Tuesday 4th January 2021

Well, the New Year often gets off to a slow start. I turned on all my graphs and feeds with great trepidation yesterday after an interval of not being able to face them. As I might have known, rates of increase slowing or actually declining, as always, the herald to that word that must not be spoken.

Even to say it is to collude. You can hear it in people’s voices, the way it’s tossed off, rolled in with other words as if it were completely normal. That’s giving in. That’s why we’ve got it.

Prince Dmitri texted in despair. I put on Nixon in China. I’m having nothing more to do with it. If anybody reads to me from ‘The Book’, I’ll cut them off for good. Or for the time being, at least. ‘It’s in THE BOOK, THE BOOK, THE BOOK….’, Madame Mao screeches in Nixon in China. She’s deranged.

We did have a Christmas treat. It was an evening concert at Glyndebourniana with limited afternoon tea beforehand. Sir Mark Elder, excerpts from Fidelio, plus overture, then Ibramova playing the Brahms violin concerto. She had no shoes on. No interval. 500 audience members, clamped in terror, eyes darting above the cloth restraints. Not one single cough was emitted throughout. Royston King accompanied me. He was thrilled with it. Ibramova was sensational. I think she didn’t wear shoes because she stamps about while playing – so to reduce noise. But really it won’t do. The noble gesture is much appreciated. I can’t bear it for the artists. All the same, I won’t return to the halls and houses until the audience and performers are complete and free.

We practised Royston’s forthcoming interview for a huge position. I hope he gets it. He’ll have so much money and power.  We decided Royston’s strong points are that he actually knows about the heritage, gardens and parks. He won’t be a professional Chair brought in from the suitcase world, unlike some others that could be mentioned. It was important that the panel felt they could get a word in edgeways though, that he listened to their questions and answered them. Apparently Herbert Morrison had said the same, although less nicely no doubt.

Royston mentioned to Robert Nevil in my drawing room before we departed that Steve McQueen didn’t like him and he didn’t like Steve McQueen. ‘Top black people often don’t like each other,’ he explained. We’d been talking about the TV series Small Axe which I’d been watching with the Gay Mother since Black Lives Matter is her main theme at the moment, along with the awfulness of the Arch of Canterbury. Royston didn’t appear to have watched Small Axe, but from what I told him he thought little of it. Too arty and the Mangrove was seething with drugs apparently. I think that’s what he said. I hope so because I don’t want to make false accusations, although, really does it matter? So what if it was. If only the Gay Mother and I had gone to the Mangrove when I lived so near it until 1996. Nowadays we would, of course, and been incredibly friendly and maybe had drugs although I’m not keen. But then, it was too frightening. Don’t ask why. It just was.

Monday 4th January 2021

…it loomed upon me with that completeness only known in the delirium of half sleep. I came to a kind of consciousness with the idea square and fully formed, a definite shape. Why had I never thought of it before? Identify as non-species. Not non-binary. Non-species. Obvious. Throw off the narrow confines. I never asked to be boxed up as a human species member. So now I’m throwing all that off. I’m identifying as non-species. People assume that I will be something else instead, such as a blob or a plankton. That’s not the point. The point is to be of no species whatsoever, except perhaps a person without organs.

Saturday 2nd January 2021

2021!

I should mention that 1921, one hundred years ago, was a good year, being when the Gay Father, Debo Devonshire and the Duke of Edinburgh were born.

Most people’s idea, including mine, is that 2020 is to be jettisoned as fast as possible and never mentioned again.

I will look back though. When the shutters first clattered down, in March, with terrible Wrong, my first Essential order from Amazon was two out-of-print novels by Ivy. And I managed to read them, with pleasure. Before I could never read an Ivy.

Thinking it was 1940, I revived Bird’s Custard. Val was going to revive Woolton Pie but never did.

2020 was the year of isolation. But I was never less alone. The Archer/Neviles were in residence in my Official Residence, for five weeks, Robert Nevil and the Nizam came for Christmas, I was nearly 3 weeks in Madeira with Anthony Mottram and Vadim, another week in Prague in August, twice to Normandy with Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver, every month from July to the Gay Mother’s, usually for a week. Other visits have taken place and darling Poor Little Rich Gays have flocked round. I was at Walmer and Lewes for a two-night away with Royston King.

I’ve been twice to Glyndebourniana, as usual, and once to the Ragged School for mu. The Great Dixter Plant Fair in October took place as always.

As I predicted at the start, we’ve got used to the muck as we go along. But they can’t crush us either, they can’t keep us apart. The whole thing’s a painful dragging back to Prep and Public days (although with food and heating) but having been at Prep and Public assists. Endurance of deprivation was the warping quality produced. I remember starting at Barrowborough in the summer of 1970 and working out that I’d only have to be there for 4 years and looking at boys who were almost at the end of the 4 years and thinking that somehow one could begin to hack away at that time. Later on, resistance of course.

These are wild savage times. Maybe later we will be fascinated to have lived though them. Who knew how easily society could be destroyed? Not just the economy, as we thought in March, but society itself. Sebastian Archer said to me while staying how shocking he found it. Why aren’t there riots on the streets? Why isn’t everybody tautened into a tight bow of skepticism? Fear, stoked up by the authorities, works wonders. Just look how malleable the population becomes in an instant, how easily divided against itself. Suddenly, as Professor Balloux said, we’re back to the Middle Ages:  dogma, superstition and ostracism.

I wouldn’t want to be ruled by scientists, or doctors for that matter. Who’d have thought there were so many professors, and so many graphs, all veering in different directions? What are we to make of these people? As Sebastian Archer said, science is not always consonant with human life. Just imagine if the Government were entirely made up of Public Health Officials. Somehow data, technology, a preliminary, speculative kind of ‘science’ has got the upper hand. Politicians are helpless before it. Is this their fault or the way things are going? Young people ought to be fiercest in revolt. But bed illness was not commonplace for them in childhood. Their cocoon was the fat time, especially, as we look back, the boom years from the early 90s to 2008. The Young dictate their existence from their phones. In their world all the Apps work. No wonder they are among the most ardent Covidians, insisting that vaccination is the only possible exit.

The story told from the start has come true – up to a point. Vaccine will surely be the most popular child’s name for years to come. There’s nothing to be done about it. Imprisonment until then. Meantime, though, couldn’t those with responsibility recall a few of the old-fashioned virtues? If you’re in charge, in however small a way, you’re supposed to radiate encouragement, boost morale and, if necessary, suppress bad news.

If leaders need to issue threats, they must be threatened themselves.

We really need to see an improvement.

Saturday 26th December 2020

You’ll have noticed that my usual Christmas Day broadcast did not this year take place – along the lines of Monaco National Year which, as I’ve mentioned before, in the year of Grace Monaco’s Death was subject to the saddest announcement that ever was placed in The Times of London. It said, ‘Monaco National Day. Monaco National Day, usually held on October 23rd, will not this year take place.’

With the Gay Grandfather I often went in the Rover (one of those ones with the front and back doors opening from the mid point, the whole machine black, of course, for an official air) to take bottles of port to the tenants. They would say things like, ‘That’ll be very nice with a bit of hot water.’ We did get out of the Rover, we even advanced up their garden paths but we never went in. That was the thing. It would have been unthinkable for the landlord to cross the threshold unless somebody needed to be sectioned. The tradition carried on into the 21st century, even with those who were not tenants, but might have been.  My Christmas visit to Mrs Dinner, the Gay Mother’s thrice-weekly until 1986, was always her leaning out of her stable-type door, me in the road outside. That would have been going on until at least 2010.

Now we’re all tenants. No home to be entered. Go no further than the doorstep. Beyond might be a hovel, not fit to be seen. And seething, of course, with you-know-what.

In other news, Poor Little Rich Gay male parts are giving out at an alarming rate. The Laird was restricted earlier in the year and unable to function. Now Beamish O’Halloran, of the Red Tops, was struck on Christmas Eve with the same thing. Off to Causality. Laura Malcolm is looking forward to all her male members being attached to catheters next summer in Normandy, which would be a good revenge for all the trouble they’ve caused womenfolk over the years.

Her Majesty the Queen had absolutely the right idea yesterday in her broadcast. Don’t mention it. Not by name, only oblique. ‘She’s gawn Woke,’ Laura Malcolm said. But that’s another matter. I liked the idea of her peering out from Windsor at the lights of Diwali in Slough. What she also didn’t mention is that those people would probably not have four or five huge drawing rooms in different colours – as she does.

Sunday 20th December 2020

Tomorrow the Shortest Day – then back up the other side.

Robert Nevil and Sebastian Archer have been staying since they demolished their bathroom. Sometimes we are Royalty, especially on first greeting each day. Curtseying is required. How exhausting it must be at Court – up from chair, then down to the ground, every time a Royalty looms, equal to any fitness regime. Robert Nevil expects a full plunge to the floor. In the afternoons Robert Nevil and I launch out. Then we are two maids of the Up Down type on their afternoon off, with a remarkable range of opinions on urban architecture. In between times we’re picking over our Landed Gentry forebears and their secrets – the suicides, the drunks, the unmarrieds. When alive nothing was mentioned but now their brushes with the law could not be more apparent from the lightest of Google-ing.

The Nevil/Archers are bitches for quizzes. I couldn’t believe it. They can solve the wall and get the missing letters and work out the sequences. So brainy. Sebastian Archer can do Maths and Science of course but Robert Nevil is a sharp little Emily too. All those hours staring at the credits after the film’s finished have paid off. He can probably remember who the Second Gaffer was on Taxi Driver. They love it. Fingers on the buzzers.

But strange ideas about food. The Nevil/Archers seem to think food should always be nice. Not my idea at all. When dining privately at home my objects are: economy and weight loss. We didn’t live through Two World Wars to waste food. I made a Re-boiled. That’s one of those Tuscan recipes for using up old bread which is really the core of Tuscan cooking. In the end I had to force it down them rather like those poor geese being fattened for foie gras. The next day we had Papa di Pomodoro which is the same thing but without the cabbage. They didn’t think much of the Chouxfleur aux Yoghurt avec Olives Noir either – even though I sprinkled za’tar over to give it lift.

Sebastian Archer stuck back by returning from Neal’s Yard shop with £500 worth of cheese.

Another day we had lemon sole which cost £40. One piece was left over and almost not eaten. That would have been £10 wasted.

The other thing is the chocolate for which they are fiends. Bars in odd places all over the house, in case of sudden need. I never have choc except for visitors or if things get really bad, like one little bar with coffee in the drawing room after lunch. But they had 40 or 50 slabs on the go all at once. Luckily their choice is mostly from Planet Organic – Lemon Grass and Kelp, Sea Thorn and Henbane, Kale and Raspberry…. Doesn’t anyone ever like to say it – this stuff is inedible. In fact, worse. I took a tiny tablet one day and was flung across the room with the vileness. Poison. Any more would have been fatal. How one longed for a Lindt Full Milk Cream.

Such talks though. Sebastian v. pandemic different. Superb. Now they’re gone I’m bereft. But I’m getting a technology upgrade. Sebastian has bought me a new TV and I’m to have a thing called a Sound Bar which will beam all over the house and mean I can get rid of all other devices and their beastly wires. I’ve only just caught up with CDs and Digital Radio but that’s totally gone out now.

The only thing is no Sound Bars to be had for the moment because of the blockade. I hope I live to get one.

Wednesday 16th December 2020

I forgot to say… I do mind. Some are saying ‘It’s only temporary. Normality will be restored one day. We can read our books meantime and live a pleasant quiet life.’ But I am shocked, devastated in fact. Who knew just how easily society could be destroyed. It’s terrible thing, even if only temporary. At first we thought it was the economy. That was bad enough. But in March there appeared to be no choice. There was general support. Now we know it’s worse. Thinking not allowed. If you think, you’re a crazed right-wing libertarian or just selfish, or tiresome. Change the subject as quickly as poss. Gas-lighting. Even those known previously for thinking, most notably the Remainers, have collapsed into a heap of fear and orthodoxy. I thought the whole point of Remainers was that they were glorious for facts and reason, trying to stem the cascade of ignorance and barbarism. That’s what I thought while being one, as I still am. But now, Remain and the Left – it’s just bark, bark, terrible dread, useless Gov (they are useless, but not in the way imagined), why aren’t there more restrictions? Not enough being done. Lock up. Lock down. Lock, lock, lock.

What on earth’s the matter with them? What about the Poor? I thought they were supposed to care. But the Government are supposed to pay for everything apparently. Just miserable politicking. Disgusting really.

So the whole edifice of intellectual challenge collapses immediately. Catastrophe. Re: the EU nobody said, ‘You’re not an economist. You haven’t got a PHD in the European Union. How dare you have an opinion?’ Quite the opposite. But now only ‘experts’ may speak. Our society is destroyed but we may not speak. Everybody must have noticed that only one brand of ‘expert’ has seized the airwaves. But that’s of no matter.

Is this worst than Brexit? For the time being, yes, it is. Everybody should be asking questions.

Tuesday 15th December 2020

One day this will be just a date. I said that months ago, of another date, in April or May.

It’s not so much being put in Tier 3 as the manner of it. What has it come to when a Government Minister resorts to blatant misinformation and scare-mongering? A mutant, my arse. Has he been whiling away the dreary Netflix evenings of ‘lockdown’ (don’t say that word) with rubbish sci-fi movies?

Go on! Cancel Christmas. Why don’t you?

This is what happens in a second-rate dictatorship. Weak, mediocre and frightened – so take it out on your people.

The horror is that so many fall for it. Why don’t they look at a map? Any fool can see, surely. Has nobody noticed that when a ‘professor’ is on main stream media the usual protocol of asking awkward questions, let alone having another ‘professor’ who thinks differently, has been dispensed with? These people are allowed to hold forth as suits them. No wonder they’ve lost their heads.

I’ve never believed in the heroic ‘battle’ against the virus, with the accompanying burden of personal responsibility and opportunities to blame and look down on others. It’s simply a story that has grown monstrous from the lesser side of human nature that wants to belong, to be rewarded for being good and to feel superior to others, driven by fear and longing for safety.

I don’t see how any reasonable person could believe that now. Just look at what has happened. Lockdowns, tiers – the virus pursues its own course regardless. That’s not say that you should do what you like. Poor Little Rich Gays here and throughout the World love to sani, distance (anti-social distance perfect for a Poor Little Rich Gay. The further way the better), limit contacts, buy tests, buy their way out of ‘lockdown’ (don’t say that word). Don’t ever say that Poor Little Rich Gays are reckless or don’t care. But they will decide for themselves what the limits are – in their conscience which they still have, unlike the Earls Court Gays who will stand no barriers.

I’m keeping a list – all those who have collaborated, all those who have colluded, pored over the rule book, sung Madame Mao’s song, ‘It’s in the book…book…book. It’s in the book…book…book.’ All those who have blamed and divided, set themselves up, cared only to remain infection-free regardless of their own risk and cared nothing for the agony of the young, the otherwise afflicted, the performers….

When this is all over, I don’t say my regime will be any less authoritarian. But at least the right people will be exterminated.

Sunday 13th December 2020

The huge news is that a leading Poor Little Rich Gay has been delivered from the Covid-19 and we can almost dare to hope it’s time to order the carriages for the drive to San Paulo di Londra for the Service of National Thanksgiving in the Springtime.

Secondly the Gay Mother has had the vaccine – the first dose. She found out by chance there was a number you could ring, then go to the back of the hosp and wait in a queue out of doors. Forms to fill in, jab, sit for ten minutes, then home. After-effects: tired.

So what’s happened to the priority system? It was Lady St Ivel who told her about the mysterious phone number and she heard from a neighbour, not through being a Lady. An old man nearby on all known medication for being a massive red slab and 87 has been summoned to the Far West town for jabbing later this week. He’s not in a home either.

I was with the Gay Mother upon return from Madeira. The main event was a wren got in and wouldn’t go out again. The Gay Mother said they fly low and love dark corners. Their Latin name is Troglogdyte. In the end we just had to have faith that it had escaped from the bathroom.

One morning we had porridge at the Gay Mother’s because it was frosty. Otherwise the usual repast were taken, including tea.

She’s much preoccupied with Black Lives Matter. The Church Times is full of it. So we viewed  three massive TV dramas called Smallaxe about Black Lives with all the dialogue in Jamaican patois. One of them was people dancing for 25 minutes with music and nothing else. The Gay Mother kept saying, ‘I don’t understand what’s happening.’ There was a little bit of a Lesbian under-toe which I didn’t like to mention. It was the boldness of the filming style to have nothing happening for 25 minutes. Quite deliberate.  The other ones were about the Mangrove Cafe and a black policeman. I wish I’d known about the Mangrove Cafe and the court case in the 70s in all those years I lived near it but never dared to approach.

Otherwise my activities are below the horizon, being no longer in society.

Thursday 10th December 2020

It’s up in the cable car to the Botanical Gardens and down in another to the wild seashore in a different part of Madeira only accessible on that wire. My nerves were bad in the car, especially when Anthony Mottram insisted on standing up and rocking it. Just hanging on by a thread which could snap at any moment or what if the cable got jerked out of the wheel it depends on? You never know if anybody’s thought of these things.

The Bot Gardens were incredibly charming and vertical but I had such a hangover that day. Could hardly move. Flora is huge in Madeira. Flowers everywhere, most of them in the brightly coloured tropical range – the Bougainvillea, the large flowered hibiscus, a cactus plant with flowers like red-hot pokers.  Many species are unique to the island and labelled ‘Maderense’, such as Geranium Maderense. Everything grows so well in the even climate with plenty of rain. Only in the Bot Gardens, where they display other flora, such as cacti, were there signs of failure as always seen in English gardens. The cacti were remarkable, though – those great tall ones like persons by Henry Moore.

Another day we went to the museums of Madeira – incredibly brown and unvisited. One with boiling standard Flemish works for some reason. In the basement was a contemporary installation. Anthony Mottram said it was lace-based, as is the whole of Madeira. It wasn’t quite lace actually but drawn-thread work. But Anthony Mottram insisted lace was the foundation of Madeira and could be of many countries if only they tried.

It didn’t seem very likely, looking at all the rocks and embattled nautical buildings that there would be a lace basis to it all.

The other museum was devoted to the works of two brothers from the late 19th to early 20th, one was a painter and the other a sculptor. The place was beautifully kept, the lino gleaming and 4 or 5 attendants managing the free entry. There must be a huge foundation. The works were perfectly adequate, in different styles from the period.

It was important to pay these visits in order to give back something of what Madeira had given to us as an opportunity for exile. Only Reid’s Hotel remained to be visited, where the Ducal Grandson said there were vitrines containing abandoned wedding dresses of long ago. On the last night we went there – at last the in and out drive of Reid’s Hotel. But it had been taken over by the Belmont chain, the atrium now international polished luxury from the central issuing office of international luxury and the vitrines abolished.

Madeira Bot Gardens

Madeira Bot Gardens: These were Everywhere but No Label

This is the Red-Hot Poker-like Thing – all over The Island

The Bot Garden – General View

The Residence in the Bot Garden – English-looking apart from the Shutters

Hibiscus seen all over The Island in Different Colours

The Best of the Flemish Boiling Works in the Museum

The Lace Foundation of Madeira shown in the Museum

The Lace-Inspired Contemporary Work installed in the Museum. In Lace is Strength

Best Painting in Other Museum of the Two Brothers

Some Maquettes by the Sculpting Brother: V. Life-Like

Going Down: Cable Car Life

At the Bottom

Saturday 5th December 2020

Thank God it’s 5th December. One is just blowing away the days. I look at the calendar until March and think of that time to be chipped away at. A comfort is to cast back. So we’ve managed to come this far from 1st September. Now until March is the same. January is a long month. But February is shortest.

Although in fact the schedule is near normal, apart from mass gatherings, such as the Royal Opera House, the Royal Albert Hall and the Royal Festival Hall. I returned from Madeira on Monday 23rd November by air and gained the Gay Mother’s on Tuesday 1st December. Robert Nevill and Sebastian Archer are staying at my London home. They’ve got builders into their own home and have suffered the abolition of their bathroom. They use mugs and can actually do the questions on Only Connect. Brainy or what.

The best comment on the current ghastiness is made by Professor Francois Balloux, of University College, London: ‘It feels at times as if the enlightenment age never happened. In many ways, our response to Covid 19 seems to me not that different from our ancestors’ reaction to the Black Death, with its toxic mix of superstition, millenarianism, dogma, fear, anger and ostracism.’

Quite so. It doesn’t matter how many graphs a person has looked at, everyone’s view of the pandemic is just a reflection of their personality, whether conformist, wanting to belong, difficult, maverick, not toeing the line, won’t be told what to do, goody-goody, afraid, loving to look down on others etc. I said early on that everybody has got their own little rituals for warding off the microbe. At the re-opening of the Garden Museum in July, I’m pleased to say that the Opera Critic of the Graph, run into there, said exactly the same thing, expressing horror at the masks.

If the Opera Critic of the Graph said it…

I’ve got 4 serious cases at the moment, 3 of cancer, 2 bad, one bad but more hopeful, the 4th with a mystery neurological disorder. There’s also a prominent Poor Little Rich Gay down with Covid. But I’m afraid cer is the scourge at our time of life. Walking past the undertakers last Sunday with Robert Nevill, I said, ‘I could be in their fridge by this time next week.’ You just never know.

In Madeira Anthony Mottram called the drink he’d had in a bar Instant Whisky, which would be on the same lines as Instant Coffee.  We spent a lot of time thinking of Ways with Wire Wool. In recipes, I mean. Perhaps nests of wire wool for quail’s eggs or a Baked Alaska with a Wire Wool Surprise at the centre.

Anthony Mottram has a hotel breakfast even if not in an hotel. It takes about 40 mins to assemble: the mixed cold meats, the smoked fishes, the eggs, the cereal selection from the Harvest Table (the Harvest Table was once offered to Godfrey Twirly-Wurly in early hotel days and he had to leave the Breakfast Room with convulsions), the jams, honeys, dips, vegetable plates, fruit plates, breads, pastries, toasts and various juices and beverages. When over, one morning, Anthony Mottram put the remaining beetroot slices on a plate with the other vegetables. The staining!

Did I mention that in Madeira the roads all have swirly patterns picked out in mosaic? Funny, because otherwise the architecture is plain, old-sea-dog mariner and Atlantic-facing, with sash-windows as in England but one pane wider than ours. You can just imagine the old sea-dogs looking out of them and growling in that way they do in the films, growling to be riding the ocean waves once again.

I think that’s why they made the windows like that.

Poor Little Rich Gays, here and throughout the World, know what their calling is.

Madeira: Wavy Patterns

Anthony Mottram Mixed Plate: Beetroot Staining Nightmare