last when it was donated to ease my post-Sales deficit crisis.

But I shall find a use for it.

A Priceless Stilton Rind - ex-Multis

Thursday 10th February 2011

The Blond Multi Gained

Tuesday 8^th February 2011

• Bullet points are inescapable, there’s such a plethora. Poor Little Rich Gays are everywhere. They’re taking over. Last night Lord Arrowby and I went to a play. It was called Becky Shaw. To tell the truth (if you’re interested in the truth), it was actually about straight people. But how much they’d learnt from Poor Little Rich Gays re: brilliant, new, difficult, dazzling configurations of relationships! With the pace of change these days, it won’t be long before marriage and monogamy have gone completely, axed to the ground by Poor Little Rich Gays. No, correction, there’s nothing wrong with marriage, often as a cosy base from which to branch out with return in mind. I plan to marry myself one day. But it is deadly unless there is some large angle laid across it.
• On Sunday I was sweeping in my front area when who should be peering through the railings but my architect, Bruce MacBain and his partner (Mondays off and separate homes), Tancredo Viamare, both masculine in Designer outwear with hoods. They were returning from an exhibition of Japanese frockage, the last day… if only I’d known.  They held the entire street in thrall for twenty minutes with accounts of Issey Mikaye (never worn by me), Yamamoto, Comme des Garcons (it won’t do the cedilla). I said, ‘What about Yuki? Those draped evening dresses.’ What a topic for the front area!
• That morning I risked Sainsbury’s where I never normally go. I wanted their car park and thought it only right to try and buy something to be nice. There was Peter Acharya at the check-out, in a million-dollar leather jacket, looking completely finished for a Sunday morning and with front hair interest. He said: ‘Champagne’s half price. I’ve got ten bottles.’ He said: ‘There’s been an encounter between two older gentlemen. One said, “I’m going to buy Brasso.” The other said: “I always use Lancôme.” Offence taken.’  I snapped up three bottles of Lanson for £14.99.
• The Multis, meanwhile, went round on Saturday to the headquarters of the Monmouth Coffee House in Maltby Street, Bermondsey, where they are known. Look what they found: see graphs below. They also went to Heston Blumenthal’s new restaurant Dinner at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel.  The Photo Multi speaks primarily in pictures, so….

Rich and Dark - the Multis at Heston's London Restaurant

Heston: Pudding

Heston Cheeseboard: Surprisingly Normal

Heston: Mint Tea Service

The Multis Arrived at the Monmouth Coffee House, Maltby Street on Sat Morning

Maltby Street Sat Morning Last: How the Multis were Greeted

Sunday 6^th February 2011

I can’t keep on about Paris for ever. It’s two weeks now since I was there. Besides, after the January lull (which wasn’t really a lull at all, as we have said) London Poor Little Rich Gays are blossoming with restaurants, dinners, creations, operas, private views, police incidents and miraculous bargains.

But what about Bruno-France Bruno, seen in Paris in that magnificent Hôtel Partic?  He may well turn out to be one of the greatest Poor Little Rich Gays of all. What a masterpiece! There’s inevitability but constant surprise. It was inevitable that, whatever hotel we took in Paris, he would be nearby.  We were invited for drinks. He supplied the code which would open his street door.  Once in the courtyard, we were to call him and he would come down to fetch us: but he didn’t, he came in from behind, through the street door also. Years ago, Bruno-France summoned about thirty people to Glyndebourne: he had special free access to a dress rehearsal of Fidelio. Once there, in the foyer, doubt swept through the party as to the existence of the tickets, from what source, not known. Possibly Bruno-France was glimpsed struggling, or appearing to struggle, at the Box Office. Harry Rollo, the world-famous impresario and performance artist, who has just triumphed in New York, yet again, was writhing on the floor with the tension. But of course there was soon a tremendous clattering and whirring of printing machinery and we were in.

At Glyndebourne Bruno-France always snacks from the house fridge. That’s not the opera house, the actual house.

Last seen residing in a high, high apartment above Drury Lane (white cats, glass walls lightly pinned with honed steel discs), the same apartment in fact that Trenton from the Multis’ gallery went to last winter and sat on a sofa where a porn film had been made the day before – Bruno-France is now recreated in this splendid Hôtel Partic. Bruce MacBain went sweeping round, saying ‘That’s a this,’ and ‘This is a that.’ None of it meant anything to me. It is the apartment of an old lady, now deceased, who endured a long decline and had holes in her clothes. The drawing room was like a meeting room with black leather chairs, no doubt important, round a circular coffee table dense with primitive figures – nowhere to put your knitting. Throughout there was little sign of occupation – no lippie, no stockings, no clucks flung off (I think all that had been modernised into cupboards), streaming wood floors, quite a bit of steel, complete refurb, very modern, of the old building. There was a treadmill, an experimental vertical garden and, according to Prince Dmitri Hersov who knows about these things, absolutely ultra audio equipment.

Bruno-France himself lives mainly elsewhere, at St Germain-en-Laye or if here, in a secret room he showed us, behind a concealed door, with its own bathroom and kitchen.

Experimental Vertical Garden

Wednesday 2nd February 2011

That Paris weekend, ten days ago, produced such a rich harvest but you’ll be wondering what I’ve been doing since.

Well, that emergency-purchase shaving cream from Space NK (their own brand) isn’t working out. It smells first of all of pineapple and then of boiled-down fish bones. A back-up Moroccan Neroli Shaving Serum from A­esop has arrived.

Now – back to Paris. Oh those shimmering days!  In the garden (little hedges and gravel) of the Hôtel de Sully in the Marais, there was a Russian olive tree so arranged that its lower branches made a strikingly straight edge where they stopped above the path.  ‘It’s been chopped so the bus can get by,’ Prince Dmitri said. An odd idea: it would have been a very small bus, barely six feet high, and a very short route, from one side of the walled garden of the Hôtel de Sully to the other.

Don’t mistake Prince Dmitri Hersov for your routine blue-chip accountant. He has the Russian grand vision, the endless Steppe rolling away, not empty, but in decline, everything falling apart, fickleness and lack of endurance all around. Still he collects art and furniture, roars in the Porsche from one vinyl record shop to another in search of rare bands, and places excellently pointless remarks.

‘These fragments I have shored against my ruins.’ That’s probably mis-quoted and not quite applying to Prince Dmitri who has hope of a better life on another shore.

I said to Bruce MacBain, my architect, also with in Paris: ‘What did you talk about when you were with the ballet dancer?’ Bruce started in the top, you know, not five minutes in London from Scotland and he was cooped up in the Covent Garden apartment now used on weekdays by Marcus Cargill, England’s leading clockmender, with a household name, an internationally-known ballet dancer. That was thirty years ago. ‘Well, it depended who we were with. If it was Angela Lansbury, we talked about Death on the Nile.’

Angela Lansbury! A great favourite of Robert Nevil and Eddie Sedgewick in the 70s for her role in Black Flowers for the Bride. When they showed her the design for her wedding dress, she mini-ed it instantly by slashing a great black line miles above the knee.

On the Sunday morning, we revolved a subject dear to the hearts of Poor Little Rich Gays and a source of some racking: what sway should be given to material things? Will a superb linen cupboard, onyx flooring and Prada frockage barr the spiritual path?

You can have a spiritual path, you know, even if you are not a believer. Bruce MacBain pointed out that the Christian message has been conveyed often through the sensual medium of art. We pondered the rich interiors of churches and their altar candlesticks.

It was some comfort.

Very straight Edge of Tree, for the Bus to Pass Under, According to Prince Dmitri Hersov

Interior at the Hotel de Sevigne, Condemned by Bruce MacBain: 'Like a bedsit'

Monday 31^st January 2011

I’m going to be art historical. If you want moisturiser, shopping, outfit crises or superbly fractured lives, come back another day.

As you know, I’ve been much criticised for going to Paris, with my architect Bruce MacBain and top blue-chip accountant, Prince Dmitri Hersov, to see the Monet Exhibition. ‘Terrible Sunday dauber,’ Robert Nevil wasped. Lord Arrowby absolutely wouldn’t come, appeared never to have heard of Monet and has now struck back with a new home art installation: an actual stuffed vole besieged by tiny ballerinas made of bird-bones.

I do hope Lord Arrowby isn’t cracking up.

Of course the main reason for wanting to see the Monet Exhibition was the near impossibility of getting in. Dimly, at the back of my mind, it flickered: Is Monet a bit common? Too much sunshine, the one-dimensional holiday mood shown in sick-making shades of salmon and azure?

Now, willed vulgarity is all right. Absolutely Poor Little Rich Gay. But how defiant and badly-behaved was Monet? Or did he think that masses of bright blue and orange was nice?

Poor Little Rich Gays require greatness in art. Good isn’t good enough.  I refer to gallery art.  Home art is another matter.  Or Art can be massively minor, freakish, obscure  and neglected.  We like that. Greatness means a complete vision of how the world is, offered without compromise, astonishing yet recognisable, patently true, not without darkness yet resounding and affirming.  K.Clark (of  Civilisation) said that Monet was ungreat on account of lack of form. Colour and light aren’t enough.  He said that when Monet painted Rouen Cathedral he made it look like melted ice-cream. He said it was telling that Monet’s idea of an interesting structure was a haystack.

K. was right about form. Form gives thunder and importance and is a massive bulwark against nothingness. He was right that ‘Bathers at Asnières’ by Seurat is the greatest painting of the early modern era. But he was wrong about Monet. Monet does have form. Those haystacks are dynamic in a quiet way. K. couldn’t see it.  There is design or so little design that is the point. One of my favourites is the one of the poppy field.  People might think it’s a pretty picture,  but the perspective is unsettling, leading up to the blind house and allowing the feeling that the poppies are a kind of wave that might overwhelm. The figures in the picture are ghostly; the two at the side, in fact, I’d never noticed before. This is how Monet saw things throughout. We little humans in this lovely world yet overwhelmed by it, blasted by sunshine, assaulted by colour, gripped by wind.

Poor Little Rich Gays like this. We live under the glorious panoply of our own importance, bearing the knowledge of our nothingness –  unlike the Earls Court Gays.

The garishness is inevitable.  How could Monet avoid it? He didn’t mean to be pretty. Those brilliant colours are terrible. At times the glare is appalling, the colour scheme offered by the world likely to wipe out anyone going near it, both in and out of the picture. He had to face it.

But he might have avoided the awful gardening. I was hoping and hoping the picture of the abandoned lunch-table at Giverny would be there, adored by me at the Jeu de Paume 30 years ago and not seen since. It was – but a standard fuchsia in a Versailles tub!

Monet: Awful Gardening

The Poppy Field: Sinister Overtones

Monet: Appalling Wind

Monet: Colour Almost Unbearable

Monet: Another Colour Assault

Wednesday 26^th January 2011

It’s an odd mixture, but there we are.

Yesterday I scratched my Balenciaga black slacks in good cloth, only just back from the tailor for thigh widening. A table was in the way.  But that same tailor told me you can get out the marks left in fabric by stitching if you wet and then press (using a pressing cloth, of course). I thought: apply the same principle to the scratch. It worked.

What a laundry or perhaps mending joy!

On Sunday in Paris I went into Kielh’s in the Marais for more shaving cream: £13 a tube. ‘It’s run out world-wide.’ ‘Quel horreur,’ I said, not believing. But it’s true. I’ve tried Space NK and www.mankind.co.uk .

Space NK’s own brand was my only hope. I don’t like it. There should be at least a three-week build-up to a purchase of this nature.

Now: higher things. The Cluny Museum in Paris. Bruce MacBain, my architect, and I were there on Saturday afternoon. Prince Dmitri had gone elsewhere to look at vinyl. I don’t think you know that he’s a vinylist. It’s long-playing records or singles. Rare music. He’s got one of the biggest collections in the world.

I know, the Monet Exhib was the main thing, the reason why we went to Paris. But I’m pondering Monet a little longer. Just how Poor Little Rich Gay was he? Meanwhile Robert Nevil is leaping about on the sidelines, condemning: ‘Terrible old dauber.’

The Cluny Museum, if you don’t know, displays medieval artefacts: bits that have dropped off cathedrals, just a tiny bit dreary, and hard to see how they could be used in the home or about the person. The great glory is the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. We loved them. Radiant mass of decoration, naughty animals, carefully placed, clever unity of colour, deceptively innocent: not entirely clear what the Lady is up to with the Unicorn. Overall, festive, pagan and elusive.

Years ago, Dr Carol, a bad influence on Robert Nevil and myself, used to say: ‘Revive Medieval music? Might as well bring back Medieval drainage.’ Well, Bruce MacBain and I thought otherwise. Look at the graphs below. See what you think. Would you wear that necklace? Or adopt that saintly expression in certain circumstances?

Bruce MacBain found the whole experience very calming. ‘Such compassion,’ he said, in the medieval items.

A New Necklace Look?

Table Decoration? Hostess Gift?

Perhaps One Hanging Over Each Guest's Chair at a Dinner: Especially if the More Elaborate Look Comes Back

Liven Up a Winter Coat?

Supply Each Guest with An Individually Designed Shield? More Fun that Name-Tags or Placement Cards? Useful if Unpleasantness

Simple Dink-Donk on Wheels: Useful Accessory When Ambling the Streets?

Perfect Expression for the Calm Hostess: Try it Yourself

Tuesday 25th January 2011

As a matter of fact, an exquisite Frenchman of my acquaintance told me on Sunday he was boarding for Moscow yesterday. Last night I couldn’t raise him. The whole Poor Little Rich Gay enterprise was tottering. Could one cluck on, so silly, so monstrous, so without worthiness,  in the face of… ?  But in the small hours a mail came through. The Air France flights go to the other airport. His British colleagues were destined for the place of terror but turned back mid-air.

A near miss! But one day, one day, something so awful will happen and there’ll no recovery…

How dare you! Outrageous, you say. Others were blasted. What about them?

Yes, indeed: ‘…The costly aversion of the eyes from death.’ That’s Larkin. Or Robert Frost: ‘And they, since they/ Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.’

Delirious with relief, we seal off and carry on.

In Paris, on the weekend, which could so easily have been another era, Prince Dmitri revealed a new talent for spotting French lady greatnesses in hats and secretly graphing them.

A Furred Greatness Lunches in Paris: Note the Curious Bus-Style Seating Arrangement

Une Dame Blanc (Michael Jackson Resurgam?) Before Notre Dame de Paris

A More Basic but Still Thrilling French Dame Look