Thursday 18^th March 2010

I’m feeling better – than on Tuesday when you last heard. Even though Miroslav, the Polish builder, phoned with a great, desperate Dickensian tragedy of a failed bank transfer and his boys (that’s the workers) stranded penniless in Whole-born. Could I advance £100? The milk powder for his actual baby son came into it somehow.

Otherwise, car sales are up. Borrowing is down.

For goodness sake, I can’t go on like this.

The vital thing is:  I’ve made a certain phone-call. A person educated not a hundred miles from myself has been farcically lodged all week with Robert Nevil, rather than, as usual, with me. Owing to non-speakers. I went round there before he loomed and ate all the choc.

I forgot to mention that, on Saturday, Robert Nevil and I visited some incredibly rare plant nurseries in freezing Cambridgeshire. At one I was subject to fart gas by the phloxes. Robert Nevil quipped, oh yes, he quipped: ‘Might warm us up a bit.’

Last night, RN and I, accompanied by the youthful restaurant fiend, Joshua Baring (he’s just never out of them. Also has read so many books, but loves Top Man, trash TV and, like the Multis, open-top cars) went to the living rectory in Spitalfields where Eddie Sedgewick’s art show has been housed for the last month. He was to launch into self-written poetry and music to accompany his art, with canapés and wine, on a small paying basis (£20) for a select, invited audience, which included, as it happens, names. In addition to ourselves, of course.

Just what Poor Little Rich Gays should be doing in middle age – veering off in previously unheard of directions. I’m all for it. There was one sad poem and one happier one about the colours: ‘What would I do without pink?’ The whole gallery was turned pink with lighting actually and the music was splurgy and electronic. Very soothing. Something to do with Brian Eno. Have you heard of?

The idea could go further. An event: guests to do a turn.  The only rule: it must be a never-before-tried area. I was going to say: Val and I – our vision of  Adelina Patti from the wax cylinder recording would be perfect. I’m the hissing background and Val, with lav paper and comb, the tiny, faint, French shriek of the Mirror Song from Faust.

He knows all the words which I never do.

But it would be breaking the rules.

All the same, we should be inspired by Eddie Sedgewick. Have such an event. Better than  telly on or conversation. People like a structured activity.

I’ve heard, by the way, that the divine Lord Arrowby, refreshed by his night of lux at Claridges, was taken by Reggie Cresswell to the private view of the Kobke (the ‘o’s got one of those lines through it) Exhibition at the National Gallery.

Now the National Gallery is very much where these two belong. One or other or both will be trustees one day. Poor Little Rich Gays are outsiders but where there is a chance to be an insider, the rule is dropped.

The Queen of Denmark was due but was in bed with ‘flu (I hope not terminal. She’s a smoker, you know. Also her frockage is self-designed). Nevertheless the speeches were prefaced with great flurrying ‘Your Majesties’ and Lord A and Reggie were at their wits’ end trying to spot reigning monarchs lurking in the crowd.

Tuesday 16^th March 2010

Still no word from Papers and Paints.

Prince Dmitri Hersov has been in Moscow, distantly his homeland, where he encountered Tiramisu a la Russe. You see it below, shaped and dusted, not the usual slab, but recalling all the same the great Tuscan tiramisu war of last summer. That, and the immense grandeur of Lord Arrowby installing himself at Claridges on Saturday night to avoid the possibility of a noisy party in his apartment building (yes, it is warehouse-style), is all we have to cling to at the moment.

The Prince, in his rolling Russian way of the steppe, is gloomy. At his grand firm of accountants personnel are being slashed. The Multis are adamant for double-dip recession. Miroslav, the Polish builder, is falling to pieces. I don’t think he’s got enough work. What a riot we had a few years ago, Reggie Cresswell, myself and Laura Malcolm, as he re-built our homes for the most glorious prices. The awful wrench of the job being done and him gone, utterly bereft in the Pole-empty home. Now, I send him across the road to a neighbour to do some jobs: she is disgusted.

Usually we rise above the outside world. You’ll have noticed I never mention the economic crisis. I was in Tobago at the time, Oct 08, with Anthony Mottram, Vladmir Alexov, Peter Acharya and Ned Czernowski, crouched in the TV room at the villa, watching the red crashing markets with that summer-of-1940 feeling, barely able to breathe.

If you don’t know, that’s the Battle of Britain, our darkest hour; Granny put flower-pots at the end of her street against the German invasion, rumoured hourly to be imminent.

Somehow we seemed to recover. Last Spring I burst forth with the blossom into shopping again. Now, there’s a lurking, crumbling dread, a low dull sickly flame of anxiety. My only hope is that RBS shares will reach 80 pence and I can sell and make £2500.

But the Blond Multi says that might never happen.

Money, as you know, matters.

And we’re declining on the inside too. Claude Purcell died. An astonishing number of couples are splitting up; I have my great trouble with a certain person resident abroad.

But we must not forget: Poor Little Rich Gays know better than most what it is to disintegrate and re-form by the minute, making the most tremendous fuss while enduring. We are accustomed to living in extraordinary configurations and several dimensions at once . No Mummie and Daddy Woodentot and two little Woodentots for us.

And we’ve got more money.

Prince Dmitri Hersov's Russian Tiramisu - with chocolate-rendered-necktie garnish

Friday 12th March 2010

Still no word from Papers and Paints.

There’s a fabulously gloomy poem by Christina Rossetti, called ‘Up-hill’. It goes:

‘Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.’

At lunchtime today the builders left. The utter, utter joy! I can breathe again. I haven’t been able to breathe for a week. Not at all.

Cruel, isn’t it?  They don’t mean any harm.

One of my best breakfast cups got cracked. Matching set now reduced to five. Let’s pray there are never more than five for breakfast. They made off with all my paint scrapers (yes, I do a little DIY when no-one’s looking: it’s an excellent economy) and my carpet brush evap; the  matches lifted by Lady Carmichael, the blond Multi’s mother, from La Pont de la Tour on Sunday – they got hold of those for their cigarettes. I saw one of the completely non-speaking ones (not even ‘hello’ or ‘goodbye’) in the street flourishing… I thought: ‘That logo looks familiar.’

The bath panel – well, I’ve told you all about it.  ‘Small Gregor’, as he is known, was set to prising off all the mis-applied silicone – at my expense.

Oh, I was low. I got rather snappy with Miroslav, the head man, during the thirty-minute confab re: what to do about filling round the bath panel. You recall that it also sticks out at one end.

After that, I staggered upstairs without hope, quite frankly to lie down at ten in the morning and do a Sudoku.

But, on the top terrace, I’d forgotten all about it – the pointing. It’s been sitting there for nearly four years, looking like mud pie. Nothing to be done. No hope.

Well, you won’t believe it! God moves in mysterious etc. Transformed. Lovely, neat pointing out of nowhere.

I hope you know what pointing is.

Later, downstairs, another miracle. ‘Small Gregor’ somehow had managed to get the sticking-out bit of bath panel not sticking out. And the plan of filling the right-hand side (this is so interesting, I know) from the other direction – well, it’s yet to be sanded, but I think it might work. The remaining two sides will be filled later on. We’re putting off the dread moment. Maybe after a week’s rest, Small Gregor will be refreshed for the challenge.

So when I said the builders had left, it was not quite true.

For Poor Little Rich Gays they never do leave – not really.

Filling with Hope in my Downstairs Bathroom

Delicious Pointing Achieved After Four Years

Wednesday 10^th March 2010

No word from Papers and Paints. Will they dare to ignore? If so, I’ll go over to Fulham and set fire to their shop, in the manner of Nancy Cunard, who incinerated a taxi (driver had displeased) with an old flame-thrower she had left over from the Spanish Civil War.

The builders are still in! Oh! Oh! Oh! All I can do is groan. I’m at the lowest point. The new bath panel! It sticks out at one end. Why isn’t it neatly tucked under the rim of the bath? And it is bendy to the touch. Gregor has smeared silicone filler all over it and all over everything else in the room. The new shower screen: wrong size – back to the shop. Another one, a week. The pointing on the top terrace? When are they going to start on that? Will they ever get it looking less like mud pie?

Look at what they’ve done to my dining table! See the graph below. Those are their lunch bags. My thumb is split from the cleaning up after.

So lunch with Lord Arrowby last Saturday was an interlude. He is so calming, so wise and good. From his bedroom he fetched specially his new silver necklace from India. Like a fool I failed to graph it. It is unusual. Not, I imagine, made for the gay market. Big, yet intricate.

I must get a graph of it. Jewellery is not a subject we’ve touched on much. One of my biggest regrets is not to have worn more. Robin Smallmeal, head of landfill or whatever, and to me most dearly loathed, has got a diamond necklace, you know. Even he, who strives so hard to pass for straight and somehow succeeds; there are quite a few straight men with dubious dyed hair (although now, of course, Smallmeal has gone back to grey). I saw the necklace once: disappointing, puny. A man’s diamond necklace has got to be huge, each stone costing a council flat’s block.

If the budget does not permit, try metal. But you don’t want those clichéd chunky silver things they wear in clubs. You want something original, like Lord Arrowby’s.

Rings – now there’s more scope. Just summer I went to Ed Jasper’s in Oxfordshire for the weekend. A male couple dined. One of them’s mother had recently died and it seemed they were wearing all her jewellery. Some good pieces – large ruby ring, but a silver setting would have been better. All the same, clever move to put it all on at once.

So – you’ve got to have a lot of jewellery. Wear a minimum of seven pieces together – or none. Stones must be big and real, settings simple. A challenge. Burglary?

In the meantime, you’ll be interested to hear that the Multis are to lunch at their bank on the 19^th. The menu has been wired through. A bit common? Rather like an organised pub lunch with bargain menu if you choose in advance – rainbow trout or chicken in the basket. Also, shallot twice,  ‘Mushrooms Two ways’ and, as terms, ‘Starter’ and ‘Main’?

Starter

Ham Hock with Herb Shallot and Mustard Dressing

Main

Roast Fillet of Beef, Shallots, with Mushrooms Two ways a la Grecque and Cep Puree and Madeira Jus

Dessert

Iced Chocolate Parfait with Mandarin

Polish Builders' Luncheon Party

Sunday 7th March 2010

I’m just back from La Pont. You never saw the like!  What glory! The Multis entertained 39, including children, at La Pont de la Tour, one of London’s top restaurants, should you be in foreign or the US. Eighteen bottles of Bollinger, 200 canapes, all the other wines, Eggs Benedict, Aged Beef and Creme au Citron.

I haven’t time just now to tell you about yesterday, when I lunched, en prive and intime, with Lord Arrowby in his flat. I never knew he had a sofa – always cleared for the parties.  He was enchanting, of course, and so kind.

But the BM’s sister has been sticking a pig or killing it, helped by the BM’s brother, who took the day off work especially. The point is that Persephone has never knowingly turned right on entering an aircraft, always 1st. The Mercedes was blood-soaked apparently. Utterly extraordinary. I said, ‘Don’t you have to be careful re: ham-curing? Can’t it all go horribly bad.’ ‘We’re going to try the first slice on the dog,’ she said. Further thought: ‘It might make botox, you know. We could just rub it on…’

There were the most amazing complications with my present. I dashed to Columbia Road this morning – it’s a flower-market in London’s East End – and bought a tray of exquisite tiny irises, growing in plastic pots. Not very expensive, I have to say. I dropped them off at La Pont at 12, because I had to go somewhere else first and didn’t want to lug. But when I got there later they were nowhere to be seen. Hunted high and low. Staff swirling about – not much English spoken. Eventually they pointed to the tables laid out for our lunch in the private cellar. There they were! Carefully decanted into small silver flower pots and placed as table decoration! They must have thought I was the florist’s delivery boy earlier.

Immediately I said to myself, ‘The Multis must have those silver flower pots.’ What a miracle that La Pont had so elevated my present. Lady Carmichael, the Blond Multi’s mother, had the same idea. Indeed later she produced a carrier bag, gathered up the pots and stowed them with the rest of the presents to await removal to the riverside penthouse.

Is this the family background required for Multi-dom?

Lady Newell was there. Delightful exchange. China marks and earrings. She was given 185 sets by a queen for her 80th birthday. Or I assume a queen.

The Blond Multi's Bespoke Birthday Jewellery

Friday 5^th March 2010

Returning from Claude Purcell’s funeral on Tuesday, I sank low. But at least, Miroslav is here. He is builder to the Poor Little Rich Gays. Reggie Cresswell, Laura Malcolm, we’ve all had him. He speaks English, but it is quite new.  This is right for Poor Little Rich Gays, now I think about it. While at Reggie’s he became the father of ‘twinks’. He informed Laura Malcolm that, in Poland, he is a ‘very urgent person.’

Can you establish the true meaning?

What better time, and with the spring coming in and after the harsh winter, what better antidote, than to refresh and renew the home?

Without quite realising it, I began last week, while at the Gay Mother’s. My Indian cut-work bedspread has been in restauro since Christmas or rather lying around waiting for work to begin. The organdie backing tears easily. So I was on the Gay Mother’s drawing room floor with nail scissors snipping out the damaged sections and stitching on tiny new pieces.

Now it needs washing but Miroslav’s ‘boys’, as he calls them, have got the downstairs laundry bathroom into a Beirut-like state. Only renewing the bath panel which was bowing and splitting – for the third time incidentally – but you wouldn’t believe the bombed-out look. Otherwise they’re dealing with a few bits of rotten wood outside, replacing some window panes, some cupboard doors, re-painting parts of the stairs that have got scuffed, trying to get their pointing, done a few years ago, a bit less of a mud-pie – nothing exciting. But the whole house covered in dust and my hands through to the bone from the Flash and the mopping and wiping. Of course Laura Malcolm would have none of it. She just wouldn’t bother. Between you and me, back in the 80s, she never dusted the back of her telly after builders, never, ever, all its life long.

To renew there must first be suffering, the home prized open, a great wound  – and of course drama. You forget, between times, what it’s like. I phoned up Papers and Paints. It’s a very superior paint shop in Fulham – historic colours, 5000 off-whites. Do you get the picture?  I said, ‘The last tin of HC92 (it’s Wedgewood Green actually) I had from you isn’t the same colour as the other HC92 you sold me. Would you…’ ‘Oh no,’ this horrid pinched, stuck-up toff lady voice said, ‘out of the question.’ She started up about legislation, pigments having to be changed, something to do with preserving fish stocks. Enormous length, no idea what she was talking about, any attempt by me to speak at all treated as impertinence. Well, I just flew at her. How dare she! Unbelievable! It’s the wrong colour! I was only phoning to ask if she absolutely insisted on the receipt seeing as it’s a unique product, could only have come from her shop.

The superciliousness! The grandeur! The vile, pecking, upper class voice! It was Val and the Baronessa Von Rezzori all over again. Once we stayed at her tower in Tuscany. Paying for it, but treated like the lowest of the low. ‘Bring out the guillotine!’ Val said. ‘I’ll be in the front row with my knitting needles.’ Wrong country, but never mind.

Funny how Poor Little Rich Gays, not exactly without privilege, are possessed of revolutionary fervour on occasion.

That arse Papers and Paints duchess told me to send in a sample. It was a concession, but you’d never have guessed.  I’ve done it. Got out the paint tin, prised it open, found a piece of card, painted it, waited for it to dry, then, envelope, accompanying letter, photocopied receipts, stamp, round to the post box, paint tin shut up again, hammer, wash brush…

I’m going to get them.

Wednesday 3^rd March 2010

A few weeks ago I mentioned that something had happened, a sad thing and a timely reminder. Claude Purcell, the music critic, had a catastrophic heart attack in the street and died. Only 60. I haven’t been able to believe it.

Yesterday was the funeral. I didn’t know Claude very well and wondered whether he qualified as a Poor Little Rich Gay, which is why you won’t have heard of him here before. But it turns out, now it’s too late, that he did.

I collected Bruce MacBain, my architect and one of Claude’s many friends, at 10.15 and we set out by bus for London’s Central. Bruce had a loose thread but needed little other tidying. Quite often he is covered in builders’ dust. I don’t think I’ve got across that in some ways he is a small boy. I wore my best Prada boots, for, say it myself as shouldn’t, Claude liked nice things. At the church, Robert Nevil and Sebastian Archer had already arrived and Reggie Cresswell came in later, lucky to get a seat. Leon de Veer, Miles Kent and Tristan Pasco, the radio announcer, as well as other friends,by coincidence, of Anthony Mottram, were there. Harry Rollo not present, but his Aunt Dora was.

Well, it was a proper funeral. Marvellous early 18th century church, some simple, plain white elements, the floor somehow dynamic, thrusting out to the sides but a grand, solemn altarpiece of carved wood;  haunting, sad, sad music played by the pianist, Asako Ogawa and the cellist, Nikolay Ginov, who got there in the nick of time;  the coffin borne in on men’s shoulders, no horrible trolley; the Book of Common Prayer; ‘He who would valiant be’ and the Mariners’ Hymn to finish, ‘Eternal Father, strong to save’; the whole thing lasting no more than 35 minutes, as is right.

I don’t know whether Claude was a believer. Maybe not the point, but this was much more than good taste. Distinguished, exceptional, personal, in this funeral I felt that I knew him more than in life.  One remarkable and unconventional address was given by a recently discovered nephew and the other by an old friend and well-known children’s book illustrator. So Claude, freely, made  his life out of his passions and enthusiasms – for the Silver Screen, the Music Hall, 20^th century German and French music. At the age of eight, he set out alone across London to visit the Music Hall legend, Ida Barr, whom he had somehow got in touch with. He championed the forgotten and the obscure, as she might by then have been. It has now emerged, he secretly treasured his table settings, photographing each one before the guests destroyed it. And they were astonishing, believe me, I was there a couple of times; quite the best. Old damask and heaps of assorted antique glasses, perhaps some wild flowers, the magic impossible to recapture.

Sunday 28^th February 2010

On Wednesday the Gay Mother gained 86. What an astonishing Gay Mother!  I really am thrilled with her. You may have noticed she has a curious date of birth – 24.2.24. Only two digits. I wonder what it means.

She wore a red jumper, the colour so strong it was surely alive. We went on a snowdrop walk. Now, there’s a thing. Simon Limpney at Massivebury, my arch enemy, was always ordering rare, rare snowdrops at £36 a bulb, then crawling over the February grass with a magnifying glass in the small hope of seeing the minute variations from the ordinary ones. Only last week Bruce MacBain was threatening to visit a snowdrop garden. The opportunity to be exceptionally particular is irresistible for the Poor Little Rich Gay.

The Gay Mother was having none of that. We strode into the woods. ‘They’re tough little things. See the way they grow under hedges and between stones.’ She’s right. They belong on the woodland floor or in the open part at the bottom of hedges, not really in gardens at all. And they must be massed, great swathes, the individual flower not the point. I tried to graph them, the brilliant white against the surrounding brown deadness.

It’s the same with daffodils. The Gay Mother becomes enraged on a spring drive if there’s, dot, dot, dot by the roadside, a bald-looking row, and even more so if they’re those fat modern yellow ones that don’t stand up properly. Daffodils must be in great streaming carpets.

The Birthday lunch was in the village pub. The Gay Mother didn’t want to go too far. We ordered whitebait. A pile of orange, deep-fried, hard, scab-like items about 2 inches wide appeared. But she enjoyed her pudding, some kind of creamy slice. Then we roared on to tea with our cousins at Maryleigh. It’s not exactly a country house but a crazy rabbit-warren, in parts Georgian, and, although in the middle of nowhere, four storeys high, famous for its freezing corridors and chocolate-brown gloss paint. Cousin Teddy showed me his studio. He is 92. Fascinating. Good landscapes, all sorts of other, more ambitious paintings, very unusual ideas. Easily enough for an exhibition, but he is above such things. His sister, Cousin Lunetta (their mother was half-Italian), also resident at Maryleigh, hasn’t been further than the village in thirty years. His wife, Cousin Paquita (don’t ask), whose parents were at Court, showed me her Gerald Kelly. But she couldn’t think what had happened to the other one.

So that was the Gay Mother’s birthday. You might gather that she is not showy. She did not rave at the centre of her birthday as a truer Gay Mother might have done. But I’m not sure I would have liked it if she had.

On the surrounding days she visited lawyers. She’s not in trouble. Just family business. We also inspected a house she is renovating for tenants. Replacement windows! Oh no!  What would Bruce MacBain say?  In the evenings, I sometimes heard her muttering to herself about the lawyers’ bills. It’s quite normal in our family. We all talk to ourselves. I was caught out a few times agitating aloud about a certain troubling situation involving a person resident abroad.

Snowdrops on the Gay Mother's 86th Birthday

The Gay Mother's Floral Corner

Friday 26^th February 2010

Last Saturday I drove all over Essex in search of Allium Ampeloprasum. It is a plant and very rare. Robert Nevil could not accompany me because rellies in Beaconsfield were moving and therefore shedding household goods, including deceased Aunt Bicky’s good hock glasses; absolutely essential that they were grasped into the RN sack apparently. But what about me? What about my white wine glasses, hit by the Credit Crunch? I’m down to the last four. Or  my dinner plates?  I need to re-plate my home. Where is a harlequin set ? Hadn’t these people got anything to offer?

Robert Nevil and I very much have gardening in common. I’ve kept quiet about this side – not sure whether it is truely Poor Little Rich Gay. Now, I’m beginning to wonder.

At Langthorn’s Plantery, which, as it happens is near Stanstediana (it’s an airport), seven or eight people were waiting in the shed to pay for their plants. At the till, an elderly lady of great glamour – good camel coat, black tights, excellent black patent leather flatties, good modern hair, lovely blue eyes. She addressed the nurseryman: ‘Now, look here, have you got any help yet? My son, and he’s sixty this year …’ (which means she must have been at least eighty, doesn’t it?) ‘he’s all over the place and he hasn’t got any help.’ Then she turned and addressed the company. ‘We all rely on this place, don’t we? But they must have more help.’ Then she veered in another direction. ‘I’ll be back, you know.  I’m still having treatment. By rights I should have been dead a month ago. But I’m not. I’m here. I’ve got two big planting schemes planned for the summer.’ By this time, her ancient husband, bent like a tree by the wind, had paid and she was at the door, about to exit, in full, beaming command: ‘That’s how it is with cancer,’ she said triumphantly.

Wednesday 24^th February 2010

Robert Nevil, of the Poor Little Rich Gays, is one of the more naturally endowed as to money. At the book-worm, brainy end, shall we say? Rich rewards there reserved for those with the gift of writing badly.

Would you believe it if I told you he has recently acquired his own individually-assigned booking manager at the Ivy?

I don’t think you would.

The Ivy, for better or for worse, is at the heart of Poor Little Rich Gay life. We are all known there or trying to be.

Sol Weideinwar, the gay multi-millionaire friend of Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver, has such a thing. One simple call. Table absolutely guaranteed. Except that he bitched up and spat back. When he used this method to book on his secretary’s behalf, she going but not him, they had the effrontery to complain. So that was the end of them. Decisive wrenching of lav chain.

To get back to Robert Nevil. Last week he was lunched at the Ivy by some senior book person, presumably with a private income.

Oh yes, I’d quite forgotten. Smallmeal was there! We haven’t heard much of him recently, have we? Nor the partner, the cat expert, Simon Limpney. The thing is you can only manage so many enemies. I’ve had my hands full with a certain gentleman in the ‘consultancy’ line. Let’s hope there’s news soon on that front. Smallmeal, of course, is known and loved at the Ivy after giving them an award for Britain’s prettiest tied rubbish bags or some such. He’s head of landfill in this country, you might remember.

So, Robert Nevil’s lunch is tremendously extended and he gets into conversation with the maitre d’ who it turns out is a huge fan of the Pony Club. You don’t believe it, do you? And you’ve forgotten that Robert Nevil wrote that delightful history of the Pony Club, haven’t you?

Well, it’s true. Excitement and thrilldom all round. RN to offer a signed copy for the Ivy library (do you know it?) post haste. AND, this is the absolute glory, the maitre d’ hands a card with a special e-mail: ‘Use that if you want to book. Don’t bother with the dreary old switchboard.’