Angus Willis's photo shoot for Australian Vogue

The Multis wine purchases in preparation for the arrival of Elsa Hodgeman

Tuesday  18^th August 2009

 Our Tuscan setting is gay perfection. The landscape is austere, contrived and important, granted permanence by great artists. No horrid, craggy, just-as-nature-left-it Lake District horror here. Bruce MacBain would approve. On the other hand, there is Donatella, who has been engaged for a reckless number of hours by the Multis to provide what Anthony Mottram would call ‘breakfast service’. Think Barbara Windsor as naughty French maid. Except that Donatella is a rich burnished terracotta, coiffed and outfitted to a level beyond vac-ing or dusting. Her cork mules limit movement. Maybe she will gossip and go in for naughty talk like the excellent ladies who run Massivebury, the Limpney/Smallmeal country res.

 Poor little rich gay employers tend to bring out the filthy side in lady domestic staff. It is not quite what you expect. These women, of course, have never known such larks.

 Prince Dmitri Hersov, one of the Multis’ oldest friends (they were at the accountancy school together) is here and speaks good Italian. But he is proper.

 Speaking of the Limpney/Smallmeals, the Exocet missiles have arrived, but lie abandoned in the grass. I find I have no real urge to fire them off. Maybe it is the heat. It would be rather awful if my loathing were to go off the boil. Suppose I were just to forget about them?

 Yesterday, the Multis set off on a tour of grand wine establishments with Prince Dmitri in the Porsche and Marcus Cargill, who is England’s leading clock restorer and incidentally was at prep with Anthony Mottram (it’s a small world when you’re at the top). Marcus is noted for responding to the recent economic downturn by tripling his quota of holidays. They returned late in the evening with numerous of those rather sinister wooden cases very grand wine comes in that look rather like coffins.

 I must confess, although it is early in the holiday, I am so far only down about 50 euros. As you know, I have budgeted £6000 for living expenses while here. But these wine-buying outings are a little worrying. What if the Multis suddenly turn round and say, ‘That’ll be £40,000’?

 Just like that, there could be no money left.

 What seemed to give them most delight was a china ex-ashtray they bought at Baron Ricasole’s for 31 euros. No-one smokes now so it is a nibbles try. They squealed and giggled as they got it out of the box. At Baron Ricasole’s one of them’s shoes had been admired. More child-like, gurgling pleasure.

 You remember we were curious about how the Multis would dress in Tuscany. In London they are continual tailored suits, massive cufflinks – the business look gone mad. Well, here, it is the butch army shorts as I suggested, but the amazing stripped or floral or both shirts are retained as are the glamorous and unlikely shoes by Jeffrey West.

 There’s so much more to tell you. Robert Nevil and Anthony Mottram have raised profound philosophical questions in their comments. I hope you have seen. Why are we rich? Were we happier on those basic holidays of student days? But I’ve no time now. Nor to tell you how lunch yesterday was delayed because Angus Willis was busy photographing it for Australian Vogue. In the end, Fergus Strachan (he is Angus’s partner; terrifying lawyer, massively rational but devoted to bathroom products) and I became models. It was the only way we could get anything to eat.

bag of pomodori styled by one of the multis

 Monday 17^th August 2009

 Tuscany! I have gained. The Multis’ villa is baronial and at the end of miles and miles of dusty track, utterly exclusive and surrounded by the deepest, deepest silence. We have already queened all over it but more of that later. No room is smaller than a tennis court.

 Shall we go cooh, cooh, gush, gush over Tuscany? Do you know a ghastly book called Bella Tuscany by Frances Mayes?  Anthony Mottram and I were here first in 1976, at the Molino di Castagnole – £40 a week, enormous house, half of it not properly indoors, stream running through the kitchen if it rained, six kilometre walk to only, 6 a.m, bus to San Gimini, Siena…where ever we wanted to go. Enchanting!

Is Tuscany now de-based, wrecked by all the gushers and fantasists like Frances Mayes?  No, it isn’t.  At least from this mansion, the view is as it’s always been – ordered and sweeping .  This landscape is grave, simple and unsentimental.  It might look like wild woods but the assemblies of hilltop dwellings, umbrella pines and sombre rows of cypresses are the human addition.  Depicted with calm, factual clarity in so many Renaissance paintings, it has become, unlike other landscapes, a work of art in its own right.

 It is the right back-drop for gays, whose lives are more than usually artificial.

 But we have little time for any of this. Within the baronial halls and immediate environs there is much to attend to. Angus Willis, the internationally known food writer, is furious that the original vaulted kitchen has been turned into a redundant drawing room, one of three, and the huge stone sink is an ornament. I will tell you about his five-year restoration of a Tudor house in Hastings one day. We, with the Multis leading the way,  don’t like the floor tiles (too modern, not reclaimed) the ceilings (the same), the position of the swimming pool, the outside lighting, the shape of the dining table;  the extractor fan over the cooker is at the wrong level; Angus would have all the fake cotty, wooky, Cotswoldy  fitted kitchen cupboards out in a jiffy. The Multis themselves, concerned for their guests and attending to every detail,   have been heaving furniture, wielding the weedy Miele vac, styling vases and fruit bowls. 

It’s excessively stimulating.

You will be intrigued to know that not even a multi-million pound fortune is enough to provide uniformed staff. We have Donatella, who is delightful, but amateur and a deep burnt-orange hue. She warned that this morning she would be late. She was taking her daughter to the doctor; perhaps this offspring is not coming up the same amazing shade.

It’s terrible to mock staff, isn’t it?

 Nor is there immunity to Ikea. Last night at dinner, one of the multis quipped: ‘I see we’re asked to put the burglar alarm on at night.  Not much point. We’ll put up a notice: “Only Ikea within”. ’ There was just was before Mr Fox (or rather Master Fox) was discovered by the fridge, nicely settled for a snooze.

Vegetables styled by Angus Willis, later de-styled by Donatella and re-styled by Angus Willis

Friday 14^th August 2009

 Elsa Hodgeman’s party last night! Glorious final burst before we close down for the holidays. Elsa is a crucial figure in the art world and tremendous friend and advisor to the Multis who were there of course. She’s also coming to Tuscany, so we’ll hear more of her. Her style is fully bohemian. Enormous Georgian terraced house which for years has been a kind of artists’ commune. No frilly little canapés on a slate in a nest of blossoms. In the kitchen a huge Parma ham and several cheeses, but access made difficult by a tremendous congestion of, as it turned out, QCs, Law Lords, Government Ministers, prominent doctors, art students, dealers and celebrities.

 Oh the names!  Grayson Perry! Last seen by me at the opening of the Towner Gallery extension in Eastbourne where I went with Bruce MacBain in April. Then he was in the frock. That’s all I know about him. He wears a frock, very expensive looking, silk, hand-made apparently. He makes pots. I’ve never seen one. Laura Malcolm doesn’t approve. This time he was not in the frock. He’s decidedly masculine in appearance. He said he’d been made deaf by riding a motorbike.

 That was it! No further conversation. The point is to gaze and be in the presence. Odd thing celebrity. Call it superficial but I’m all for it. What a lift ! Otherwise there’d only be reality. If you get to know famous people or they become friends, the magic fades. They are just like everyone else or worse. But you must have well-known people as friends. All poor little rich gays do. 

 And then Lord Baron. Former President of the Royal College of Surgeons. Ferociously important. I couldn’t believe it. He was also at the Towner opening. Lord B had an extension built some years ago by my friend, Gilbert Gray. So I brought that up. I actually spoke to Lord B. He said the extension had transformed his life, before house had been unbearably poky. It seems unlikely – I know his street. The houses are huge. Anyway all this was utterly riveting. Later Lord B departed the party in a cycling helmet.

 Only slight awkwardness was the lady from my bike shop, where recently I was just a little cutting and unstable about their enormous bill. Did rather reel to see her at Elsa’s. Quite a biking theme to the evening, as it turns out.

Lord Baron, the King of Harley Street, leaves Elsa Hodgeman's party in informal cycing gear

Wednesday 12th August 2009

Lord Arrowby has broken a tooth at breakfast on the Ile de Re (yes, I know about the accents). He is to be treated locally and will not regain this country until Friday. It is not known whether this incident is connected with any intensive programme of luxury pampering he may or may not have been subjected to at his hotel.

I should explain that a proper rich gay summer holiday has the following features: hotel (4 stars min. Some think 4 stars hell; Do look at Mrs Solomon Bung’s comment below re: 4 stars: death; 5 stars:life); regime of ‘treatments’ – that’s it.

It would be encouraging if a figure of the gravitas of Lord Arrowby were to apply this principle. Once at La Residencia on Mallorca (do you know it? It is supposed to be a hotel to mention, but on Tripadvisor.com there are lots of complaints about it), a friend of Simon Limpney’s was treated to the point of total paralysis on the massage table.  It was hours before he could be wynched off and days before the pain eased.

Anthony Mottram has gained the Eastern and Oriental Hotel which he says is at Pankot – but this must be his monsoon madness speaking because Pankot stands in for Simla in The Jewel in the Crown.  The crucial thing is: he has been upgraded to a seaview suite.

The upgrade, at no further cost, is a vital feature of the rich gay holiday. At times it is achieved by gaydar-style work with the reception staff. But this is rather cheap. Mottram probably bantered and teased while not failing to convey the steel beneath.

The Riverside Multis once went to Venice for the weekend. It was the Biennale. At the Gritti Palace Hotel they were offered a tiny, dark room  at 750 euros a night. Not good enough. After much patient work, they secured a half-price suite  – at only 1400 euros a night.

Wednesday 12th August 2009

All morning I’ve been troubled in my mind by pictures in the Daily Mail  (left on the floor by a visitor) of Lord Mandelbaum’s  Monday boarding outfit .  I was too quick to judge yesterday. Something’s wrong with it but what exactly? As it happens, summer frockage is a challenge generally to the over 40s, women, as well as men. Most people look better in winter.  A certain Liz Jones of the Mail is no help at all. She is horrid about everything Lord M wore in Corfu, condemns his perfectly nice leather sandals and  insists that middle-aged men should only wear light-weight suits and shirts in summer. Now the Riverside Multis might like this. They wear made-to-measure suits all the year round, even on Saturdays. In one of them’s dressing room on Sunday, I saw a selection bagged up from the cleaners ready to be shipped out to Italy. But they also have a casual look which consists of lumberjack shirt, hefty masculine army shorts and big butch boots. Is this what they will wear in Tuscany? See Style in the News

Malaysian railway crockery - as seen in Mottram boutique hotel

 Monday 11^th August 2009

 Can you digress before you’ve even begun?  I must just tell you, before I launch my main topic, that my spirits suddenly are restored.  I wonder why?  On the whole, as I get older, I grow more emotionally unbalanced. On Saturday I bought a boxed set of 4 Mozart operas for £8.99 and played the Queen of the Night’s aria about seventeen times. Sometimes simple things can give pleasure. On Sunday, lunch at the Multis; en plein air, roof terrace, glorious day (even for August with its white light), views such as enjoyed only by the very rich or very poor living in tower blocks. Of course on Saturday next we foregather at their Tuscan villa and get dug in versus the Smallmeal/Limpney holiday home at Rimini. I must remind the Multis to ask the Villa company to supply, as well as Wi-fi, a good stock of long range missiles. What are they called these days? Is it Mik-32s or was that years’ ago? One really ought to know.  I wonder if you can get them last minute.

 Val attended the Multis, just a little drunk on arrival, brilliant, hard, crystalline and full of the glories of Nicky Haslam’s Desert Island Discs, which I missed. But he is dreadfully thin and hardly ate a thing. This is a new development – worrying. It is sad. In the past we often holidayed together, Mottram, him and me. Now it would be impossible.

 But, thrilling news, I’ve actually had an e-mail from Lord Arrowby and a text message. I’ve also heard from Anthony Mottram in Malaysia. So bursting to tell you.  Lord A is not in Corfu with Lord Mandelbaum but on L’Ile de Re (it’s got an accent on the last ‘e’ but no idea how to put it). What on earth is it? I think it’s off the French coast, in the Atlantic. I have an idea my friend, Edward Jasper, the bed linen expert and multi-millionaire, goes there. He, unusually for a top gay, doesn’t like travelling and will only go to St Bart’s and, I think, this Il de Re place. So if it’s good enough for him…. Perhaps we should look into it. Lord Arrowby, of course, completely unforthcoming as to who with or how long staying or price of the hotel etc.

 But I shall find out.

 It is a shame Lord A is not better known to the public but his work is all behind the scenes, you see. He would be much more of a hit than Lord Mandelbaum. Did you see his (Lord M’s) boarding outfit today for his return from Corfu?  Less said the better. Now if that had been Lord A it would have been some kind of shimmering, sparkling athletic wear that would have caused a sensation and surely revived interest in the workings of government. It would have been that safety-pin dress all over again. What was she called, that girlfriend of Hugh Grant? Heather Mills? No… LIZ HURLEY… that’s right.

 As for Anthony Mottram in Malaysia, I rather wonder. It is the monsoon season and they do say the White Man can go mad in the rain. On arrival he claimed not to find Asia. He said it had been Bobsified. He referred to his father who concreted over any garden. Now he has removed to a lux resort beach complex. It looks perfectly normal, in the rich gay way of looking – seething with staff, railway-style crockery for sale from glass cabinets in the lobby, trails of white muslin everywhere for that tropical look – but he keeps insisting that a certain tent on the beach is named ‘The Limpney/Smallmeal Honeymoon Lunch Tent’. He says there is a plaque and that staff have fond memories etc…. but this can’t be true. Simon Limpney and Robin Smallmeal had their honeymoon on a canal boat in Wales. It was Simon’s idea. Often those of high birth think they might fancy such a thing. But the Elsan (that’s a chemical toilet) finished them off and they had to be helicoptered back from Llangollen (I’ve actually checked that spelling and I got it right) to Massivebury after 48 hours. 

 Here are some of Anthony Mottram’s holiday snaps:

The so-called Smallmeal/Limpney honeymoon lunch tent - Malaysia

Beach Freshening in Malaysia

Vladimir from the Ukraine - about to assume voluntary burka

 Friday 7^th August 2009

 To Bruno with Robert Nevil. I remembered that he is a friend just in time. I am prim. This is the fate of the frivol. I couldn’t bear Borat – agony of embarrassment and boredom. But I was looking forward to Bruno.  Fashion; screaming queens – perfect for me. There was a very funny Bruno incident on TV once. He tricked some unfortunate assistant of Carolina Herrera into discussing earnestly the non-existent sea theme of the designer’s latest collection. Eventually Carolina Herrera herself appeared: ‘What about the sea-theme?’ Bruno shrieked. ‘There ain’t no sea theme,’ the grand dame growled, incidentally supplying the perfect punch-line.

 By the time Baron Cohen made the film, the fashion industry had been warned. The only people who hadn’t heard of Bruno, it would seem, were the witless, naive, backward inhabitants of Middle America. So Bruno is really Borat all over again. At times it was just too cruel, as when desperate show-biz moms agree that their children could be crucified or exposed to dangerous chemicals if it would get them the part. Many of the scenes ended in the same way with Bruno’s victims getting furious and Bruno having to run away – not wildly funny. And I do rather know that the Mid-West is – how shall I say? – well, not very waxed, not much pouring over paint charts or fabric samples, and abounds with guns which are likely to be turned on any male found doing any of these things. I wouldn’t go there myself. Why not come to London and be a poor little rich gay?

 So I didn’t take Bruno as well as I might. It did not lift my spirits or perhaps because of my poor spirits I was not lifted. Robert Nevil, on the other hand, was much freer and less grim. He was thrilled with it from start to finish.  I did like the early bit where Bruno had a boyfriend who was a ludicrous Asian child-lookalike subjected to every kind of anal punishment, mechanical and otherwise, by way of a sex life. This was good satire; in other words just a little bit spot-on. Gays are keen on: younger boyfriends, possibly kept, and anonymous performance sex. If you can combine the two – have anonymous ritualistic sex with a ‘barely legal’ lover – this is ideal. Straights might like this too, but rarely have the opportunities open to gays – or do they?

 Robert Nevil tells that there have been complaints that Bruno re-inforces gay stereotypes. Well, it does but so what?  Only a moronic straight from Swindon would mistake a gorgeous manly gay like Lord Mandelbaum for Bruno. Anyway I rather like stereotypes. At least you know where you are.

 Afterwards we go to Chinese restaurant in Gerrard Street (that’s Chinatown in London – just the one street really). This is all right when no-one is looking. You can’t go to the Ivy all the time (but I will be going there soon – when the season re-opens in September. Just you wait and see!). A drawback of being even a little bit rich is the anxiety that the money might run out. So you have to save and cut-back when there is the opportunity. In order to build up reserves.

 But we do choose the smartest Chinese with the shiny black stone lining. I don’t know its name. It’s awfully well-known. It’s been reviewed everywhere. Rufus Pitman told me about it. Over dinner I bore Robert Nevil with talk of re-lay-hion-ships (as Philip Larkin put it). He is a fragile poor little rich gay at the best of times. Now he is reduced to pile of grey ash and has to be taken home in an urn (later he revives). I long to achieve the perfect blend of comedy and tragedy that you see in Chekov’s plays (except Ivanov – what a relief when he suicides!).

 Is that how you spell Chekov? There are  prob. several ways.

 The bill for the Chinese was £70!  But Robert Nevil got half-price cinema tickets – so whole evening cost £40 not including bus fare (don’t tell the Multis).

Wednesday 5^th August 2009

 I regain the capital. I find I cannot remember who my friends are. ‘You’re a sad and lonely person,’ Simon Limpney screamed down the phone at me. This was some years ago. He sounded just like Dawn French doing that send-up of The Omen.  I think it’s The Omen. Anyway she’s tied to a bed getting more and more satanic. Eventually her tongue comes alive.

 No word from Anthony Mottram, no farewell text before boarding for Malaysia. Lord Arrowby has gone abroad but it is not said where – maybe he has joined Lord Mandelbaum in Corfu. Lord Arrowby is just like Lord Mandelbaum if you imagine Lord M as: younger, terribly attractive, with hazel eyes, sparkling, with a fun-loving side. I don’t think Lord A is involved in politics. I’ve only the vaguest idea of what he does – but it’s terribly important.

 Granny always took a dim view of August. She said the light in July is blue but in August it goes white. I agree. August is a non-month. It is the true winter of the year, not January or February as is commonly believed. The trees have gone dull. The garden is tired. If you look in Hello magazine, and there are pictures of people at parties in August, you think: this can’t be happening, they must all be dead or something.

The Gay Mother's superb garden

Tuesday 4^th August 2009

 Bruce MacBain returns to London by train. He actually has to work. But he is self-employed, of course. Very few rich gays are employees; if they are, there’s trouble.

 I remain for a few more days with the Gay Mother. We have a nostalgic couple hours after lunch on Monday recalling her old frockage. Rather I recall. She has forgotten.  The Dior-esque summer dress in a sweet pea print circa 1961, the plainer straight up and down navy frock with large white spots  –  a complete blank.

 In a nutshell: I was born and began immediately to find fault. Didn’t like gloss for the woodwork. Why not eggshell? Why magnolia throughout? Poor Gay Mother – no wonder she thought one child enough. By the age of five the effort of urging her to greater and greater heights of frockage was wearing me out.  She had plenty of jewels, hats, gloves, bags and associated garments but endless excuses for not wearing them. So what if she was gardening or it was too hot/too cold? My cousin, George, had better control. His mother rarely got more than half way down the stairs before she was ordered  back for a re-fit.      

 Looking back, the Gay Mother put up a pretty good fight. Now I’ve come to appreciate her taste. Her drawing room has an impressive unity, like a painting, all subfusc (Spellcheck has never heard of this word: I’m holding out) blues, greens and browns. Her garden this year is glorious. But she cannot be persuaded to open it under the National Gardens Scheme. Once she is gone, I’ll be very much alone in the world. I cannot bear to think of her home, where she has lived for 56 years and where I was brought up, in other hands.

 Nevertheless there is the matter of the overhead light in the dining room. And table-laying and styling is not a strong point (see below).

 Anthony Mottram’s mother poses flirtatiously if ever he takes a photo of her. Lord Arrowby’s is taking an excessive interest in his gay clergy friends. But she must be thrilled that her son is a lord. I would be. My friend, Edward Jasper, the bed linen expert and another genuine multi (I’m sorry. I love money. I really do) had a whole floor of his house re-modelled (walls knocked down, new bathroom etc) for his mother’s ten-day visit from abroad this summer.

 Is it that with gay mothers there is always an element of competition? We must return to this theme. The other day Mottram had the cheek to say to me: ‘You’ll never have a boyfriend for as long as you’re tied to your mother.’ Speak for yourself, I thought. ‘Boyfriend’ is a rather Central of Europe expression, don’t you think? Rather behind the times. We say ‘partner’ now, especially in our fifties.  But then, not all boyfriends are partners. And not all partners are boyfriends.

The Gay Mother's table styling