Friday 17th July 2009

Robert Nevil and I are at war in the cave bathroom. We are lodged at a two-star at Shiroka Luka, you recall – own rooms but shared facilities.  ‘You should shave then shower,’ he snaps as I do the opposite. This was before he went into paroxysms because I left my pants in the cave without me in them. But when he uses it, he points the shower at the lav and turns it on full blast, drenching the entire room. Afterwards I have slave away with that kitchen paper I bought yesterday, mopping up.

I can’t abide a wet lav.

 At breakfast I compliment him on his fine pale blue linen shirt. He peers in my shirt. ‘I can see what it is,’ he says. It has ‘Miu Miu’ written all over it in tiny letters.  That’s it. No further remark.

We have higher things to think about – the orphans. But it is rather galling. His outfit is from UniQlo and shows off his exquisite tiny form to perfection. My Miu Miu, by contrast, is a bit much. At least no orphan was wearing it too, unlike yesterday with the appalling Marc Jacobs clash.  

We visited a vast creepy underground cave with water roaring through it where Orpheus went down into the Underworld, possibly. I never knew that Orpheus came from this part of the world but he did. ‘We must be sure to look back as we come out again,’ Robert Nevil said to Anthony Mottram, jerking a thumb in my direction. He was casting me in the Eurydice role but wrong. Orpheus was absolutely supposed not to look back as he led her back to life. If he did she would be returned the Underworld. Mottram and Nevil were shaking with glee. I said to Mottram: ‘You pretend I mean nothing to you. Don’t leave it  ’til it’s too late. Don’t leave it until my coffin is being lifted from the bier to be struck to the floor with grief, never to rise again.’ ‘I think I’ll be the first to go,’ he says. It’s true he has high blood pressure and considerable girth. But the Prague doctors have declared him not overweight – although, since they’re private doctors, that’s what they’re there for, I should imagine.  

Oh, to be left alone amidst the alien corn, weeping at Mottram’s grave! Next year will mark our 40^th year of quiet and not so quiet bickering.

Somehow Robert Nevil managed to buy some gay floral tea in the cave. Lord knows how. He pranced near the edge, taking pictures, in danger of becoming unco-ordinated with the little bag of tea and the camera straps and so on . Would he topplie to his death in the cruel waters two hundred feet below – all because of some gay tea?

It is said that the water crashing through the cave emerges in the valley lower down but any object put into it in the cave is never seen again.

The evening was given to the orphans. There was a football match and another little show for them, given by a visiting English school party. I had word from London of a brilliant party given by my friend Laura Malcolm, the novelist, for her husband’s 45^th birthday, attended by the Riverside multis and a very famous television personality. The Multis also sent a photo of their marble dining table piled high with glassware and napery for a dinner of their own. I sent back a picture of the huge white fridge in my bare little two-star room.

My room in the two-star

Both events I would have attended, had I been in London. So I am sacrificing something for the orphans.

 Thursday 16th July 2009

Yes, we are still here, at Shiroka Luka, in deepest Bulgaria, visiting the orphans. This morning I couldn’t help it – could one little outfit do any harm? Should we be monkish and self-denying just because of the orphans? Besides I could hardly go nude. Wouldn’t the children love to see frockage as worn in London, Paris and New York?  Is not this what I have to give them? My wildly low-waisted, simple, pure Marc Jacobs blue check cotton slacks could not be wrong – with the Paul and Joe scoop-neck plain white T-shirt.

I struggled into the pieces, after the cave bathroom which gets completely drenched by the shower, and after my exercises (Pilates plank, sit-ups, and press-ups: no gym here of course). I stepped out of the hotel in small triumph and ran straight into one of the orphans, lurking in the street as they do. You won’t believe it, but the child was wearing my outfit, identical, copied down to the last detail of the T-shirt I spent a whole day hunting down in London. There was nothing for it but to scurry straight back indoors and change.

Later I decided to look at the shops. In this mountain village you can buy cow bells, mushrooms and rocks. At the main store the paper goods are kept in locked chamber recalling the famous  temperature-controlled cheese room (not actually locked but it might as well be) at La Fromagerie in Highbury, London. I bought some kitchen paper to mop the floor, lav, cover over the lav paper etc  in the cave bathroom. I adore kitchen paper. I always carry a few sheets in case of accidents.

Robert Nevil was not impressed. You always have to remember he was brought up on a farm. Later at lunch Anthony Mottram wanted to know what the orange flecks in the rice with mushrooms were. I said, ‘Carrot’. ‘There’s always carrot in vomit,’ Robert Nevil remarked. It was a rather filthy lunch, it is true, but really…

As yesterday, at five the orphans hoarded into a smelly kind of theatre in the village for a performance, by some Bulgarian Hindus, of Indian music with sari tying and yoga thrown in. Anthony Mottram behaved badly during the yoga and worse when the musicians appeared to go into holy transports. ‘I can’t take it,’ he hissed. Robert Nevil showed his photographs of his visits to Calcutta, including images of himself turned into a puce and fluorescent green mess as a result of children throwing paint at him. Apparently this is a formal part of the Hindu festival of Holi.

It was an almighty worry to stop the orphans from getting run over outside the theatre. There is a busy road right there. Some of them are no more than five. Last night on the way back from the restaurant, a poor little cat was run over by the one car in the otherwise empty street. The driver stopped, inspected the corpse, shrugged his shoulders and deposited the remains in the roadside dustbin.

Wednesday 15th July 2009

Here I am at Shiroka Luka  (I checked the spelling).  Can you imagine?It is a tiny village in the Rhodope mountains of Bulgaria – cooking fires even in summer, characteristic lumpy stone roofs, cowsheds beside the houses, which are white with wooden casement windows – pretty and far, far from Harvey Nicks, La Pont de la Tour and all my glittering existence.

A sheep arriving at Shiroka Luka

We are here because of the orphanage. Anthony Mottram has sponsored a drama festival for the orphans (many of whom are actually abandoned Roma, with living parents, aged between five and twenty) for the last seven years. It is in progress and will reach a climax on Saturday with a performance involving all sixty of the children. This year it is a Bollywood theme.  

In our party, Stoyan, one of Anthony Mottram’s former young men, now almost thirty, Robert Nevil, the writer, myself, and the actual Anthony Mottram, still with ghastly, port de mort cough. I was anxious on arrival yesterday evening. Will we not be conspicuous in a rustic setting with our odd configuration, frockage and general impossible air? But we are upstaged by some excellent cows making a grand return from the fields to their sheds up the main street.

Do you know, it is a relief to be simple, in a two-star hotel with buzzing fridge in the bedroom, and bathroom, shared with Robert Nevil, a tiled cave with shower stuck in one corner and lav in the other. My outfits are here and my labels, but the agonising edge has gone.

And  no danger of running into Robin Smallmeal!

Today we examined the wild flowers. Robert Nevil photographed them all and knew the names. What a marvellous array!  There are many Alpine-like meadows such as Maria von Trapp might have twirled and swirled in at the beginning of The Sound of Music.

At five there was a mime show for the orphans. Anthony Mottram loved the Mud Fairy (the story took place in Iceland where there are geysers) and made mud-noises along with the children.  An older boy of about twelve sighed with sophisticated exasperation. It was too young for him. He lay down across several seats and sucked his thumb.  Later we encountered another orphan, of almost Indian appearance, an older boy, perhaps fourteen. He seemed in one way almost adult, yet when Anthony, who remembered him from previous years, tried to communicate with him, he became a helpless, troubled child. There was more to this than not being able to speak English.

Monday 13th July 2009

What a day! Tomorrow Robert Nevil and I board for Bulgaria at the crack where we visit the orphanage at Sir rola luka (spelling all wrong. Will check) that Anthony Mottram takes an interest in. The orphans are staging a street drama next Saturday. The theme is Bollywood.  I am to give a class in moisturising and face care, according to Mottram. Why? Robert Nevil and I have been competing all day in the pre-boarding tension stakes. I had to cram in a One-day fish course at the Leith School of Cookery. It was a present. On the way there who should be standing on a random street corner as I whizzed past on my bike but Robin Smallmeal – again!  Twice in the space of a week! I had just enough time to glare and as per great whips of leccy scored the air, with me, I must admit, wrenching  the voltage box to max, as it were.

Is this really a suitable way of a man of fifty to behave?

The fish course was all boning and fileting and wine reduction sauces – the sort of thing only high queens or desperate housewives would go in for, which latter I upset by saying that I’d never bother at home to make a salmon noisette tied up with string. All the same, my fileting and trimming was more exquisite than anyone else’s.

Then it was dash back to my official home for massive onslaught of pre-boarding tension. I’ve yet to put the things in the case and order the taxi for the crack. I’ve done all that ghastly folding though but, I hate to confess it,  I’m packing a shirt that has already been worn. Absolute golden rule – only clean clothes are packed. As I was laying out my wardrobe for the week, I thought, ‘I must dress designer for the orphans.’ Isn’t it awful? Mottram has given me a whole lot of Indian junk to take out for the Drama festival. I can’t see how it’s going to fit in my suitcase, but if I eject it in favour of outfits Anthony will say I should put others first, especially those less fortunate.

Sunday 12th July 2009

Drama just before Lord Arrowby’s party last night. Rufus Pitman, the outstanding novelist, critic and columnist texted me: ‘Come at once. Lord A in a state.  Brighton down with Swine flu; Lord A threatening to wear a Hawaiian shirt.’

So I dashed down to the Arrowby apartment at Vauxhall but Rufus had already prevented the Hawaiian shirt. A stunning melange of guests on the vast terrace overlooking the seats of power on the other side of the river where Lord A is such a kingpin. The Brighton element not conspicuous by its absence. A beautiful tall young man, possibly Iranian, in make-up, stands solitary in the midst. I encounter a different young man, compact, muscular, no-nonsense, and immediately get on the wrong side of: ‘Those boots,’ I say (he had the most stunning boots, fitted over the foot in one continuous piece as worn by youths in Renaissance Florentine paintings), ‘…are they Prada? Did you go to the sale?’ ‘I don’t do sales,’ he snaps. Later he revisits me to repeat the point. Then we bond. We’ve got frockage in common.

How many of these guests have the slightest idea who Lord Arrowby is?

Rufus Pitman is brilliant as always. He is explaining the irresistible attraction to women of a young widower, in whose kitchen will inevitably stack up tray upon tray of cling-filmed lasagne. Another hot hunk (apparently an associate of Lord A’s but with an anti-establishment hair cut – longer quills in unexpected  places) is demonstrating to some straight women the innovative approach of gays to domestic arrangements. He separated from his partner of five years but now they are reunited – at opposite ends of a large flat. He hopes not to encounter the ex’s new sources of entertainment in the sitting room (or perhaps there is only one source of entertainment. I’m not quite sure).  

In all cases that I know, including my own, the relationships of gays are never quite what they seem.

But, oh, I am forgetting the glorious Lord Arrowby himself, athletic, wasp-waisted, growing more and more blue-eyed and enthusiastic as his champagne bottles become more and more explosive (they developed a fault). He hugs all the guests. I dare to put my arm around him. I can’t believe it when he puts his round me.

Saturday 11th July 2009

Anthony Mottram regained Prague on Tuesday having been laid up all the weekend with Swine flu. On Wednesday he had the nerve to fly to Moscow to introduce Swine flu there and to huff and puff at Russian ‘consultants’ most of whom had been relieved of their jobs by the end of the week. Whether Mottram’s style of managing employees was High Queen or Pseudo Straight (he can do both) I do not know. Nor can we be certain that he actually had Swine flu.  His claim might have been an elaborate ploy of some kind. I am so far free of symptoms.

Friday 10th July 2009

To the marble rooftop palace of the Riverside multis. Before dinner, from the south terrace, we view their properties which are most of the nearest buildings. We see an actual tenant in his garden, not doing anything wrong. The penthouse has terraces on all four sides, so the Multis are enthroned above all of London and most of the surrounding counties.

The other guests are Trenton, a director of one of the London’s most important contemporary art galleries and (a phenomenon we shall encounter frequently) his somewhat younger partner, although I thought Trenton’s having, as he revealed, three personal trainers and going to the gym six times a week had achieved spectacular results. Trenton was extraordinarily forthcoming and generous. By the end of the evening I had the impression I knew everything about him: he takes a taxi to work every day at 10, he flies about the world visiting billionaire art collectors on their private estates which are patrolled by security guards; he has never spent more than £7000 on a painting but fortunately some of his investments have done spectacularly well; his collection is kept in storage except when pieces are loaned for major exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery or wherever. The Multis showed him their bathrooms; in the gold-onyx one, Trenton said, ‘Keanu Reeves has one just like this in his apartment in New York.’ Even the Multis were non-plussed. ‘How come you know that?’ they said. ‘I went there for supper.’ Trenton was very casual and just a little indignant. ‘You know him?’ ‘Why yes.’

What an absolutely perfect life!  I felt very little, I can tell you – and envious.

To cap it all, there was Karol – the younger partner, who, at first, said little.  I caught just a hint of a Southern accent. He was from Savannah, now moved to Miami and studying texiles. Later he blossomed. ‘Are you addicted to exercise?’ one of the Multis asked him after Trenton had described his gruelling routine. ‘Ay most certainly aim naat addicted to exercise,’ he drawled. His favourite thing was going out on his balcony during a hurricane. He was enchanting.

 Thursday 9th July 2009

Michael Portillo! You won’t believe it, but he was there. Bronzed, well-preserved, almost the colour of very rich people (I’ll explain another time

And that was the least of it, as it turned out.

No, I drove in behind a terrifying black Mercedes. It halted in front of the house despite large signs saying ‘no stopping’. A chauf got out and started unloading picnic baskets. ‘Get out of the way!’ boomed Aunt Lavinia, who was sponsoring me at Glyndebourne as it were, and has the kind of voice that has kept hounds and stags in order through the centuries. A blacked-out rear window descended.  It was Robin Smallmeal – with the new grey hair!

My unrivalled arch enemy!

A jagged gash of electricity reared up between us.

Of course, his favourite trick is to drop off his 40-ton picnic right by the house to save lugging it from the car park miles away. They’d put up those signs just for him.

 We drove on. In the mirror I could see Smallmeal being told by an official to move on and his luggage being ignominiously re-loaded.

 ‘If we hurry,’ I said to Aunt Lavinia, ‘I know a really good picnic spot.’

 My plan worked perfectly. We got Smallmeal’s absolutely adored favourite place. He appeared ages later, wrecked with the weight of his accoutrements which would hardly fit into the only remaining picnic space, beside some hollyhocks which my aunt had dismissed as rather untidy.

 There was another great whip of leccy, which rather startled the other opera-goers.

 No sign of Limpney, thank goodness.

‘Who is that peculiar little man with all that grey hair?’ Aunt Lavinia bellowed.

  ‘That’s Robin Smallmeal,’ I said, ‘he’s huge in rubbish. Head of the landfill sites. Something like that. A mega-multi.’

 Fortunately she didn’t ask any more. It might have been awkward to explain how I know such things. In previous days, I was chauffed from Massivebury, the Smallmeal country residence, to Glyndebourne.

From then on, Aunt Lavinia proved invaluable. Her comments boomed straight to where Smallmeal thrashed around with his baskets, rugs, glassware and silverware. As he proudly produced his candlesticks, she declared that her late husband couldn’t stand the pretention of candlesticks at Glyndebourne. As he handed, to his porridge-coloured corporate accomplices, a medley of smoked fish with what appeared to be some kind of beetroot concoction as well as various other mayo-like blobs and a cube of some sort of jelly, she thundered that she didn’t mind a picnic as long as it was simple.

As for me, I couldn’t resist glancing every now and then at the new grey hair. I’d heard all about it. He used to be Mod Rock black. Then he had a wig made to see what he would look like grey. Then he went grey.

Every time I looked there was another zig-zag of electricity, becoming embarrassingly more conspicuous as darkness fell.

There was also an opera. Glyndebourne is marvellous, despite everything. It never fails.

Tuesday July 7th 2009

At least Anthony Mottram got through the night and is now in transit for Prague. He must be feeling better. He has been wickedly insisting that he was attended by Nurse Probert. Who is she? Must be one of the killer nurses like Nurse Fletcher from One Flew Over…. And I did get a perfect late-sale bargain at close of shopping play last evening.

 But I can’t stop long. I’ve got to rush for Glyndebourne and I’ve just realised in all the Swine flu drama yesterday I completely forgot to mention the Gay Icons opening party at the National Portrait Gallery. It was last week. You may have heard about it. There’s been quite a fuss. Terrific crush. Boiling heat. I wore my new white suit by Theory, seized on the first day of the Harrods Sale at half price (£214). There’s no point in spending a lot on a white suit. You wear it twice and it has to go to the cleaners. Then the summer’s over. Anyway suit much admired, until that is Wesley Kerr looms. Do you know him? Used to be a reporter on Newsnight. Now does the Chelsea Flower Show on BBC, in charge of squillions of lottery money for London. Tremendously grand and rude. He assaults suit, says it’s far too small and demands to know what I’m doing at the party. I manage to lob back: ‘How on earth did you get in? I suppose you’re paying for it all.’ ‘No,’ he says, ‘I’m here because I’m black.’ The party rather papered out I thought with porridge-coloured corporates (must have been to do with Rose d’Anjou who sponsored the exhibition) on nightmare tightrope, not wanting to be thought gay yet terrified of appearing unsympathetic. Otherwise, it was the usuals – Grayson Perry in tea-cosy frock, Vanessa Feltz, Germaine Greer.  Mercifully no sign of Sir Elton, one of the top gay selectors of  icons for the exhibition, nor, thank the Lord, of Simon Limpney and Robin Smallmeal. Had they appeared, there would have been two more gay icons, I can tell you – splattered on the wall.  Alan Hollinghurst, another selecting top gay along with Sir Elton, was his usual discreet and forebearing self but he must have been embarrassed to find his rare and refined choices (exquisite, indomitable, obscure novelist, Ronald Firbank, died 1926; you must read) mixed up with Billie Jean King’s mother (perfectly charming, I’m sure), Will Young, Gianni Versace and Jeff Stryker. Critics have been complaining but miss the point. Only gays could have created such a glorious muddle.

  I really must get off for Glyndebourne. I do hope Michael Portillo won’t be there. I’m sick of seeing him everywhere.

Monday 6th July 2009

I was going to tell you about the frenzy of excitements in store for the poor little rich gays of London at the moment but I’ve just heard that Anthony Mottram has gone down with Swine flu while staying at The Vases in Gloucestershire with Leon de Veer and Miles Kent.

At least he says it’s Swine flu and not serious. I don’t believe him. He always downplays illness to get the better of it. I expect a call in the middle of the night to say he is sinking fast.

I might succumb too, since he was staying with me last week.

Next week we are supposed to be going to Bulgaria to visit an orphanage – enough of an ordeal in itself you’d have thought for those used to certain standards. Anthony has an immense enthusiasm for the young. The orphans are staging a drama event sponsored by his business. Robert Nevill, my second oldest friend, is coming too. But what if we are both struck down with Swine flu miles from a BUPA hospital?

Anthony is not well enough to return to Prague and resume his activities as ‘consultant’ and possible spy. He is in line for a knighthood, you know.

Oh dear, I have a sense of those few hairs of time that might separate a triumphant exit from the Prada shop emblazoned with carrier bags and the catastrophic thump of a not-seen passing car.

Anthony and I have been bickering away for the last forty years, ever since we met in 1970 at Mr Carpenter Jacobs’ tea party for new boys. But there’s never been any sex, as far as I can recall.

Tomorrow I am going to Glyndebourne – all being well. There was so much I wanted to tell you. I’m invited twice this week to the Riverside Multis (that’s multi-millionaires) who live in a marble-lined riverside penthouse and then on Saturday it’s Lord Arrowby’s summer party (yes, he really is a lord – something huge in administration, advising the Government – although you wouldn’t think it to look him). On top of all that, there’s the sales, which this year with the Credit Crunch and so many of them starting early and nearly catching me out have been more than usually terrifying as well as thrilling of course.

You see, being a poor little rich gay does not necessarily mean having any money. Anthony’s and my friend, Val (short for Valentine) has always been a poor little rich gay despite, owing to advanced alcoholism, often being troubled for the tube fare home.
So the sales are the one and only chance to seize certain essential items, mainly of clothing.

Maybe this Swine flu is punishment for spending too much money in the sales. And for throwing away perfectly good clothes that have gone out of style. Only last week Anthony was saying how the orphans would be thrilled to wear my old Prada.
That was before he got ill. I do hope he’ll be all right. He is so careless with his health. He has insisted that his private Czech doctors declare him not overweight. Once, he and his employees underwent some kind of personality test. His result showed him to be highly controlling. So he cancelled the tests across the board.

But he won’t be able to cancel Swine flu.

I think my only hope is a little consoling, distracting nip to the shops in the hope that a surprise end-of-sale bargain will fall my way. There is comfort – I was going to say in lesser things but that won’t quite do.

Tomorrow I’ll let you know if I was blessed in the shops. And we’ll have news of Anthony. And I’ll go to Glyndebourne. And so it will go on in all its usual glory and horror.