Thursday 6^th May 2010

The Multis voted at 7.30 this morning. Through the twenty-two years they have been united, it has always been at this time and together. ‘Conservative gain’ is what they want to hear on the TV this evening.

I’ve voted too – but I’m not telling, yet.

But I must go back to Tuesday, to perhaps the last great event of the Labour era, as well as a sudden burst of joy and instructive triumph.

Lord Arrowby told me some time ago that the Maggi Hambling opening was on 3^rd May. He was on the list of course, as an art buyer and connected,  going with that friend of his who’s got his ex-boyfriend living at the other end of his flat.

Maggi Hambling, as you may know, is an important artist. Her show is at Marlborough Fine Art in Albemarle Street – grand, grand,grand.  She is grand too, with fog-horn voice, but very badly behaved.  Keen on smoking in all the wrong places and upsetting Royalty; general warrior mentality; huge feuder. Were she not an uncompromising lesbian with left-wing tendencies, you can imagine her hurling out of the gates of some Big House and terrorising a neighbourhood from a Landed Gentry pinnacle.

I do actually know her, but too scared to ask for an invitation. It got to Monday and panic mounting – how to get in?  I tried Joshua Baring, that coming young man who knows everything, but Robert Nevil told me that they were going to the cinema that evening. So that was that. What with Lord Arrowby likely to scratch, owing to 16 hours a day steering the ship of state in the absence of government and social life thus nearing extinction (except for Queer Question Time at the Vauxhall Tavern: see earlier post), I was beginning to think: shall I stay in my lovely home and prick out some seedlings?

Then suddenly, on Tuesday morning everything changed. Robert Nevil and Joshua Baring not going to the cinema, RN remembers getting invitation to the opening but had thrown it away, anyway is going, I can ride on coat tails.

All the same, I arrive alone, ahead of RN. Do I cower weakly in the street and wait for him or do I boldly forge?

I boldly forge. This is the miracle. This is what you must learn. Just nothing to it. Straight in, no questions asked, glass of champagne acquired – and away.

You might try having on a Prada mac and a certain air.

Then – more miracles. How happy we were! As if one act of will had joyously disturbed the universe. Robert Nevil arrives, not run over as is always a danger given his tiny size and absent-mindedness. All our favourite people – Shena Mackay. We are received by Maggi Hambling herself. ‘Sebastian not here?’ she booms. That’s RN’s elusive partner. ‘Thank God for that!’ There was a row about a book jacket years ago – never forgotten. ‘So sorry,’ she says, departing, ‘have to talk to a perfectly ghastly old friend.’ After that, who should waft through the door, but Joshua Baring himself, like me, uninvited, and Robert Nevil, despite their abandoned engagement, not expecting. Then, as if risen from the dead, Lord Arrowby himself, with his friend, in radiant form, his skin tone utterly superb – he swears natural, not bronzer – the ship of state presumably parked outside in the street. Actually he had come direct from his Sloane Street dentists; last summer’s £3000 new tooth has failed, had to be dug out, start over.  He showed the gap and his exquisite tiny other teeth. Finally, finally, finally, not seen for ages, Virgil Grayson, architect of international reputation, and his partner, Cedric Partridge, full of the latest bizarre encounter between Miriam Margolyes and The Queen and lavishing invitations to his house in the South of France.

So there we all were, unexpectedly together in vast London.

Now Joshua Baring, you’ll be interested to hear, is looking at country properties, in the Wisbech area. Another Massivebury? Another Charleston (I hope not)? I said, do pick a sheltered spot, fearsome winds straight from Siberia in East Anglia.

Tuesday 4^th May 2010

There’s nothing for it – I’m going to have to vote. You can’t just not.

What to do?  What to do?

Poor Little Rich Gays like to glint and prance. Terrible to be pinned down. Do you know a poet called T.S.Eliot? Awful grim home-life, boiled, grey dinners, basement dining room in South Kensington. Well, he wrote a poem usually referred to as ‘Prufrock’. It’s a monologue of a rather nothing little man. But he did quite refuse to be ‘formulated on a pin.’

On the other hand, to endlessly evade and flit and work the fan…

Fergus Strachan, partner of Angus Willis, the cookery writer, himself lawyer and botox enthusiast, is a Lib Dem. He was interviewed on the Today Programme yesterday by Sir Wilfred Self. Lib Dem, Fergus said, combines ‘most beautifully’ freedom and equality. That is the freedom to lawyer in Lincoln’s Inn, take mini-breaks in country house hotels in Norfolk and longer breaks in South Africa with cosmetic procedures thrown in. Nothing wrong with that.

But what about the ‘equality’ bit? I fear the Lib Dems. Will they not tax and level and turn us grey?

Nation of small silver car-owners

On Friday last I sought enlightenment at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, long-established, ‘alternative’ gay venue, shabby red plush, something of a throwback. It was Queer Question Time with our own adorable Rufus Pitman, that dull policeman who was on ‘I’m a Celebrity’, Shelley Cooper, Linda Bellos and Darren Johnson MEP.  Lord Arrowby, running the country in the absence of ministers during the election campaign now more than ever, amazingly was present, in tight, tight frockage. He looked tired but ‘to airy thinness beat’ by work. I mean refined, beautified…

We had to write our questions on cards beforehand. Mine was: ‘What should be the minimum wage for a Poor Little Rich Gay and how is the new government to guarantee it?’ But once the discussion began, mounting dread that it would be chosen and I would have to stand up and speak it. And be torn limb from limb… Wouldn’t have done at all. Especially in my Prada mac. Two of the panel were sledgehammers greatly preoccupied with injustice to the trans-gendered; one of the sledgehammers as good as said all gays should be socialists. Poor Rufus Pitman, looking alarmed and kindly, the only voice of reason and indeed information; humour and irony razed all around.

Lord Arrowby, in touch throughout by text with the highest corridors of power, muttered: ‘What about crime against Poor Little Rich Gays: stealing their I Phones.’ Afterwards in the street, he was skipping about and squealing with delight: ‘That was Lorraine Chase in there. I met her. I met Lorraine Chase. She can come to my party.’

Do you remember Lorraine Chase? She was that model in the 70s who looked dead classy but when she opened her mouth turned out to be cockney.

It really was her, too.

.

Friday 30th April 2010

I’m rushing for Queer Question Time at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern. Sacred Lord Arrowby sent an e-mail: ‘Are you planning to attend this important event?’ Rufus Pitman is on the panel. I fear I’ll be too late to post a question. It would be: ‘What is the minimum wage for a Poor Little Rich Gay and how will the new gov achieve it?’

But tulips, tulips. ‘Fancy Frills’ is recommended by ‘Christo Lloyd’ whose biog Robert Nevil is currently immersed in (see comments on ‘Gay Tulips’ yest). CL said it was like coconut icing but what I grew (this was some years ago) was a stunted impertinence – nasty pert pink with white fringe. Nobody could believe it. People had to be lead up to accompanied by trained attendants. Robert Nevil was jumping up and down with glee, almost self-wetting at the wrong.

Here are some of my other combinations: Paul Scheerer (black), Abu Hanza (no, not really, Abu Hassan), White Dream. That was last year. White Dream planted on its side to delay flowering until the other two ready. Now on my top terrace this year there’s been a drama. I planned Spring Green, which is off-white with a green streak, one I’d not tried before called Phillipe le Comte (rare, you see) which turns out to be virtually miniature and black and then, for just a small frisson, Estella Rijnveld, a crazy streaky parrot tulip. They’ve all come out together, which is remarkable for a first try but Estella turns out to a red and white sea-side awning affair, very uncompromising and assured.

But all in pots, so problem simply solved by moving.  Then I put them back together again for the graph. Now I’m not so sure.

Estella Rijnveld on Her Own

Spring Green and Phillipe le Comte - good taste

Spring Green, Phillipe le Comte and Estella Rijnveld - Are They Friends?

Paul Scheerer (black) Abu Hassan, White Dream May 2009

Thursday 29^th April 2010

Time for a colour feature.

I’ve wondered about the place of gardening in the Poor Little Rich Gay sphere since it might involve actually doing it yourself. I’ve decided that it’s all right provided it is very particular, labour-intensive and complex.

As it happens I can’t bear a garden designer, unless it is the adorable Sean Swallow, of course. Robin Smallmeal’s London garden, from which I am now banished, is a cold block of shaped box, trimmed twice a year and the clippings vac-ed up by a hired team.

Now I think of it, the Blond Multi has been secretly growing indoor geraniums all the winter on the stairs leading up to the penthouse. He has achieved a cascading floral bank. The Photographer Multi, too, self-gardens the wrap-around roof terrace with glorious disregard for the rules.

Robert Nevil, fellow gardener (in the garden we both find solace and escape from trouble; plants are something to look after), had the idea of growing mixed tulips. Terrible challenge, quite besides squirrels to be kept out with thorny twigs. The tulips won’t necessarily flower together even if the same type. Just don’t behave. You have to try it one year, then, the next, plant the earlier ones on their sides to delay flowering.

If you don’t know that tulips are a bulb you won’t know what I’m talking about.

I got through all that but look at the result! See graph below. What was I thinking? That orange one was the last out. I’d forgotten about it. Before it was rather tasteful with the purple and the white.  I’ve been watching with mounting horror the creeping orange doing its wrecking work.

A true Poor Little Rich Gay would pull them out. But I just can’t. A living thing. Taken so much trouble to grow.

Or would they? The alternative is to embrace, embrace – absolutely stunning, you say to spectators, those violently clashing colours yoked together by my willpower. It’s new, it’s an outrage, it was intended all along.

Oh dear! White Triumphator, Maytime(purple) and Ballerina (orange)

On the Other Hand, Utter Glory!

Thursday 28^th April 2010

I’ve been laid low; that volcano was aimed solely at my lungs. Then on Monday I had a summit with Anthony Mottram in an interval between his ‘consulting’ work at the very heart of our nation. To remind: he is my oldest friend; we’ve been bickering away for the last forty years but recently we have bickered to the very edge of hell. Absolute non-speakers since Christmas. I made a bid for near-marriage. And lost.

Gay relationships! You won’t have heard of a curious lady-novelist called Ivy Compton- Burnett, died 1969, unmarried, but hardly an out-Lesbian, if a Lesbian at all. She said, ‘I wouldn’t have wanted a full, normal life.’

Nor should you.

I shall say no more on the Mottram front, for the time being. But there are to be sensational developments.

Last Thursday at the Multis’ I watched the Leaders’ Debate with Prince Dmitri Hersov among others. My favourite bit was when they showed Nick Clegg arriving in a large Jaguar. I love arrival, and also departure, especially by chauffeur-driven car. It is one of the ways in which Her Majesty the Queen has such an advantage. But the part in between can disappoint.

The aching dreariness of the debate! Couldn’t wait for it to be over. How can Poor Little Rich Gays be interested? Free eye tests, winter fuel allowance (second homes allowance more like it!), Cameron insulated his loft….

All the same it is rather worrying. Who’s going to stand up for the rich now the Tories have gone all nice and environmental? Are we to become a persecuted minority?

The Multis and the Prince were subdued. I hope they haven’t fallen into despair. Normally the sight of Gordon Brown and his vile debt and wasteful ways drives them to fury. They become magnificent and emotional and angry in a way that they do not about anything else.

By strange chance, at the same time the Gay Mother and Cousin Phoebe, the head cousin, have been a-clattering and a-steaming about that mine. Do you remember, last autumn the Gay Mother gave me a mine, or rather her share of it, while retaining its supervision? Don’t worry; not an ounce of whatever’s in it has been drilled nor is likely to be for years if at all. Now, it’s nothing but lawyers, accountants, land agents, the Gay Mother dictating letters, and liability and being made unfairly to sign and who shall act for us and are they to be trusted and everything could be seized by the authorities in the event of… and we’ll be left destitute.

I was telling Sebastian Archer, the partner of Robert Nevil, lying on the sofa upon return from New York (he’s got money in the bank; he’s been at Provincetown for a salt-water treatment) all about it. ‘It’s so difficult, being rich,’ he said.

It’s true. Such a struggle.

Thursday 22^nd April 2010

The Multis love market forces. When and if Mrs Thatcher dies you must be sure to phone them and condole.

But their friends – apart from Prince Dmitri Hersov – all veering the other way! I passed by Elsa Hodgeman’s front window yesterday. You know her, she’s a huge player in the art world, Turner Prize judge, friend of Grayson. Look what I saw!  See graph below.

At an excellent lunch on Sunday – outdoors on the wrap-around terrace of the Multi penthouse with the golden heart of money, i.e. Canary Wharf, in view – Lady Newell, 82, outstanding, mahogany-voiced, mother of Elsa Hodgeman, revealed that she had once been persuaded reluctantly to stand as a Lib Dem candidate for Oxford council. Posters started appearing on trees. She wondered who had lost their cat but found her own face peering out. She had to be dragged to the count. She scored an exceptional 119 votes but not enough to win. It is possible that she was elected on a subsequent occasion and has been a councillor for years without knowing it. She still supports the Lib Dems, to the horror of the Multis.

Also lunching, head to toe in purple and lavender, with silver teddy-boy hair, was David Harrison, the artist. Like Eddie Sedgewick, he was brilliant at the table as artists often are. He and Elsa Hodgeman recalled St Martin’s days (it’s an art college). ‘There’s no way Billy Childish ever got kicked out,’ he said. Apparently there was only one person who ever got expelled and not for wanking in the studio in front of some girls. That was all right. It was his art. No, he robbed a bank, got caught, and in his bag was found a severed hand.

That was a bit much, for St Martin’s.

The Multis are in many ways rather proper. But never say they lack range or are not paradoxical.

Elsa Hodgeman's Window

Saturday 17^th April 2010

Rents are going up. In fact, as we heard a few weeks ago, they’ve never been so high in London, this great city which throbs at our nation’s heart.

The Multis have bought a 1715 silver cufflink tray for £225 on the strength. See graph below. They were given a free ladle and serving dish by the grateful Lisson Grove antique shop.

The next thing that happens – glory of glory, from their point of view at least – David Cameron is photographed in front of one of their paintings. Where exactly, or why painting there, not disclosed. Must be top secret.

But there has been awful trouble re: pigeons on a balcony neighbouring some of their tenantry. Mad old lady feeding – usual story.

Meanwhile, Anthony Mottram has been in London from Prague. In touch, but not seen by me. Mottram Inc has secured the most prestigious contract. It’s to do with a national outrage you’ll all have heard of and which has been mentioned here by me.

I don’t dare to mention it.

Poor Little Rich Gays, of course, are always at the centre of things.

Poor Mottram engulfed; raving work, consulting, detail, calculations, formulae, troubleshooting,  problem-solving, test runs, re-test test runs – all that. He was returning to Prague on Thursday but whether trapped under the ash cloud and still lurking in England’s green and pleasant, I do not know.

Why don’t they fly their planes under the ash? For goodness sake, air travel authorities!

I must phone up Lord Arrowby. I’m sure he’ll be able to issue the required orders.

The Multis' New 1715 Cufflink Tray - £225

The Multis' New 1715 Cufflink Tray - £225

The Multis' Free Ladle and Serving Dish

David Cameron Before the Multis' Artwork by Peter Davies This Week

Wednesday 14^th April 2010

Have you heard of Patrick Procktor? Maybe not. In his day, which was the 1960s, he was the ‘twin’ of David Hockney, wonderful painter, much feted, outrageous figure, friend of Cecil Beaton, Princess Margaret round for drunken candlelit evenings etc. On Monday, before it opened, Marcus Coleman, England’s leading clock mender, owner of outstanding Procktors, was doubtful that this Redfern Show and launch of a book, Patrick Procktor: Art and Life by Ian Massey (Unicorn Press £40) would do much to boost his old and now dead friend’s sunken reputation and prices.

He was wrong. Redfern seething last night for the opening, many on sticks it is true, £75,000 the highest price (I do love prices) and the work, at its best, ravishing. It is a fragile talent. He must have worked quickly, a lot of watercolour, hit and miss, can be rather slight or sentimental. Works in oil risk veering the other way, into ponderousness. But fragility is a strength. Flowers, exotic landscapes, finely wrought portraits of weirdoes and boys , small-scale, delicate, colours you hesitate to call pastel, capture some kind of elusive beauty. None were quite as stunning as the painting of the boy in white swimming trunks on a beach in Greece which is in the private collection of Marcus Cargill –  long landscape picture, nothing to it but blue sky, sand and small figure of the boy oddly reproduced over and over, caught in a few brushstrokes.

Who should I run into at the Opening but Eric Vaughan, 85 if a day, of a different generation of Poor Little Rich Gays, partner of Lionel Moore (not present) who produced a famous TV Drama serialisation in the 1980s.  ‘That man’s trying to pick me up,’ he announced. ‘He’s a roofer.’ It didn’t seem very likely. When I last saw Eric he was a la port de mort, with an awful cancer that drills holes in your bones – but now, like Patrick Procktor, revived, although PP actually really dead of course, not that that is standing in his way now. Eric and Lionel knew everybody, and still do. Once Lionel couldn’t think who the tall woman standing next to Edna O’Brien was. ‘D’you know Mrs Onassis?’ Edna inquired (you have to imagine the upward Irish lilt).

Only the most famous woman in the world!

Eric is worried. ‘That Chinese woman. She’s the owner of the Gallery. Doesn’t know anyone. We must help her.’ I say, ‘What about Redfern? Where is he or she?’ Eric is confidential: ‘Long gone but I can tell you. Leather harnesses. Used to lock them in an upstairs flat and throw the keys down the stairwell.’

Andrew Logan, of the Alternative Miss World, at the Patrick Procktor Opening

Monday 12^th April 2010

A crate of apples in the foyer at London’s  National Film Theatre: help yourself if you fancy a healthy snack. Wander into the Ladies by mistake, according to Robert Nevil, and you might not realise your mistake (DON’T be rude about lesbians, it’s not funny and it’s not nice).

Why on earth are Poor Little Rich Gays within a million miles….?

I’ve always had it in for the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (believe it or not, an annual event). For me, it means one thing: Robert Nevil diarized and unavailable for weeks.

And the horror of it, from all I’ve heard. One year I could swear there was a six-hour epic about Gay Life in the Gobi Desert. They planned a disco night, but nobody came.

This year, RN was accompanied variously by Eddie Sedgewick, Joshua Baring, and Helmut Mutti (straight, but complaining of the unattractiveness of the boys on the screen). They saw one film about a ‘boi’ (a lesbian with a goatee apparently) looking for her orgasm, which she had mislaid. Nobody had the sense to tell her to go back to where she last saw it. Another was about grim Orthodox Jewish butchers having it off in Jerusalem and a third concerned the refurbishment of old dildoes.

Robert Nevil and Joshua Baring have described Raging Sun, Raging Sky to me in some detail. It is Mexican and has everything: lovely thoughts, some of them even written on the screen for ease of understanding: ‘Sacrifice is love, love is sacrifice. Nature must have her demands’. Lovely action too: a young slapper has sex with a hot young boy who leaves and wanders round Mexico looking for boys to have sex with. Meanwhile a hunk is wandering round Mexico looking for boys to have sex with. He comes upon an ugly having sex in a lav. He thought he wanted to get involved but got scared. The ugly then wanders round Mexico looking for boys to have sex with. Now we know the hot young boy and the hunk are meant for each other. They wander through Mexico in the rain. The ugly tries to interrupt them. Finally the ugly gets raped in a nasty part of Mexico while the other two had sex.

No wonder the Mexican Tourist Board have put their stamp on this glory.

Joshua Baring got the giggles and was told off by some prim Art House Cinema gays. The last part of the film was mad. ‘Everyone seemed to be doing a lot of flying and running and dying and resurrecting,’ Joshua remarks. ‘It was AWFUL.’

The clothes at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival were awful too but Poor Little Rich Gays do not merely sneer. The obscure, you know, the minor, the forgotten – it’s what we like. Sharon Osbourne! Katie Price! Jane Austen! Fuck off!

What about The Man Who Loved Yngve? Stavanger, 1989. Norway, so un-Poor Little Rich Gay. Oily fish and beer but charming, intimate, confused 17-year-old boys, one of them reminding Robert Nevil of the Austrian scion of a condiments empire he had a pash for at that age.

Poor Little Rich Gays have always known where the money is.

Friday 9^th April 2010

The First Fine Day!  It was yesterday, wasn’t it? Important to record, for it is such an event, not to be lost.

My anguish over the Mottram situation completely evap. Joy and contentment suddenly installed. I have heard from Marcus Cargill that he has been lodged in a neighbouring street on a visit from the Central of Europe, with some important bankers involved in Mottram Inc. What if we were to meet by chance? Would it be the hissing cats sketch he does so brilliantly? Nothing beats Mottram’s sound work. Once you have heard his Final Cough of Mimi (from La Boheme: it’s an opera), only given twice in thirty years, you are not the same person.

We’re supposed to be on speakers but he does not reply to texts.

We’re both impossible people but touched with greatness.

Between 1982 approx and 1987 approx we were asunder. Reasons now lost in the mists of… Perhaps it was to do with money. I’ve always had a bit, but not enough, owing to being Landed Gentry (as well as Poor Little Rich Gay, of course). In those days, Mottram was yet to be self-made. Once I bought him an overcoat from a charity shop which ended up being worn by Tim Piggott-Smith in a Michael Frayn play. You see, we’ve always been at the centre of things, always finger on the pulse. Piggot-Smith (why add ‘Piggot’ to cheer up ‘Smith’?) must have walked off with the garment. Mottram has never had a good wool outdoor coat since.

Leon de Veer and Miles Kent (of The Vases, where Mottram was struck with Swine last summer) fetched him away from the flat we were sharing and drove him into obscurity. Possibly they were something to do with the row. For a time he was ‘sharing’ with an unsavoury person who dragged back, even though the partitioning of the sleeping areas was improvised. Furthermore, he put grit from the sour, rented garden in the washing-up water. That was in Earlsy Courtsy (will have to wait for another day but Earlsy Courtsy is vital in PLRG iconography). Intermittently Mottram sent messages (how?). ‘I saw you on the platform at Baker Street last week – generating enough electricity to run the underground for an entire day.’ Another: ‘Haven’t you heard?  I’ve met someone.’ At that time, Robert Nevil was living in agonised slavery in my flat in London’s West. When I was away one time, he smuggled Mottram in and they rigged up a photo-shoot with Mottram leering on my bed, displaying the Balliol Record. His Balliol was a big one-up on my London Uni – that was the idea. The resulting graph was mounted on card and the surround painstakingly decorated with glitter, stars, various cut-outs. I still have it somewhere.

The other thrill coming with the blossom and balmy days is that rents in London are record-high. It was on the news last night.

The Multis!