Thursday 8^th October 2009

A triumphant dinner at the Multis last night. Lord Arrowby was induced to attend and did. For most gays the ideal lover is a handsome straight doctor. This he more and more resembles, without actually being a doctor of course – especially in his suit, direct from the corridors of power, energised and freed by work. We shared a taxi back. I did suggest that his apartment might be the final destination; we could dispense with bit where I went on alone to my home. But he said he had to meet the Home Secretary first thing in the morning.

This answer was encouraging. Maybe in another ten years….And the glamour of the Home Sec! Can you imagine? Something absolutely purring and reassuring and cosy about it all…

The others: the blond Multi’s sister and her husband. Outstanding. Some gays won’t have straights but not all of them are leading full normal lives, you know. These certainly aren’t. Persephone says the most devastating things in a dry drawl as if she were reciting instructions for assembling an Ikea item from a flatpack. She dislikes goat cheese; given it at a Kensington dinner, she rushed into the lav to throw up. Only it wasn’t the lav, it was a cupboard full of fur coats. Vivien, who is something absolutely huge in the City, once dragged his teenage daughters out of bed in 4 in the morning to catch a flight for the ski slopes. But he’d got the day wrong. So they had to be re-dragged the next night and, since the clocks changed that day, the hour for elevation was 3 rather than 4.

As it happens, the Multis’ table was a picture, absolutely perfect, very simple and unpretentious.  There’s a photo of it below. Yesterday, if you recall, I rather gave up in the subject of table settings. The truth is it is a stone I have left unturned. But gays do style the table, they really do. Often it’s worth it. Once I had lunch with the eccentric opera critic, Seamus O’Reilly and the table was heaped with the most stunning antique engraved glass. It really was a sight.

The danger is, and the reason why people like Laura Malcolm will go raving mad at the mention of the subject:  your table can end up looking fussy and common as if it’s been transported direct from the shop window at Harrods.

But now I think of it, Matt Driver had a mania for underplates in the 80s.

The attraction of the Multis’ arrangement is that their cutlery and napkins date from their pre-Multi days which they scavenged in second-hand shops. Not everything is perfect. Their glasses are simple and not too tall (very tall glasses are suburban; also impractical) BUT the blond Multi said at first they were £9.99 each, then revised it to £29.99. And you’ve got to have a lot of them, as you can see.  Then there’s that marble table, which is some kind of modern classic – not cheap.

My glasses are from Divertimenti – the Asquith range, a sturdy 18^th century goblet design, the biggest one £7.75. You can order on-line.

The best glasses are absolutely plain but not boring; in other words, impossible to find. If they have a thick ridge round the rim, they’re too cheap. Stems are usually the let-down. The rest of it might be all right but the stem will be horribly over-fancy.

Let’s have a list of Don’ts for table decor. On the whole, I prefer Don’ts to Do’s

• Don’t have coloured linen of any kind; only white or cream. And not coarse or fringed or ruched. Antique damask is best,
• No napkins folded into peacock fan shapes
• Nothing wooden on the table – especially ‘cruets’; but salad bowls can be wood (see picture below: where wood is working well)
• Don’t have everything new
• Either matching sets or every glass and plate different – which you declare a harlequin set
• No hideous clashes – brand-new looking antiques with nooky wooky crafty pottery, for example.
• No fancy cutlery with wooden handles and gold-plate. No yellow metal cutlery either from old school

The Multis very successful Table Decor

Fine Table decor at Peter Acharya and Ned Czernowski's. A candle in each place and see the butter styling

Wednesday 7th October 2009 

My beautiful thoughts of Massivebury and Smallmeal cause my gorgeous mind to leap back to the agonising, unresolved issues arising from my gay dinner party of last week – namely staff (or lack of) and table settings.

 But first I must tell you about my weekend visit to my godson who is 20, likes the Internet, sailing and gliding. He is of nautical appearance, with beard. An outing to Space NK Apothecary in Bath (if you’re in foreign or US, it’s a high-end moisturiser shop) to look at bronzers seems appropriate. Thrilling news: Institut Esthederm have brought out a new even darker bronzing gel. £28. Also, the Multis, last Friday, went to the Wolseley for the third time in as many weeks, where they saw Paul Smith, Marc Almond, Dale Winton and David Walliams. They encountered Marc Almond again the following morning at breakfast in a place called Roast. On Sunday they were at La Pont. Their kitchen at home is soon to be granted show status (very high indeed, if you don’t know. It means ‘never used’) and all the wildly expensive appliances are to be wrapped in plastic as if just delivered.

 Now, back to staff etc. At Massivebury there were often staff for the larger dinners or lunches at weekends. Then sometimes there weren’t. When there were, Smallmeal might be heard whispering to Limpney between the courses, ‘That was a pile of crap.’ This is the torment. Will staff do it properly? You’ll be interested to know that the Massivebury retainers were not in uniform and foreign, they were ladies from the village, just engaged for huge numbers of hours at a higher rate. On Sunday mornings, with Smallmeal not yet down and Limpney attending to the cats, I often had breakfast alone in the very grand kitchen, chattering away with the person who’d come to do the washing up.  So really I’d gone all the way to Swindon for the full luxury country house weekend experience only to spend a lot of time with a modest cleaning lady of mildly racist views. Looking back, I can see the warning signs: the hard-faced determination of Limpney re: the cats, the prolonged absence of Smallmeal. But was he ever there when present? That nice washing-up lady was my friend in that house if anyone was.

 And finally, table-settings. I’m running late for the Multis so it’ll have to be quick. My own style is wrecked stately home but I do starch the napkins myself. For my larger dinners I lack space. Last week Robert Nevil and Arjun Bose (being the smallest) had to sit wedged at the corners of the table which is anyway constructed of two tables jammed together and covered with a motley of cloths. Possibly they enjoyed this outrageous informality. Others had to poke their knees under Granny’s nursery table with the spiked legs. It could have been an adventure. I lack matching sets and lavish qualities of cutlery and glass. My place settings have a camping holiday feel (Are tables laid on camping holidays? I’ve never been on one). At Massivebury there was a £30,000 antique dining table, allowing at least six foot between guests.

 I suppose I’m rather bored with the whole white linen, silver and glass look. It’s time for something new. But what?

 Tuesday 6^th October 2009

 I retreated to the country last Friday, to participate in family life in a small village outside Bath. There is a mother and father and their son is my godson. Hurtling down the motorway, or rather not hurtling but blocked by filth, I suddenly thought: Smallmeal!  This is the time on a Friday when the Bentley goes forth from the Brentford offices of the landfill or whatever for Massivebury, bearing the tiny scowling face of Smallmeal under that swirling mass of Lord Lichfield-style grey hair.

 I don’t think I’ve mentioned that Massivebury is near Swindon; the main gates are but a stone’s throw from a mean housing estate. But there is a longer, more scenic approach from the rear.

 Well, no sign of the Bentley, which is probably for the best. I doubt that my nippy, perfectly-formed, official car, as it is known, could have taken on the Bentley and won. Instead there are endless notices lit up overhead, saying ‘Slow down. Debris in Road.’ On and on, they go. I am increasingly bemused. I see no sign of Smallmeal.

 He must have been cleared out of the way earlier. They’d forgotten to switch off the signs.

Monday 5^th October 2009

I’m sorry for the delay. But I’ve whirling and heaving and slamming to get straight again almost non-stop since Thursday with an interlude in the country I’ll tell you about tomorrow.

Thursday last at 7.30 Prince Dmitri Hersov arrives (always absolutely bangers) and the vast machinery of my self-given birthday dinner purrs into action.

 Do you know, say it myself as shouldn’t, it all went off all right. Which really is a miracle. At times during the day I was so wracked by pre-dinner nerves, so exhausted, with face like a concrete slab aching and throbbing, I craved the grave.

 It’s always been like this, ever since the Gay Mother and I gave a large children’s party in about 1968.

 All the same, what kind of dinner could possibly result from a relaxed approach? ‘Relax’ is my least fav word in the whole English language. I shall only relax when finally confined to the earth.

The guests poured in – the Multis, Laura Malcolm, Matt Driver, Robert Nevil (who, saintly, came early to help), others you don’t know as yet, Arjun Bose, a finely-wrought Indian friend of Robert Nevil’s who has somehow ended up renting the basement flat of Giles Ullerston, (at Barrowborough with Mottram and me), and his dynamo wife, Frankie-Doreen  Gunn (both present), Sebastian Archer, partner of Robert Nevil but not mentioned so far owing to prolonged absence abroad for health reasons, and finally Peter Acharya and his partner, Ned Czernowski, formerly of New York, who give dinners and have twice been on an Atlantis Gay Cruise. We’ll be hearing more of them.

 They showered me with presents; they were warm and jolly. My nerves evap. Just slid away. Amazing. Now, I couldn’t tell you much about what they got up to for the rest of the evening. Arjun Bose had the most superb shirt in a floral print; Peter Acharya wore an exceptional necklace. No doubt Matt Driver imparted some little known facts such as: which item is most frequently stolen from supermarkets? Answer: razor blades.  The photographer Multi speaks very clearly. I managed to grasp that he was exasperated:  Bloomberg have extended Stuart Cumberland’s show; so how are the huge artworks they have bought to be installed in time for the visit this coming Sunday of an important Palm Springs curator (with  lunch following attended by greatest living artists and me at La Pont )? And, what’s more, these items are going to have to be taken off their frames, rolled up and re-stretched at a cost of £2000; there’s no other way of getting them into the marble-clad penthouse.

 I got hold of that much. I do talk to my guests at my dinners but I don’t really know what I’m saying. This is an issue: What is the host’s main object? Is it service, table-styling, plating up, pushing out, tea or coffee?  What about conversation? How is that to be fitted in?

Chefs in restaurants don’t have to have conversation; it’s not fair really.

 But my food – I did enjoy it. I didn’t turn against my own food, as has been known. My fig and goat cheese 1^st course was liked. I should hope so too, all the money it cost. I don’t think I’ve made it clear that the figs were supplied by special gay arrangement with the Ottolenghi shop itself. They don’t normally sell raw ingredients. And all those strange spices in the chicken – absolutely thrilling. Nigella’s middle-class family pudding I thought was oozy apple puree with bits of toast in, but the blond multi (who gives detailed feed-back) said it was his favourite.

 I need to say more about my table styling, presentation and general level of facilities. There are areas of true gay style I’ve yet to acheive. I lack commitment; I need to be harder. For a start I need to spend about 3 million on premises large enough to accommodate the grandiose number of guests I aspire to. You’ll also be wondering: where were the staff?

 But I’ve gone on  long enough for one day. These urgent topics will have to wait. Besides I’ve to dash round to Peter Acharya and Ned Czernowksi’s for the second dinner in a week. Apparently they’ve having some gays who might be quite vicious – or not. We shall see.

Wednesday 30^th September 2009

As I was saying, before so rudely interrupted by Robert Nevil starring at the Puja, my menu for my birthday dinner tomorrow came through on Monday night. If you’re wondering why RN was so honoured, as I’m sure you are, it was because he spoke up in favour of a kitchen or flower room or some such thing being added to the Isle of Dogs Temple.

So no money involved, merely goodness. Smallmeal, of course, would just donate £100,000, if he inclined towards Hinduism, which he doesn’t, as far as I know.

Now my menu – I’m doing everything wrong. 13 are to dine. A sensible person would wheel out trusty old favourites – fish pie and apple crumble perhaps. These dishes are heard of in our world, but you have to use Angus Willis’s recipes, which elevate them onto another plane – I can’t quite remember how; I’ll tell you one day. But I’m using untried Ottolenghi and even unknown ingredients, although Mrs Solomon Bung of California did tell me that sumac is all right. I want my food to be new, you see, the latest thing.

Absolute madness.

The first course is figs with pecorino (already got from La Michelson at La Fromagerie, as instructed in the Ottolenghi book: the exact, named Pecorino: £22) and honey. Then I’m doing chicken with this sumac and something called za’atar. And my pudding – well, there’s a falling off because it’s Nigella. Nigella at her most mumsie and embarrassing as to phraseology: ‘If you want to keep apple-y…’ she goes. I did want to keep apple-y because there were no damsons to be had and apples are in season now. So I’m doing her Apple Charlotte.  Angus Willis can’t bear Nigella. Won’t have her name mentioned. Total amateur, he claims, no restaurant experience.

So is it even a proper gay menu? Should I be bothering about the food at all? Some queens give everything  to the table styling, the matching sets, the ranks of glassware, the napery, the candles: then, if you’re Ralph Kitto, the art collector of South Kensington, you bust open the M and S ready-dinners or phone for pizza – this really is true.

The Gay dinner  is always bizarre, always outstanding, always fiercely meant.

Certainly queenaria has featured in the assembling of my dinner so far. I’ve been three times to Waitrose (that’s our top supermart in UK if you’re in foreign). The first time, no chestnut honey and behind the ‘sumac’ label in the spice rack – an empty space! Couldn’t believe it!  Will not have vultures picking clean the shelves!

But at least evidence that sumac exists.

So far, I’ve given the best part of two days to my dinner, with one more to go. It  might be different if there are two of you or if Mottram had turned up to help me, but don’t believe anyone who tells you it can all be whirled together in no time at all. You’ll end up in an asylum. Phone in sick, or, better still, give up work entirely if you’re going to take dinner-party giving seriously.

Gays suffer more, you know, and bear it better – for their art and in other ways.

Finally – money.  Chicken – you have noticed – yes, cheap! Mummy Nigella calls for Calvados in her apple-y apple-y apple puree. I had some lovely Somerset Apple Brandy (the same thing) given me by my late uncle, but Mottram appears to have drunk it all on his visits here. I did look for some more. £17 a bottle!  Didn’t contemplate. Slashed it straight out.

But I’ve slammed two bottles of Tattinger on my credit card. On offer at Majestic. Debts are racking up again.

Tuesday 29th September 2009

 No, he’s not dead. But he’s getting huge in Hindu circles. In East London.

 Hang on, I’ll tell you. As it happens, my menu for my birthday dinner on Thursday has come through – it arrived in my head all of a piece last night. This sounds mystical and ridiculous. But it’s sort of true. Already I’ve been in extensive confab with Ottolenghi itself re: figs and I’ve been to La Fromagerie. La Fromagerie!  Do you know it? Cheesery in Highbury, London. Special cold room in which cheese enshrined. Icy grandeur such as even top gays can hardly get through the door. La Michelson presides, boosted endlessly by Nigel, who lives nearby. I spent £22 but let myself down badly at the finish by failing to buy honey at £6.95 a jar.

 But it’s a vast subject – the gay dinner party. It’ll have to wait.

 I may have mentioned before that Robert Nevil has a passion for the sub-continent. Or perhaps not. Anyway he does. Along with Lord Arrowby, as a matter of fact, but not on the same scale. I’ve never visited and after that ghastly scene in Slumdog Millionaire when the little boy jumped in the poo, I never will. I know, narrow, narrow! For those that love India it is perhaps an escape from the endless struggle to get everything right in the sleek, relentless Western slipstream. And, curiously, the old-fashioned, underground gay life is an attraction, too.

 There’s something to think about.

 At any rate, it is a broadening of the horizons, something beyond the exquisite confines of art openings, frockage and boutique hotels.

 And Robert Nevil is forging ahead in the Isle of Dogs Hindu world, this being a former industrial zone of London where Dior does not apply.

 He was Guest of Honour at the Puja. Not the only one, it’s true, but all the same.  I’ve no idea what a Puja is, I’m afraid, but it’s got a front row, to which RN and the others were conducted, amidst applause.  There was food, of which they had first pick and their opinion sought as to merits of, further applause, speeches made in their honour, final applause as they departed. In between was, apparently, a religious event  – very loud drumming, frenetic dancing and prostrating of priests, hurling of flowers and swirling of incense. Much more agreeable than Fashion Week, Robert Nevil comments.

 Typical.

 The Swiss failed to euthanize Anthony Mottram (don’t joke about death; you’ll be sorry). So now he pops up on a cycling holiday in Sardinia with his friend Veronica whom he has known for years from when they were both on clarinet in a south London amateur orchestra.

 It will not be the usual sort of gay vacances – far from it.

 Vladimir from the Ukraine has been left behind. He has essays to hand in.

 This holiday is Mottram’s way of celebrating my birthday which occurs on Thursday. I’m having a small dinner at home for which the menu won’t come. Ottolenghi is the thing and I’ve been pouring over their book. But what are sumac and mograbiah? How will I know they’re not horrid?  I’ve had an awful time with the smoked paprika powder from the Moro cookbook which makes everything taste of sausages and then burnt plastic. Neurotically I go on using it – can’t bear waste, you see. Also hoping and hoping it might get nice.

 I don’t want to get saddled with any further  nasty, obscure ingredients.

  It’s a shame I can’t have more people to my dinner. But my home is a doll’s house and I fear too many guests could cause it to fall down – as when they celebrated the building of the 1000^TH council house in the Norman Wisdom film. The Lady Mayoress cut the ribbon and dignitaries swarmed in. Within minutes the crap building was flattened.

 The other astonishing development is that Lord Arrowby has consented to dine with the Multis. And there is to be a special function for Grayson Perry’s new carpet of which, as it happens, I’ve had a sneak preview – a thing of wonder. This man is becoming a major part of my life. It’ll be the fourth time I’ve seen him in as many months.

 But he hasn’t seen me, though

 Perhaps it’s time he did.

 Yesterday I went to Somerset House for what I thought was going to be another fashion show to do with London Fashion Week, now London Fashion Weekend. Tickets were got by a headmistress friend of mine, not often seen.

 The weather was glorious, as it was on Friday and again today. Three days of uninterrupted sun in London – mellow, melancholy, yellowy, the shadows deepening.

 But it turned out to be a vast kind of jumble sale of women’s clothes by various unknown designers. Seething hoards of young women shopping, themselves an amazing spectacle. My childhood was nothing but rummaging through Granny’s and the Gay Mother’s frock cupboards in wonder. I had a phase of actually wearing the clothes and Mrs Bone next door ran me up a little dress and jacket. My father wasn’t best pleased but the Gay Mother and Granny quite enthusiastic.

 In adult life indifferent. Have little grasp of what women have been wearing for the last 30 years. These ones had on everything – tights, boots, eight necklaces minimum, those little flimsy shifty things that aren’t a dress or a shirt, other unidentifiable garments on top or underneath, huge handbags with straps and buckles everywhere. Everything clashing. Frightful sight really, but rather wonderful. There they all were, en fete, having a whale of a time, I should say, parading.

 Better that than maundering beside Jade’s grave.

 Then, as I came away, a wedding was emerging from a well-known Wren church. It was late afternoon, the light less brilliant, more misty. A ghostly feel and the wedding a Platonic ideal of how weddings have always been – the young men ushers in morning suits earnest with unaccustomed responsibility, an aunt-figure in an old-fashioned print dress enlivened with a hat specially bought perhaps, more hats, shawls, shoes, the bride and groom emerging from the church, the groom looking very much the marrying type.

 And this glorious mother-of-the-bride ensemble. Just look at that silk coat and that hat!  Whether this actually is the mother-of-the-bride will never be known.

Outstanding possible Mother-of-the-Bride ensemble

Thursday 24th September 2009

It’s been a long and cruel wait. I’ve promised and promised the Nicole Farhi Show. It happened last Sunday. And now it’s Thursday.

It was through a relation of Aunt Lavinia’s that I got in. She was at Glyndebourne, if you recall, and loudly condemned poor nearby Smallmeal’s style of picnic. Aunt Lavinia has a voice that would curdle the blood of a beagle. So not a gay connection, which is a shame. Because there is a gay mafia and, if you’re thinking of turning gay, the poss of belonging to it and swishing through all sorts of doors that are closed to the straight might sway your decision. You could even pretend to be gay, if you were to find your desires not co-operating.

I suppose that’s how I met Smallmeal. How else would someone like me rise to such heights as the head of landfill in this country (or whatever)? And be received at Massivebury.

I have only once before been to a fashion show. It was in 1979, the couture show at Yves St Laurent in Paris, on the strength of very dubious merely photographic (and one-way at that) acquaintance with the number three in that organisation. It was after lunch. I wore a tiny suitlette in heather mixture with turquoise lining from Howie. Do you remember Howie? Bottom of Long Acre (that’s London, England). It was £40 (in the sale). Glared at by horrid French bitch/matrons at the salon, who were going to buy the frockage, all distinguished by greasy hair and skin disease (cruel but true). Afterwards we went round (this man was called Andre, I think, and lived in the Avenue President Kennedy, had a bonne; sixty if a day; I assume now dead) to some ecole to fetch a kitchen (it was school coming-out time) with whom he then fucked off to his country res, leaving me alone in Paris for the weekend with the rheumy-eyed relentless bonne who had been ordered to provide no more service. 

Only then did I realise I’d been lured to Paris under false… the couture show was the bait.  And found wanting.

But I digress. Aunt Lavinia shows up at the Royal Opera House, where the show to take place in the Paul Hamlyn Hall, in amazing get-up – brown boots, trilby hat, tweed jacket, foaming chiffon scarf. ‘It’s the country look,’ she boomed. ‘I’ve heard it’s in.’  We foregather in the foyer and I hear her saying to a man from the Mail on Sunday, ‘The country look  – it’s in.’

So now it will be. Just you wait.

We go up early to absolute prime balcony seats and look down as all the greatnesses assemble.  Etonnant. Merveilleux . (No accents today. Sorry). Man in black plastic trousers and half a jacket in silver and red brocade (other half just not there), an extraordinary little tottering dolly-bird, borderline human, no expression,  in tight, tight, tiny, tiny dress and vast hat clamped to head like plate of melting ice-cream. She got graphed, which I suppose was the point.  Young man in blue suit and white shirt with huge collar extending way beyond the suit like a sea-shell, carrying enormous shiny bright blue holdall. Then the editor of Grazia. Honed, sculpted, she gets right across the floor to her seat in about two strides.  Finally Susy Menkes herself – do you know her?  She is the most powerful fashion journalist of all. I’m not quite sure why. Famous for her pompadour – a great forward roll of front hair. Well, I’m sorry to say she did not look at all well – puffy and her coiffure in decline. Sat with knees apart in purple mac thing.

But I rather liked that – most important person at fashion show couldn’t give a damn.

Don’t think I’m mocking.  It was all  festive, crazy and delightful in quite an unexpected way.  The Nicole Farhi Spring/Summer collection for 2010 was shown and much admired. It took about twenty minutes.

But the real show was the audience

Outstanding frock made of men's suiting material

Shoes with tweed trim worn with Men's suit dress

Thursday 24th September 2009

As I was saying, last Thursday was Edward Sedgewick’s launch at Ligne Roset. He has designed some superb hand-painted one-off furniture fabrics which they are featuring on sofas and chairs – complex, arresting, suggesting the urban scene at high speed and in thrilling brilliant colour. I said, ‘Will the paint come off on a lady’s or man’s  knitted frock?’ ‘No, I’ve tested it. But there’s brown food going round in here. That’s much more of a threat.’  It’s true. Guests were lurching near the upholstery with their flutes and greasy, meaty fingers.

Edward is feeling frail. He’s been publicising all day. There was a lunch in the shop (passers-by gawping through window). He sat next to the editor of House and Garden who had to rush off to fetch her grandchildren. We recall that our mothers adored House and Garden.

Edward and Robert Nevil shared a flat in Brixton in the 1970s. It was above a male brothel. They were burgled every single day, sometimes twice a day. But that was nothing to do with the brothel. They were always at that club in Great Queen Street. Just can’t think of its name. Something beginning with B. One of you will remember. It was the beginning of gay life as we know it. Biddie and Eve, Steve someone or other – mean face but bottle-blond. Head-dresses or hats. It’ll come back to me when it’s too late.

Edward is an artist – silk-screen prints, huge works, instant but very difficult to achieve, urban scenes, New York, collage effect, colour, dots, squiggles flung on, photographs lurking underneath sometimes. 

The opening was heterosexual. You could tell. But interesting, especially for examples of men (presume straight: massive assumption: hope no offence given) in higher frockage. But also great ladies, of course. Many (again I assume) from niture/fabric design world. And the PR girls, in 7 inch heels min. Heels are very high this season.

Let the pictures speak for themselves:

Three Men in Shoes

A gathered skirt looking new this autumn

Very Successful shiny jacket. Note pointy shoes

Wednesday 23rd September 2009

I’m afraid the Nicole Farhi Show will have to wait another day. I know you’re all aching to hear. This morning I’ve been having a row with a neighbour about a wall. Now Anthony Mottram announces that he is being conveyed by train (1st Class) from Prague to Zurich to meet some Russians for ‘consultancy’ purposes. I said, ‘Don’t join a queue unless you’re sure what it’s for.’ Voluntary euthanisia, you know. You can’t be too careful. Mrs Solomon Bung was in Switz last winter and only just escaped.  

In the meantime, we haven’t had any graphs for an age. It’s been words,words,words. So here are some snoops from the great array of functions I’ve attended to mark the opening of the Autumn Season (well, three).

Two weeks ago, the photographer Multi and I attended a launch lunch at a very top gallery in East London (terrible industrial road, entrance just a hole in the wall, inside acres of luxury polished cement, soaring white walls, just like MOMA, New York). Trenton was there. You remember? Superb top gay seen at the Multis in July, 4 trainers, works out 4 times a week, art collection, taxi to work, gorgeous American partner. Now we find he has additional feature of holiday apartment  in France’s South. Ladies at this occasion are wearing such things as: exquisite white blouse extended to the knee and held in a bell shape by hoops, black dress and coat with red tips – i.e. red pumps, giant red bag, red nails. This was Lady Newell, who we were with in Tuscany. Grayson was there – as his lady persona with frumpy blancmange green knitted coatee and hideous multi-coloured wedges. At lunch Trenton seemed a little weary, was rather silent. I liked him more. In this gallery they’ve got works by a Japanese woman artist. Can’t remember the name but marvellous. Opalescent frog-spawn, exquisitely done. A painting. I could rather see the point. If I had £200,000 I really would snap up.

The following week the Multis and I went to Christie’s for lecture/drinks party on the human figure in art, revival of interest in. American lady greatnesses had flown over specially and my theory that the rich  are in fact a different colour from everybody else was proved beyond a shadow of a.  At least 20 per cent of the faces present were that imitable honey-bronze hue which is the result of products but which no product can achieve, if you see what I mean. 

Great ladies are attracted by the contemporary art world because there they can push at the limits of frockage. Here are some pictures:

Great Ladies at an Art World Function. Note the excellent shawl

Coat worn by Greatness. Spotted bag just visible in corner

Couture Coat by Joseph O

After the Christie’s function, the Multis and I went to the Wolseley (them paying), where we saw Joan Collins looking rather frightening, I’m sorry to say.

Here are the chips:

Chips at the Wolseley

Now, I also went to an opening at Ligne Roset where my old friend and school friend of Robert Nevil’s, the artist Edward Sedgewick, had designed some furniture fabric. It was wall-to-wall PR girls. But that’s going to have to wait for tomorrow too now, because I’ve got to rush….