Tuesday 10^th November 2009

Yes!  I saw him. He addressed The Conservative City Circle. The trouble was he looked exactly the same as on telly. I had to keep pinching myself – it really is him, it’s not telly.

The Multis were very down on his suit – creased around the crotch, cheap, they said. And his shoes rock-bottom but hair good. I thought the look was supposed to have been created by Richard James. Of its kind – businessman with tiny dash of style – not bad. He had a plain white shirt and plain purple tie – quite stylish. Full marks for absence of dismal blue stripped shirt, as worn by most other men present. Cloth of suit had a slight expensive sheen – I love a sheen.

If he’d wanted to be absolutely sure of my vote, he should have had waxed jeans, bum-freezer prep school blazer from Top Shop, scoop-neck T-shirt, big necklace and bracelets and pointy boots by Prada.

The speech made no specific reference to Poor Little Rich Gays and their needs, although I could smell a pleasant waft of: Tories equals more money, for gays and straights alike. (Do you know, I’ve been awfully good and never voted for them) The Multis thought his remarks should have been more tailored to the City audience – references to people on middle incomes rather over the heads of the listeners. He was awfully rude about Gordon Brown throwing his Nokia phone about – slanderous even. I don’t think he would have said such things on telly.

Have you heard about the phones? More insider information – GB is supposed to get through two Nokias a week. Hurls them to the floor. Terrible temper.

The abundance of the occasion astonishing. Tray after tray of canapés surged out from the nether regions; we reckoned we were on a canapé a minute throughout, with glass refilled every five at least. There was: foie gras with fig, chicken satay, samosas, mini-pizzas, smoked salmon roulades, cold Yorkshire pudding with rare beef, all about 7 out 10, except the last.

I had arrived before the Multis. For some reason, they were waiting for the congestion charge to end before driving in in the convertible.  I found a chair and watched the Tories coming through the door: grey, grey, charcoal, grey, grey, grey, charcoal… That’s their suits. They are marvellous; they haven’t changed since the 80s. They still look like expensive, quite large dogs. The young men are still blond, blue-eyed, not quite good-looking.

I did have a little dread of Smallmeal, but no sign of the dear little Pekinese face beneath the Lord Lichfield semi-bouffant sadly.

Afterwards, we dashed to the Lahore Kebab House off Commercial Road. Do we know it? It’s the cheapest restaurant in London. Imagine the blond Multi queuing up at the corner shop opposite to buy wine (it’s Bring Your Own). Later he got some of the meat starter on his brand-new looking tie. ‘I’ve been thinking this tie has got to go for a while,’ he said.  It seemed to be assumed: stain equals chuck.

Name Tags of MPs who were No Show at Cameron's talk. Viggers was the one with the Duck House

The Blond Multi's Tie Terminated at the Lahore Kebab House

Sunday 8th November 2009

I’ve at last put something on the ‘About’ page, so if you’re new to this site, why not look there?

Or even if you’re not.

MPs’ expenses – I’ve been threatening to hold forth for weeks and now it’s too late. Sir Christopher Kelly’s report seems finally to have knocked out the story. At last! Thank the Merciful…! But tomorrow I’m going with the Multis and Prince Dmitri to hear David Cameron speak in the City. I have to be careful what I say. I think he’s an upper class thug. But they love Mrs Thatcher. In fact she was absent this morning from the Cenotaph. Could she be à la porte de mort?  Should she die, don’t forget to phone the Multis immediately and condole.

Needless to say my Poor Little Rich Gay views on the MPs’ expenses affair are impossible. Couldn’t give a damn, whole thing vastly out of proportion, sick of measly weasly British public whining on, £68,000 a wretched wage, of course they had to boost it by whatever means, the only real crime excessive patronage of John Lewis.

But that’s not the  point. It’s my inside information. Poor Little Rich Gays always have inside information. I can’t let it go. I’m leaning on the feeble excuse that I’m seeing Cameron tomorrow.

My inside information is to do with him.

I’ve suddenly thought: what if Smallmeal’s at the rally? He’s supposed to have gone over to Cameron. Made a massive donation. What if great lashes of leccy whipping between Smallmeal and myself electrocute the future PM?By accident.

On the other hand, Cameron might get quite bullish. He might say to Smallmeal, ‘Now look here, Smallmeal, you silly queen, I don’t want your landfill (or whatever) money while you’re carrying on this ridiculous queenaria with poor little Adrian Edge.’

What I heard was, from a most exclusive source, in Brussels, in the think-tank via the Bank, as follows: Cameron, when the MPs’ expenses so-called scandal was at its height back in the summer, rather saw to it, was, just possibly, doing a bit of fancy work behind the scenes, to ensure that all the useless old squirearchy-type Tories, not good for party image, were the ones most richly bollocked. You remember – the one with the duck house, the one with the moat, the one with the trees (whose wife, incidentally, had lunch with the Gay Mother). While others, particularly himself, were merely scented with the lightest whiff of fart gas.

But now Sir Christopher Kelly has made a special point of banning MPs from claiming for mortgage repayments on their second homes, a practice lavishly enjoyed by Cameron.

Friday 6th November 2009

Frockage! Speeches! Oxford!

Where to begin!

Poor Little Rich Gays have run up a monumental extension at the Ashmolean. Well, not exactly, but our friend Rick Mather is the architect. I travel up by second class rail, with Bruce MacBain, my architect and an old friend of Rick’s. Robert Nevil and his itinerant partner (shortly to depart for New York again, for health reasons: possibly liposuction), Sebastian Archer, also with. They are supposed to be the brainier, book-writing end of the Poor Little Rich Gays, but tonight they’re massive scarves, a Paul and Joe suitlette for Robert Nevil, a similar $19,000 tweed doll’s get-up for Sebastian Archer, who, incidentally achieves the premier PLRG moment of the evening: ‘I’ve lost a £900 pair of glasses,’ he says, with just the merest flicker of irritation. ‘Oh dear! Where?’ He slices back with the required perfect blend of finality and insouciance: ‘Locanda Locatelli.’

It’s all in the tone of voice. You must practise it. You must get it right. It says: ‘Of course I was there, it’s nothing extraordinary and don’t make a vulgar fuss.’

If you don’t know, Locanda Locatelli is a terribly top restaurant. I went to it once with the Multis; they paid.

Next week, by the way, Robert Nevil brings out a book. The launch is on Wednesday. Read all about it here.

We gain Ford, not seen by me for twenty years. We see the back door of Balliol, where Anthony Mottram, who I’ve been ‘with’ in a manner of speaking for forty years, ‘read’ Philosophy and also rat studies (psychology), not liked by him. But at Philosophy he was absolutely first class, tutors on the floor with praise etc.

I wouldn’t have given forty years to a second-rate mind, I can tell you. Although, when it comes to kitchens (see glossary) you might feel that Mottram’s thinking goes awry.

But the bollards in the back entrance to Balliol are the thing. I should have crossed the road to inspect them. Thirty years ago they were the subject of voluminous correspondence between Mottram, sec. of the Balliol Sunday Night Concert Society, and the college bursar (Brigadier someone or other) re: getting them lowered so that Ossian Ellis’s harp could be heaved in. It would have been more straightforward to re-stage the entire Second World War.

To this day, whenever we see a bollard we always look to see if it is retractable. In Madrid the other week there was a road sign which said: ‘Bolardos Retractiles’. If only Mottram could have been there to see it.

I’m reminiscing. Oh, the heavenly Oxford days! Not actually. What Mottram most looked forward to in his Oxford day was gazing at the window of a shop in the Market which sold trunks and dog biscuits.

Now, do get on with it. At last, we forge into the Ashmolean Museum for the party …and are knocked out with thrill at the new building. Bruce explains the rhythms, the complexity, the superb melding of old and new. And the drama! A vast atrium with extraordinary stairs waving down the side. Bruce and I are on the floor with our I Phones, seeking angles for our graphs. See inadequate result below.

Off the floor, we run into Rick Mather himself in the porcelain gallery. He is full of how the founder’s ashes are secretly contained in a jar there. Can we guess which one? This, as well as filling in David Mabberley, Keeper of the Herbarium at Kew, not seen since 1987, on twenty years’ of gossip, quite distracts me from congratulating him on the stunning building.

Then there were the other guests – and the speeches. Oxford, you know! Most likely to be overheard: ‘I’m a Trustee….’ ‘If you’ve sat next to the Senior Side Mumbler at as many committee meetings as I have…’ ‘My assumption that gowns would be worn when the Vice Chancellor is present appears to have been erroneous.’ (Indeed it was: London club gays had got in, their idea of ‘cocktail dress’ as per the invitation being studded belt, tight jeans and novel-looking white cloth shoes, not exactly trainers).

Laura Malcolm would have had a field day. She does a brilliant impression of a blinking lady don, saying ‘I have a minorish quibble.’

Finally the speeches… I mustn’t be cruel. I’ve gone on long enough. These speech-making men (they were all men) had got this marvellous building built. But, oh dear! The thanks, the jokes.  When Mottram was ‘up’, in the 70s, he overheard, lodged as a paid musician in a high gallery above a dinner at Lady Margaret Hall, a speech given by Harold Macmillan, then the ancient Chancellor. Or rather didn’t hear – there was just a low groaning coming through, gradually getting louder until ‘Nearly as old as I am’ rumbled forth. It was the first climax.  Roars of smug laughter. Then the whole process repeated, several more times.

That’s speeches for you!

Rather, I’m sorry to say, everything that Poor Little Rich Gays are against, but the building itself, the new Ashmolean extension, absolutely what we are for.

The Outstanding Rick Mather Staircase at the Ashmolean

Superb Rick Mather extension to the Ashmolean Museum

Craft Items at the Ashmolean Liked by Robert Nevil and Sebastian Archer

Major Scarf worn by Sebastian Archer at the Opening

Second Class Railway Carriage in which PLRGs Conveyed to Oxford

Wednesday 4^th November 2009

I’m just about to board for Oxford, for the Ashmolean opening. Mustn’t forget my invitation. Essential for admission.  I haven’t been to Ford in years, not since the days of my great friendship with Paul Taylor, theatre critic of the Independent as was – there’s an outstanding personality who ought to be commemorated.

Now my waxed jeans.  I did a terrible thing.

I know it’s a loose thread and you’ve all been waiting to hear the end of it. To remind: the problem. In August I bought at H Nicks a pair of black waxed jeans by Lindeberg.  £90. Completely adore them but what to do, what to do about washing? Suppose, through washing, the waxed aspect ceases? Think about getting another, identical back-up pair. But no, too boring. See at Zara some brown waxed – perfect, different colour, a real addition to the wardrobe etc. Must have the sheen. It’s new, it’s exciting, it’s this season. But, but, but, none in my size. Meanwhile, lurking in the background are some brown waxed by Diesel at one hundred and ninety pounds. I had formed but not executed a plan to try these on and find fault with them – always a good approach with what you can’t or shouldn’t afford.

So, it is Saturday 16^th October. The following week I’m to be in Madrid with the Gay Mother.  If I leave it any longer, vultures will have picked clean all shelves of every pair of brown waxed. All the branches of Zara to be covered that day in search of …  Well, it’s getting late. Nearly 4pm. Mottram expected for dinner. I’ve tried King’s Road branch, Oxford Street, Regent Street. Am at Westfield Shopping Centre, Shepherd’s Bush, miles from home, way off course. Nothing there either. Actually not even a shop. I have to phone to White City.  Zara in Whiteley’s Centre absolute last chance. Get them on the phone. Yes, they’ve got a pair in my size!  I roar off, pound into the shop, barely able to speak, crash into the changing room.

You won’t believe it. They don’t fit. Too tight on the waist.  Although my size. Also, too baggy in the front. Get into a total muddle. Maybe I should try a bigger size. But they haven’t got bigger size, which would be even more baggy, wouldn’t they? What if I go to another branch, try bigger size but still want these ones, that don’t fit? I come back to Whiteley’s and they’re gone! Prospect of no waxed jeans at all opening up. Unthinkable. Creeping thought starts creeping – only £35, might get to like them more, have it in cash, can’t be any harm, maybe somehow they will stretch and shrink.

There I am, out on the street, with the bag. I have a little interlude at Whole Foods in Kensington High Street. Buy sea-bass filets for £12.92. That over, I vow to return home. With perhaps, just a little tiny diversion to H. Nicks, where the Diesel brown waxed are, at £190. Really should try them, just to be quite sure they’re not right. It’s a duty, really.

So, to H.Nicks. Pound downstairs, straight to exact spot of Diesel brown waxed jeans. Thoughts starting to veer. Maybe, with a little bit of creative accounting, if I count it as pre-spending on my January sale clothes budget… but surely they will be horrid.

Well, they’re not horrid. They fit perfectly. I writhe in the changing booth. But probably not enough. It’s so wicked. I will surely rot in hell. How reckless! On the other hand, you only live once….I should be bolder in my spending. Caution has always held me back. What would the Multis do?  If I pay £100 in cash, somehow it won’t count. And get the whole thing over with as fast as possible…

That’s it. That’s the story of the brown waxed jeans. Now I must dash up and clamber into Diesel heaven for the Ashmolean opening – except, I’ve just remembered, the invitation says, ‘Dress: cocktail’. What on earth does that mean?

Sunday 1^st November 2009

In Madrid I’d been thinking, after this stained hotel bathroom at least my own won’t seem so bad.  As you know bathrooms are a sensitive issue with me, ever since Frankie-Doreen Gunn, in the 80s, withered the one in my old flat, which did have an avocado suite, never replaced in 14 years there. Although the avocado suite wasn’t the issue.

Besides, so often home is a let-down after hotel.

But no!  On returning, I plunged. In the downstairs bathroom, the shower screen leaking, the plaster work diseased, a definite whiff. What if Frankie-Doreen comes round! And then, everywhere I looked, scuff marks on the walls (in the Museum flat in Prague, Anthony Mottram trolls round with a pot of specially mixed paint, a very rare off-white, touching up where the cleaner has bashed by with the vacuum. And this is someone who claims to despise moisturiser-users), not a piece of furniture unscratched, dented, pieces broken off, lights not working, chipped china…

Oh for a proper complement of staff!  With eight full-time staff you could begin to scratch the surface of the work to be done in a three-bedroom terraced house, such as this one.

There are always five hundred jobs outstanding in the home, aren’t there?  Have you ever counted? No matter how hard you try, the number remains the same.

With a furniture restorer on site, a builder/electrician/plumber, a fabric/upholstery specialist, an archivist/secretary, a carpet mender, a picture framer, a trained cleaner, an advanced shopper and sourcer, a gardener, you could at last make progress.

Then, yesterday, it was Eddie Sedgewick’s talk and launch of his website at The Chelsea Arts Club. It’s famous if you’ve heard of it. Eighty per cent of the members were a dead ringer for Maria Aitken, the actress.

But that’s not the point. The talk was so inspiring; all my troubles evap.

Eddie Sedgewick is a successful artist, was at school with Robert Nevil and I have known him since 1977.  We saw him briefly the other day when he presented some wonderful fabrics he has designed at Ligne Rosset.  ‘Success’, though, is a paltry notion when you consider what he said, quite irrelevant really. He spoke of how he makes art out of wherever happens to find himself. In the 1970s, that was Railton Road, Brixton, London. If that means nothing to you, take it from me, it was urban deprivation, crime, drugs, racist police, embittered Afro-Caribbean community, truly an awful place. He lived there with Robert Nevil, above a male brothel. They were burgled every day. The Police said they were fools to live ‘amongst coons’.

But, as Eddie put it, ‘I invented the place around me.’ It was the same, years later, when the 7/7 bus-bomb went off right outside his window, in Tavistock Square. This horror he forged into art. Even in reality, in his view, it became art: ‘The forensic people, when they had finished their work, wrapped each part in blue plastic. They wrapped all the trees and bushes. I suddenly thought, ‘It’s a John Christo’. Then I thought, ‘What an awful thing to say.’ Then I thought again: ‘No, that’s how it is.’

This is the essence of Poor Little Rich Gay life. The raw material is re-shaped, transformed into something else. For those of us with a smaller gift for invention than Eddie Sedgewick, it is money that wrenches the life into the desired position. And money, as we know, can give you wings or it can be ruinous.

Friday 30th October 2009

I suffered a setback on return from Madrid. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow. I’d thought those stains in the Madrid hotel bathroom would boost my morale at home but no…

I hope I wasn’t cruel to that city. I’ve been thinking. Poor Little Rich Gays must be at the centre of things. Money puts you there; poorer Poor Little Rich Gays make their own centre or are the centre. Poor Smallmeal, head of the landfill in this country or whatever (total non-speakers, fuck off and slam down with me at the moment and probably for good) would be wretched in Madrid; he didn’t make millions to have tapas.  Italy, on the other hand, emanates importance, even if you don’t know exactly why. There’s certainly no need to actually go and see Giotto or Michelangelo or whoever. The Multis and I were discussing, when we were in Tuscany, how the Medicis started up banking, taking the first steps towards the Multis becoming Multi.

I’ve quite forgotten to tell you, by the way, that they’ve done a fabulous deal with Coutts Bank – the blond Multi or the photographer Multi or both took a hard line and got the rates knocked down. Millions handed over. It’s now quite possible that the Multis’ private economy could run the water treatment system of a small town or several bus services. Not that they could possibly be involved with anything like that – the dreariness.

I’ve been quiet this week. I’ll tell you more tomorrow. But other PLRGs have been whirring as usual. Bruce MacBain, my architect, went to the launch last night of some Japanese sanitoryware at C.P.Hart. Jet cleaning and perfumed air blast WCs at £10,000, supply only (I’m not quite sure what that means, are you? I think it’s: you can’t have one, even if you’ve got squillions).

Next week, Bruce MacBain and I go to the opening of the Ashmolean extension at Oxford. It’ll be huge – the function, I mean, not the extension. I wonder if Grayson Perry will be there or Michael Portillo.You won’t be able to wait to hear about it.

Lord Arrowby (you remember him, very unusual, because gorgeous, blue eyes, athletic, BUT lurks in Government circles which are not noted for their glamour – that Milliband passing for pretty; he’s the Foreign Sec) was at the State Banquet at Guildhall (that’s in the City of London) for the President of India. He told the Indians that I would be visiting their country soon.

He did, really.

Frankie-Doreen Gunn, my old friend, the dynamo, multiple business interests, and Laura Malcolm, novelist and expert on French life, are at their respective Norman homes. Laura is bed-ridden, possibly Swine. We are praying that she will not be lowered into the rather wretched little nearby graveyard.  Now I’ve got some inside information on Swine. I had dinner recently with some people high up in the disease world. You might recall my agony when Anthony Mottram was struck by Swine in the summer – quite unnec. it turns out.

All Poor Little Rich Gays have inside information. You must too. I’ve also got inside information on the MPs’ expenses affair. I’m dying to comment but I’m going to wait until Sir Christopher Kelly’s report is published next week.

Tomorrow I’m lunching at the Chelsea Arts Club. Eddie Sedgewick, the artist, is launching a website.

In the meantime, thinking of those ladies in Normandy, do divulge your thoughts on second homes in foreign for gays. Are they popular?  What locations do you suggest?

Monday 26^th October 2009

The weather has been glorious for the late season and walking in search of hotels (see previous entry: What to Do if Your Hotel Disappoints) I had to remove my Prada mac, which incidentally got stained at lunch. Speaking of lunch, the Gay Mother and I took it outside in the Plaza de Santa Ana. It was tapas. Anthony Mottram texted when we arrived: ‘I suppose you’ll be having that frightful tapas.’ He can’t bear it. Must sit down to a proper slap-up. But the Gay Mother who queens and sulks at the highest level if the food isn’t right has condemned all Madrid restaurants. In one she didn’t get enough membrillo (that’s quince paste) with her cheese, in another the veal escalope was received with withering silence, in a third, they brought the main course before she had finished the first and wouldn’t take it away again.

This is called efficient service. I have never seen it taken to this extreme before. Have you?

We went to inspect a place recommended by our hotel which looked bland and expensive as hotel recommendations always do. There are some famous restaurants in a residential district some way away and in the guide book it says you’ve got to book months in advance.

So there was nothing for it. We sit, lunch and dinner, crouched on brown-painted stools around small brown-painted tables in humble bars with every possible surface painted brown, having tapas, picking at the tortilla, the potato croquettes, the squid rings, the Padron peppers, discussing the standard of tomatoes available at home and whether china candlesticks can be seen in the drawing room.

Croquettes are my favourite of the tapas possibilities. The best ones were in Casa Ciriaco in Calle Mayor. There is a photograph on the wall of the mother of the king eating there, although it looks more to me that she is being tortured. Any minute now we’re off to Casa del Abuelo where the Gay Mother is looking forward to some deep-fried prawns.

So you see, we’re rather loving it. The Gay Mother is not short of a… She usually dines among antiques. But this is something different: an adventure.

Would every Poor Little Rich Gay survive?  I wonder. And what about Madrid in general? I had looked forward to wearing outfits. For the summer holiday you pack and pack and end up wearing mostly swimming trunks and a towel. At all other seasons you can display fully the cream of your wardrobe. But here, clucking along in tight black waxed jeans by J.Lindeberg (the ones I’m never going to wash. I’ve just had to take them off to check the spelling) and my new Topshop prep school blazer, I’m distinctly starred at. Nobody’s in the skinny, dolly look.

The Madrid frockage is nothing much. They’re all in subfusc, not offensive, but drab. The Gay Mother complains she stands out in her rose pink cardy and fuchsia pink jumper (yes, they do clash, but marvellous)

Just now I took a walk. I got as far as the Prada shop in the Salamanca district. That’s where the glamour’s supposed to be.

It was dreary, darling. Dull, bourgeois neighbourhood, not gleaming, no magic.

They’ve even done the Prada shop in brown, no Prada green and nothing much in it  – just a little grey jumper I’m sure I got from their Factory Shop near Arezzo years ago.

Poor Little Rich Gays might try Madrid, but you’d have to adapt. It could be good for you. Then you can go home to your own purring, honed, unbelievable home and metropolis.

Pot Plant at Hotel Urban. See 'What to Do if Your Hotel Disappoints'

The King's Mother Dining at Casa Ciriaco in Calle Mayor - or being Tortured

Shade of Brown a Favourite in Madrid

Sunday 25^th October 2009

Madrid. Our hotel is not of absorbing interest. The Gay Mother and I have had to create other diversions. Just across the road from here is the Prado. Well, it’s almost Prada, isn’t it? It’s a picture museum. Do you know it?

For Poor Little Rich Gays, museums are a challenge: nothing is for sale and they don’t even put the value on the labels. What’s more, we are artists of our own lives; with money and other resources, we shape and render and make ourselves other than what we would otherwise be. So all the things in museums are competition.

Back in the summer, when I was in Tuscany and went to Arezzo to see the frescoes of Piero della Francesca, I don’t think I brought this out as much as I should. It must have been the heat. How long ago the summer seems now! But one is much crisper in the autumn.

Anyway, the Gay Mother and I forge into the Prado regardless. Fortunately she has grasped the first principle of PLRG museum visiting. We look at three or four huge rooms of Velasquez – he’s a Spanish painter of the 17^th century, if you don’t know. ‘That’s it,’ she says. ‘I’ve had enough.’ No earnest slogging round.  Heaven forbid – no guided tour!  One hour max.

Sebastian Archer, of whom we’ve heard little, the partner of Robert Nevil and first class, high spending Poor Little Rich Gay, long ago laid down firm rules: 45 mins for a museum, 30 mins for a Stately Home, 20 mins for a garden.

It’s the speed-dating principle. And quite grand, don’t you think, as an attitude?

Also, to reduce further any feeling of being held to ransom by the museum, behave as you would at H Nicks or equivalent. In other words, when shopping, you have your catalogue of loathed designers you don’t go anywhere near – in my case, Versace (vulgar, vulgar, vulgar) and Issey Miyake (dull, dull, dull, for men, at any rate. Women – do you really want to look like an accordion?) ? Well, it’s just the same with museums. Arrive with pre-prepared list of struck-off artists. At the Prado, you won’t want to have anything to do with Murillo (ghastly religious kitsch) and another Spanish artist called something like Ribena – can’t quite remember what’s wrong with him, but he’s frightful.

Anthony Mottram, with whom I’ve been bickering for the last 40 years, since schooldays, once devised a system for categorising artworks, which you might like to apply. They are either boiling, stewing or frying, boiling being the worst. Oh the boiling primmies (that’s primitive paintings ) we ached before when young.

In these ways, you can make your own mark on any museum.

On the whole the Gay Mother was superb in the Prado. She only likes the best and won’t have anything swirly or drippy. But she would admire a dubious Guido Reni. And went so far as to buy a postcard of it. The Gay Mother and postcards, and the posting thereof – I digress but she can spend forty minutes choosing and another hour seeking a post box that looks trustworthy. In foreign that is.

But, look, those paintings by Velasquez – they’re absolute fillet steak. You really do have to make an exception. Mostly very plain and even unpleasant-looking people, but rendered sumptuous by art.

We’ve been back twice to the Prado and we went to Segovia, which is a small town outside Madrid. The Gay Mother was there in 1955, had suckling pig and wished to re-visit. In the cathedral there is some fabulous junk and we saw Jesus in a skirt.

Christ's Skirts Do Not Quite Achieve Full Daintiness at Segovia

Christ Suffering from Moronism at Segovia

Saturday 24^th October 2009

Where were we? The Gay Mother and I are in Madrid at the Villa Real, 5 stars – don’t like it. Horrid colour on the walls. Foolish paper flowers on poles (see photo in previous posting). But only 134 euros a night.

No question of it being the centrepiece of our holiday.

We’ve been here since Wednesday. How have we filled the void? Don’t worry. Poor Little Rich Gays are nothing if not resourceful, especially when accompanied by a Gay Mother.

Who, on the first day, looked out of the window, saw it was about to rain and announced a walk. Off we trudge in a gale to a park called The Retiro, the Gay Mother, 85, several times nearly Mary Poppinsified by her 3 euro umbrella, bought earlier in the day. Do you get it?  Of course, we don’t like The Retiro because we don’t like gardens in foreign full stop – dusty vistas, everything in rows, no flowers.

On the way back from the garden, so-called, what do I see, looming ahead?  Yes, the Ritz Hotel, the Madrid Ritz, said to be the best. I’ve mentioned before, I think, that we can see it from our rooms at the Villa Real. ‘Do you fancy a tea’s cup?’ I say to the Gay Mother. Yes, she does and where do I suggest? ‘Well, we could try….’ and before she knows it we’re through the door.

You see, I’m applying the same technique as with the waxed Diesel jeans at H Nicks which were so expensive, but in that case it didn’t work. (I know it’s a loose thread. I haven’t finished the story of the waxed jeans I was in quest of last Saturday. It’s utterly thrilling but you’ll have to wait…). Sample what you haven’t got or can’t have and find fault with it.

Fortunately the Madrid Ritz did not let down. Moribund, poor service, depressing Palm Court with no windows, gloomy heaps of rococo crap, faintly grubby, cheap pink jackets of the waiters. Only plus a good cup, good china and silverware but I should think so too at 18 euros. Final triumph – on leaving I looked back at the facade. Replacement windows!

Wouldn’t have done at all.

This is what you do if your own hotel fails. Are you following?  Do you get my drift?  That’s it. You fill the time looking at other hotels. Anthony Mottram and I once spent days scouring the Los Remedios district of Seville in search of hotels. That was after we’d inspected the 5 star Alphonso XIII (absolutely not: items for sale in glass cases in the lobby). The Los Remedios district was modern and residential, but, you never know, there might have been a glorious hotel lurking.

In that case we aspired to move. The 2-star we were in was impossible. Finally, finally we got into the Alabardero, whose radiance we had yearned for the minute we arrived in Seville.

The Gay Mother, at 85, has less appetite for hotel warfare. We will be staying put. Hotels have therefore taken up less time than is desirable. No inspecting of other hotel rooms, always a pleasant past-time whether you intend moving or not, no haggling, Anthony Mottram style, over prices – when re-hoteling you have the great advantage of being on the spot.

We’ve had to branch out in other directions, including, would you believe it, sight-seeing.

But just round the corner is the Hotel Urban. I’ve located it but not been in. My friend, Mrs Solomon Bung of California, stayed there. I fear it might be better. But it is the sister hotel of this one. We could have gone there for the same price, you know.

Consoling Vulgarity at the Ritz, Madrid

Things Could be Worse: a 3-star Garage-Hotel in Madrid

Good Silver Tea Pot at the Madrid Ritz

Styling of Bathrobes not Seen Before by Me: Good Point

Friday 23^rd October 2009

 It’s disgraceful. I’ve been at the Hotel Villa Real, Madrid for two days. But we haven’t had criticism of the hotel. As you know, hotels are the throbbing heart of Poor Little Rich Gay life. They are any holiday’s main object; we like our homes to resemble hotels. Anthony Mottram’s museum-sized apartment in Prague has a hotel bedroom and bathroom within it. Smallmeal’s former London home was often assumed to be a hotel.

 If you’re wondering what I mean by ‘hotel’, remember Mrs Solomon Bung of California’s great saying: ‘Four Stars – hell. Five Stars – heaven’.

It follows naturally that criticism of the hotel is a highly developed skill of PLRGs. I’ve already mentioned, this Villa Real is awfully brown. When we arrived, the Gay Mother said, ‘You have that room, it’s more masculine.’(A bit much, as a remark, don’t you think?) But the only difference was that the brown bedspread in the supposedly more feminine room was temporarily absent. The next day she said, not with enthusiasm, ‘I’ve got a brown bedspread now.’

 We’ve got luxury wood flooring, walnut veneer furniture, a balustrade and steps down to the sitting area, red-brown leather sofa, dirty yellow rag-rolled walls, two splurgy paintings and three paper flowers sprouting out of poles about 5 foot high.

 It’s 5 star, you know.

  But really it might as well be my father’s office in the 1960s and that was old-fashioned then. He was a provincial solicitor – walls mushroom and woodwork choc gloss. Lino floor.

It’s drab.

 I picked up one of the wooden coat hangers and it dropped to pieces in my hands – wretched thing made of balsa wood and ineptly nailed together.

 But it’s 5 star.

 Now the bathroom I’ve got more time for. The ideal hotel bathroom should be as if hewn from a solid block of marble. This has that feeling but look – I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. Crud around the bath, staining of the marble, the floor tiles not aligned with the wall tiles (what would Bruce MacBain say?)

How could we build our holiday around a hotel like this?  On the other hand, (you’ll be astonished, I know), the Gay Mother and I have struck lucky, we have been blessed. This is my secret. I’ve had good fortune like this before. At the Hotel Raphael in Rome where the wires were sticking out of the shaving socket. You see, this Hotel Villa Real in Madrid (5 stars), it’s due for refurb, isn’t it? It’s delap, it’s had its day.

 You know what that means, don’t you?

 Yes!  Prices are slashed. We’re only paying 135 euros a night each (you get what you pay for, as the Multis would say).

 But it’s still 5 star. Who can deny it?

 So this is what you must do. Find a 5 star on its last legs and pile in.

Just one question: if the hotel was not to be our main occupation, how were we to pass the time? What on earth have we been doing in Madrid since Wednesday? Could there have been sightseeing? If you can wait until tomorrow, I’ll tell you.

Incorrect Tiling Module: What Would Bruce MacBain Say?

Stained Marble in the Bathroom

5-star Bathroom Crud

Three Paper Flowers in Vase in Hotel Room