Tuesday 14^th December 2010

Last year, you should remember, the Multis, those outstanding company-and-property-owning Poor Little Rich Gays, gave you a marvellous Christmas example, almost as good to follow as the Star of Bethlehem itself.

Give a lunch at a country pub for your friends and relations. Hire a limo or train to convey the London element. Invite thirty or so. Even with champagne you can bring it in for £1200 or less, so well within the grasp of even the poorest of Poor Little Rich Gays.

And a very good effect.

This year, the Multis scaled down a little. But oh the comfort and smoothness of the arrangements! First class self-paid train for the London party, consisting of Elsa Hodgeman, the Gertrude Stein de nos jours, Beatrice Cantor, the artist, her rock-hewn husband, Seth Wright, the artist, their imperial daughter, Prince Dmitri Hersov, who was at the accounting school with the Multis, the Multis and me, Adrian Edge. At the destination, a mini-bus, then a short walk. The aspect of being in the country could almost be overlooked.

At the lunch, the Photo Multi’s mother, his sister and her daughter, his brother, the one who, when a small boy and asked to mow the lawn, hired someone else to do it. Beatrice and Elsa were talking about the British School in Rome. It’s strange, because back in the summer, at Virgil Grayson’s in the South of France (he a world architect), this subject surged and resurged with the persistence of the sea. One of the guests, a bitch so monumental you couldn’t but admire, had worked there and, still living in Rome, had all the latest: the Director had been throwing tea bags out of the window, the Director’s wife had upp-ed the canapé allowance outrageously. Beatrice said she knew this bitch. Apparently all couples going to the British School in Rome emerge re-configured. It suddenly stuck me: that’s exactly what happened to the Gay Mother’s best friend, Hilaria, in ’52. Her first husband was beneath contempt (‘mentally unstable’). At the British School in Rome she was re-aligned with the World Expert on Coloured Marbles and lived happily ever after on committees of the National Trust.

So things knit together in odd ways. Who’d have thought it. But nice for Poor Little Rich Gay who love shape.

The Photo Multi’s mother, who tends entirely in the opposite direction from Poor Little Rich Gay, moved seats to be near her glamorous son-in-law, the Blond Multi.  They were very thick together the entire afternoon.

Our Pendolino Service for the North

Inspiration - Styling for a Turkey Dinner

What You See in the Countryside at this Time of Year

Multi Footwear for a Day Out in the Country

Sunday 12th December 2010

If you hurry to Euston you’ll see us boarding First Class. Our aim – 1) the Photo Multi’s Mother, celebration pub lunch 2) to bring champagne, tailoring and hats to the provinces

The party: Beatrice Cantor, Elsa Hodgeman, Prince Dmitri Hersov among others

My outfit: Jil Sander shirt, grey with black trimming, reduced last Jan sales from £395 to £95, Prada cable knit in unique dusty purple, from Prada factory shop, Italy, black waxed jeans by Lindberg, full price H. Nicks, Prada bootees, black but like light ones worn by boys in Renaissance Florentine artworks, just a swathing for the foot.

Thrilling news: Upstairs, Downstairs is to be revived after Christmas

Saturday 11^th December 2010

Poor Little Rich Gays are absolutely at full gallop. Even Lord Arrowby is out every night, to be sure, that superb governmental thoroughbred. We’re running up to Christmas. The final jump, 15 feet of brushwood with a water feature on the other side, actual Christmas Day itself, we will take with excellent grace, surely.

This morning I eschewed Lord Arrowby, my part-time love interest, who would have been at old Borough Market in his Saturday slap – special Designer specs, tons of Boots bronzer and a raunchy plastic puffer jacket by Dolce e Gabbana.

If you don’t know, Borough Market, in London’s central, was the place for high, high produce.

But now, New Borough Market has swept in. The Multis have been heralding it for some time. Maltby Street, Druid Street, more in the Bermondsey direction, not known to the general. Rare and specialised.

You must have it.

The Multis were there this morning, the Blond in a glamorous wide-brimmed hat.  He bought me a coffee in the Monmouth Coffee House (the Photo Multi said: ‘This is the absolute headquarters, only open on Saturdays’). At the counter I said, ‘I’ll have the same kind of coffee as the Photo Multi’s got.’ Multi means multi-millionaire, by the way.  The Blond Multi said to the server: ‘What did the Photo Multi have?’ ‘An expresso,’ the man said firmly. ‘I don’t think so,’ said the Blond. It turned out the Photo Multi was being confused with Nigel Slater.

Nigel Slater had been sitting right next to the Multis but they hadn’t even noticed.

In St John Bread  (yes, all part of St John Squirrel and Eel Restaurant) the Blond Multi said, ‘What’s your best price on the Christmas puddings?’ They reeled. ‘£30. It’s a lot! What makes them worth £30?’ he continued. Back in Monmouth I had failed to spend £19 on a selection of specialised choc from different countries for the Gay Mother.

Last night, at Peter Acharya and Ned Czernowski’s Christmas party, Bruce MacBain, my architect, said, ‘Some decorators don’t paint round light switches so well,’ then cast a dark look in my direction.

We also met some gays from Norwich whom Peter and Ned had encountered on an Atlantis Gay Cruise – Venice to Mykonos and back (I think). They said Norwich was a long way from London.

New Borough Market

New Borough Market

Coffee with Leaf-pattern at Monmouth Coffee Headquarters, New Borough Market

Wednesday 8^th December 2010

Go to the junction of Portobello Road and Lancaster Road, find the vibrator shop, forge into the basement and buy one of Miss Lallian Lark’s exquisite Deco ladies. Only £250 to £400. Perfect present. She’ll be cut out of card, built up in succulent layers and in her own tabernacle or box with doors, which hangs on the wall. The Whow! Factor is the feather attached to each. You blow on it – the exhibition is called ‘Blow’ – and get a tiny, but earth-shattering, frisson.

It’s participatory art. Put something in and you’ll get something out.

Miss Lallian Lark of the Titlark Tours of years ago – a charabanc would leave on a mystery tour, Robert Nevil and Eddie Sedgewick invariably on board as a grim mother-and-daughter team. Mrs Murphy’s husband was buried at St Leonard’s Streatham. Herself (played by RN) was gloves, bag, hat and neat suit, blue with an gracious silver sprig in a springy material, three-quarter–length sleeves and a pleated skirt. She was supposed to be a cleaner at the Design Centre in the Haymarket, but I would say she was a cut above. Once the charabanc pitched up at Kensington Town Hall for a public-subscription, Mr Pooter-style dinner dance. Some poor old thing was very taken with this lady. Marriage prospects hove alarmingly into view. Even now, she could have been leading a genteel double-life in Kilburn, although the terrible daughter (played by ES), quite capable of feeding her children sequins with grated lippie, would have been a blot on the landscape.

Miss Lark has always come up trumps at Christmas. Once, in the 80s, her card was a walnut shell. Inside was a tiny nativity scene, all self-made.

Lady with Feather - by Miss Lallian Lark

Lady with Feather and Hat by Miss Lallian Lark

Multi Ladies by Miss Lallian Lark

Sunday 5^th December 2010

First thing, before dressing, in fact lurching straight from my bed, edit  my sock, pants, tie and belts drawer. Then dainty breakfast. Then Miroslav and the father-in-law who is not his father-in-law, to paint the kitchen, not absolutely expected. I clear the kitchen. They paint it. I to the garden. Everything to be done before forecast freeze. Tulips in, eucomis out, off to the garden centre for more pots, mud everywhere, Miroslav and father-in law in the way, brushing, tidying, heavy heaving, stake a shrub that’s tipped over, measure to keep vile cute squirrels off tulips, get the kitchen back in order, listen to Miroslav outline epic plans in made-up English for the upstairs windows …

Enough of that. Lord Arrowby lies awake at night criss-crossing over his next move in the highest corridors of power. I writhe over my Christmas card list. Will I get it done in time? Will I conceive an adequate canapé menu for my party (yes! It’s happening), let alone execute the canapés?

Speaking of Lord Arrowby … I promised to tell you more. You remember I took against him a month or so ago and was going to sack him as my part-time love interest. I’ve felt a little like Cecily Cardew having to write all the love letters she received from Algernon herself. Really, were we in a romantic novel, my undying devotion would have been rewarded by now. I’ve heard that straight men are never seduced, they either fancy or they don’t. That’s it. Gay Men are worse and Poor Little Rich Gays the worst of all. It’s only ladies (or women) who might change their minds.

But just imagine!  At the party last Saturday Lord Arrowby came over specially to talk to me. He only has to murmur in my ear and all is forgotten. It seems he’s been subject to psychometric tests. Anthony Mottram, my estranged old friend, was found to be dominant by such means, so he cancelled the test for the entire office. Lord Arrowby said he knew what they were getting at so exaggerated his score.

Well, we all have an idea of ourselves we like to cling to. Me, I think I’m marvellous and deeply human, if a little alarming and also rather frightful. Lord Arrowby – these prominent and important people – they’re complex, you know. Think of Winston Churchill. Not normal at all. Not steady. Not what you’d expect. But you don’t want steady at those heights, you want brilliant. All the same, Lord A goes about, raves at the Vauxhall Tavern, is seen at parties, maintains a full diary including weekend visits,  just like all the other Poor Little Rich Gays.

I think he’s  just tired. So many Poor Little Rich Gays are. Is there a more gruelling path? Not just face, hair, clothes, decor, art collection, perfume, but, in Lord A’s case, all the old people ever, even those not yet old – he’s supposed to do something about them. Government boxes come round on Saturday mornings.

At least he’s back now, as my part-time love interest.  Maybe it’s the ideal arrangement. For him, as well as me. We’ll see.

By the way, Lord Arrowby has pointed out that his new coat is alpaca not fun fur as erroneously stated in my previous post.

I’m also thinking … what if he’s invited to the Royal Wedding…

Saturday 4^th December 2010

Today the only mild day promised for weeks, so had to hurl into the garden and get the tulips in.

Hence delay in blog.

Even so defeated by pots still frozen.

Also Miroslav here re-newing the silicone filler in  my shower, touching up paint work etc – those 500 or so small jobs always outstanding in any Poor Little Rich Gay home, a mountain which not even 8 full-time staff could erode.

And life piling up and up – my renewed intense involvement with Lord Arrowby which includes never seeing him from one month to the next (so much to say), then opera and the Photo Multi nearly falling out of the box, then the agony of rummaging through one hundred and twenty-three Paris hotel websites – we board for the Monet exhibition in January. Robert Nevil has refused this earth-shattering, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But one ticket remains for 7 in the morning of 22^nd January, in Paris, at the Grand Palais.

This year my tulips:

The Front Area: 20 each of Apricot Beauty (apricot), Princess Irene (fabulous ocre/gold with buff and purple streaks) and Coleur Cardinal (solemn religious red)

The Back Garden: 20 each of Texas Gold (a yellow parrot), Professor Roentgen (an orange parrot), Flamenco (a yellow fringed with red stripe, substitute for Flaming Parrot, not available) and Honeymoon (a white fringed, substitute for Spring Green, not available)

Top Terrace (which does have a view of the Shard after all. I was looking in the wrong direction for months): 20 each of blackcurrant ripple parrot (blackcurrant and white), Bleu Aimable (blue) and Spring Green (off-white with green stripe)

That’s 200 tulips: not cheap, I’m afraid, but essential.

Wednesday 1^st December 2010

Saturday:  Conrad Matheson (huge in the disease world) and Valèry Duplessis (great banking survivor) received world-famous Poor Little Rich Gays with champagne and hand-made canapés (Valèry had self-made. The detail! The choice! The accompaniments!). Nevertheless ordinary members of the public would have been astonished to see these people in an actual, even if highly decorative, home in an actual London street.

The archway between two rooms gave the Greatnesses a proscenium for their entrances – Rufus Pitman, novelist, critic, taste-shaper, in black skirts and monkey boots, Lord Arrowby, power behind the throne, stalker of the highest corridors of power, Russian in belted brown fun-fur, so expensive he claims his travel plans are curtailed.

Then there were Reggie Cresswell, the Ghanaian ceramicist, about to thrill with yet another epic work, and Harry Rollo, the impresario and performance artist, who in Miami after Christmas will give Wagner highlights from within a giant cement mixer while completing a 6000-piece jigsaw of a Baked Alaska.

And many other celebrated Poor Little Rich Gays who crave anonymity’s cloak.

Rufus was modelling an outstanding perfume, as always. The only floral for men, he said. Something de Geranium. I committed to memory but forgot. We must all have it but it’s so rare. Googling achieves nothing.  He said: ‘If Kate Middleton’s brother forms a Civil Partnership, what relation is that Civil Partner to Prince William and the Queen?’

Learn from this too, ordinary members of the public. What intriguing notes are you offering as the Christmas party season looms? Rufus is a kind of 18^th century figure as might have been found at Court, full of diversions and entertainments, material and verbal. You must be too.

Harry Rollo concentrated on gossip. A leading member of our dear Government, he explained, had a lady fuck-buddy at Oxford over several years. Experiments were with a Mum Rollette deodorant stick. We agreed that this could only boost, were it to come out. Nobody these days is total top: 50/50 is the thing, even straight men.

And what about Lord Arrowby, that handsome blue-eyed rather unlikely Governmental personage?

I have to tell you, I’m taking him back – as my part-time love interest.  A few weeks ago I was rather horrid to him. I was thinking, bitterly, of replacing him. But oh, on Saturday, he was divine.  I couldn’t abandon him. It would be too cruel. He’s a got a sensitive side, you see, like Mr Darcy, beneath the stern exterior. Irresistible.

I was going to tell you more, but no space now. There’s much more to tell. Come back.

Sunday 28^th November 2010

Val continues uncoupled from the dear bottle, or at least on a longer reign. A little drop now and again can do no harm or hasn’t done so far. He tried AA years ago but couldn’t bear it, nor the Wolfsheim wing of Ealing General (something like Wolfsheim. Maybe you know it).

Val will never be institutionalised nor doctored as to personality, just as he has never and now will never work in an office.

This is the longest run of low in-take for years, possibly ever. And what glory! What deeds and words!

What Val needs is a private income. He should never have been put to work.

He went North the other day, I thought to make cossies for a pantomime, but it was something else. Somehow he got on-line, a novelty for him and, first thing, Googled Eudora Welty.

Have you heard of Eudora Welty? Well, you’ll Google her yourself now, won’t you?

This Googling is marvellous.

She was a short-story writer of yesteryear, possibly on a ley-line with Warwick Deeping, another curiously named and now forgotten author.

Before the North, Val edged a jacket with hat petersham ( see graph below). It’s a kind of ribbon. He had to go to V.V. Rouleaux (if you hear the name without knowing how it is spelt you might assume a cabaret artist) to get exactly the right sort that would stretch just a little on the corners. So much detail.

In the North there was an immense programme of visits – Tatton Park, Dunham Massey, Nutsford, Manchester Gallery of Costume Platt Hall (Val loves an obscure museum: the museum of catering and commerce at Budapest; the never-found museum of paprika at Szeged) and the Lady Lever Art Gallery at Port Sunlight.

Future plans include a visit to Hastings, where a friend has turned vegetarian. ‘I told her, you’ll get nowhere if you don’t know how to make Sauce Mornay.’ She’s also to be instructed in bread-making, for which Val is wild.

On Tuesday Val and I were in the front row at St John’s Smith Square for the astonishing and thrilling recital of Chopin by Artur Pizzaro. In the interval Val had a cup of tea. Standing by the sugar lumps, he made a moving affirmation to all nearby: ‘I’m here, by the sugar lumps.’ The tongs, whirled at arms’ length, decorated and strengthened the statement. He’s worried there will be fascinators at the Royal Wedding. I hadn’t heard, but apparently Mrs Middleton was recently spotted, flat on her stomach in the grass at Sandringham, with a shot-gun. No more sure nor certain sign that Royal marriage is imminent could be imagined.

Val said: ‘You could pour your cup of tea straight down the loo and cut out the middleman.’

Now we’ve both  been rather knocked sideways by the death of Bernard Matthews. Val is munching on a Turkey Twizzler in remembrance.

Val's Jacket Self-Edged with Hat Petersham and With Self-Made and -Appointed Coat of Arms from Tie Fabric

Thursday 25^th November 2010

The Blond Multi took a week off.

You may be underwhelmed but, I tell you, it’s a sensation.

Our fabulous Brideshead-blond-yet-utterly-contemporary multi-millionaire normally out-Thatchers his idol Mrs Thatcher who didn’t, as I always thought, announce in the doorway of the newly-bombed Brighton Grand, ‘Yes, I was working’ but might as well have done.

Talk about driven. The Blond Multi even does piano exams at home in the evening.

Work, work, work. Awards, honours, recognition, expanding wealth base, a private economy the size of a small city’s – Poor Little Rich Gays must have them.

So what was the Blond Multi doing having a week off at home, throwing away all the paperbacks ? He’s decided on hardback only. But Robert Nevil’s Parallel Life of Nurse Edith Cavell and Josephine Baker, an early work, was spared.  Otherwise, in the footsteps of the Queen, he toured the offices of the top accountancy firm where Prince Dmitri Hersov is doing hush-hush work for the Chinese and lunched at Roka, Canary Wharf. No chop-sticks, thank you, bring a knife and fork and why seven sushi pieces when there are four of us?

The talking lift at Roka enchanted the Blond, who rode up and down several times just to hear the computer-generated voice of death fail to express any difference between ‘First Floor Roka Restaurant’ and ‘Ground Floor Street Exit’.

Talking Lift at Roka Canary Wharf, Loved by the Blond Multi. Note the Glimpse of Adrian Edge Himself

Raw Fish Ensemble at Roka. Attempts to Eat that Prawn Head were Unsuccessful

Aspargus with Lifting Equipment

Wednesday 24^th November 2010

‘twas a dreary Sunday last. We went to Strawberry Hill. I hope you know it? Horace Walpole, creator of, late 18^th century, villa at Twickenham, on London’s outskirts. Founded a whole architectural style, known as Strawberry Hill Gothic, copied throughout the land.

At present the house is being restored. It’s not finished, has no furniture, but you can go round.

In the party, Bruce MacBain, my architect, his partner, Tancredo Viamare, Professor Sir Lewis Buller, the insect expert of world renown and his partner from the fabric world, me, Adrian Edge, and my abuser/friend, Robert Nevil. So an onslaught of six Poor Little Rich Gays, our conversation generally unsuitable, winging through the parlours and amongst the earnest visitors. RN: ‘That rabbit with chocolate you served up!’ ‘Thirty years ago! ‘ I protested. ‘It was a Jane Grigson recipe.’ ‘Disgusting. I didn’t know whether to vomit or faint or both. I’d only just only just retrieved myself from a stranger’s bed. I was wrecked with hangover.  My new “friend” had a flatmate, possibly a borderline boyfriend. I heard this person through the wall. “How was yours?” he was asking.’

Sir Lewis, when a don, was the host of the celebrated Oxbridge party where rampancy set in and raged so fiercely, Xavier Pillar, now something huge at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and I, Adrian Edge,  had to clamber over writhing bodies to get out of the distinguished, donnish door.

That was 30 years ago also, if a day.

But now, the present: Strawberry Hill. Robert Nevil overheard a lady saying she knew perfectly well why Horace Walpole had housed an actress in the grounds. ‘I don’t think so,’ RN murmured.

Horace Walpole was a Poor Little Rich Gay, you see, one of the earliest known perhaps. He had a camp coterie of women, and men who did architectural drawings. He had squillions from his father, bought up bits of old abbeys and flung them back together again with fan-vaulting made of papier maché, gilding everywhere and nice bright colours. The overall effect more Rococo, Gothic with a light, decorative twist, which isn’t Gothic at all.

You too could do this. Follow your whim, break all the rules, spend lots of money, get some minion to do drawings (not Bruce MacBain, of course). You never know, you could end up with a world-famous architectural style. Your idea for windows could go global.

As Poor Little Rich Gays we were thrilled and inspired. We loved the amateurishness, the slight fraudulence, the feeling of a stage set with little outbursts of exquisiteness particularly in the lovely arrangements of stained glass.

All the gilding too, newly restored, reminded me of the 80s when Val and I had a craze for gilding everything in sight. We began with Dutch metal, then progressed to real gold. Only oil gilding, where essentially you glue it on from transfers. We never ventured into water gilding, which gives that burnished look of actual metal.#

Strawberry Hill - A Simple Door Treatment

Strawberry Hill - Door Treatment Might Inspire Your Own Home

Strawberry Hill - You Too Could Have This Trellis Work. Very Easy to Do