Monday 16^th August 2010

There’s so much to tell. The Multis are here and the villa is zinging with fine wines. Last week’s  4 euro supermart bottles seem to have disappeared.

My own mania in Umbria is for the perfect sformato – it’s a rare dish – as well as Muriel Spark’s grave, the Prada factory shop and out-of-the-way Raphaels.

Poor Little Rich Gays rarely rest. We always have a plan.

But that’ll all have to wait.

Yesterday we actually went sight-seeing. Marcus Cargill, England’s leading clock restorer, has a guide-book of all things. As you know, Poor Little Rich Gays don’t want to be milled in with other tourists, resent buildings and artworks they can’t buy and, as artists themselves, of their own lives, see Raphael etc. as competition. There’s also the earnestness question. We like to be light.

But Marcus is an outstanding craftsman. He looks at an important Gothic fountain and thinks: How would I do this? Somehow or other it all connects and the next time he’s restoring a top Rothschild clock there’ll be an impact.

In fact I haven’t been quite telling you the truth. We did do some clandestine trippery work last week – Gubbio, Cortona, Sansepolcro to see Piero della Francesca. Very fine, but these places are just a little spoiled nowadays and I was perhaps dragged down by the Anthony Mottram situation. There’s been another set-back.

Then yesterday we went to Perugia. Nobody there, glorious clear, fresh, brilliant, post-storm day, Perugia still a real place, not a tourist destination, up high with stunning views, full of noble pink-flushed buildings for some reason never aligned with each other. We studied the famous fountain outside the cathedral with its enchanting, economical Old Testament scenes and graceful rhythmic design. Hard to believe it is early Medieval. Marcus read from the guide book. No-one else was doing this.

Without warning joy unadulterated.

Sansepolcro

Interesting Doggies Seen in Italy

Gubbio - Almost There

Cortona - Not Quite What it Was

Saturday 14^th August 2010

Nippy, sprightly, impertinent Robert Nevil (‘Look at those tight white jeans with a red B on the bum. How common!’ was his manner of referring to my Balenciaga) and the mini-maharajah of the flowered fabrics, Arjan Bose, left the villa this morning. Sad, sad, sad.

Over for another year.

Prince Dmitri and I await the Multis, Marcus Cargill, England’s leading clockmender and his partner, Hamish McCory, for the Umbrian villa part two.

What a time we’ve had!

Prince Dmitri fell into despair over his Vitello Tonnato but it was excellent. Then he played Fantasy Football on his I Pad (which doubles well as a hand mirror for my use) and thought to name his team ‘Ladyteam’ but it wasn’t accepted. It’s been raining: Arjan switched on the pool lights in the hope of warming up the water.

We’ve been picking over our early lives. Only Prince Dmitri was not absorbed in childhood by ladies’ powder compacts; Arjan, as an even tinier boy than the present man, was always hurling onto the stage to give an Indian dance, make-up and jewels beyond the call of duty. Robert Nevil reminded me that in the early 80s, in a Tuscan location, Anthony Mottram, my oldest friend from school-days, and I were as now interminably not on speakers after a row about the meaning of the word ‘Gay’.  Reconciliation was only achieved in the making of a hugely elaborate pasta pie where a sweet pastry-case was filled with hand-made and stuffed tortellini and a complicated ragu. The result was disgusting.

So what has changed? Poor Little Rich Gays are nothing if not temperamental. And not given to compromise.

And yet, and yet –  Robert Nevil recalled his second boyfriend who was a philanderer. But RN was so in thrall, he even sewed on a button for this person as he hurried off on holiday with some side-slapper. Although that was also the final straw.

Poor Little Rich Gays continue to suffer and endure in this manner if not quite to this extreme. There is much that cannot be spoken off. Will it ever be known? You might think we’ve substituted shopping and decor and hotels for juicer activities. You’d be wrong. You’d be knocked flat by the complications if you but knew.

Arjan Bose wore a different flowered or embroidered garment every day.

Embroidered Shirt Worn by Arjan Bose

One of Arjan Bose's Hand-Made Prints

What We Suffered! Thus an Italian Chicken from the Mart

Thursday 12^th August  2010

It really is astonishing! Poor Little Rich Gays are still happy in Umbria.

We’re just not finding anything to complain about.

Our outfits, unusual configuration of minute Indian doctor princeling, perky prancing Robert Nevil, manly Prince Dmitri Hersov, the only Poor Little Rich Gay with an ounce of sense, and me, Adrian Edge, not exactly normal, all in separate bedrooms, plus our unusual holiday activities (my own craving is for Muriel Spark’s grave, as well as the Prada factory shop, of course) are attracting attention in the neighbourhood. The maids are surely in attendance beyond the call of duty, eyes out on stalks.

We have tried sight-seeing, we’ve been in the pool a bit, but to tell the truth, there isn’t the time with the cooking and shopping. As I speak, the Prince is slamming in a veal filet for vitello tonnato and he’s only just finished an epic ragu.

A recipe is never not underway.

It was alarming when we arrived to find that the Co-op supermarket was the only choice for food shopping . Would we be able to interview the fruit and veg manager re provenance? What if the courgettes came from Israel or Holland?

But no! Such a blessing! Everything excellent, flavoursome and Italian.  Although on Monday, the tired lettuce did plunge me into crisis. Prince Dimtri said, ‘You’d better watch out. You’re growing dissatisfied with the Co-op.’ He was right.

An outsider may not to be able to understand it, might think it doesn’t matter. But woolly dead fruit, tough, tasteless vegetables, a wretched choice of brands – Poor Little Rich Gays  feel utterly betrayed.

So, cared for and loved by our shops, we’ve been joyous in the kitchen. We’ve had tiramisu, pollo arosto con radicchio e rosmarino alla griglia, risotto al fungi, salsiccie locale con polenta, speciality pasta con sugo pomodori e ulive nere, saltimbocca, salade nicoise (dodgy: not Italian), fiori de zucchini fritta.  The slow-cooked fennel on crostini, the recipe coming from Dhiren Dutta, made by glinting, sprightly Robert Nevil, was of exceptional importance. This has been this summer’s signature PLRG dish. The minutely chopped, contrasting bright green fennel leaves are an essential final flourish.

Otherwise we’ve been talking and talking. Oh the talk! You wouldn’t believe it.

But it’ll have to wait. If you want depth, come back tomorrow.

Monday 9^th August 2010

We came out on Saturday from London.

This summer the villa is in Umbria. Not Tuscany. And self-paid by me and Prince Dmitri Hersov, to return the Multis’ provision of a Tuscan palace last summer.

Worrying.

Umbria not the best, its landscape not necessarily at the centre of things (I mean history, great art) – where Poor Little Rich Gays like to be.

Also, in the brochure, a monstrous pool table affair lowering in the villa drawing room – how would we get it craned out? What would the Multis, Marcus Cargill and Hamish McCory, who are coming next week, think? The Multis, by the way, have always got a crane round, hauling in to or out of the penthouse a piano or artwork.

We drove up, up, up, two miles of dirt track, at the end –  the villa. Utter glory! Completely thrilled with it. So rare to be satisfied. Huge, well-restored, no hint of Ikea, the pool table of no significance, far better than anything ever offered in those villa holiday days by loathed Robin Smallmeal, head of landfill in this country. And, as you know, I only skirmish in the foothills of money.

Best of all are the views. We have complete command of a massive valley. The Umbrians have done the landscape with mixed woodland punctuated by pasture. In the evenings they place sheep in contrasting browner, drier fields.

It’s superbly varied, rich, enchanting and silent. I’ve never known such an absence of humans. We’re permanently at a private view for just  the four of us in this week’s villa party;  the woods and hills and fields don’t seem to know we’re watching. As well as the noble Prince, one of the few Poor Little Rich Gays to see beyond this world to a better place, Robert Nevil, old friend from university days, writer, former drag artist, is here and his close friend, Arjan Bose, an exquisite Maharajah-type, glowing, even glinting, with the air of being carried round on a cushion but in fact a doctor who has just completed a six-month stint doctoring in the clap clinic. There the Gays didn’t show up in fine weather.

Our Superb View from PLRG Umbrian Villa

Pasture and Woodland as Styled in Umbria

Excellent Umbrian Landscape as Seen by Arjan Bose

Thursday 5th August 2010

Was this a mistake? Poor Little Rich Gays here and throughout the world will be interested to hear we were offered Paris Hilton nude, including knickerless vista.

Wednesday 4th August 2010

As if the Pink List were not enough –  now there’s all this fuss about cloned Poor Little Rich Gays contaminating mainstream society. And then hysterical Girl Guides demanding that all air-brushed Poor Little Rich Gays are clearly labelled as unreal.

What rubbish!  Leave the Poor Little Rich Gays alone.

The nerds in white coats who are growing Poor Little Rich Gays in petri dishes should be invited to tea at BP tomorrow. Except that HM’s gone to Balmoral and the decor there’s frightful.

What could be better? The more non- employees (Be quiet, Smallmeal!), with art collections, frockage, hair, products, interiors, utterly  impossible, fabulous, on the verge, rich but poor, poor but rich, not always very nice, bristling with detail, making, making, scheming for money, relationships oddly configured, not normal,  possibly unright in the head but who cares, the better.

As for the Girl Guides, they can get on with  learning how to light a fire in dustbin in the event of a national emergency but hung with dire unmissable placards: ‘Keep away. Absolutely as Nature Intended’.

Tuesday 3rd August 2010

I’ve economised with old pine nuts. I’m doing an Ottolenghi – the chicken with za’atar and sumac (p122 Ottolenghi -The Cookbook). As it happens, it was featured on Laura Malcolm’s menu last week. She’d queened za’atar and sumac all the way from London to Normandy. Robert Nevil and Sebastian Archer have had it before in my home too.

But what else to do with those spices?

I’ve rather run out of ideas as well as money, truth to tell. The Gay Mother has been on the phone night and day about that mine. At times the choice of food seems to shrivel, doesn’t it? Just meat, or fish or vegetables. So dreary.

At least I’ve got some of the Gay Mother’s blackcurrant puree for pudding. I didn’t tell you about her currant situation, did I? 86 and still running four abundant bushes. Inundated with fruit in July and August. She forged into my bedroom at 8 am when I was staying with her the other week. ‘There’s a recipe for blackcurrant sauce to have with duck. It’s in Jane Grigson but I can’t find it.’

You can see how it all began – with the Gay Mother. Most Poor Little Rich Gays have got a Gay Mother who started it all, in one way or another.

I’m also offering a true Melba. Do you know it? Real peach, not a cling, good vanilla ice cream and Melba sauce which you make by sieving raspberries and adding icing sugar.

Except I forgot the raspberries, so it won’t be a Melba at all.

Sunday 1st August 2010

Text first thing from Rufus Pitman, novelist and critic and perfume expert – Indy on Cindy ‘Pink List’ of 101 top gays is out.  He’s in, of course. So is Lord Arrowby! Declared more important than Lord Mandelbaum and John Galliano.

Well, I don’t know  – when I think of that grey trouser suit Princess Diana wore for lunch at the Connaught with Raine, Countess Spencer.

I have been murmuring behind the scenes, all the same. Rather pleased with the results. Loathed friendship-terminator and power-monger (the cruel but inevitable extreme of Poor Little Rich Gay life), Robin Smallmeal, head of landfill in this country or whatever, has been removed.  The Multis, Harry Rollo, the performance artist and impressario, Reggie Cresswell, the Ghanaian ceramacist, Marcus Cargill, England’s leading clock-mender, begged to be excluded as did Robert Nevil and Sol Weindenwar, the bronzed 50-year-old muscle-god and tycoon, who was in once before.

As a result they’ve rather had to paper out with Jeanette Winterson (we don’t like her, especially after Robert Nevil fell into a hole outside her house in Spitalfields: the case continues) and other drears.

But it couldn’t have been all Poor Little Rich Gays, who are without exception outstanding, could it?

31^st July 2010

As you know, I’ve been in a family setting in Normandy with Laura Malcolm and Esmé Manning. Ivor Driver, Laura’s eldest son, 21, brainy, washed his hair. ‘What did you use?’ I said. ‘Whatever,’ he said. After dinner, we played Boggle. You have to find the words from a jumble of letters, the results unthrilling: ‘I’ve got “sit”,’ a family member cries. ‘Stem’ ‘Him’ ‘Car’ ‘Cars’ ‘Door’ etc. I couldn’t get Laura and Esmé to take much interest in my struggle to find, in my early years in frockage, trousers that were long enough. And when I tried to explain the frightful ordeal I’d had with Harvey Nicks to take back the Burberry cardy (£240 after 40% discount), which had gone bobbly, they took up their novels.

But the menus! That completely new mackerel dish was just the beginning . Laura undoubtedly surges up and up year on year. Tomate Farci aux risotto de courgette, carrote et pois avec un sauce de tomate. That was Raymond Blanc actually. Beyond belief!  The detail, seven ingredients for the sauce alone and the whole thing only the first course, followed by rack of lamb with sauce verte, cheese and Breton gateau.

Then Matt Driver, Laura’s husband, regained First Class from New York, where he had been saving the Johnson and Johnson account. You can expect a lot of him. Last year he gazed at fairy rings. Sometimes he agitates outside estate agents, scheming for a chateau, never quite achieved. We played Boggle again, but now on the edge of our seats, waiting. Nothing for a few rounds, all orderly and disappointingly normal …until, a sudden flash of jaws. ‘How did you get that word?’ ‘All your answers will have to be checked.’ ‘You’re always horrid to me when we play…’ Laura and Matt love to murder each other over games. This time Matt claimed innocence and was still claiming it the next morning.

And you just won’t believe what Esmé Manning had up her sleeve, only revealed at the last moment – yes! Portable lav paper. ‘On the Go’ by Andrex. In addition to a mink lip liner by YSL and  a special brassiere by Rigby and Peller, which she invited me to inspect in the middle of the lounge area of the filthy channel steamer – unfort we did return by the same route in the end.

Throughout the Norman experience, of course, stalked the Drivers’ blue mink cat, fully luxury furred right down to where his paws meet the ground.

The Drivers' Blue Mink Cat, King

Laura Malcolm's Tomate Farci

A Tomate 'Lid' Fell and Caught my Unrural Pied a Terre Cluck. The Yellow and Black 'Trainer' is Matt Driver's; Laura Calls It a Malvolio Look

Esme Manning's Portable Lav Paper

Esme Manning's Mink Lip Liner by YSL

Thursday 29^th July 2010

I am in a full family setting, a Poor Little Rich Gay in farmland, with my women friends and their total compliment of offspring, no more expected after 50.  Ivy Driver, 15, Laura Malcolm’s only daughter, inspects my products. Bronzer, microdermabrasion, Concentré Correcteur Anti-Age, escentric molecules – at last a mind-boggling broadening of the horizons. It is almost too much for her, I can tell.

But no husbands though. Matt Driver is in New York, saving the Johnson and Johnson account.  So I am the man about the house.

The others have gone for a cycle ride. I remain behind, owing to lack of suitable footwear. In Pied à Terre slip-ons with a high-gleam mahogany look including grain, I lie in a hammock under trees. Contentment threatens. Laura and Matt have a magnificent demesne. No other houses in sight or even ear-shot, roughish fields with cream cows swishing and chomping, their garden marked off by hedges, within, mature trees and some younger ones, no rare species, complex editing, lighting, water-features or planting schemes. All casual, what can be managed in the short time they spend here, without specialist nurseries nearby. I can see Poor Little Rich Gay reduced to a teaspoon and, only just visible, swirling down the sink.

No sign either of the blue mink cat.

Then Laura does mackerel with a celery, raisin, olive and honey salsa. Beforehand, when the menu was announced, Esmé Manning said she wanted pure Norman. She has asked me to mention, by the way, her sandwiches for the journey out – a choice of smoked salmon or cheese and ham, finely crafted, definitely a cut-above. She was involved in buttering on an industrial scale, despite only three takers, including herself, for her wiches.

But this mackerel was completely new. It was just about the newest dish I’ve ever had.  Ottolenghi, as it happens. Pure Poor Little Rich Gay.

In the end, there is no escape.

The Norman Hammock in which I Lay

Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver's Simple Norman Garden

Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver's Norman Demesne - Is this Enough?