Saturday 5th September 2009

Do look at the comments on this morning’s posting, readers. This site is being  infiltrated by impostors and maniacs. What do you make of Vivienne Bar Tendah-Smallmeal, claiming to be a relation of Robin Smallmeal ? Do any of you feel like handing over £156,000,000? On the other hand, we must not automatically think the worst.

Saturday 5^th September 2009

 Have you seen what’s happened?  Just mention an unknown Italian waiter and there’s an eruption of comment such as we’ve never seen before. It’s sex, of course.  Forget my elevated musing on the subject of being paid for. Far more important to air views on a nameless waiter unlikely to be seen or heard of again.

 If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ll have to look at the comments on the previous posting, ‘On Being Paid For’.

 Perhaps we’ll have to have more sex in the blog.

 But it’s getting dangerous. Mottram is up to something. He sent a threatening private message yesterday. It said, ‘Watch it’. Asked to explain, he did not reply. Well, he mentioned kitchens in his comment, which is his name for very young boys/men he likes so I had no choice but to explain in the glossary. Of course, I am cast in the role of bitter, jealous monster. But what does it mean that he calls them kitchens, which is complicated short-hand for chickens?  Besides, rich older man with youthful (but not illegal, of course) boyfriend plus one or both of them with sister/wife figure (in other words, me, Adrian Edge) trailing along behind and that relationship often more continuous and ultimately satisfactory is a feature of poor little rich gay life. It is surely seen in straight relationships too, but with gays living this exaggerated kind of existence (I suppose I mean more freedom, fewer ties, children etc) and the further aspect, in the case of the poor little rich gays, of considerable wealth, it shows up more.  

 So it has to be explored. And followed. What will happen? The main reason for remaining alive is: what will happen next?  The great drawback of being dead is no news, no developments, missing out on the latest. If the dead came back they’d be so last year we wouldn’t know what to say to them. So what will happen to this curious trio of me, Adrian Edge, and Anthony Mottram, companions of forty years, and Vladimir from the Ukraine?

 There is also the phenomenon, going back to the poor waiter at Volpaia, of intense sexual interest in ‘unsuitable’ people; in other words, if they don’t speak English, aren’t especially educated (although that young man might have been a PHD student, for all I know), are unlikely to want to settle down in comfortable, baggy, boring companionship, all the better.

 Anthony Mottram has suggested that I join a group from Prague, including Vladimir from the Ukraine, his current boyfriend, for a few days in Istanbul in October. I don’t think I can go because that is when I holiday with the Gay Mother. She has sent for a new passport and has been looking for the cork forests of Southern Spain in the atlas. So we have that thrilling prospect. She is 85, you know.

 But Mottram has made no mention of a holiday for just the two of us. It now nearly four years since we had a week in Tobago. Is it too much to ask? Of course, he would say I meanly fucked off with the Multis to Tuscany and refused the usual summer holiday with the two of them.  At times this is how Mottram makes me feel:

Adrian Edge martyred by Anthony Mottram

Is this childish? I hope so. Poor Little Rich Gays can afford not to grow up and become sensible.

 Final word on the Volpaia waiter: I see I have allowed his person to be openly picked over. Let’s hope he never hears of it. Robert Nevil and Anthony Mottram prefer scrawny, near-starved little scraps; our Italian friend is burly, so not their type. He is also, I state definitively, handsome and engaging by any standard, particularly in his method of service which is: jaw drops as third bottle of wine at 60 euros is requested and order repeated incredulously: ‘You want another one?’

Yes, we do want another one; that’s the trouble.

Tuesday 1^st September 2009

 Prince Dmitri Hersov has thundered across Europe in the Porsche and regained this country. We go to the Prom at London’s Royal Albert Hall (do you know it? It’s very hideous) on Monday. He is worried about the waiter. I wasn’t going to write about this but I see it has some bearing on my main theme. Yes, today I’m going to have a theme.

 The Prince fears that our enthusiasm for the Tuscan waiter was no better than grubby straights ogling the waitress. He regrets the lavish tipping. On Friday, before leaving in the Porsche for this country, he tried to dispel any possible resentment by leaving 100 euros for the other waiters but by misfortune this  fell into the hands of the favourite anyway. So that young man is now 360 euros approx up. That’s it really. Money, you see.  360 euros to be made a fuss of and mildly assaulted with a camera. And , truly, no leering or suggestive talk. How much worse would have been the straight with a measly, guilty 50 euros and constantly falling on the floor to get a look up the skirts.

 The sheer grandeur, scale and boldness of the poor little rich gay method.

 We don’t often touch on sex. You may have been wondering about that.

 But my theme, my theme. Fergus Strachan – you remember him, the brainy one, at law, loves products and gym-work and crackpot diets – has been asking, Is it better to go dutch? As you know, in Tuscany we did not go Dutch. The Multis paid. I am imagining the squalor of wrangling over who did and who didn’t put money in the kitty, who didn’t have the gin or thinks there might have been a cheaper balsamic vinegar. What’s the point of being older and richer if you can’t be vague about whether some haven’t paid as much as others. Early in life obsessive nit-picking over money enables an accumulation of capital to fund grand carelessness later on. Also, with age and increased riches comes more being paid for. Because others have got even richer. If I were the Multis and had an income of £10,000 a day (approx), I’d take a villa and treat my friends. Why not?  What’s the harm? If those fuckers ever get on and dig all that metal out of my mine (I don’t know whether I’ve mentioned that I’ve got a mine. Well, not the sole possession of, and at present inert and likely to remain so), that’s exactly what I’d do. And, I hope, not count the cost. I’d also have a car and driver. But that’s another matter. And a lot of diamonds.

 No, their money has done the Multis the world of good. They’ve been infinitely freer and more extraordinary since, through their own design, they created it. They couldn’t possibly be employees,  not like Smallmeal – whom they now far exceed in wealth, by the way, which was the original object. And I really don’t think they’ll throw me out of their lives just like that, I really don’t.

The Villa Herself

Waiter liked at Volpaia

Saturday 29^th August 2009

 The last supper has taken place, the villa party has broken up and the Multis are now underway for the Hotel Hassler Villa Medici at Rome – as I’m sure you know, a great classic hotel at 700 euros a night.

 These last days have been wild. The Multis have been increasingly bizarre and miraculous. At the Brancacci Chapel (frescoes, you know, by Massacio and others), the photographer multi photographed the post cards. The other remarked that the paintings couldn’t be that good since there were so few people there. Later he said, ‘Why were Adam and Eve chucked out of Paradise?’ But they loved the art. It is the life of St Peter. Everyone’s in pink. Not a gay pink. A very good rose pink.

 Restaurants remained simple. No Smallmeal-style dragging off to Michelin fork establishments, although, to be fair, Smallmeal was once persuaded into a simple trat in the car park at Siena by Robert Nevil and appeared to enjoy it. But the experience was not repeated. Perhaps this is tragic.

 At Volpaia, – tiny Chianti village – a very traditional mania for the waiter set in, led by Prince Dmitri Hersov, who tipped 260 euros over four occasions. At all meals, the multi camera was going without cease. It was a kind of built-in paparazzi. A timid family party might gingerly ask if they could  just possibly take the one picture. The rich gay style is to produce a £3000 Nikon with which there can be little argument and commence clicking . At one point, Elinor, Elsa Hodgeman’s daughter, had command of the camera. She was shameless. She pointed it straight at the waiter. He stuck an elaborate pose. She clicked. He struck another. She clicked again. Over the whole evening the young man was not quite whipped to orgasm by that relentless shutter. Lady Newell was on anti-biotics. Her daughter had warned her not to drink. ‘I’m going to, so be quiet,’ she said. After dinner she had to be supported to the car. I remarked to one of the Multis that if the Gay Mother, that’s my own mother, had drunk so much, she’d be in hospital.

 We must return to the question posed by Robert Nevil two weeks ago: were we happier or as happy in younger and poorer days? Why have all this money?  What’s it for?  The Multis paid £10,000 for the villa, easily £2000 for the wine, another £1500 for Donatella. All that, just to throw a ball around in the swimming pool, go to a few surprisingly simple trattorias and visit museums?

 In many ways this holiday was not so  different from those of years ago. Perhaps we were always poor little rich gays. We usually managed to get hold of nice villas, go to reasonable restaurants and so on.  It was all a great deal cheaper then, of course, but even so  there were low points which exposed the lack of funds – the car with no hand-brake to be parked in vertical Cortona, the night enjoyed by Anthony Mottram and I in the youth hostel at Piraeus.   Now we have choice.  That is the difference.  Rustics with no alternative but to go the humble local trat tend to be less enamoured. To fully embrace the simple life you have to be awfully rich.

All the same, there’s no guarantee that the Multis, on gaining their suite at the Hotel Hassler Villa Medici in Rome, did not throw themselves down on their beds and sigh, ‘Lord were we slumming it at that villa. Now at last we shall be comfortable.’

The Last Supper

Waiter much admired

Thursday 27^th August 2009

 You remember how Angus Willis, the internationally-known food writer, slammed down his fish slice when I put salt in the beans, queening, ‘They’ll be hard! They’ll be hard!’

 As it happens, they weren’t.

 But I’ve haven’t told you about the tiramisu affair.  On the first night, Donatella, the richly burnished villa housekeeper, made the welcome dinner.  The pudding – tiramisu, without coffee, a sweet, perfumed custard decorated with little choc buttons. Rather charming and I thought typico. That horrid gluey confectioners’ custard paste such a feature when in foreign. But Angus Willis furioso. Non mangiere. Next morning into the kitch, instructs Donatella to buy ingredients for true tiramisu, particularly a rare coffee liqueur. We imagine her buzzing all over Italy in the Fiat Uno in search.

 Anyway, next day, she appears with liqueur. No sign as yet of the bomba in cucina we all think a certainty. In fact from the kitch all day (while Angus Willis reigns no-one likes to go in, especially after the salt-in-beans near-death experience), rumours drift that Donatella is actually helping with the erection of the True Tiramisu.

 In the evening we have the Tiramisu, as I’ve mentioned already. It is marv. You will find Angus Willis’s recipe in the comments on ‘Strange and Wonderful Harmony in Tuscany’(22nd August 2009). Then next morning people wafting past the nether regions report that Donatella is actually trying the Tira, and taking down the recipe.

 Finally Angus Willis himself appears. He makes a stunning announcement. He intends to cook one of Donatella’s recipes. And he does. And photographs it for Australian Vogue. It is Penne con ragu alla salvia. Perhaps you’d like the recipe for that as well?

 On the other hand, you can have enough recipes.

 But Donatella is non credo, bowled over.

 So poor little rich gays are not completely horrid. As it happens, in addition, Angus Willis demonstrates the true gay style in the matter of staff. The approach is firm, even demanding, but equally there is a duty to entertain and break down barriers. Staff should feel that they have never been so terrified nor known such larks and nonsense all their born days. Simon Limpney, when I knew him, before the great falling-out, kept up a whirlwind of innuendo and outrage in the kitchen regions at Massivebury. Come to think of it, I don’t think his ladies were frightened of him, not as I was later.

Notice at Siena - what Poor Little Rich Gays never are

Wine label loved by one of the Multis

Classic Multi Holiday Footwear - worn with shorts and jacket

Wednesday 26^th August 2009

 Monday, inexpensive and good lunch in the square at Panzano. Out of nowhere a menacing black Bentley appears. It is a dead-ringer for Robin Smallmeal’s. A cross face can just be seen at the wheel. The real giveaway is the dry-cleaning hanging in the back. Smallmeal always has dry-cleaning. Who would have dry-cleaning in Tuscany? The vehicle makes an abrupt circuit of the square and disappears.

 Can it have been Smallmeal?  Surely not.  But it might as well have been. A shudder of terror goes through me. Yes, I am afraid of Smallmeal or was when I knew him which was for ten years. I didn’t realise it at the time. Was it the power of money? Others certainly deferred to him. There were endless treats, paid for by Smallmeal – villa holidays, Glyndebourne, the Ivy.  Was there a price to pay? I think there was. Certainly, in our falling out, he has not treated me as an equal.

 Then there is the question of Simon Limpney, of course, the Smallmeal partner.

 I must pull myself together. Things can’t be so dull at Rimini that Smallmeal is reduced to driving all the way to Tuscany in the remote hope of terrorising me. It’s more the sort of thing I would do. I’m sure he’s having a wonderful time with that awful couple, one of whom called me ‘rather pompous’. He can’t possibly be finding it necessary to get ahead with his Christmas cards.

Besides I’m here with the Multis. Who are enchanting. I’m thrilled with the budgeting so far. I think I’ll have a fair bit of change from that £6000 I set aside. We’ve visited yet more surprisingly simple and good restaurants. The only major expense is the wine, on which the Multis must have spent £2000 with daily further outlay. And Donatella, who comes at 12 euros an hour – and there are a lot of them. They really aren’t like Smallmeal at all. Apart from anything else, Smallmeal, although absolute number one head of landfill or whatever in UK, is nevertheless an employee. And they are not.

 One of the Multis has bought some chutneys in unusual small jars which give him great pleasure. The other loves throwing beach balls from one end of the swimming pool to the other, then swimming after them, the whole process now repeated in the other direction. The chutney Multi is given to sudden outbursts of affection; he is an excellent photographer and has been going about the neighbourhood making friends through photography. Yesterday he came back from Panzano with reams of shots of a young het French couple he had come across by chance. They had a dog.

 Then, last night, whenever you opened a door or rounded a corner in this vast mansion, there was the photographer Multi being held at bay by Fergus Strachan, the glamorous lawyer and rationalist (who, it turns out, has been visiting a back-street collagenist in Hastings with marvellous results): ‘The American model is a disaster. You can’t be serious. They spend 16 % of GDP on health care.’ ‘I just think with public services you get waste… there need to be controls’ the poor Multi gasped. ‘Sixteen per cent,’ Fergus repeated, wagging his finger.  They were arguing about the NHS, the British, state-funded health service. So it went on, all over this vast, baronial mansion.  The cat’s paw would snatch at the bird; the bird would get away; the cat would pounce again.  But later at dinner I heard them murmuring contently to each other.

 I would never have dared to speak to Robin Smallmeal like this. The Multis are tolerant; they take a huge amount of trouble with their guests; they are kind and generous; they relish being surrounded by people who are not like them,  who are polar opposites even. No, they will never allow themselves to be hollowed out by money.

A surprisingly simple lunch much enjoyed

Simple Restaurant in Arezzo suddenly favoured by the Multis

Monday 24^th August

 Friday  last – one the Multis suggested a cultural outing. That’s right. So much for naughty Robert Nevil lobbing accusations of philistinism. Have you seen his comments? But I do often wonder myself: is shopping more fun? Museums are all very well, but nothing is for sale and they don’t even say what the things are worth.

 It is an important question – can the rich take any pleasure in an experience that only costs 10 euros?

 Well, they did. We whirled over to Arezzo to see the Piero della Francescas. Lady Newell, 80, mother of Elsa Hodgeman, the art critic, was my passenger. Marvellous. Mahogany voice. Keeps up stream of amusing talk as we bowl along. The War comes up of course. All the upheaval caused. Evacuation, loss of servants; I tell her about my grandparents’ house being requisitioned, my grandfather having no work. Comfortable middle class mode of life finito.

 Is this why, even today, the poor little rich gays of our generation feel that we are only just clinging on? Is this why are we driven to accumulate capital? Even Val, despite advanced alcoholism, has capital, you know – rather more than most.

 Approaching Arezzo, Lady Newell suddenly: ‘I can’t bear Arezzo. I can’t think why we’re here.’ It turns out she’s never seen the Pieros. In 1976 I parted wretchedly from Anthony Mottram at Arezzo Station after three weeks in that crazy Molino I told you about – there it was just the two of us.

 The Multis continued paradoxical.  Restaurant with white table cloths and waiters in trendy floor-length aprons rejected on account of cutlery on outside tables in fancy boxes as if from shop. Instead we forge into divine cellar full of old junk, the aim to have the cheapest red wine. This is not straightforward: first of all we have a bottle but one of the Multis suspects this is not the cheapest. He wants it in a jug. This is eventually achieved, although he says he saw the wine being poured from bottle into jug behind the counter.

 Into the Pieros. Elsa Hodgeman gives an illuminating commentary. One of the Multis points out a soldier in the battle scene who knows he is being watched by the artist. The other Multi, in his lethal, casual way, says afterwards, ‘Well, you know, I was thinking: how much longer do we have to stay here?’ But I don’t believe him. Lady Newell delighted although she thought  Piero might have bothered to get the perspective right in one or two cases.

 On the way back we stop at the Prada Factory Shop at Montevarchi and buy. So there was shopping after all.

 To me this was the perfect day. Lady Newell was scathing about the shop. But without shopping there is no renewal. There would only be decay. And we would be contributing nothing ourselves. The Multis made their millions by their own efforts out of nothing.  Piero della Francesca is all very well but he went and did it all himself. If only he had left a few gaps for us to fill in.

Pudding enjoyed by one of the Multis in Arezzo at surprisingly simple restaurant

Tuscan Heaven

Saturday 22^nd August 2009

 So much to tell you, I don’t know where to begin.

 There’s more to these rich gays than money. But we must remember that the path of being rich is the one we have taken – at different levels of course, including that of Val who has at times bordered destitution.

 On Thursday an Italian friend of Prince Dmitri Hersov’s, Carolina, came down from Florence for the day.  I haven’t told you much about Prince Dmitri. When he laments the decay of the modern world, you sense the Russian Steppe rolling grandly away. I’ve no idea what the Russian Steppe looks like but there we are.  He has soul and is good. Carolina could have been pre-ordered for the villa. She said that, were she ever to leave her present job which is running 30 shops of a well-known designer, she would like to be a personal shopper for a princess. Apparently such people instruct as follows: this year, I will have two winter weddings, four summer weddings, two Spring funerals, three summers funerals etc. We thought the funerals diarised a year in advance priceless.

 I dashed up to Radda in Chianti to join Carolina, Prince Dmitri and the Multis for lunch. When I arrived the Multis were re-arranging the furniture on the terrace. On their last visit, they declared, they had re-arranged the entire terrace.  But the lunch was not liked, despite the re-arranging. Little else was spoken of, save its failings. I feared that one of the multis was on the verge of offering, to the waiter, a list of suggestions for improvement. This would have been done with superb, lethal neutrality.

 But in the evening joy broke out. Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver arrived from London. ‘It’s a het attack,’ Matt said. You remember him. He’s the advertising mogul solely responsible for the way deodorants are advertised to adolescent boys all over the world. He said his mission was to steal a Tuscan roof tile. I assumed this was some kind of challenge made by his het friends back home but it turned out he wanted to make a garden light.

 Well, I don’t know I’m sure.

 The Multis were divine, flitting in their pale suits, in the twilight, offering drinks. One of them arranged the table with candles.  It couldn’t have been more perfect. Angus Willis cooked some astonishing beef on the barbeque. It was a feast. Carolina returned from fetching her boyfriend from a motorway service station. She brought ice-cream. We seemed to be getting well-known in the neighbourhood.  There was also a tiramisu, made by Angus, utterly on a higher plane to any other ever tasted.

 What was said? Who was brilliant? I don’t really recall. At our end of the table there were inept attempts to speak in Italian with Carolina’s boyfriend. But there it is – at lunch the tide was out and we were on the mud flats, in the evening – magic.

Anthony Mottram's well-named hotel room in Penang

Friday 21^st August 2009

 Poor Anthony Mottram! As you know, I cruelly broke the tradition of twenty years. I said: No, Anthony, no holiday threesome this year, no you and me, however baggy and comfortable after 40 years together, no to your twenty-three-year-old boyfriend, in this case Vladimir from the Ukraine. I fucked off with the Multis to Tuscany, doubly cruel because Mottram loves Tuscany; it is ours. Seven times we have been here.

 What were my reasons? Was it spite? Was it principle? Taking a principled stand might be dangerous, could turn out to be nothing of the kind. We have always holidayed as a three, the role of the third, younger Mottram boyfriend (we have got older, they have stayed the same age) being taken by a range of Eastern European young men. Why not carry on the same? Why make a fuss?

 I feel guilty. If only he could have been here, in Tuscany. In Malaysia, he visited a fly farm. It rained. It was terribly hot. Especially in The Old Kitchen. This is the name of a hotel room. Do look at the pictures. Look at all those pots and pans heaped up in the bedroom! No TV, no air-con, no mini-bar, but still a vastly expensive Old Kitchen.

 Mottram himself wonders if this is the ultimate gay holiday experience – a hotel so purified it barely has electricity let alone a mini-bar – and a bedroom which is an old kitchen. And, of course, all at glorious expense.

 There is a further peculiarity. Mottram himself is, or imagines himself to be, an Old Kitchen. Let me explain. One of his previous boys was learning English and got ‘kitchen’ and ‘chicken’ muddled up. Mottram did not correct him. ‘Shall we have some kitchen for dinner?’ this young man would say. So ‘kitchen’ came to mean ‘chicken’. At some later point, ‘kitchen/chicken’ came to stand for the boy himself (as a spring chicken, Easter chick; i.e. young and lovely, small and fondle-able) and, later still, Mottram himself, as a lover of kitchens, took to referring to himself as an old kitchen.

 So how right that he should end up in a hotel room named The Old Kitchen in Penang.

Mottram's kitchen suite in Penang

The Mottram Old Kitchen suite in Penang

The table, at Le Vigne, Radda in Chianti after lunch had been eaten. What do you deduce?

Thursday 20th August 2009

Today Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver are coming. In fact she has just texted from the 1st Class lounge at Gatwick, feeling a little queasy after the Easybus – whatever that is.

You may remember, they are to experience their first gay holiday as non-gays.

At breakfast, a minute ago, a helicopter flew over, low. Very low, skimming the tops of the trees. Was it the Limpney/Smallmeals, doing a recce? I’m thinking those Exocets might be needed after all – purely for defence purposes, of course. They are known users of copters. It could have been them. Now, I have heard, if you’re interested, about the guests at their Rimini hutch-hovel – that’s their villa. Oh dear, oh dear! What a falling off! No lovely Robert Nevil, who like me was once of their party, no Anthony Mottram, no Riverside Multis. They are reduced, reduced to a drab stuffy couple one of whom once called me, to my face, ‘rather pompous’. I think he thought ‘pompous’ meant ‘campy and queeny’. Can you imagine the ignorance?

Speaking of which, yesterday I went to Florence, to fetch Elsa Hodgeman, her mother, Lady Newell, and her daughter, Elinor, from the airport. Would you believe it, the Prada shop in Via Tornabuoni in restauro! Chiuso! Just as well, really, I’ve not a penny to spend. But, walking through the city, I suddenly thought: the Pazzi chapel is near here. So I peered through the grille in the Piazza Santa Croce. There it was, sitting, complete, tiny and perfect, at the end of the garden beside the church. Maybe you don’t know the Pazzi Chapel. It is one of the earliest Renaissance buildings, by Brunelleschi. The headmaster of my prep showed us pictures of it. I’ve always known it. It looked more dun and more extraordinary than I remembered. But there it was, not seen by me for at least 15 years. For some reason I felt a little tearful. It was the same when I rounded the corner at the end of Via Tornabuoni and there were the Arno, the Ponte Vecchio and the Ponte Trinitá. Elsa Hodgeman said it was all to do with the English middle class mania for Florence as the cradle of modern European civilisation.

Today the Multis have roared forth in their hired convertible to a wine-tasting. They seem to be aiming to taste all the wines of Chianti before, perhaps, launching into production themselves. One of them is dressed in an amazing tropical get-up circa 1950 – white jacket, shorts, but bizarre slip-ons giving a unique touch.

Last night there was just a little hiss and scratch when the outdoor table had to be re-positioned to accommodate the enlarged party. Too many cooks were spoiling the broth. One of the multis had to take control and the rest of us were heaving the heavy marble slabs. It was found necessary to count the floor tiles to get the exact middle. I forgot to mention that a few days ago Angus Willis had a fit when he discovered I’d put salt in the beans before putting them on to boil. ‘They’ll be hard,’ he snapped, ‘hard.’ And then at dinner that day the gorgeous Fergus Strachan (he’s the lawyer partner of Angus Willis) suddenly got into a tremendous state about Statins and begged certain members of the party to up their doses. There was also a bit of set-to about the Congestion Charge. In London you have to pay to enter a central zone in your car. The Multis are massively against. They adore Mrs Thatcher. So they don’t like bossy, interfering rules and regulations. In fact, when and if she dies, you had better phone them at once and offer condolences. Fergus and I mad for the Con Charge. Before I knew it, I was screeching, ‘If we don’t cut down on car use, the planet is doomed.’ One of the Multis brilliantly deflected the situation: ‘You’d be marvellous on Question Time.’ – it’s a political discussion programme. He meant: terrible, tub-thumping bore. What’s more, I’ve been just a little coy about my poor performance at Bridge on Tuesday occasioning some plain-speaking from one of the Multis.

 But soon, we’re seeing the funny side. I said to Angus Willis, ‘That was a superb cat snarl on your face brought on by the bean crisis.’ I don’t think the Multis will kick me out of their lives, unlike Robin Smallmeal and Simon Limpney. Money for the Multis is freedom: to buy as they want, to treat their friends, perhaps to stock pile against the future.

I have gone on too long. Have we really probed the question: why are we rich, even if not as rich as the Multis? Could we have remained as we were in youth?

In the evening, Donatella appeared to do some uncalled for gardening. We suspect that her real purpose was to display a particularly lovely jungle-print sun-frock to an exceptionally appreciative audience.

Donatella in early evening gown