Saturday 2nd May 2020

I must apologise. I’ve fallen into despair again. But let’s not let that stand in our way. Yesterday I stopped off at Merle’s because the Turkish shop was out of curry leaves. I thought she might have some. Don’t worry. Nobody is more socially distanced than Merle. Besides, she wasn’t there. She was Click and Collect at Waitrose. But a man forged towards me outside her house, going for his car. Wouldn’t wait. I got tangled up with my bicycle somehow, trying to get out of the way, and fell over backwards. Quite hurty. Then my Kerulan aubergine creation wasn’t right. Chewy desiccated coconut, even though from Planet Organic. I read a few articles, in the Spectator and so on. Bad idea. Before I knew it , had plunged. No hope. No end to corona. And the economic damage.

It’s no use expecting anybody to feel sorry for a Poor Little Rich Gay who’d only wanted to be just a little bit rich in old age and free at last of racking strain and worry.  Instead of which, three times, devastation.  2008, the financial crisis,  then my mine went bust in 2018. We’d just got through that and seen off the threat of the most ghastly Socialism and this happens. Beyond belief.  Three times. Who would believe it? Contrary to common belief, one is not strengthened by these blows, but weakened. In the end, it will be too much.

But I digress. I was going to say, I went out for exercise to Regent’s Park. Whom should I bump into by remarkable coincidence but Royston King?  ‘Human beings can only worry about something for so long,’ he said. That was some days ago, when we were still comfortably locked, not now when we face the horror of trying to unlock and consequences of it all and the hopeless viral future…

But Regent’s Park, as never seen before. Only now it reveals itself in its glory, as if it had been unpeeled and pushed forward by crisis in which only outdoor tours are possible. What an incredible thing Regent’s Park is. The completeness of it. We cycled all round. I never knew that Quinlan Terry had added six or seven mansions on the north-western side. We saw a Memsahib walking in the garden of one of them with a mask on. She was going round and round the box grove. Royston thought she could be the wife of the Indian steel magnate who owns the house and not a member of staff. Not that there are any members of staff these days. The creamy terraces we know of course. But they blazed that day. I’d always understood them to be badly built and narrow. But Royston said only on the south western side. The eastern terraces are astonishing. Flaring statues, great portals and pediments and friezes – such a grandeur of conception when really they’re stucco terraces.  Then the Park itself. I’d always thought it was mainly flat with carpet bedding but it’s got lakes, wildernesses, Queen Mary’s Rose Garden, another garden like a stage-set near the theatre and a new desert garden with echiums. Just incredible. Tremendous landscaping with concentric circles. We saw some herons up close. I thought maybe they were ornaments but one of them moved. I never knew. I thought herons couldn’t stand human company.

So, I’ve got a bird in the oven. I managed to get some frozen peas. After dinner I’ve got another episode of Belgravia stored up. The most fabulous high-class rubbish. A foundling story for nos jours. The Gay Mother says that tomorrow is International Dawn Chorus Day. We must be up at 5 to join in the Dawn Chorus.

Thursday 30th April 2020

In early life I craved society. It was only to be had locally. Later I went to Prep and became the raving snob I have been ever since, Thank God. So in this pre-era a boy came to play, just the once as I remember. He wasn’t a good boy, unfortunately, wasn’t liked. In later life he turned out too hopeless even for a life of petty crime. We lit a fire which failed to go. This boy had a brain wave: Why not put hot water on it? Cold water would put it out but hot water would surely have the opposite effect. At seven years old I wasn’t at all scientific or even clever. But I remember being completely shocked. Still am. How could anybody think that? We’ve all had moments of stupidity – pulling the door when it says Push. That kind of thing. But this was something else. A massive failure of the internal wiring. As if someone were hungry but didn’t know that they wouldn’t be if they ate something.

I never again experienced such stunned amazement at the thinking of another until, that is, President Trump unravelled his notion of internal disinfecting and also illumination last week. So that’s a whole 55 years of nothing like that, with at one end an unfortunate foster boy of seven years old and at the other the President of the United States of America.

Tuesday 28th April 2020

It suddenly occurred to me that as well as being nobodies we’re all Princess Margaret now. When Harry Rollo was a student in the 1990s, he sat on a sofa with Princess Margaret. It was after dinner in one of the Cambridge colleges. Perhaps Princess Margaret was visiting Norman St John Stevas, that old Queen. A select few of the students were invited in after dinner. She was very welcoming. She said to Harry: ‘You’re too sitting too near. Could you move further away? It’s rather warm.’ In the same way, she said to Nicky Haslam on another occasion, ‘No kissing, Nicky. It’s far too hot.’

Social distancing. Princess Margaret was a pioneer of the art. If only she’d lived to see today.

Sunday 26th April 2020

I’ve been seized with sudden mad optimism. It’s been carrying on for several days now. So maybe there’s something in it. Professor Johan Giesecke can be seen on Lockdown TV being interviewed for 30 minutes by a hot bird. He is the retired Head of Public Health in Sweden, who appointed the present one – so might be thought to have some idea of what he’s talking about. But v. controversial, all the same. His most telling words: ‘You can’t stop it.’ So maybe I was right about Dame Lettie. That’s Muriel Spark’s Dame Lettie who fought with such ferocity to keep out death with all her locks and security grilles. In that way, she successfully aroused the interest of nearby murderous burglars and so she met her end. If we were a bit nicer to the corona… it doesn’t mean to kill. If it kills it can’t reproduce. All this fighting and battling and staying safe might make it worse. It will fight back.

Besides, as Royston King said this week, humans only can worry about something for so long. Just this morning I took a Dorset Cereal packet (Spelt Dorset Cereal) from where it had been in quarantine for only just under two days rather than three as should be. The problem was I wanted to eat some Spelt Dorset Cereal, astonishing as it may seem. A flake dropped on the table and my urge for tidiness got the better of my hygiene drive. I picked it up and ate it – even though my fingers might have touched the outside of the box while opening it. I couldn’t face washing my hands before eating the flake, even though it was early in the day and I’ll easily have washed them 35 times by the end of the day. As for the viral condition of the table on which the flake lay – it doesn’t bear thinking about.

But as the Gay Mother is always saying, the Government haven’t told us we’ve got to burn all our shopping when we bring it back into the house. And our clothes, hair and bodies… They never said… what about coriander that’s been open on the shelf in the greengrocer? What if someone’s coughed all over it? You can’t boil or bleach or hand sanitise it if you want to have it raw. But they never told us we can’t have a fresh coriander garnish.

Robert Nevil was telling me yesterday that the Nizim showers upon returning from the shops. But I’d be worried about washing virus into one’s mouth or nose though…

Can we really go on like this indefinitely?

There was supposed to be a plan for a pandemic. I wonder if it involved shutting down the entire country at a cost of £500 billion or whatever and leaving the population to invent the science. I think they just copied China and hoped for the best.

In another two months, once proper data begins to emerge, I’m sure our situation will be very different. Something else that Poor Little Rich Gays in particular are least likely to have in mind – remember we are animals. What do our instincts tell us, as if we were a fox or polar bear?  The present incarceration may have been unavoidable as a temporary measure. But we know it’s not right really, don’t we? We feel that strain and uphill effort and unnatural struggle. A squirrel would know better. You can’t stop it. Within is our best anti-viral machinery. There’s nothing like it. It’s built-in and it’s free.

Wednesday 22nd April 2020

On Sunday Angus Willis promised two sea bass at £10 each that had mysteriously appeared out of the sea at Hastings. But by Monday morning, two sea bass had turned into one sea bass and a grey mullet. Merle went mental. ‘I don’t want a grey mullet,’ she boomed. ‘They taste of mud.’ ‘Well,’ Angus said, ‘perhaps it’s a question of whom can get first to the Warehouse to collect.’ ‘It’s happening,’ I screamed, ‘as predicted, all human relations breaking down. Chien mange chien en temps de guerre.’ Merle didn’t like that either and reversed violently. She’s not having human relations breaking down.

In the end radiance and human warmth all round.

Angus had bought us fish from the sea in time of crisis.

Merle collected the fish. And agreed to fillet the sea bass into two parts and hack the grey mullet in half and bring the parts to me. Angus said the grey mullet was ocean-going and hadn’t consumed any mud.

Yesterday Laura Malcolm and I exercised together in Hyde Park. Never has the Spring been so green for years and years. There were a lot of prefects around. ‘Quick,’ said Laura, ‘they’re coming.’  Our legs at once began a tremendous show of being exercised. When the prefect came by in his van he said, ‘When you’ve finished exercising, go home.’ Which is what we were going to do anyway.

It’s a bit much when you think who we are. But in this Covid everybody is nobody. Have you noticed? Just members of the Public. In a way, it’s a relief.

Back home, the drain was blocked in my front area. I reached in to unblock, soaking the cuff of what I thought was my very very old Prada apres-ski jacket, black in sheer nylon. But it wasn’t. It was the good Jill Sander black cashmere cardy I’d put on for my exercising with Laura Malcolm.

My Cardy by Jill Sander which I thought was An Ancient Apres Ski by Prada

Brackets Newly Mounted to Lift Corner of Drawing Room. Took Two Days to Get Right. Had Brain Wave to Place Lower One Slightly Skew. Gives Rococo Movemente. But Lower Bracket had to Placed Three Times

Arrangement Before Touching up with Paint. Look Carefully. Had to get Old can of Paint Out. It leaked from hole in Bottom. Then Tone Down Paint with Raw Umber and Ochre to Match

Long View of Rococo Arrangement

Sunday 19th April 2020

Maybe we are half-way through, one third of the way through or getting nowhere. Who knows? Last night we tried Zoom at 8pm. Archie Hurling came on. He’d received a remarkable package through the post, the contents of which he caused him to fuse his ring at 4 in the morning. Poor Merle once again much victimised. ‘Everybody’s talking at once,’ Merle said, again and again. No effect.  Angus and Fergus kept disappearing into their background, which was the Maldives. They wouldn’t sit still. Next thing, the pair were blank altogether. Battery failure apparently. ‘They’re drunk,’ Archie said, in the interlude of their absence, like one stamping the final paper before the gallows. Once they were back, he cried, ‘I’m not coping. I’m very emotional. I’m not used to this.’ Nobody took any notice. He started snacking desperately in full view on Zoom.  Where was Heavenly Brahms? He’d been painting a floor, Archie said. ‘Here is the floor he painted,’ Archie said, moving his device to capture it. But no sign of the person of Heavenly, none whatsoever. Evap completely? Who knows? Only Miss Miracle, after I asked six times through the chaos, was at all forthcoming with anything resembling sense which was remarkable because in ‘normal’ times she’ll have your menu turned upside down, her cardie she’ll pull off over her head and it’s never been laundered from the Charity Shop and she doesn’t agree with anything you say. Now she’s making sense. Everyone else gone off the rails. She’s working in a school. There are three pupils, the off-spring of essential workers. Where are all the others? The off-spring of essential workers, I mean. There must be more than three in a large secondary school.  And she’s making head-bands for NHS workers. Somehow she’s got a sewing machine. She’s never used a sewing machine before.

Val could be running things up for the NHS.

I sense a low point. Jolly little WhatsApp groups established at the outset are fading away. Nobody phones. I don’t phone anybody either. Too much effort. There’s nothing to say. Apart from the Gay Mother – and she’s got somebody she knows on a ventilator, but in Sweden. It’s a long story. Really you just can’t believe it.

I suppose Heaven will be a bit like this when we get there. Nothing to do, or if things to do, there’s always tomorrow, one day exactly like another, stretching out into eternity. Infinite time to write a novel. So nothing gets done. But it’s not just that. You can’t keep the din from outside out. . All kinds of schemes are urged. Why not flower as an artist? Or at least acquire hobbies. You’re free. Now’s your chance.

But the agony of negative capability for the artist, the impossible struggle to exclude and absorb which must be made possible. No proper artist could forge on through this, ignoring.

Outside, life is draining away, quite literally. TV is drying up, because they can’t gather to make programmes. What’s happening to people?  Did you notice the bizarre general assumption prevalent from the beginning of all this – that solitary isolation and being glued up with your Loved Ones were the same terrible fate? In fact on the whole being glued with LOs marginally worse.   Everybody in the same boat more or less. So we learn an irony. Empathy as normally understood depends on difference. Once everybody’s experience is the same, something very strange starts to happen.

Dismaying State of Washing Up Brushes after Five Weeks of Isolation

Friday 17th April 2020

I was awake in the night trying to manage my larder. Merle Barr says it’s too dangerous to go shopping more than once a week. Yesterday as we cycled (we just happened to meet, didn’t we?) she explained to me her terrifying system with a chicken, the dismembering, freezing and eeking. Somehow I’ve ended up with an all-carbohydrate menu. Rice which is near fatal to me – I had the second half of the kedgeree last night. So risotto was really out of the question for tonight. But what would happen to the chicken stock? In my delirium it whirled to me that the original chicken was bought two weeks ago. Nor have I considered what kind of risotto – small detail. Then there’s the horseradish cream. Will that go off before I get the steak defrosted? (I’m so against freezing). And I’ve got all those potatoes. A gratin looms. But the mushrooms might be past their best. Then there’s that cabbage…

So this morning instead of getting on with scumble-glazing the dining room woodwork, I boiled up the stock, cooled and put it in a plastic box for freezing. Then I forced down a panzanella at luncheon as the schedule and best before dates demanded before fading away quietly on the sofa.

I can just see it. We’ll be unlocked and I’ll be massively behind with my eating.  Just like at Barrowborough, when Anthony Mottram and I had to get up early on the last day of term to consume the Vesta Chicken Curry and Chow Mein we’d been saving for a special treat. It’ll be that all over again.

Speaking of locking, has anyone noticed that in the last crisis that was going to wipe us out for good, a motif was the Speaker of the Commons House crying, ‘Unlock, unlock’ after all those nail-biting ‘votes’ that led to nothing? Now it’s ‘lock-down…. lock-down’. So what will it be next? It’s rather worrying that we’ve already had ‘unlock’ so maybe it will be ‘lock up. Lock them up permanently.’

What I really meant to say, looking on the bright side, is that vital supplies are getting through. Rufus Pitman raved about two Ivy’s and I just had to have them, even though I’ve never managed to get to the end any of her works and Val said he’d read one and Ivy had forgotten that someone had left the room. Victor Gollanz used to send the Ivy’s straight to the printers without reading them, so anything could have been going on.

But Rufus made the Ivy’s  sound irresistible, so badly behaved and ruthless. I’ve always loved the idea of Ivy in any case. These titles are about as out of print as you could hope, nevertheless avail on Amazon and delivered within the week. So vital Ivy’s are getting through. Also gesso – for the trolley I’m longing to tortoiseshell and the bed-head I’m going to do in French Grey – gesso was delivered.

Vital Ivy Delivered

Second Essential Ivy Arrived

Also Vital Gesso

Wednesday 15th April 2020

Wednesday already!

I said at the outset: we’ll get used to the muck as we go along. Even about ten days ago (I’ve lost all sense of time) I took a look at my bathroom edging and thought it utterly despicable.  Benign crisis-induced acceptance of deterioration up to a point was seeping away even then. Things were returning to normal.

It’s true, today, I’ve only glanced at the stock prices and taken the merest peck at the BBC News at 4.45, as I do every day, my only ration, but the raging anxiety of the earliest days seems to have subsided. I’m getting used to the muck. It’s not disagreeable to be in one’s home, amongst antiques and decor, to parade in one’s grounds (15′ x 30′), to wander through the bedrooms, as a Royalty would do in their Palace. I always said this confinement brings us nearer to Royalty. Perhaps it’s a kind of trance. Some Poor Little Rich Gays are deliciously ensconced in their various menages. They couldn’t be happier. Robert Nevil said, ‘There’s nothing you can do about the situation generally. Best not to think of it.’ I don’t know that I’d go that far. But you can see how prisoners get addicted to being in prison. So cosy. No responsibilities. As soon as they’re released, they contrive to get straight back in again. It’s a well-known phenomenon. The only disturbance in my enclosure is the constant sirens going up and down the road nearby. But they do anyway in normal times owing to the criminal element. I just hope it’s not ill people being taken away.

Yesterday the Gay Mother on the telephone said, ‘Is this virus to be the only thing we talk about? What about Greta Thunberg? She’s terribly unhealthy.’ I thought she was going announce some dread new news re: Greta but no, she’d read in The Tablet that Greta took half an hour to eat a banana and her sister took even longer to get the better of a spoonful of yoghurt. ‘She doesn’t eat properly. She’s tiny. You’d never know she was sixteen.’

I telephoned to Reggie Cresswell, and Lord Tanza who was about to go out to buy some self-raising flour. Flour! I couldn’t believe it. Flour’s generally considered a rarity these days. But they’ve got it in their Turkish shop. ‘I’ve never known that shop not to have anything,’ Reggie said, ‘ except perhaps a 1st edition.’ He was cleaning the silver after finishing Middlemarch (that’s George Eliot’s Middlemarch) which has got quite a lot wrong with it (George Eliot herself going on: wonky story-line) but marvellous bits. I wonder if anyone will ever read it again. It could get disused. We talked about Ivy as well. Reggie’s thinking about another ceramic, which is incredibly thrilling.

Front Area Tulips: Didn’t Realise Paul Schreer was going to be Outsize. With Princess Irene and Coleur Cardinal

Paul Schreer Haughty: With Coleur Cardinal and Princess Irene in the Front Area

The Other Two have Showed Up on the Top Terrace: Armani (Red) and Abu Hanzer. With Sunny Prince (yellow)

Top Terrace Tulips now Complete: Armani (Red) Abu Hanzer, and Sunny Prince. I Blame Armani 

Monday 13th April 2020

Funny how mood can change. Always by the day, I find. Today I’m much better than yesterday although nothing has changed in the outside world, as far as I know. Yesterday I took my temperature in the morning. It said 35.2 which is .2 degrees from hypothermia. I did feel a bit funny. Later it rose to 35.6. What can it mean? I must ask Joshua Baring who is a fully qualified doctor in all but fact. While up at Oxford he attended all the medical lectures in addition to the ones in his chosen subject. Why not?  2 degrees for the price of one or may be 3 or 4, if you throw in nuclear physics and marine biology. So you could emerge as a George Eliot specialist with a sideline in building nuclear power stations and saving coral reefs.

I haven’t been out since Friday. Robert Nevil and Sebastian Archer are completely secluded, with the Nizim fetching and carrying for them. It seems that in the garden he dons a boiler suit and does heavy work in the pond while Robert Nevil prances about taking picturesque shots for Insta. So useful.

It’s best not to go out because if you do you might lose your temper. The happiest seem to be those completely in purdah. Supermarkets are hopeless. No social distancing. I got furious with a young man who walked right up beside me by the raisons, whereupon he tried to blow in my face. Not very successfully, I hope. But still another week to wait to see if symptoms develop. I think he might have been unhinged.

The episode brought to mind Dame Lettie – that’s Muriel Spark’s Dame Lettie, from Memento Mori, which is a novel by Dame Muriel Spark. Dame Lettie is an important committee-woman and chairman. When she receives anonymous phone calls saying, ‘Remember you must die,’ she so barricades her Hampstead home with grilles and alarms that burglars are provoked to action and she ends up murdered in her bed.

How would it be with this Covid if the more we brace and spray and wear ourselves out with hygiene, the more it is spurred on to attack?

What I’m really trying to say is that there’s something desperate and strained and unnatural about this ‘fight’ against the virus. Where does it end? As I was saying to the Gay Mother last night, how do you get a letter out of its envelope without the letter possibly touching the outside of the envelope? How do you know the letter isn’t contaminated?

Merle Barr came round with some crumpets she’d made, except she decided they were pikelets. Angus Willis furious. Said they weren’t pikelets, pikelets common, how dare Merle. Recipe quite wrong. All his memes went red. I said, ‘We know about food too!’ Wouldn’t normally dare to speak thus except in a time like this.

I managed to get pikelets out of Merle’s packaging onto a sheet of greaseproof of my own. Then they were toasted for final viral obliteration although Merle least likely to be viral.

Merle’s Pikelets Arrive. That’s Ant Powder by the Way

Merle’s Pikelets: Superb. So Light and Pikelet-like

Sunday 12th April 2020

I’m thinking of ‘Easter 1916’. Other Easters have been terrible. But in different ways.

My late uncle Maristow, Lord of the Far West, if frightened when a child, used to sing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ to himself in the dark. So we sang it at his funeral, 13 years ago. Yesterday I was frightened and sang ‘Thine be the Glory’ and ‘Jesus Christ is Risen Today’, the Easter hymns, alone in my drawing room with YouTube accompaniment. But it was too much. I was overwhelmed. I should be with the Gay Mother for Easter. She should have done the flowers for the font in the Church. At the Easter service we always have ‘Jesus Christ is risen today’ and ‘Thine be the glory’ to finish. My favourite bit is ‘Bring us safe through Jordon/To thy home above.’ To see those congregations all together in the YouTube clips at the Easter service!

Although in truth the Vicar’s sermon was often annoying and awfully long and the glory of ‘Thine be the Glory’ was in part that the service was nearly over. Terrible Poor Little Rich Gay itchiness.

It’s all right, Poor Little Rich Gays – sometimes it’s just too much. You don’t have to be upbeat the entire time. It’s all right to give in now and again.

Val rang from Hastings, well refreshed. ‘Mother has risen,’ he announced. ‘She jolly better have,’ I said. He feels that he’s not had a bad life, he’ll be 63 next month; if he’s taken with the Covid it won’t be the end of the world. I said, ‘Our only hope is Jesus.’ You can see how people become religious, especially now that we’ve turned back to 1364 and have no other hope. If they unlock us after this outbreak, within six weeks the whole thing will get going again and we’ll be back to square one, where we are now. What is to be done? What is to be done?

In the afternoon I telephoned to Prince Dmitri and we talked about what we shouldn’t talk about, the virus epidemic. Sometimes after telephoning I feel worse. I think people don’t telephone in case they feel worse. But today I felt better. Anxiety subsides if vented and another mentions some slither of hope picked up from a newspaper. If two people cling to the slither it makes it more believable.

Ye Choirs of New Jerusalem                                                                                                                                                                                 Your Sweetest notes employ

What Should have Been: the Gay Mother’s Flowers for the Church last Year