A Stelrad - rip out if you have

Saturday 2^nd August 2009

I drive the Gay Mother back to the country taking my architect, Bruce MacBain, with me. But he comes as a friend (of over thirty years in fact) rather than in an official capacity. You remember him. He is also Laura Malcolm’s architect, as well as a lot of other important people’s.

On the other hand it is usual for grand gays to travel with a skeleton back-up team. Art advisors are often crucial. Some years ago one of the Multis told me that Chase Aston, the make-up artist, made the mistake of coming to London from New York without his trainer and nutritionist – with the result that he gained over three stone.

Bruce saved the day some years ago when the Gay Mother was finally persuaded to have central heating (yes, like the Queen, she had been crouched over a two-bar fire since the War). I was lying awake at night thinking she would end up with Stelrads – do you know them?  They’re the absolute bogarama horror radiator, the ruin of many a happy snap of family life in the home. I have some in my own home, in inconspicuous places, I hope. At the last moment, Bruce suggested Monza. The Gay Mother listened to him since he is a plain-speaking Scot. They are flat and blend into the background, unlike the vile Stelrad. You must have them.

Bruce’s luggage causes consternation – to me, at any rate. Where it is?  Just a little slim thing like a briefcase. For four nights I have two large bags, five jeans, six shirts, emergency pants (I’m learning to live with those outsize Bridget Jones bloomers, by the way. It’s terrible. You get used to anything in the end. This is how not to achieve style), Rare Earth Face Pack, two colognes (day and evening). The truth is Bruce was brought up in a peat stream. His skin is perfect. He doesn’t need products – not yet at least.  

No, he has put everything into other areas. He once very properly fell out with a painter and decorator who got paint on his flawless polished rubber floor. For the last two years he has been contemplating a curtain over a door in his house. Just about every known fabric sample has been sent for. None will do.

We visit a nearby well-known garden and make criticisms. Acers are dismissed – I do agree. A lot of them are brown, not red. They look like shivering trolls. Plants have a hard time getting into Bruce’s own garden. There must be no frivolity or lax habit. Evergreen is preferred for year-round interest and lack of tendency to look unsightly. On this occasion Bruce lights on a formidable item with large hairy leaves and strange scaly flowers. Here it is:

Rodgersia (possibly pinnata superba ) - approved of by Bruce MacBain

Tea-light in a paper bag at Angus Willis and Fergus Strachan's dinner

Tea-lights in paper bags at Angus Willis and Fergus Strachan's - why not try ?

Contrasting style: the Gay Mother's table decor

Thursday 30^th July 2009

The Gay mother came to London. She is 85 and carries her own suitcase. We went to dinner with Fergus Strachan and Angus Willis. Just imagine – the Gay Mother, 85, is separate rooms, good Wilton carpet, pretty bits of china, antique furniture, framed prints. Angus and Fergus are vast open space, polished cement floor, rough walls unchanged from when the building was a warehouse, two huge pale blue sofas, a coffee table with rock legs and a cactus.  At one time you could not open a magazine without seeing this space, as it is properly called, featured.

The Gay Mother fell silent. Afterwards, she said, ‘Well, it was an experience.’ She thought some more and added: ‘It’s not really a home, is it?’

Of course it isn’t a home. Gays don’t live in homes.

Angus Willis is a well-known food writer, stylist, photographer and entrepreneur. As we arrive he is styling the table, which is, like the floor, polished cement tiles.  I once dropped in at the Warehouse to find a stylist (not Angus) styling a tea-towel for a photo-shoot. Today the look is tea-lights in white paper bags and bashed-up tin ware from Vietnam, bunches of mint, and a stem of pink orchids laid across each place. Is this the first time Vietnamese tin pans have featured at a high London dinner? At all Angus’s dinners it is different everything – different cutlery, crockery, lighting. You too could do this if you made a bit more effort. You only need to spend a few days looking in second-hand shops for matching sets; after the dinner you can sell them on e-bay (but I don’t think Angus does this). For your next dinner you buy different ware, which might involve flying to Asia.

Angus’s early recipes include: a cake with a chocolate band. You melt choc and spread it on greaseproof paper. At the crucial moment, just before it sets but is still pliable, you tie it round the cake and whip off the greaseproof paper to view upstanding perfect stockade of chocolate around the cake. Housewives up and down the country were admitted to rest-homes still clutching their failed chocolate bands. Another recipe for an Asian salad has at least ten obscure ingredients, many layers, side-bits etc and was quite delicious. As it happens I gave it to Robin Smallmeal who said only a gay would have dreamt up such a thing.

Later Angus published a very successful book of more basic cooking such as might be carried out in families.

The dinner begins: the Gay Mother is presented with a banana leaf on a tin plate. There are little piles of perfectly chopped shallots, red chilli, ginger, some unknown white root as well as an exquisite fairy bowl containing shrimp paste.  These ingredients are to be laid on beetle (Robert Nevil tells me it is betel. I had no idea)leaves  and eaten. The Gay Mother proceeds with caution. Six courses follow: two kinds of spring roll with their dipping sauce to be wrapped in lettuce leaves and mint from the vast tin plate the size of a cart wheel in the middle of the table, a surprise soup occurring half way through – sadly I cannot describe it all. It was a Vietnamese dinner – hence the accessories.

What an extraordinary experience and what a privilege to be there!

There were also guests, most of them big names in the food world. And there was camperama: a grand lady asked the head chef of a famous restaurant if he had seen The Fairy Queen. She meant the opera by Purcell.  ‘I certainly have seen the fairy queen and far more of her than you’ll ever see, dear.’ Grand lady very excited. They had quite a stretch of naughty talk. Gay Mother not impressed. ‘If only they had been more natural,’ she said later. This is worrying. I’m not very natural myself, as you may have noticed. It’s my nerves. The important guests made intriguing statements. The grand lady pronounced the food in Scotland very badly cooked and claimed that Elizabeth David did terrible harm to British cooking at a time when it needed a boost. The as yet unfamous guests were friendly.  One was Jenny Hammerton.  She took an interest in the Gay Mother. The recipes of the stars of the silver screen are her passion. She has collected over 3000 from old magazines.  She can provide you with a silver-screen supper. I think you should try one. E-mail silverscreensuppers@yahoo.co.uk.  She gave us all packets of Janet Gaynor’s ice-box cookies which she had made herself the night before. We enjoyed them subsequently amidst the Gay Mother’s decor in the country.

Tuesday 28th July 2009

You know about the spectacular villa war raging amongst the poor little rich gays. In a fortnight the Riverside Multis launch a thundering offensive with a fully-staffed, six-bedroom Tuscan mansion, which cannot fail to fully pulverise whatever cement hutch in tasteful beachside lemon with curly white balustrades the Limpney/Smallmeals have landed themselves with at Rimini.   

Now, at the last minute as usual, Anthony Mottram is lobbing in a two-week holiday in Malaysia with his current young man, Vladimir from the Ukraine.

I suffered a lunge of distress at the news.

It will be a classic, boutique-hotel, private-guide, private-chef, excess-luggage, full gay holiday with Mottram being paradoxical in the rich gay manner.  Any lapses of service and he’ll have his scalpel out: ‘What is your target time for bringing the drinks?’ ‘What sort of impact do you expect this sauce to have?’ On the other hand, he will aim to entertain staff with jolly banter. They should feel they’ve never had such a wild time. In California, in the Napa Valley, at a hotel glazed and polished and honed to etherised perfection, this didn’t work. ‘What’s the point of ironing the newspapers? I wouldn’t bother if I were you,’ Anthony said to the receptionist whose head started to roll alarmingly and almost fell off.  

You could say, ‘That’s California for you!’ Joshing not understood.

Lord knows what Anthony would make of the Copthorne Hotel in which I am now sitting (no Internet connection at the Gay Mother’s where I am staying. I was desperate). There is a huge party of Australians. The barmaid keeps saying over and over: ‘You’re due a welcome drink. Do you want to pay for this one and have the welcome drink later?’

Maybe they could have their welcome drinks on departure.  It might be hard to fit them in.

For the last twenty years, I have always had my summer holiday with Anthony and whichever young man he happens to be giving a start in life to. Travelling as a three, no doubt passers-by were thinking: ‘Isn’t modern science wonderful! Look at those gays, they’ve got a son!’

It was an unusual arrangement. But until recently Anthony and I also always had a week to ourselves at New Year. Attractive European destinations. But when this new young man was introduced, that was no longer convenient and the New Year holiday was abolished, not to be replaced. As a threesome, always Anthony and I and the third one not being a fixture, of course, we have had numerous tours, in Africa and Europe. Anthony and I would do most of the talking, breaking off to answer questions from the younger one, who might be mainly attached to a computer, looking for educational opportunities.

This year I cruelly threw over Anthony and Vladimir in favour of the Riverside Multis’ villa in Tuscany. This new relationship with Vladimir from the Ukraine shows great promise. It is quite likely to develop into a complete, equal partnership. The Multis’ offer could not have come at a better moment and I was thrilled to accept it.

But now I am just a little wounded.  Anthony has mentioned at various times that we might visit Malaysia together. But now I find other arrangements have been made.  He might have chosen a more modest holiday. There are many agreeable mountain huts to be had in Rumania or Slovakia with dining possibilities in nearby ex-Communist restaurants. Wholesome cabbage soup, grey or purple cutlets, yellow or pink pudding  – surely this would have done?

Sadly, Malaysian boutique it is to be. Gay relationships may only appear to be less conventional than straight, although I know of only a handful that are exactly what they seem. The companionable partnership, founded on esteem and understanding of the kind that is only possible between equals (if you want to know what I’m talking about read Pride and Prejudice), but minus the sex and romance, is quite a feature. The difference, compared with hets, possibly, is that gays have more powers of endurance. You may have heard that they were awfully brave in the War.

The holiday is winding down and we are suffering from mild pre-boarding tension. There is no camperama. There are no more excerpts from Gone with the Wind or, another favourite, Upstairs, Downstairs (‘Since Bridges was took I’ve been awful lonely.’). Instead, the topic is cleaning women, difficulties of relationship with. Matt Driver does not take part. He is looking at the fairy ring.

As we drive out of Normandy, I see the entrance to the great manoire which Simon Limpney once visited on cat business. It was in the days when he favoured Somalian blues, which aren’t blue at all. It’s a kind of pedigree cat, if you don’t know – small and puny, inclined to die. There was an important breeding opportunity to be had at this manoire. He was accompanied by a hired interpreter. Last week, at that castle we visited in Falaise, it suddenly comes back to me, were some models of medieval siege machines. The French name of one, Laura told me, translated as ‘bollock flinger’.

Medieval bollock flinger perhaps useful for laying siege to Massivebury

What a good idea to get a few of these made up and then lay siege to Massivebury, the Smallmeal/Limpney country residence! They would be sitting in their pale aqueous drawing room and a great stone bollock would come hurling through the window.

That would liven up their dull lives.

On the channel ferry I am astonished to see no gays in the premier lounge but two glum pensioners the only occupants. Gays usually like an opportunity to purchase superiority.

No gays in the Premier Lounge on the Channel ferry

I was going to say that a channel ferry of any kind is a challenge to the poor little rich gay. In Prada and Alexander MacQueen one really is impossible in such a setting. Esme recalled that on a previous crossing, when Hopkin was much younger and fussy about his food, I had shrieked at the top of my voice, ‘I’ve found a wich that the child will eat.’ This is front-syllable lopping, another of my tendencies. Either I or Anthony Mottram got the idea from Shakespeare (I’ve wracked my brains to think of an example). But now I begin to wonder. There are quite a number of chronically styled, not necessary gay, young men even in this banal lower rung of Hell. Perhaps this is the problem for the modern gay. How to stand out and be noticed now that no longer picked on and vilified? Although it is not entirely true that gays are not picked on and vilified. By chance Charis tells us about some man she knew who never did any household shopping but one day his girlfriend was ill and he had no choice. He went to Tescos. At the checkout his bankcard failed. He shrieked and screamed. The climax was: ‘What am I, Carlo Maria von Wedderburn, doing in Tescos anyway!’ I was thinking: a gay ought to have been saying that. It’s not fair.  Is this stereotyping? It must mean something to be gay. Is it unreasonable to ask what?

The only thing you can be sure of is that, unlike Carlo Maria von Wedderburn, no gay would have a long-suffering girlfriend-mother to go home to.

Sunday July 26^th 2009

Glorious pink morning at Laura Malcolm’s Norman demesne. Breakfast in the garden is an idyll. Charis launches the day by swearing blind she’ll never have cosmetic surgery. Except perhaps for a bust reduction. And just a little bit off the chin. And maybe the eyes.

Fortunately Charis, at present, is in her prime.

Matt announces that all the private schools in England should be abolished. This is serious conversation. Esme and Charis do not agree. Somehow I do not have the right kind of voice to make myself heard. After this there is table tennis rounders. I say that I wasn’t able to hit a ball at all until I was 42 – which is true. It was because of the horrible bullying PE masters at Barrowborough, where Anthony Mottram and I were at school and before that at my prep where Matron thought I didn’t breathe or walk in the right way – in other words not manly enough. I don’t see that table tennis proves much – absurd little clattery nonsense ball. I think I draw the line at table tennis rounders in a family setting.

For the rest of the morning we discuss parking and taxation. After the first Christmas dinner of the day (i.e.lunch: array of cold meats, full cheese board, several salads, two puddings, one a rare summer fruit trifle with a brioche base – should you be interested in recipes) the afternoon topic is Oxbridge entry, difficulties and unfairness thereof. There is a danger of looking middle-class. Esme is tragic after a terrible night owing to Hopkin having a growth spurt or at any rate sudden pain behind the knee for two hours at 3 a.m. But she bears up well and bravely lies in the sun all afternoon.  Laura and Charis do the same. By six they are no longer recognisable and Charis has charred the lower slopes of her embonpoint (Laura would tell me I’m using the word wrongly. I just like the sound of it. It is my weakness in writing. I mean her neck really). Over dinner the half-baked women gradually return to life after a few glasses of Cremant de Bourgogne. Laura cannot believe I have never seen Gone with the Wind. On the other hand, Matt Driver is glinting and oddly wicked looking after a run. He produces an enormous car magazine and engages me in conversation about makes and models. I’m quite good at this. ‘Is it a 1.8 engine?’ I say. It is an anomaly. I know about cars.

We finish the day with a round of Articulate. This is dangerous. It’s that game where you’re in teams and one member of the team has to give clues to the others in their team to enable them to guess the person, place and so on which is on the card. There’s an egg-timer thing going. It’s nerve-wracking. We played a few days ago. Laura and Matt were in different teams and at each other’s throats throughout. ‘You looked at the cards before we started.’ ‘You’re a sad little grey man’ etc. Esme nearly had a breakdown with the drama and vowed never to play again. The next day both husband and wife separately took us aside: ‘It’s not me that’s competitive, it’s him/her.’ So we tried them in the same team. It made no difference.

This time they end up in opposition and nobody has the strength to do anything about it.  It’s hair-raising. Laura glares at the egg-timer while the other team are playing lest they go one grain over time. Matt rears up dangerously at one point over something Laura said.

But afterwards, Laura cranks up the dial-up and they are to be heard murmuring privately to each other as they look at options for holidays in Senegal on the Internet.

Senegal?

I am reminded of the time Anthony Mottram and I bicycled in the Buda hills. Don’t be deceived by the grammatical togetherness. That awful hard look came over his face and he careered ahead not even waiting for me at junctions. I blame my borrowed machine. It was ancient and puddingy. The same thing happened on another bicycle ride between Primrose Hill and Islington in about 1980.

Saturday 25^th July 2009

The others are very relaxed. Esme Manning, the actress, spent the whole of yesterday in her new lemon pyjamas with scalloped edge from Tescos. Laura has some amazing bulbous shoes nearly 25 years old kept exclusively for Norman use.

Laura Malcolm's Norman footwear

I come down in my new Alexander McQueen jeans (reduced) and a pink Paul Smith summer shirt from last year.

My exercise regime is rigorous owing to the fabulous perpetual-Christmas-Day level of eating. It was easy to keep thin when young with no money for cheese or cream or chocs. I’ve added in side-planks (I think that’s what they’re called). Absolute hell. Can only manage 45 seconds on each side before collapsing in agony. I’ve also got to be taut and appealing for my Tuscan villa with pool holiday in August as well as for other purposes.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned before that the Riverside Multis have taken a six-bedroom villa for the last two weeks of August thereby sparking off a villa war with horrid Robin Smallmeal and Simon Limpney, who are going somewhere extraordinary like Rimini. Let’s hope we hear more.

 As it happens Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver are coming to the Multi place for 4 nights, for their first experience of a rich gay holiday.

Today to Falaise. I’m hoping there’ll be an opportunity to buy a bog brush. We’ve been almost two days without one. There’s a great butch castle, something to do with William the Conqueror , which Matt Driver is very keen on. We visit it. Matt makes bow and arrow noises on the ramparts.  Through head-sets comes a mad commentary – something about what the medieval people would have been doing in each room. Esme Manning, now out of her lemon pyjamas, and I get rather silly. Esme mimes the tailor cutting his cloth (absurd busy scissors), I help her with the king and queen being courtly, the young couple prancing and so on. We adopt that half-baked expression you see in medieval paintings. Other French visitors not impressed.

Later I try to find the antique brocante in Falaise where I went with poor Val in the 80s. He bought the prie dieu and curly swirly crucifix mounted on red velvet which he dutch-gilded himself at home. They are still in his flat, rather dusty.  But back then, his poor rich gay style was just beginning. We loved France. It meant only one thing: cheap antiques.

On the way back we stop at Leclerc. I rush in to hunt down a bog brush. It is the only thing I buy and I’m left standing, on the wrong side of the checkout, in my Prada mac (the second best one. I have a new one waiting in my wardrobe in London), holding the bog brush, while Laura, Esme and Charis complete the family shopping.

Am much stared at.

Back at the Fastness, things are getting out of hand. The children have got hold of a novel by Henry Miller. Hopkin can’t be prevented from reading bits out. It is pornography. Charis and Esme snatch the book away and try to hide it. As they prepare dinner, the women recite their favourite bits from Gone with the Wind (‘I swear to God I’ll never go hungry again.’) and gossip about incontinence pads.

Intermittently, Matt Driver says, ‘It’s all too gay’ and goes off to do some gardening. He comes back saying he’s found a fairy ring. Throughout the evening he carries out regular inspections of this fairy ring.

Narcissistically I wonder if somehow it’s all my fault. Maybe I’ve driven them to it. Or perhaps they’re like this anyway.

Laura, Charis and Esme: 'too gay'

Thursday 23^rd July

I am in France at what my old friend, Laura Malcolm, the novelist and commentator on French life, calls her ‘Norman fastness’. It is a full heterosexual experience. I met Laura 30 years ago when we were both having a phase, now behind us, of working in offices. These days, she spends six weeks every summer in her French home.  I visit in July.  I drove out yesterday bringing with me in my small but chic gay car only intended for one or two, Esme Manning, formerly of stage and screen and soon to return, her son, Hopkin, Charis Cameron, former journalist, soon to return, and her daughter, Marina. Such a crowd meant I had to sacrifice my large suitcase and attempt to cram everything into a hold-all. Well, I tried. I put my pants (did I tell you about buying the wrong size Calvin Kleins in the sales?  Now I am lumbered with these voluminous Bridget Jones bloomers) and socks in and it was full. What to do? I ended up with two valises and poor Esme, sitting in the front seat, was up to her neck in luggage that wouldn’t fit in the boot for the entire journey of six hours.  She did not complain.

Bowling through France, Esme produced baps. She had been up all night buttering. Soon the car acquired that smell of butter and bananas that means children and mummies and perhaps daddies if they haven’t fucked off elsewhere.

At the Fastness, there were dear Laura, her hot husband, Matt Driver (who single-handedly is responsible for the way deodorant is advertised to adolescent boys) and their whippy bendy daughter with nerves of steel, Ivy – in their country clothes. Laura’s London home has recently been renovated from top to bottom (barely a trace of the original remains) by our mutual friend, Bruce McBain, the architect. Two summers ago in Normandy she was in the thick of the London refurb, downloading plans on an ancient dial-up Internet connection, getting out her ruler to check the dimensions of the vast granite-topped ellipse which was to be the central feature of her new kitchen. Just when we thought the position and size of the ellipse had finally been settled (458 mm out from the wall units, 256mm wide and so on) that old dial-up would be pinging and hissing away and Laura would be e-mailing Bruce McBain demanding a complete re-think.

For all this, Laura is a passionate non-freshener. That is to say, she does not do any cleaning nor indeed any household work except for cooking at which she is superb. It is said she was once a year in a rented house without finding out how to switch on the vac.

So, on arrival in Normandy there were always one or two things to attend to. This year, the rideaux (or curtains) in my bedroom are a heap on the floor and the bog brush has mysteriously evap (its handle remains). However Matt Driver has developed a sudden wen for cleaning and is actually hoovering the ceiling when we arrive . I should explain. The house has wooden beams that get covered in cobwebs. But it absolutely is not a nooky, wooky, cotty, beamy twee horror home. And it has never been so fresh, as a result of Matt’s efforts, so I won’t be vac-ing through this year.

I find that I can rig up the rideaux by balancing the pole on the screw-head which is all that remains of the thing that should hold them up. The bog brush will have to wait.

With my products laid out and my frockage also – I’ve rather tended to avoid the chest of drawers since we found that it had turned into a maternity ward for field mice a few years ago–  I really am very comfortable. It’s time to trip downstairs to begin family life.

Laura Malcolm's outstanding Nicoise

Tuesday 21^st July

Back in London and to the Glyndebourne Prom. It is The Fairy Queen, a sought-after ticket and recklessly I have offered it to Val. If he doesn’t show, owing to advanced alcoholism, I’ll be furious. But he’s there when I arrive, using the Royal Hall as a resting post. For a flash I think of sending him straight home. I can see at once he is drunk. He lurches upright, bellowing and trilling like a duchess. People stare, not least, I should imagine, at his catastrophic undead appearance. I manage to stop him from stealing a sandwich. I dread the performance. What if he starts shouting?  It’s happened before. And the Orch of the Age of Enlightenment so delicate and tiny in sound? But he is calm and we love The Fairy Queen. It is one of those evenings of unalloyed pleasure that can never be anticipated. The surprise of Val, in his state, enjoying it so much is not the least of it, for me.

I feel I have done Val a good turn. Thank goodness I didn’t make a smug scene about his being drunk and wipe out all chance of happiness, however momentary. But smugness is inescapable, I fear. I may well think of Val is less fortunate, but what about my own addictions and compulsions?

Sunday 20^th July 2009

Robert Nevil’s morning greeting: ‘How dare you use the shower before me!  Now I shall have to wade through your leavings.’ It is true that I have failed to wield the kitchen paper. There was an end-of-show party last night. My strength is gone. At breakfast Robert and Anthony have a high-minded discussion about the future of the Orphanage, the problems faced by the teachers and carers and so on. I am considered too simple to participate. If I protest, they accuse me of having harboured Saddam Hussein in my coal hole. I fall to dreaming: if only I could give £50,000 or £500,000. What a difference that would make! If my mine could only get going (I have a mine, or part of one, at present inert. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before), then I could truly donate. Suddenly I’m imagining Robin Smallmeal’s sinister black Bentley drawing up at the Orphanage as he and Simon Limpney arrive to buy it outright. What an opportunity for Limpney to install droves of ensuite bathrooms equipped with Molton Brown products (a bit high-street if you ask me). There would be courses in pure-breed cat management and how to show your cat at a cat show. This is Simon Limpney’s great thing at the moment – so I hear. We have not been on speakers for the last two years, owing to my shameful behaviour over Simon’s Christmas Day call.

Then, the most extraordinary thing, but on the way down from Shiroka Laka (after another sad farewell to the orphans) the Sofia road is lined with billboards showing a portly middle-aged gentleman in a striped apron, with rouged cheeks and an aubergine rinse advertising processed cheese in either packets or bottles. It is Robin Smallmeal – posing before he went grey presumably, unless it is yet another wig. How bizarre that the head of landfill sites (or whatever) in England should have a second career as an advertising model in the former Communist bloc. Of course, it might not have been him, but I really am as certain as I can be.

We stop for lunch. Robert Nevil says the cheese (not presumably that advertised by Smallmeal) is like chewing on a condom and outrages a German mime mistress (one of the theatre troupe who have been helping the orphans) to whom we are giving a lift with a stream of unkind remarks about the state of the Bulgarian ladies’ hair. ‘They must have a conditioner that promotes split-ends,’ he says. It is true that we have not seen a single hairdressers. All the hair must be home hair. Very few ladies have escaped an aubergine or bar mitzvah-red rinse. It is a poor country, I know, but really they would do better to leave their hair alone.

At length we gain the Maria Luisa in Sofia. It is a four-star – greetings at the door, help with the luggage. You see, we are putting the orphans behind us. The receptionist is a little tart but I barely notice. The minute I enter the hushed lobby I am engulfed by waves of delightful ease. The two-star at Shiroka Laka was charming but there must have been an underlying strain. Anthony Mottram and I take a respectable twin, absolutely suitable for a pair who have been together for 40 years. Nevil is housed elsewhere. We lie on the beds, hoping to wallow in luxury. But it is stiflingly hot. The window doesn’t open. We fuss around the air conditioning controls to no effect. I call down to the lobby. The receptionist comes into her own.  She offers no apology; all she says is that another room, which she calls a ‘suit’, will cost 30 euros extra. I hand the phone to Mottram, who knows these parts. ‘We will take the other room but we will not be paying extra. Think about it and call back in five minutes.’ She does this but has not budged. ‘Have you had any training in customer relations?’ Mottram enquires. She must have said, ‘No,’ because he says, ‘It shows.’ By now the bell-hop has appeared. Mottram complains about the receptionist. The bell-hop explains that she has her position to hold. Also she is very beautiful. He shows us the ‘suit’ which is a larger room with a kind of low barricade in the middle of it. Mysteriously the price has dropped to only 10 euros extra. We take it. ‘Bulgarians are normally so charming,’ Mottram says to the bell-hop, ‘but that receptionist has had hers specially striped out.’

The bell-hop was by no means as nonplussed by this as he might have been.

Later when we descend to the lobby different staff are on duty but we can tell by their fantastic screw-on grins that they have been warned.

Saturday 18^th July 2009

At 2 we assume grand frockage and ascend to the Orphanage above the village. In the streets, my new white suit by Theory is stared at, Robert Nevil’s Indian garb is not.  The orphans’ great moment has come. They are to give their Bollywood Show for which a group of actors from Sofia have spent the last three weeks preparing them. Anthony Mottram, as the patron and benefactor, is presented with a huge bouquet of meadow flowers. Two hundred people have gathered before the outdoor stage erected on the bare asphalt in front of the Orphanage. There are speeches. Anthony, cradling the toddler-sized floral tribute as if born to such deportments, Robert Nevil and I sit in places of honour, two grand London queens and one grand Prague queen now fully conspicuous in this poor, remote place. Robert says my white suit is perfect Bollywood gangster. It is boiling hot; I imagine that we will remain on the hard seats, bolt upright, glazed, dutifully present, lending support, for the rest of the afternoon. We have been told that the performance will last for three hours. To begin with there is a rock band from a neighbouring village. We start to know what the Queen must feel when, on an African tour, tribal dances of some duration are offered. Then the orphans begin. We can see them in all their Indian chiffon and glitter and bangles and necklaces bursting to get on. There is some stylised fighting with sticks by small boys in Gandhi loin cloths and turbans, then yoga, then a puppet show by the five-year-olds, then a mask dance. The music from the sound system is enhanced by live orphan drummers, pipe-players and singers. For the finale, the costumes are at the limits of the possible – headdresses, saris, garlands, beads, shawls. All the children are on the stage. Annie, who can’t look up and has limited speech, is amazed and delighted. Some hurl themselves about with thrilling abandon, others, whether aged 4 or 16, are exhilarating dancers.  Towards the end, a row of older boys made an unexpected entrance, slicing across the back of the stage. Finally, the entire cast of 40 odd whirl round and round and round and dissolve into a crazy haze on the floor. We beg for an encore. I  had not expected to be moved, let alone bowled over. What an achievement for the acting troupe, who had brought all this off while appearing to be sauntering in the other direction! What an achievement for these troubled children! What camperama, exuberance and invention! Don’t forget that it was rich gays who made this possible. Anthony Mottram not only put up the money but he had the idea in the first place for the theatre school. How many other ‘consultants’ would be so imaginative? How appropriate that the end result should, in a way, embody the poor rich gay spirit. When it came to the handing out of the certificates, the final cake, the parting of the ways, the actors returning to Sofia, the orphans left behind, distraught, there was nothing for it but to clamp on dark glasses and be brave. Watch the orphans’ Bollywood finale show.

More importantly, give, give, give to the Orphans of Shiroka Laka: bulgarianorphans@aol.com