Friday 22nd December 2017

Merle and I gained my inn after a gruelling journey from the Capital. She was to lodge in the actual Fern Willis residence with Angus, Fergus, Archie and Cloudless. In my room at the inn there was a bath and the loo roll styling was a lav paper flower inserted into the top of each one. Drinks in the bar came with free roast potato and Yorkshire pudding snacks. Merle said she didn’t like black pudding which was the third option. We motored on to Fern’s. Archie and Cloudless had already arrived. They’d acquired a new hearse to convey all their purchases. ‘It’s extraordinary how it fills up,’ Cloudless said. Angus and Fergus were still in the Marylebone Road. Blood pressure was mounting, but Fern pressed on with her curry supper. In the middle of it, Angus and Fergus crashed through the door. Their average speed from London was 120 mph. Archie attacked Fern’s hanging light over the table: too harsh. Incredible curry supper with so many dainty extras. Fern had planned everything with loving care. After dinner Fern’s husband played German military music on his computer very loudly and Fergus went mental.

The main idea was to make as much noise as possible and exercise no restraint whatsoever as to wording or mood. Somebody said, ‘Don’t mention Brexit.’ So it mentioned and there was more raving and Fern’s husband gave as good as he got. Really they might just as well have flung buns about the room.

The next morning, after my night in the Lord Poullet Arms (self-toast at breakfast), I came upon them all screaming at Fern’s husband in the kitchen: ‘Turn the heating up.’ He did nothing of the kind. We left him to the Telegraph crossroad and went roaring round Bridport antique market. Angus acquired some frightful old milk churns. As Merle pointed out, Fern’s great gift is to nose out things that Angus will like. There was quite a lot of questing for bashed-up old bits of metal all over Bridport in the end. At the indoor antique fayre, Archie and Cloudless acquired a Deco tea-set without once mentioning the vagina.

We were almost late for lunch. It was Soho House by the sea or something like that. There was absolute witheration for the replacement windows at the Clubhouse. I thought it was nice: airy and light. But no, the replacement windows were a disgrace. After a classic white wine, zero calories London lunch (except at Burton Bradstock) we walked on the beach. Nature came in for less of a bashing. In fact Archie went quite lyrical over the loveliness.  It was lovely. You may remember I was on that coast a few years ago with the Gay Mother. Golden Cap was quite golden in the dying light of day. The great thing is the countryside comes right down to the cliff edge – none of that ghastly waste land you often get behind beaches.

Then it was on to the pub where Miss Miracle works temporarily to see what harm could be done. She’s the Fern daughter and much admired. In Bridport we’d also visited her exhibition of sculpture. Luckily there was nobody there in the pub. It was tea-time. But no cream tea. Only a huge dog that needed washing. ‘Is this a Gay pub?’ Archie bellowed, just as the owner was coming in to ask who had parked their car in the electric car re-charging bay. It was me, Adrian Edge. I’d parked in the electric car re-charging bay. So I suppose I’d done the most harm. Because the point of the electric car re-charging bay was that the owner had an electric car, a Mercedes in fact. But Archie was right in a way because the owner didn’t like the idea of his pub being a Gay Pub.

Finally the Gays re-occupied the Fern residence. Fern’s husband’s period of autonomy in his own home was over. Dinner was ordered to be served a different room from the night before because of the hanging light which wasn’t liked. Merle and Fern slaved in the kitchen, while Archie remarked in the drawing room (he was in pink and red) that once a person has caught the flavour of the vagina there’s no going back. He referred to the daughter of some friends of his who had turned Lesbian. Her parents had wondered if she would ever resume heterosexuality.

Fern served a superb ham dinner in a different room.  Then we had her quiz: guessing who people were in photos. The next day we went to Stoke Abbott, where my prep school friend, Tom Sweet-Escott came from. I visited there in the 70s one August. I can’t now remember how I got there from the Far West but somehow I did, unaccompanied and barely 11, I should think. We found the Manor House where he lived and I discoverd later from Googling that both his parents are dead and he is a hedge-fund manager. I haven’t seen or heard of him since 1970. We drew very large cars with Rolls Royce radiator grills endlessly – but seating for hundreds.

Lyme Regis was our final stop. Fergus and Angus were stoking each other up all over lunch about a set of Encyclopedia Britannica from 1911 Fergus wanted to buy from a second-hand bookshop there. They were quite calm in the fossil shop before. Then we walked on the Cobb and got hooked up trying to get close-up photos of a sea-bird. Fergus was still fuming quietly re: the encyclopedia. Angus also took photos which he later made look old-worlde with Snapseed. But I was pleased with my fashion look – the very old Paul Smith coat in herringbone tweed, the new Zara slacks in chestnut cord, and the APC cream jumper (that subsequently got shrunk: the cords are also being a nightmare, but that’s another story. So a great photo but two of the pieces now in crisis: irony).  Anyway on the Cobb I was angular, I had a silhouette. Merle and I went back to fetch my Official Car but we were ordered by text to go round another way because Angus had suddenly bought a whole lot of fish and had to collected at once. I was in meltdown: fish-water in my boot: I might have to throw the Official Car away. Like that time the Gay Mother upset a bottle of Jeyes Fluid in that mini. She loathed Jeyes anyway. We always had Dettol, which was considered a cut above. She only had the Jeyes – something to do with the Church.

Fern offered a tremendous farewell celebration dinner complete with some neighbouring lesbians who’d protected the Queen. Policewomen.

Lord Poulett Arms: Bath in Room

Lord Poulett Arms: Toilet Paper styling

Miss Miracle: Her Sculpture

Angus Willis : Bridport Purchases

Soho House by the Sea or Whateves

The Sea Coast: Lovely

Fern’s Ham Dinner

Angus Willis: Purchases: Different Angle

Archie Hurling on Sofa with Cloudless

Stoke Abbott: Where my Friend from Prep, Tom Sweet-Escott Lived

Sea-Bird Photo Competition: Lyme Regis

Tuesday 19th December 2017

Even in November one was barely able to breathe. Will there ever be a month of rest? I still haven’t found the right shoes to have with the new short trousers. They have to be huge and clumping, as worn in The First Monday of May, by the director of the costume department of the Met, partner of Thom Browne, hence in Thom Browne bizarre, squew-whiff frockage and footwear. But it’s new, it’s important, it’s must-have.

If only I could wear one house – and wear it forever. It would all be so much simpler. But, as I’ve said before, fashion is the fight against Death.

I managed to shrink my cream cable-knit by APC and lost my Waitrose trolley-release disc. But they gave me another; then I found the one lost. So now I have two.

Harry Rollo was beamed into cinemas from New York or rather his performance was and he was seen briefly ‘chatting’ between the acts. New York was knocked out by Harry. I should have been there. Those wielding the cameras for the beaming hadn’t got quite the right idea: the performance is a whole, not a series of parts. Never mind: one had enough of a sense of its infinite mystery, rarity, social charm and degradation as well as possible salvation . Re: the bush fires in California, where Harry and Mercury Mr Kitten reside part-time, Harry said the Getty Museum has got a special force field around it which repels fire. Another homes, such as those in Bel Air, are ‘not allowed’ to catch fire.

I dined very privately with a prominent architectural historian who had lived in a house in Glasgow where Val’s doctor friend now lives. It was in this house that Val and the Doctor friend used a scalpel to achieve the exact 3mm distance between one score and another to achieve the perfect crackling for a roast pork.

But it was best not to mention this coincidental connection because apparently the arch hist had been consigned to the basement of this Glasgow house owing to wife trouble of some kind.

Then a rare performance was given of Quaint Honour at the Finborough Theatre. This play is really by John Holmestrom, one of the bank of late great Radio 3 announcers with weird private lives. There was Cormac Rigby who lived entirely for Radio 3, the Royal Ballet and the Roman Catholic Church, Patricia Hughes of Graciousness and Perfect Locution and Miles Kent, of course, known to me, Adrian Edge, personally. Another whose name escapes often announced on arrival at the office that he couldn’t sit down having been whacked by some hired boys. I know all this because Anthony Mottram, before he became the Saviour of the Block, worked in the Radio 3 office from 1980 to 82 approx. John Holmestrom  .. well, he wrote this play under a pseudonym. Set in a public it’s about ‘romances’ between older boys and their ‘fags’. Such instructive liaisons the author seems to approve of  but then he doesn’t. The whole thing’s a bit of a muddle.In some ways it’s a crusading Gay Rights piece and remarkable for being so early – about 1958. It was performed then. But I did rather long for it to end in the end. Speechifying.

I was almost late for the perf owing to rather intense estate work. In brief, I needed someone to witness my signature on some docs by virtue of which, once signed, I could acquire agricultural acres. So imagine the good forture: Marmion Beaufleasance was present at the perf with the editor of Debretts – perfect. He witnessed my signature in the interval, even though he’d got his arm in a sling.

The next important engagement was Hove,where Anthony Mottram and I stayed in the world’s most expensive Bnb – £150 per night each. We attended Hamish McCrae’s Disco Party for his 50th birthday on the beach there in a disco building. Such was the volume of disco you had to sit in a kind of trance while all kinds of crazies in costumes such as New York policemen, little buzzy frocky women, all delirious with joy, whirled past. We saw Wayne Sleep’s sort of partner – in any case presented on ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me out of Here’ as such – in fact a kind of 1940s Golf Club figure in a blazer, usually incredibly plastered. Well, he was there, now very badly crik-ed, poor old thing. Bruce McBain – whose own connection with Wayne Sleep is legendary – was convinced the Wayne Sleep partner hissed at him which would have been remarkable because he appeared capable of virtually nothing. Apart from that, AM, Bruce and myself sat on a banquette in a very agreeable state of suspension, kind of held upright by the force of disco sound. It was very soothing and time passed pleasantly with the occasional gourmet Scotch egg, home-made, or a sandwich for diversion.

The next day Hamish and Marcus Cargill, England’s leading clock mender, gave a luncheon drinks at which I met the fashion designers from Rottingdean. They’ve done well. They’ve been in H Nicks and Barney’s possibly. As well as Japan and Korea. But they said it was a bore having to make the clothes and they’ve now moving more into moulded shapes.  So it sounds as if I’ve missed that boat. We’ll see.

After that Aunt Lavinia bade me to a private breakfast at the Royal Academy for the Jasper Johns Exhib. Fascinating. After 40 or 50 years he revealed a tiny amount of himself – such as his interest in the 1977 Jubilee Vase. I would have liked to have returned for further study but no chance. Like the Rottingdean fashion designers, Jasper Johns is a very elusive artist, requiring careful attention.

There’s much worry that these private breakfasts are going to dry up and we really will have to give, give, give to the Royal Academy to get preferential treatment. There’s to be a Charles 1 exhib opening in January and I really do despair of the PV.

Finally for November there was a double party night on Thursday 30th: at the National Aids Foundation (Conrad Matheson important there) I thought: ‘That’s funny… Brian May’s on his mobile while tributes were being paid to those who have gone on before from the AIDS… maybe he didn’t care that much about poor Freddie Mercury.’ But it wasn’t Brian May, it was Sean Matthias. Brian May I found from Googling is a twin of  Charles 11: at some point they would have looked identical but one became a king and the other went grey and turned into an ageing rock star.  The other great guests were Clive Anderson, Reggie Cresswell and Sir Ian McKellen, of course, whom I sure his coat was tied with string. I had to dash on to the Bad Sex Party of the Literary Review. Arriving late, I found an air of chandeliers having crashed to the ground (although they hadn’t of course).  The great blast of the party was over and rather peculiar people who looked quite a lot like the one in the Rolling Stones who isn’t Sir Mickland Jagger were wandering around in a ‘spaced-out’ state.  Even so they appeared to have little connection with either bad sex or literature. People said the place was the former residence of Lady Astor. Well, Granny knew Lady Astor and once called on her at her London home. I talked at some length to a biographer whom I thought Joshua Baring and Robert Nevil adored but it turned out I’d got the wrong one and they loathe this person. JB blew up in the cloakroom over the Grow Your Own Cucumber leaving present. All the attendant’s eyes were out on stalks. We went round to a new restaurant in the ICA or in that range of buildings where Joshua gained special access. I couldn’t believe that I was dining with them. Usually they signal Three’s a Crowd and I’m sent home alone. Beans were bought and Joshua said at the neighbouring table was the new Head of the Tate. Later he decided it wasn’t.

Friday 15th December 2017

Bruce McBain, Charlie Armitage and myself set sail from Greenwich on a gloriously murky November day, perfect for the lower Thames. Benedict O’Looney (his real name) was to guide us every inch of the way. In advance, I thought, ‘There’re can’t be much to see’. Attendance was quite heavy, although the visit was rare. Some sort of side-shoot of the London Open House thing. Straightaway I sensed one was in superior hands. Benedict O’Looney said something about the Royal Naval College – I think that one side was not by Wren. I never knew it before. That ensemble of buildings,though, with the Queen’s House in the middle – it must be one of the greatest, must it not? Such a quiet, long, low statement of greatness. Not at all like the Hofburg or even Versailles. Or The Hermitage. But you only go round the corner and it’s all quite different. The world begins that produced that other world of parks, museums and ordered facades. ‘Look,’ said Benedict O’Looney, ‘at those derricks.’ A couple of unremarkable scaffolding-type structures, barely visible in fact. But they were used to load onto ships the miles and miles of cable, manufactured nearby, that was laid under the sea to connect by telegraph and telephone with New York and Europe. Can you imagine such a thing? What an undertaking? But somebody had to do it. Next there was a very special gasometer – or rather its frame, of very light criss-cross construction, only recently listed. Then the rapeseed oil factory, with its silos, followed by the rubbish burning facility. Intertwined were endless new flatti blocks. B O’Looney knew all the ‘studios’ designing them. Such a wild and bleak expanse, yet everything happening there and has been from the start. Industrial hive, now residential, eco-buildings, Netherlands studios at work, a new Uni.  One hundred years ago, this estuary was filthy industry out of sight, sewage works, power stations, the Arsenal itself of course, put as far away as possible owing to likelihood of explosions, indeed certainty because they used to blow up the bombs to make sure they were working. But all that wealth was pumped upstream to lovely London itself: the Savoy Hotel, the Ritz, Buckingham Palace. All that.  Now it has swung round; the power stations and gas works have been de-commisionned, the vast Ford factory at Dagenham scaled down, the rubbish is burnt but cleanly. It’s all new and hopeful. And the flood-defences, of course. The Thames barrier such a remarkable thing.

One felt hope for our Nation.

The pleasure steamer trundled on and on. 75 minutes, B O’Looney out on deck in freezing rain and mist, no notes, never letting up, broadcasting to the boat, most snug inside.  Enthralling. Finally we gained an exceptional view of the Dartford Crossing – what a span. Only from the river can you appreciate it. And, so extraordinary, on grassland on the right bank, in what might almost pass for country-side, a stone barn. Georgian, B O’Looney said, and a gunpowder store, remotely sighted for obvious reasons. Returning, another 75 minutes, we had a better view of the earliest concrete structure, dating from 1916. Can’t remember what it was for, but incredibly important concrete structure. On the north bank was a weird kind of moorland, in fact a rubbish heap grassed over. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘there are people walking on it.’ But there weren’t. The ‘people’ were black ventilation shafts. There was nobody there. The Ford Dagenham works stretch as far as the eye can see and then there’s an amazing cat’s cradle of gantries. Can’t remember what they were for but incredible and industrial.  Edging up river, the great entrances to the West India Dock, now blocked up, once the hub of Empire, huge cargo boats arriving. Couldn’t quite see how they could get in. Then a more intense proliferation of unusual flattis – 80s flattis, 90s flatties, flatties now yet built, all now historic and interesting, before rounding the final bend and back.

I forgot to mention the Tate and Lyle works. All that Golden Syrup.

Marvellous Greenwich, the Royal Naval College, where the Gay Mother lunched during The War and had Jam Tart, not seen for years at that time

The Derricks from which Rolled the TransAtlantic Cables, so They Could Graph and Phone. Actual Cable had to be Laid, you Know. No Beaming Like now

The Rapeseed Oil Refinery

The Earliest Concrete Buildings from 1916

Grassy Knoll, in fact a Rubbish tip Beneath

The Dartford Crossing: the Span!

A Great Sluice Gate

A Gravel Works Possibly near the Ford Factory at Dagenham

Very Special Flattis

Friday 8th December 2017

The Home Start Quiz at Wani Town Hall. I’m there every year. Arabella de Gardendoor, who usually accompanies, was double-booked and nobody else would come with: couldn’t face it. Laura Malcolm suddenly knew nothing, Moira McMatron also.  Not even the blandishment of a chilli con carni supper on paper plates (with bikked pootatoo wrapped in foil ), cooked by busy charity ladies in their homes, would entice. Served in the opulent Deco surroundings of Wani Town Hall – the Civic Suite. Only Beamish O’Halloran of The Mail was willing. We were sat at a table with alarming career women in their 30s. Where were their men? Not in existence perhaps. They appeared generally appalled. Not even Beamish with his roguish Irish ways, his twinkle and exciting talk of what got lost in a celebrity lady’s embonpoint and how the skirts of another whirled up in a breeze, and all the roguish Irish men with their pints were leering… nothing could cheer them up. As for Mabel, Moira McMatron’s pug, soon sadly to expire (but we didn’t know that then), and how she was on a witness protection programme having witnessed a raid on a betting shop and then, would you believe it, she walks slap-bang into a hold-up with bicycles on a council estate – the career women couldn’t have been more at sea.

But we did quite well in the quiz, despite me not knowing anything. I wore the Zara Military jacket with frogging. Rather wasted, I felt. The career women didn’t really have outfits.

Laura Malcolm gave a luncheon on the Saturday for the Usks who were up for one of their peculiar concerts at the Royal Festival Hall. I don’t think the Laird had any especially startling new facts. Little did we know as we lunched that Mabel’s final days were in progress. Kelm and Ivy formed a sudden unexpected youth contingent at the table. Moira McMatron somehow knew a lot about their friends, such as who is consuming porn online and thinking of giving it up. Neither Kelm nor Ivy batted an eyelid. I slipped up by making a big fuss of Kelm and ignoring Ivy who is a girl (or young woman). Kelm and I spent a lot of time looking at Peru on Google Maps while he assessed my levels of casual and unconscious racism. Kelm has got a romantic involvement in Peru which is becoming popular for such things. A lady, of course.

The next day I left London and spent the night at the Castle Hotel, Taunton, en route for estate work in the Far West. Taunton: very quiet. I see it was short-listed for ‘City of Culture’. I’m not surprised. So it wasn’t until the Monday evening that I gained the Gay Mother’s. She was engaged in devising a blond menu – the last of the Herefordshire apples. The second night we had brill in a cream and vermouth sauce with breadcrumbs and celeriac sticks sautéed. It was totally blond – and superb. We visited the tip (but still so many empty boxes being kept back as useful for starting a bonfire), the hairdresser and the dentist over the days as well as having the agent to tea and walking down to the market garden to try and lure the builder away from there and up to the Gay Mother’s: no success. ‘What about this Guy Faulkes programme on TV?’ the Gay Mother said. ‘Did you watch it?’ I said. ‘Certainly not. They pinched the story of Margaret Clitheroe. But she wasn’t pressed to death in public. I looked up on several websites.’ Another day she said she’d watched ‘Young Trump’ on TV. ‘What was he like?’ I said. ‘Not up to much.’

Pictures from Prague in Fact: I did Take Graphs of the Gay Mother’s Blond Food but Looks Rather Horrid: This is a Mirror Cake Served at Anthony Mottram’s 60th Birthday Tea

I Went Round Prague All day with this Label Attached: No Maid to Help me

Wednesday 6th December 2017

A vintage tram procession processed through the streets of Prague from Anthony Mottram and Vadim Tartaru’s mausoleum/museum apartment to the venue. The Prague section of AM’s 60th birthday was underway on the Saturday evening. Derailment of the tram was a constant threat, especially on corners, making it all the more thrilling. For this reason, Val was not permitted to drive it despite his frequent suggestion that he should flagrantly hurl the levers with aplomb and diva-like accuracy. There was some attention from the public as the machine passed, but the greatness within remained a mystery in the outside world. At the Mandarin Orient, representatives of the diplomatic corps, the commercial arm, the youth branch, the hotel world and les arts et metiers were present in the vaulted banqueting room. As you know, Anthony Mottram has been central to the re-building of the Bloc after Communism from 1987. But music surged through the occasion; in between the ceremonial courses and beyond, music surged. Anthony Mottram dispensed with all formalities: he did not even make an entrance with National anthems, accompanied by Vadim and a suite. It was all so simple and un-intimidating. Even so, some present were humble and on best behaviour. Meanwhile Val was explaining that at his funeral Vidor’s Toccata is to be played as the coffin is carried forth from the basilica (or church). But how music surged at Anthony Mottram’s 60th birthday banquet: live music, real music – winners of the Music Competition Anthony Mottram set up and paid for, they played, as well as his relations. His nephew’s performance of the Chopin mazurka was electrifying in its fury and rigour and tremendousness. Music generated more music: some took spontaneously to their instruments, others were programmed. The Russian team were incredible: a vast, mournful boom emerged from the tiny frame of the singer. It was popular Russian ballads as re-interpreted in the 1920s.

A speech of thanks and tribute to Anthony Mottram for all his public and private work and giving was made by the same major lady who once ran the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and said to me at our Ivy function: ‘I must see more of you. You’re completely crazy.’ Curious photo-copied fliers of an underground nature were distributed during the banquet to selected Gays only, announcing an after-party at an address. Some hard-line Gays went to that address but there was nobody there. The next day it was considered a great adventure.

At breakfast at the Palais on the Sunday morning, Val said that the pillars on the fronts of ante-bellum houses in the American South were usually too far apart. Afterwards we visited Jewish Prague and saw the Prada window (women’s). How Prague has come on! It’s totally international these days. Then it was time for the final phase of the 60th birthday – the celebration tea and home concert in the Mausoleum/Museum apartment. Here was blazing quality. The bassoonist was from the Berlin Philharmonic Orch (quite well-known as an orch), a former winner of the Mottram Foundation Music Prize. Then his wife, also former winner, now in a top quartet and Maria Bordana, on piano, the 3rd former winner present, gave a Trout Quintet. Absolutely ravishing. Maria’s playing so fluid and elegant and clear. Cakes were served, Gays came and went. Val said that Telma Stock Cubes had the imprimatur of the Grand Rabbinate of Haifa.

And so… the next morning, Val and I in boarding outfits, paid a farewell morning call at the Mausoleum/Museum. The builders were back, cardboard down on the parquet for protection and the machinery of the household whirred quietly in the background as normal life resumed. It was grey and wet and November. Ned Czernowski and Peter Acharya provided access for us to the Club Lounge at the airport, with a splendid view of the dismal wet tarmac. On board Peter was cross that there was no cupboard in Club for his coat to be hung up in. Val and I made do with the rear of the aircraft, looking forward as best we could to Anthony Mottram’s 70th birthday and another important boarding for Prague.

Prada Ladies’ Window, Prague: Rubbish

Anthony Mottram’s Quiet Birthday Cheesecake on the Remote Restaurant on the Friday

The Spanish Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter Prague: the Only One There with Colour

Friday 1st December 2017

The Gala 60th Birthday of Anthony Mottram reached a climax in Prague. I flew out with Val. Beforehand I was in London, back to back dinners. Merle Barr summoned Bruce McBain to show him her estimates. She had at least 10. The desperate struggle to get her roof light replaced goes on. Of course, Bruce McBain said the whole roof should be glass and why didn’t Merle fork £10,000, plus knock through and re-model the whole house while about it. Merle returned to her estimates in their designated file: she couldn’t believe the disparities. Who do they think they are, these people? None could be settled on, not even the cheapest.

The next night Merle re-loomed at the Warehouse Collection, where Angus Willis presented a massive Roast Beef dinner array: all known trimmings and accompaniments. Val was there, after arrival by train from Hastings to over-night with me so as to be poised for boarding at London City Airport the next morning. It was a miracle. He covered the entire history of textiles with Olive Wildish, who also dined at the Warehouse and designs textiles. I could hear him proclaiming: ‘The Assyrians… but on the other hand, in Matabele Land…..’

We limo-ed straight to the Palais from the airport then went immediately round to the Mausoleum/Museum apartment for dusting and freshening. The building work wasn’t finished in time, the great expansion scheme into the next door apartment, the second such take-over. Dust everywhere and raw edges. The great moving library shelves (hydraulics equivalent to those levering Tower Bridge up and down) which will seal off the newly colonised apartment rather as Tutankamen’s tomb was sealed, a bare metal skeleton. I dusted a glass trolley loaded with glass objects. Val refused a duster totally. In the evening, it being the actual day of Anthony Mottram’s 60th birthday, we dined privately: only about 12 in the party. The restaurant was beyond the Plecnik church – once a remote part of Prague where only a few ventured. But when we got there it was occupied by another birthday party, a mere 24th birthday. The restaurant had failed miserably. There was very nearly a tremendous bearing down of Western greatness upon the wretched former Eastern Bloc, as well as a scheme to bulldoze the 24th birthday out of the way. But somehow we were crammed in: the tiny kitchen didn’t collapse under the strain of 12 extra. In fact it triumphed. Czech food was once filthy. But no more.

The next day Val and I set off for the Muller House. It was to be a rare visit, classic Poor Little Rich Gay – metro and bus to a remote residential district. The Muller House is by Adolf Loos. It was built in 1930. Val had read about it in the Guardian. When we got there it turned out to be so rare we couldn’t go in for three weeks. Booked up. Only a tiny number admitted. We stood outside it bantering with a German couple also in quest of admission: how many such huddles must there be outside less well-known but important examples of 20th century architecture, random persons thrown together, exchanging experiences of visits, successful or otherwise. These two had penetrated the Tugendhat Villa at Brno which is by Mies van der Rohe and requires booking 3 months in advance.

The outside of the Muller House is extraordinary enough: basically a bare white cube with attachments, asymmetrical arrangement of windows, bold empty expanses of wall and the incredible recessed entrance with a sudden outburst of rich honey-coloured stone as if carved out there from the white cube like a cave and including a bench resembling a tomb. Perhaps Adolf Loos also had the sealed tomb of Tutankamen in mind – the treasures within. Which we couldn’t see.

In a separate building there was a visitor centre and I had a phase of thinking it was part of the Tugendhat Villa because there were so many photos of it plus a model. Finally the penny dropped that the Tugendhat Villa is in Brno, about 200 miles away with a 3 month waiting list for admission. Anyway, Val and I made the best of it: we poured over the displays and watched a film about the restoration for Muller House. Vaclav Havel arrived for the opening drinks party: you could see the whippy waiters poised for service in the roof garden. In the end, we felt we’d as good as visited both villas. Muller is sumptuous inside, Arts and Crafts-esque, Klimt-like, wood and gold, while the Tug is pared down, glass and white walls. Although both built at a similar time.

We lunched at Prague Bake House in the Old Town. How Prague has changed! Many expensive cars passed by. The population is young people in important black clothes. In Old Town Square, there was Bruce McBain himself, just landed from London for the Anthony Mottram 60th Gala that evening, accompanied by Ned Czernowksi and Peter Achyra, those great boarders, Club Class Lounge on air miles as well as Club Class itself, not just the lounge. I told our morning story, lamenting that not all buildings achieve the standard of the Muller House and the Tug Villa at Brno. ‘Oh no,’ said Bruce McBain, ‘that wouldn’t go at all. You can’t have too many significant buildings. If every one was by Frank Geary it would be unbearable.’

So wise. We returned to the Palais to rest before the great evening gala.

Sunday 26th November 2017

Finally it’s happened. Val got to Moscow – well, Moscow Road, Hastings. Val’s moved to Hastings. His grand piano went down in a small Polish van, rocking; we followed in the Official Car. The installation of the grand piano was the great feature of the day really and me dusting it. I dusted and windolene-ed a lot of Val’s possessions – and his bin. Everything’s got to be sparkling for the new home because it’s a Los Angeles-style low white L-shape with throw-open folding glass doors all down one side. He’s got three ovens and two bathrooms. He’s quite cross about a lot of it but he’s going to call it Lubiyankova – or something like that. He consulted with one of his friends who’d been Ambassador to Moscow. He could become Madame Yeveshenko there – tragic but agreeably crazy, welcoming guests with a spoonful of gooseberry jam and enjoying samovar life.

At the end of the day, we had fish and chips down on the seafront and I went back to London – blocked and re-routed three times on the way back. What is this country coming to? Had to call the Police since totally trapped in Tunbridge Wells. Biffed off A21. Diversion signs petered out at once. Sav Nav took me back to the place where first biffed off – twice. I wondered if I had not been condemned to circulate Tunbridge Wells for eternity.

So to Mary Berry’s evening lecture for the National Gardens Scheme at one of the institutes in South Kensington. August venue for a brainy lecture. All the garden owners always look funny and less garden-like at this annual event in late October. Mary Berry had a little black dress with ridging, a pink jacket (I think real silk, not her usual polyester) and a black evening clutch studded with jet. Also considerable heels, especially for one of 82. She did stumble once but one of her fellow speakers had some kind of crisis on rising to speak and had to be massively heaved onto the stage. He was a Lord and more advanced into the 80s. The third talk was by a man from the Times who had never actually opened his garden – or only once years ago. They were supposed sound on the theme of opening their gardens but maybe with a brainy dimension. Mary was quite charming and more quavery than on TV. She said, ‘If it’s a hot day when you open, put your chocolate cakes back in the freezer. Nobody will want them.’ Gales of laughter. But what of the actual garden? There was one picture of it on a screen behind Mary that didn’t change all the time she was speaking. It was hedges and a lawn. Nothing further was divulged. She said that alstroemeria had been picked and brought into the house that morning. Later a member of the audience expressed astonishment at alstroemeria in late October and Mary became even more quavery and said something unlikely about pulling it not cutting to keep the flowers coming. I wondered if she really knew anything about gardening. There was much mention of someone called Keith who works out of doors. Finally she said they were giving it all up and moving to Henley. Afterwards she was thronged. Royston and I bore down on her. She looked absolutely furious when I, Adrian Edge, addressed her on the subject of Keith and was he moving to Henley as well? I seem to be obsessed with other people’s staff. ‘Keith’s absolutely invaluable,’ she said.

A week or two later I saw alstroemeria flowering in the Gay Mother’s garden. So maybe Mary more clued up than appeared.

Val’s New Home

How Well We Know that Hair

More Pre-Lecture Hair: Mary at the Institute

This Lord Almost Didn’t Gain the Stage

Mary Thronged after Her Lecture: She was to Dine at Mossiman’s After

Sunday 17th November 2019

My highest yet! A Marchioness. But there was something on my shoe. I entered the Holland Park mansion then had to back straight out again. What must the servants have thought? One of the Freud daughters was coming in at the same time. In fact in her opinion the door wasn’t opened quickly enough. It was only a clump of leaves – I hope. I hadn’t been walking with care owing to the Daily Mail.  Only quick edits, they said. Well, it wasn’t quick edits, it was a whole new piece. Frantic. I don’t even remember my outfit, except for the Prada tart’s mac in turquoise oilskin. Some days before I’d mentioned without a second thought while live on Dainty Lady TV that dinners should end at 10.30 on a weekday. As they should. I got back into the people carrier at the live location, and returned to headquarters. Genevieve Suzy was occupied in lopping the sleeves off an Anya Hindmarch dress. Who’d have thought that within 24 hours, the world would be rocking on its foundations? Massive pick-up. And a Twitter storm. The Mail Online, the Times, the Graph and the Express (Vanesse de la Feltz elle-meme): all were raving.  Thus it was the Daily Mail (Femail branch) wanted 2000 emergency words on ‘The Perfect Dinner Party’. So I did that at no notice and handed in at 1o a.m. as requested. It wasn’t until 8 hours later, just as I was arriving at Kernow Hellizon’s launch party, that they came back: ‘More personal anecdotes. Hand in by 10pm.’

Phoning the Mail from the street to arrange to phone them again from the party, I wasn’t watching where my clucks were going. Finally in the mansion, I only knew Cecil Beaton’s friend, Patrick O’Connor, the actor. ‘I’ve got to phone the Mail,’ I said. ‘Do you think it’ll be all right? This house might be violently anti-Mail.’ ‘I wouldn’t worry,’ he said, ‘Lady Rothermere is here.’ ‘You look familiar,’ I said to the person with him, who appeared to experience trauma. ‘Long ago, long ago,’ he said, fleeing, Patrick O’Connor having already got away.

Still I had somehow to write a whole new piece for the Daily Mail while standing up at the champagne reception in the Holland Park mansion. I cornered an extraordinarily well-finished young man of obvious important birth and got some copy. They can do anything these people. He thought he was probably a cousin of the Guinnesses. At least, I could say to the nice woman on the Mail, ‘Lady Rothermere’s here, you know.’ From the upstairs landing, I dictated rubbish down the phone, ruining my lovely piece. Coming down the stairs, I met Kernow. He was radiant. Then I grilled the waiter: he was brought in for the evening, not permanent. Only one housekeeper, his friend, live in, attending to just the one Marchioness over 4 double-fronted storeys. Then I was worried I’m get into trouble for fraternising below stairs and asking nosey questions. The Freud daughter was saying, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t RSVP but I never know who’s going to be ill. They’re all at home, you know.’ Suddenly it was my turn to sit on a banquette with the Marchioness: she had a vaguely Sixties look, with coiffure and sleeveless slender frock. She wasn’t like anybody else. Squeezed up close on the banquette, she called out to another,’ This is Adrian Edge: he’s from Dainty Lady TV and he’s fabulous.’ She turned back to me abruptly: ‘Are you married?…. Well, you must come to my Singles night on Monday week. When you write to thank me you can tell me how to get in touch..’ After that I was somehow launched at the party although quite alone there and knowing nobody, except for a few and not being Aristocracy, only Landed Gentry. A literary editor I’d previously thought horrid was nice: she said she’d had the same thing as me with the dinner parties except it was the grocer’s apostrophe. You never know what’s going to happen. An incredible luminous figure was sitting on a sofa. If you’d landed from Mars you’d have known she was different. ‘It’s Kristin Scott Thomas,’ the literary editor said, not being at all, Do-you-really-not-know?

Magic really – the great drawing room, the creatures within, the names, the stars. It really was.

I did write to the Marchioness but was not bidden to the singles party. The dinner party piece never ran in the Mail.

Thursday 16th November 2017

Anthony Mottram and I took the Private Dining Room at the Ivy to mark jointly our 60th Birthdays, a venture never before attempted by me – I mean a private dining room for 60 where you are the host, or one of them.  ‘Are you enjoying it?’ Merle Barr inquired. She was in an incredible burnt orange top, geometric, self-supporting techno fabric. ‘You’re looking worried.’  Well, it’s worrying looking worried Genevieve Suzy was in an incredible 40s evening housecoat, bought especially. She was not the only Greatness present. How the staff poured the drink. I was in a new Topman weekend check suit, with lengthened jacket (a departure from the jackette) but with spider trews. My shirt was lace in a teal shade, also from Topman.  There was much comment. I tried to get a ‘body’ to wear underneath it. But none were to be had. ‘It’s like sitting next to Jayne Mansfield,’ Robert Nevil remarked. He referred to that film star’s revealing decolletage in her day. Eventually she was decapitated in a car accident. Robert Nevil had a book years ago with a photo purporting to show the actual gruesome scene, over which he used to pore for hours. It could have been anything really.

Anthony Mottram and I made speeches: the great thing is we think alike. Without collaboration we had concocted matching speeches – praising and embracing each other’s brilliance and utter hell and nightmare; down with gush and lovely people. I added in a bit about not being Robert Peston, after the Polperro incident and then catalogued our great contribution to life as she is known – Anthony Mottram and I over 46 years. Front syllable lopping, that’s lopping the front syllables off words,  inserting ‘lady’ into sentences unexpectedly and turning into typing refined speaking as practiced widely in the post-War years by those aspiring socially. Afterwards Rufus Pitman and Reggie Cresswell passed up a note which I thought very grand, as if it were a real pre-War dinner with Emerald and Wallis and the King. It said, ‘But we think your greatest achievement is the reconsideration of the genitive pronoun, as in ‘Lady’s Portrait’ and ‘Evesham’s Vale’ ‘Devonshire’s Duke’ etc’. I’d quite forgotten. How could I? Actually it was Val who started that. He heard of someone in India who said, ‘Lady’s Portrait.’ Also, come to think of it, we’ve translated the London tube stations into French, German and Italian without system, plus some just having ‘Ma’ added as in ‘Mapiccma’ or ‘MaBond’ or simply lopped as in ‘Farm’, or pronounced as by a foreign speaker as in ‘Lie-cester Square.’ When you’ve done so much, I suppose it’s hard to remember it all.

Plots and undercurrents of course. Otherwise it wouldn’t have been a proper Poor Little Rich Gay occasion: only that morning certain people had attempted to contrive a massive weather storm to wipe out the whole event. They failed. The week before there had been further hiss and spit over the fence as it were and rivalry and conduct: Poor Little Rich Gays are not given to agonising as to where their loyalties lie but found all the same that it did not suit them to cross the bridge. Then to the actual dinner: Matt Driver had been shopping at Margaret Howell. Laura Malcolm’s level of outrage at a £200 shirt increased rapidly, as staff continued to pour. ‘I’m earning so much money,’ Matt Driver proclaimed. Meanwhile Genevieve Suzy was trying to penetrate the Ivy Club next door. That’s the place to be: as you may remember, I moved heaven and earth to get in there when it first opened, only to recoil with horror at the decor. Angus Willis accompanied Genevieve in her assault: ‘But I’m Dainty Lady TV‘s Chief Executive,’ she hissed. ‘I’m known! I’m known! I must ascend to the terrace.’ On absolute stoney ground did her words fall. Back in the venue staff were busy pouring. Some young ladies were found to be of interest to the older men for possible club drinks elsewhere later on. Merle Barr acquired a stain. A Brexit spat was brewing between Royston King and Fergus Strachan. They thought each other morons. Joshua Baring and Finn Magnus, the hot boy doc, were sharing boyfriend wisdom: I mean, you know how young people talk: a sort of living agony aunt combined with Jackie magazine but as it happened to you. Joshua also covered Elizabethan embroidery. Matt Driver appeared: he seemed to be crawling on the floor. There had been so much pouring by this time. The topic still Margaret Howell: or maybe it was me, worried that Topman wasn’t good enough. ‘What’s wrong with Topman?’ I wailed, gesturing to my own new weekend check Topman suit. ‘It looks cheap,’ Matt Driver said flatly. Poor Little Rich Gays were delirious actually. They were in their element, making a terrific racket.

Picking over the party afterwards with Anthony Mottram, we agreed it had passed in a blur. One whirred round the room, attending to the guests. But Poor Little Rich Gays were fired up, doing a noble impression of never having been to the Ivy before: the panelled room was agreeable and friendly, or became so by the time our guests had finished with it. A friend of Anthony Mottram’s had said me, ‘I must see more of you. You’re quite crazy.’ 76 bottles had been consumed. Suddenly a thought occurred. How extraordinary! ‘Isn’t it strange how quickly we’ve lost sight of the main purpose of the party?’ ‘What was that?’ Anthony Mottram asked. ‘Why – a display of wealth and power. We’ve quite forgotten.’

Thursday 2nd November 2017

Landhydrock was the object for the second day in creepy Cornwall. It’s an Elizabethan National Trust home, in fact burned down mostly in the late 19th and reconstructed lavishly with central heating and every known comfort. The Robartes family had money, thank God.

The National Trust have re-located the car park to somewhere outside the estate boundary and not provided any road signs. So the Official Car was whirring round in something of a temper to begin with. Once, finally, able to park,  a buggy was spoken of for conveyance to the house, but the Gay Mother wouldn’t hear of it. It was easily half a mile. A good approach although wearisome because you got the full experience of the demesne of Landhydrock and its commanding position at the head of a valley which you wouldn’t do if just zooming up in a motor. I suppose you could call it ‘slo-Stately visiting’ like ‘slo food’. The house of course is low-lying. ‘It’s very manageable,’ I said. The Gay Mother didn’t agree. ‘It looks huge to me.’ I always like to reach out to a Stately and make it my own as well as establish that as people we are rather more upstairs than down. The Gay Mother has no interest in this approach which is disappointing. I like it to be known that I’m one of them, landed, lodge and gates etc.

The Gay Mother paraded all 50 of the rooms, fraternising with the guides who were determined she should take the lift as well as being often considerably older than her. She was allowed to keep her stick which prompted her to recall the Rokeby Venus episode. But there was nothing like that in the house to slash. It’s hideous really but incredibly great in its completeness and thumping top drawer craftsmanship in the endless panelling and wooden archways. Everybody says it’s a happy house, even though it burnt down. By irony it was in the creamery that we made the biggest connection with our own family for there were butter balls displayed. The Gay Granny made butter balls. I said loudly, ‘That was all she did. Apart from knitting dishcloths.’ Otherwise she sat in the Study in the mornings and lay on the sofa in the drawing room after lunch, except when doing committee work of course. Which she did a lot.  Once she found her coffee cup under the drawing room sofa where she’d parked it the day before. Staff, failing to crawl on the drawing room carpet, had not discovered it.

While in the creamery somebody mentioned clotted cream. ‘No such thing,’ the Gay Mother said. ‘There’s cream or ream.’ Well, that was something new. I never knew that. Did you?

We went into the Steward’s Room. ‘This is …. ‘s room,’ she said at once, referring to our own ‘steward’ although we call him a land agent and he doesn’t have a room in any of our properties. I sent him a picture of ‘his’ room, though which he liked.

So we were linked after all.

Then it was the National Trust soup lunch in the old stable or wherever, with tiresome mummies belligerently changing their toddlers’ nappies all round as we lunched, before the half mile walk back to the car. We passed the buggy by the porch and the Gay Mother waved her stick at it. ‘I haven’t been to Polperro for 85 years,’ she said, so off we went. Awful car park, madly expensive and aggressive re: not being allowed to give your ticket to anyone else and cameras watching. No information as to how far to walk. We rounded a corner – massive vista stretching as far as the eye could see, no sign of nooky wooky Cornish fishing village. ‘How far is it?’ the Gay Mother enquired but battled on. It was .75 kilometres. Polperro – why not knock it down and re-build with more space between the buildings? So nooky – and wooky. The boiled down essence of nooky-wooky, although not beamy.

A member of the public approached in Polperro: ‘Excuse me, are you on the telly?’ ‘No, I’m not Robert Peston,’ I said, trying to keep pleasant. But really, it is likely that Robert Peston would be in Polperro on a Wednesday wearing Topman fun slacks in tartan (spray on), a faux linen dress coat also by Topman in silver grey and carrying a second-hand Designer clutch-cum-brief case by Lancel?

So that completed the Cornish visit.

Landhydrock: Not that Big

Nice Carpet in the Dining Room at Landhydrock

Light-Switches at Lanhydrock: Aiming to Vintagise my Own Light Switches Soon

The Steward’s Room, Landhydrock. We have a Steward too, but We Call him a Land Agent

Classic Boudoir at Landhydrock: Complete and of Its Time

Landhydrock: One of the Drawing Rooms: Odd Arrangements of Furniture 

Landhydrock: the Butter Balls as Made by the Gay Granny

Polperro: for Heaven’s Sake

Polperro: Taking Nooky Wooky a Bit Too Far

Goodbye to Cornwall: the Pre-Dinner View