Sunday 18th September 2016

There was just time after the mad dash with the billionairess to fly home and get out of the Zara slacks and into the APC ones for Bruce McBain’s party – which almost didn’t happen because he thought of refusing this particular birthday.

The APC slacks are really quite a different thing from the Zara ones. More costly and thrilling to wear. Bruce was fully staffed and catered. Wall to wall Ottolenghi from Ottolenghi itself with their staff. Everybody was there. Robert Nevil, Lord Arrowby, Harry Rollo and Mercury Mr Kitten (they gave a Tom of Finland apron which Mercury Mr Kitten modelled in the later stages), Reggie Cresswell, Rufus Pitman, Laura Malcolm, Matt Driver not to mention Archie Armitage (but no Fabien-Boris Claude: he was nude in Munich). Very soon we were legless from the persistent pouring of the Ottolenghi staff. ‘Stop hitting me,’ Lord Arrowby said. He was recovering from a day with the Government. I was a bit cross with him for going all the way to Osterley in late August to look at a ghastly old second-hand bookshop. Second-hand bookshops are my least favourite form of shop. Then the night before he’d been at Loughborough except it wasn’t it was Loughborough Junction which is near Brixton (have you ever heard of it?). So when I said, ‘I thought you were in the Midlands,’ Lord Arrowby got rather cross re: having his whereabouts questioned and pointedly pointed out all the buses and trains he’d taken to get to and from Loughborough Junction. Anyway we got through the crisis and he suggested an outing, which was nice of him. Now we’ve had the outing: more to come.

I huddled in a corner with Frankie-Doreen and Giles Ullerston: their news is that they’re marrying a daughter off next summer. As it happens, its a dynastic union with my own family, the family of me, Adrian Edge. The wedding dress has been acquired for 80p which is a good thing because otherwise it’s going to be millions. Laura was about to leave for the South of France with the Queen Mother where they were to care greatly for an elderly man of rich estate sadly without family and the vista as to heirs sadly barren.

Everyone was saying, Bruce McBain just can’t leave for the far North, he can’t return to Scotland. For that’s his plan. Speaking of those who have disappeared, who should suddenly loom but the Multis, hours after the start of the party. So it can happen. All can dissolve, all connection. Peter Acharya and Ned Czernowski for example: they’ve upped sticks without warning and gone to live in Atlanta, Georgia. Some do that. Time to start again with a new palette, they think.

The Photo Multi started taking photos. Otherwise it was Brexit. He caught Harry Rollo, Lord Arrowby, Rufus and Reggie in a group, recalling that graph of Ted Hughes, T.S. Eliot, Stephen Spender and W.H.Auden at a Faber Party years ago.

As the glorious party came to a close, Archie Armitage’s arse and legs were suddenly at the forefront – incredibly hugging black jeans – as if silently propelled to notice by the recent commendation of the absent Fabien-Boris, his life-mate, who made no remark re: any other of his limbs or body-sections. Also I must mention my perfume: fellow guests could smell it. Monsieur by Frederic Malle. You recall my crisis. Well, it was smelling at Bruce McBain’s fabulous party.

Tuesday 13th September 2016

Last Thursday Angus Willis staged a lunch in the restaurant of his Home Store in Hastings. I arrived from London by train with Genevieve Suzy, editor-in-chief of Dainty Lady TV, out Wintour-ing Anna Wintour (Anna turned to winter after Genevieve’s recent visit to New York) with an important diamond choker, a suede shawl and a power up-do: all night she’d been featuring rollers, culminating in her new ornamental dog, Diamonella, climbing onto her rollers as she wore them in bed. In the train, Genevieve was wiring copy and stills of this event to media outlets.

I wonder who the wizened type was in Angus’s kitchen (it’s a kitchen-diner restaurant). Maybe one of Alastair’s former kitchen boys, now advanced in years. ‘That’s Michel Roux,’ Genevieve hissed. Well, I thought he looked familiar. Angus is a hidden kitchen apparently. Michel Roux is making a prog on Britain’s Hidden Kitchens. So the lunch proceeded with the usual absurdities: we had to order just for the camera, not what we necessarily wanted, then order again so they could film the waitress writing it down. Did it matter that we ordered the same thing the second time round? Not really.

Of course this kind of thing is our daily bread at Dainty Lady TV, except that normally we’re live. 

What I actually had was the kohirabi and shrimp starter and the grilled plaice main. There was a chance to shop between the courses. I got the hessian edging for where they’ve wrecked my carpet in my bedroom from constant pulling up to look at that wretched radiator. And an old-fashioned rotating desk-top calendar for Bruce McBain’s whose Sixtieth Birthday it was that day.

Requiring a mad dash back to London to be in time for the party: a multi-billionaire lady of a nearby manor (one of many here and throughout the world) offered a lift to Battle station,. But it was too late for Battle. The traffic. She ordered her driver (almond-eyed, James Bond glamour type youth seen by me in the driver’s mirror only) to divert to Robertsbridge, the next stop. She could have been directing a tank at El Alamein, except it was an Audi mega 4X4: the generalissmo, backed by billions, the booming manner, the complete command.  ‘We go from station to station until we catch it,’ she informed. Her plan. As we didn’t exactly gun along with the hot driver at the wheel, she fielded calls from her staff about which house she would be resident in upon her return from Italy, whence she was to travel on the next day. A car was also arranged to meet her at Charing Cross, with re-scheduling to go directly to the American Embassy residence for the event rather than via the flat. ‘Now if that had been me, I’d have had his guts for garters,’ she said calmly as Mr Almond-Eyed failed to overtake a pensioner with inches to spare. Coming into Robertsbridge, zero-hour approaching, she knew exactly where the station was: her directions couldn’t have been more business-like: ‘Now,’ she said slowly, ‘you’re need to make it down this road in 30 seconds. If the level crossing is shut we’re too late.’ The level-crossing wasn’t shut. Now it really did become emergency greatnesses sweeping all before. We screeched to a halt at the foot of the bridge over the line. Ordinary members of the public reeled in the slipstream. We poured out, frockage and jewels flying. Half way over the bridge, I thought: what of the lady billionaire’s suitcase, for her departure for Italy the next day? But of course the almond-eyed exotic was heaving it for her. He must have been quite strong. Now he was grinning and really quite rural, with a Sussex sound, not Slavic nor international at all.

My Outfit for Angus Willis’ TV Lunch: I Thought I was Wearing my APC Sand Slacks. Only in the Car for the Station did I Discover it was the Zara Ones: But a Mercy in the End, because They were Slightly Grazed by the Billionairess’s Rear Wheel Which Moved before I Had Quite got In: The APC Slacks are More Important, So it Would Have been a Catastrophe If it had Been Them that were Grazed

Artisanal Supreme: Angus Willis’s TV Lunch

The Mackerel Awaiting the Fire

An Exquisite Pre Provided Free by Angus Willis: Celery Leaves, Radish

Wednesday 7th September 2016

Before August evaporates I must capture its failure to be black. August used to be the dread month of Death for Poor Little Rich Gays and Tuscany the only solution. But this year only the Multis persisted with Tuscany: 3 weeks in the villa for 16, just themselves mostly. To be in London in August was not thinkable: yet from 10th to 25th August I was in residence. And not black. On the contrary, I was pushing back at life teeming and surging in: Harry Rollo gave a perf and afterwards boarded a private yacht at Livorno (or somewhere along that coast): I heard that their Corsican villa was threatened by a bush fire in the middle of the night and they had to evac: but were saved. Then there was Merle Barr’s last minute dinner and the Olympic cycling craziness, further Proms and Princess Irina’s birthday (she said she was 150: I thought older). We closed Glyndebourniana this year in the pouring rain: it was B and B by B. That’s Beatrice and Benedict by Berlioz: quite new to me: thoroughly approved: clever adaption of the original, incredible mu: quite new. One day I was prostrate: terrible unexplained nausea and couldn’t go with Robert Nevil to a play at the King’s Head Theatre written by a cookery writer about his Gay horror life years ago. Terrible tragedy and sluttery.

Finally there was the Bank Holiday in the Far West with the Gay Mother. Aunt Lavinia came to stay with her new dog, not reliable as to lavatory indoors: an indoor pissing dog, possibly. Well, it was all rather marvellous in the end. Aunt Lavinia’s new dog (a rescue creature, six years old, said to be overweight) was an asset to the abbey: I like these Bull Terriers, provided they’re not white with pink eyes. The black or brown ones are some form of pre-dog, before they’d quite worked out how a dog should be. Engagingly primitive, quite slow and shuffling, with snorting; apparently amiable and not flapping about like any maddeningly busy small dog.

Our country existence was the Wooden Tots, complete with Spotty Dog (well, English Bull Terrier in dark brown) and two elderly ladies as Mummy and Daddy. Bathed in sunshine, as in the 1950s when it was family life, sun always shining, digging potatoes, picking runner beans, dead-heading the cosmos and the dahlias. A trug and wheelbarrow country life, a dream of  rural simplicity for reasonably well-off people. On the Friday we lunched with an old lady friend of Aunt Lavinia’s, 90, richly left, living by the sea. Her son was taken over the main house: she’s been in a new-build stately home fragment for 18 years. Her gardeners laboured while we lunched. ‘How long since your husband… Lavinia?’ she inquired. ’10 years,’ was the reply. ‘ ‘It’s just us ladies now,’ she said, not displeased.

Aunt Lavinia’s New Dog: Attractively Primitive

That Rich Lady’s View

The Gay Mother’s Late August Border

The Gay Mother’s Late August Border: Whimsical and Light 

Saturday 3rd September 2016

August, the black month, has passed. But this year it wasn’t black. Usually Tuscany is required to drive away the blackness. August in London – death! But I regained from Normandy on August 10th and was in residence until 25th. And wasn’t black. What happened?

In the meantime, perfumes have been in crisis, as you know. Joshua Baring came up trumps as always (what that boy doesn’t know about: he’s even a medical expert, you know. Attended medical lectures at uni although his degree was English – for the breadth). On Thursday I stopped off on the way to the Prom (Bach B Minor Mass: choral bits dullish: the counter-tenor filled the hall; magnificent:  William Christie and Les Arts Florisantes quivering on the brink: sublime yet of this earth). I stopped off in the Burlington Arcade for a consultation with my parfumier: Frederic Malle Editions de Parfums, main London shop as indicated by Joshua Baring. The two fumes I’m worried about – ‘Monsieur’ and ‘Geranium pour Monsieur’ are both by Frederic Malle but bought from another supplier, Les Senteurs, Seymour Street. A Frenchman was in the tiny shop, sitting at the desk having a consultation with the whippy, coiffed young man in charge. ‘That’s very girly,’ he was saying, of a sample fume. ‘Men don’t buy that for themselves! Pah!’ ‘But they do,’ Mr Whippy said. ‘Pah! Their girlfriends buy it for them and they don’t use it.’

I formed the impression that this performance had stepped up after I entered the premises. I was wearing my summer sleeveless shirt by Guaglianone which is a silk brocade in azure with organdy overlay on the sleeves. My slacks were Zara silver mauve.

What is the point of a display of macho swagger in a perfume shop?

Anyway that man fucked off with some samples (oh yes!) and it was my turn. I explained my agony and the over-heating at Les Senteurs. But he could smell my ‘Monsieur’ which I’d worn especially for the visit. ‘Is it right?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s not damaged.’ He said it would take a lot of heat AND light to wreck a fume. I was reassured about my bottle of ‘Geranium pour Monsieur’ as well, which could have been wrecked in my bathroom by that heat wave in July. ‘It’ll be quite all right if it was in a cupboard.’

‘All the same,’ I said. ‘The perfumes don’t seem to have much staying power or intensity at the moment. When I sampled “Monsieur” in the winter it was much stronger.’ ‘Ah, the winter,’ the young man said.

It seems that the present season is not good for perfumes. When humidity is high, as it has been, and the temperature is high, fumes are on the wane. Come colder weather, and our fragrance will be on the rise. By deepest winter we’ll be reeking.

So my confidence in smell is restored. Thank you, thank you, Frederic Malle Main London Branch. Also my confidence in Les Senteurs as a shop. Had that gone, I, and many other Poor Little Rich Gays, would have been lost.

Thank You, Thank You for Restoring Hope re: Smell and Perfume Viability

Saturday 27th August 2016

Last Saturday, perfuming for Princess Irina’s 500th birthday dinner (the superb Canton Arms in Stockwell: outstanding robust, earthy food in mahogany library corner of pub: I sang ‘Amazing Grace’ and wore a tiny Topman suitlette; Princess Irina was surrounded by strong women), I dropped a travel-sized phial of ‘Monsieur’ by Frederic Malle on the floor. It smashed. Agony. £27.50 gawn. In the whirl of the evening, I didn’t give the fume that I had applied from one of the other phials (you get three in a travel set for £80) my full attention . But dimly something wasn’t right. I’d sampled the fragrance for weeks. It is supposed to be heavy and difficult – cinnamon, bark, oils, musk. But was I getting much smell now I’d finally bought it after all that preparation? Back home, I noticed after some days that the piece of kitchen paper with which I’ve mopped up the smashed phial and put in the bathroom bin – the air should have been sliceable with odour. But it smelt of nothing.

When buying at Les Senteurs, Marble Arch, there was terrible heat in the shop. Earlier in July, there was a tremendous London heat wave. I fear the worst. The fumes at Les Senteurs have been heat-blasted. These niche fragrances are so fragile. Once I lost a bottle of Molecules by Escentric, over-heated in the Tuscan bathroom of the Multis’ first Tuscan villa of their monied era. Why on earth haven’t they got air con at Les Senteurs?

Monday 22nd August 2016

Last week was a week. Sunday I was bidden to a Mahler Prom by those fabulous sporting heroes, Fabien-Boris Claude and Archie Armitage. Normally I can’t bear Mahler (too neurotic) but for them I’d go anywhere. In the event it was fascinating and incredibly intricate. Fabien-Claude expressed great satisfaction with Archie’s arse and legs, passing over the rest of him, although I’m sure, above the waist, his form is a dream many would kill for. But that’s married life for you.

Monday, Harry Rollo gave yet another perf: at the last minute he decided to start at the end. This perf was like nothing ever seen or heard before – to an airie thinness beat – quite at the borderline of existence yet beyond doubt there. Afterwards we repaired to a hotel and Mercury, Mr Kitten ordered chips. The next day they were to board for Firry then on to Elba for yachting. Yes! An American multi yacht lent. Previously, on board the same yacht in the Caribbean,  Harry explained, the cocktail mistress had retired to bed but not before inviting free access to her domain (it’s very strict on board; staff rule over the ocean waves; no wheeled luggage allowed). Harry poured from a bottle apparently labelled ‘rum.’ The others at once threw theirs away; it appeared to be turps or some kind of stripper. But Harry didn’t. He’s never been near a tool cupboard in his life. He drank all his and possibly more. The next day he was not at all well. ‘Oh,’ the cocktail mistress said, ‘that was some hooch we picked up from one of the islands.’ I said Surely she was thrown overboard for leaving it lying about?  But Harry didn’t blame her at all.

Tuesday I went round, last min, to Merle Barr’s and we watched the cycling from the velodrome of the Olympics. The News at Ten was delayed one hour because there were three false starts. The cyclists leapt ahead of the durney (or gurney) – a ridic little motorised bike they’ve got to stay behind until precisely the point it leaves the track. But when exactly can it be said to have left the track? The first time it was a fine call but the second time the German was clearly ahead. Any fool could see. But the judges didn’t have a camera in place to absolutely check or weren’t too sure themselves of the rules – so after much delay it was, ‘Why don’t you all start again?’ Eventually somebody called Jason won and took all his clothes off – or was about to. So at exactly the point it might have been interesting, Claire Balding of National Treasure said, ‘I don’t think we need to see that.’

The next day, at the third Prom of the week, I was telling Prince Dmitri all about it. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘too many medals. It’s getting absurd. How hard it is to ride a bike.?’ Another activity is the Women’s Pushing and Shoving – it’s called Taekwondo. They push and shove for a short period of time with intermittent kicking. Then somebody says, ‘So-and-so’s got a Gold Medal.’ Usually British.

It’s not quite on a parr with winning a five-hour Gold Medal tennis match, having won a lot of other tennis matches to get there, is it?

So Prince Dmitri withered the Olympics. What is to be done? It never occurred to me before that maybe it isn’t that hard. This cycling though – that’s one of our champion sports. It never used to be mentioned. You have to ride your bike fast – big thighs. I think the powers that be chose to make a thing of cycling because quite a lot of people can ride a bike and there was a good chance they’d go faster and faster the more they did it. They all say they have to get up at 5 in the morning for training – but that’s because they’ve got something else to do during the day, like going to school. So you bash on. Two hours training at an unsocial hour. On and on you bash. Eventually you’ll get a medal – for bashing on and being a bit batty, obsessed with gruelling yourself until you can whizz and flash by in a slither of a second less than everybody else. There must be some reward. And it is rather engaging – the eccentricity of it.

Wednesday 17th August 2016

The Toerag finally gained at lunchtime on the Saturday. The Lairdess was pressed into the shape of the vehicle so long had she been on board. Even dinner the previous evening had been taken in motion. At once she assumed one of the flower-power loungers and within 15 minutes was ‘marée basse’. This new expression formed the ground base to the Norman days. Laura and Matt had collected it the previous week while staying in Provence. It means ‘low tide’. Their hostess, Parisian and still in a bikini at over 50, was horrified to find her excessive sister-in-law waving her empty glass about and shrieking ‘marée basse’ to get it refilled. Herself she served a vodka cocktail – one each – and sometimes no dinner.

Once you’ve started with marée basse there’s no end to it. One result, possibly, was that a nun-made Spanish praline was gobbled up at lunch and Laura never got her share.  The alternative, some Spanish chocs with coconut filling, was considered filthy. The Laird and Lairdess presented their hostess gift – a shot-glass chess set, found in a charity shop. At a press dinner at the Dorchester, Beamish O’Halloran of the Mail recalled, it was very odd how the goody bags suddenly disappeared from the table where he was sitting. A certain Irish TV celebrity of advancing years (front hair now rotting) said she couldn’t think what had happened, but Beamish could see them peeking from her own bag under the table. The Laird’s drone appeared through a gap in the hedge and crashed into the trellis. We got back into the loungers. The Laird showed the laminated card he had made with the reference number of his Eurotunnel reservation. He often laminates at dead of night.

The Laird is planning ahead. After dinner, we modelled his fully computerised Christmas quiz for the Usk Rotary Club. It was men versus women. The women won. I mustn’t reveal the questions. Someone is trying to make trouble between Rosie Boycott and Beamish O’Halloran. It’s all to do with the fur coats given by Mohammed Fayed, later stolen while her car was parked in Stow-on-Wold. Beamish has published a book, you see, all about his adventures over the years. Anthony Burgess phoned up the editor: ‘I’ve been tricked by a Hibernian rogue,’ he boomed. But Brit Ekland was delighted: once Beamish had explained to her who Salman Rushdie was and what a fatwa was, she declared she’d punch the bastards who’d done it. ‘At last I’m being taken seriously,’ she said when the story was published. Or there was the time an engineer came over from Ireland to install a fax machine in the London offices of the Irish Press. It was meant to take two days but he was there for two weeks, most of the time flat out on the floor. One of the staff had a side-line in home-made hooch, you see. The creme de menthe was especially more-ish.

Oh Beamish O’Halloran! What a greatness! Completely fearless but not without scruple. Fleet Street’s finest. Well, yes actually.

So the days went on. For the third time, the Laird explained that golf originated from archery. Is golf archery but with feet? Laura and I couldn’t get it. We went to look at antiques. The brocante of years ago is no more. In 1986, I got a whole Louis Philippe mirror for 25 francs – with original glass (we won’t mention the £460 it cost to get it restored). But I bought a gilt frame – now I will have to find a masterpiece to put in it. A masterpiece of the right size. A caramelised garlic tart was served back at the Fastness. Another day there was another tart with leeks. Both of blinding excellence. The Laird modelled a cardboard collar he’d made from the cardboard piece which you find inexplicably on the bed when you arrive at a Premier Inn. He turned it into the human equivalent of those lampshades you put on dogs to stop them scratching. A useful and important invention. Every morning Moira MacMatron was down late with fantastic hair. She’d been working on her hair. She and I played ‘hair’ at the dinner table. You play this by stroking each other’s hair with a dumbfounded look on the face. I didn’t let on that sometimes my hands were a bit cheesey from the cheese course.

Finally finally Laura got a salmon in before breakfast and 18 were expected for lunch as a fete champetre. The Laird explained his terrine art. He’d brought two or possibly three terrines from Usk. All that is required are bricks with holes drilled for ventilation and pieces of MDF cut to size on which to mount the finished item, as well as the actual terrine ingredients of course. The bricks press the terrine into shape as it cools. So a triumphant buffet table emerged, the guests loomed and it was ‘marée basse’ until sundown. We couldn’t think how some of them were going to self-drive home. Matt Driver turned impish and naughty. He really is a first-class husband: ‘I come in and don’t get in the way,’ he said. That’s not quite the whole story, although important. Some of his talk is like the Away Team on the bus home after they’ve ‘had a few’.

The Laird recited a fiendishly complicated poem after lunch as well as the one by Ogden Nash about ladies on diets which he’d recited a day or two before.  I was awfully tormented by this poem for some reason. Then Beamish read from his book the marvellous passage about what really did happen to Angela’s Ashes and what Richard Harris told him in some drinking hole near the Savoy and how he, Beamish, got thrown out of the launch party to which he’d not been invited anyway for bringing up the subject raised by Richard Harris of what really happened to Angela’s Ashes. The number of times Beamish has been thrown out… I sang ‘Amazing Grace’ Verse One. I gave everything to my perf and the audience roared and roared. Laura sang part of her song about being over 50 and one of the French guests read the opening of ‘A la Recherche…’  – in French.

In the evening, after the guests had gone, we had a gangster film on DVD – it was called ‘Killing Them Softly’ and was incredibly ‘noir’ and filthy. About half way through the Laird played the Benny Hill theme tune on his pet whistle.

The Terrines in the Holding Bay at Usk before Loading into the Toerag for Normandy

The Laird and Lairdess’s Hostess Gift, from in a Charity Shop

Laura Malcolm was Deprived of Her Share of This Nun-Made Spanish Praline

The Drone Surgeth Forth: Cameras on Board

The Laird’s Ingenious Adaptation of the Welcome Cardboard Strip Found on Beds in Premier Inns: Useful to Prevent Self-Scratching After Insect Attack, Injury or Surgery

Lunch Laid for 18: as Nothing to Laura Malcolm from the Catering Point of View

Saturday 13th August 2016

Friday 5th August was the journey out to Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver’s Norman Fastness. I got stained at Folkestone Eurotunnel Terminal by the Leon Moroccan Meatballs (no rice). Can you believe it? I’d been under massive laundry pressure after returning from Salzburg only on the Monday. I ironed 17 pieces in one go. 7 outfits over 5 days Laura said was the minimum.

Laura herself fell into a crevice that same morning and scraped her leg. She was carrying the breakfast tray to the new breakfast terrace. But unfortunately Jean-Florian-Baptiste (from the village) hadn’t quite finished the work. There were holes for the fence posts, but no posts. So in the lady of the house went. It’s not done in France to shoot a member of staff in these circs; rather they lop off the genitals of their wives’ lovers and fling them about the village. This is what happened in a neighbouring commune only a few years ago and is still mentioned. What a lesson! Or would have been had he not shot the man dead as well.

Glorious sunshine for Normandy. It has been glorious for some years now. I don’t think I’ve ever expressed it enough in previous years – just how crucial is this summer jewel in the Poor Little Rich Gay crown. The fete champetre, the deck chairs (harder and harder for the middle-aged to get out of), the eBay-sourced vintage loungers (flower-power covers), the long table laid in the garden for lunch and dinner, the garden life, like Monet had at Giverny,

Weeks of menu-ing go into though. A permanent croissant and baguette order is placed at Coraline’s in the village, to be collected by Laura at 9.30 each morning. Jams have to be made. A new breakfast terrace built. Going further back, a new drawing room was made out of the barn, with bed and bath above. Matt Driver has been driving away. Picture framing is his new thing: he self-frames. In the new bathroom is a photo of his grandfather parading as Chilean ambassador at the funeral of George V. There’s a blurry small girl standing behind a guardsman in the top left-hand corner: I’m sure it’s the Gay Mother. She was there, you know.

My Official car, stuffed with outfits for the simple rural life, wended its way through rippling sunshine, to the secluded chateau-fragment in its own grounds. Matt insists that no other house must be in evidence whatsoever. The merest hint of a plan and he’s round to the mayor. But they own as far as the eye can see, on the whole.

I was shown to a new suite on the 1st floor. Now that the Driver children have grown-up there’s been aggrandisement. This suite has got a day-bed and the walls are crammed with the products of Matt’s framing drive. EBay, he confided, is the source of the actual frames. I do so agree.

Shortly afterwards arrived Beamish O’Halloran, of the Mail, and Moira McMatron (she’d have preferred a pink Fiat 500) with a bulk order of Prosecco in the boot and we began at once the Kier Royale life of outdoors on deckchairs. A shadow though: Laura’s father, aiming perhaps too high for one last cruise, was laid up in hospital at San Remo. Chest infection. Awaiting reports. The one thing I hadn’t packed was mourning.

We forged on through a rabbit welcome dinner. Word came that the Laird and Lairdess had gained the Premier Inn, Ashford from whence they would spring upon France in the Towrag in the morning. ETA at the chateau-fragment: lunchtime.

Stained at Eurotunnel Terminus: Leon Moroccan Meat balls (no rice)

Laura Scrapped when She Fell into Pit Carrying the Breakfast Tray

The Celebrated eBay Vintage Loungers: Note Matt’s Triumphant Lavender Hedge in the Background. Now in its Third Year

Thursday 11th August 2016

Europe’s Loveliest Registry office was in the Mirabelle Palace, Salzburg. Brides were milling about the palace grounds accompanied by men in short sleeved shirts – their chauffeurs, perhaps? Second marriages, if you ask me, or late ones. Some had got fully formed pre-children. In the lobby of Europe’s loveliest registry office it emerged that brides were marrying their chauffeurs, who had by now acquired jackets. One bridal block was held in a holding pen in the lobby while another was being finished in the actual chamber. It was only possible to dash in and get a glimpse of the great room between brides. The queuing system recalled the crematorium and I texted Anthony Mottram of Prague to that effect. ‘But less joyous,’ he returned.

The next day and final day in Salzburg was the watery visit. But before that Harry Rollo asked for the fan to be turned on in the lobby of his parents’ hotel while he waited for them to descend. It was that hot. But the receptionist claimed she was cold. So with searing sensitivity, Harry turned the fan away from her and towards himself. Oh catastrophe! The hotel leaflets, those useless leaflets that nobody wants but are always there, were caught and flung all over. The entire area was alive with curling, furious leaflets. Poor Harry, instead of a moment’s peace and cool, had to scrabble frantically to catch them.

Which brings one to The Sound of Music. ‘How can you catch a moonbeam like Maria?’ The Sound of Music tour was to be have been a highlight of our Salzburg visit, after Harry’s performance. But somehow, rather as in the performance, nobody was able to leave on The Sound of Music tour bus. Rufus and Reggie can recite the entire Sound of Music from start to finish. Harry and Mercury Mr Kitten were lodging at the scene of ‘Mother, I have sinned,’ (spark plugs). But nobody boarded that bus. This was only partly because Reggie called it ‘rather smelly’ – or said it took four hours.

But there was A Sound of Music element at last, as you shall see.

The watery visit was to Hellbron. ‘A good starter Archbishop’s palace,’ Harry declared standing before it. It was a little rustic. They’d tried very hard to excite the inside but it wasn’t the best. There was a painted hall that was too complete in the way that mediocre things are. Quite nice. It turned out we’d all been secretly graphing an incredibly hot but clearly impossible young man who was amongst the paying visitors. The Archbishop in question was Italian and 18th century, perhaps 17th. Maybe he found Salzburg in need of pipping up. We took a tour of the garden with a great mass of members of the public. The guide stood near something he was fiddling with as he talked. Then he fiddled more decisively and we were all squirted with water. But it was the Archbishop’s doing. Those sitting at his wine table found themselves unexpectedly watered up the arse. Strolling in a grotto or trying to leave one, jets of water (copied from the human male piss stream of a six-year-old in force and dimensions) assaulted from the floor. All frantically amusing. More so for us, without the Archbishop there. We squealed and shrieked. Astonishing how even in middle age getting squirted is just as exciting and alarming and thrillingly horrifying  as it ever was when a small kiddie. By lunch we were dry.

Then it was down a long avenue, and round a corner. The actual pavilion in which they sang, ‘I am sixteen going on seventeen.’ Except that it had been moved there from where it had been in The Sound of Music. And where it was was in a dark corner of the garden by a wall under a tree. And it was locked. And it looked like something off a film set. It was locked because otherwise people would go in and whirl around the benches inside going, ‘I am sixteen….’ then fall off and have accidents. I was snogged by Rufus Pitman before the Pavilion in tribute. We were sixteen going on seventeen.

So the whole experience of Hellbron was delinquent.

We determined to walk back to Salzburg down the longest, straightest road you ever saw. On which was the villa of a hugely important art dealer – we’d been informed privately by Harry’s mother of its location, you see.  No 65. The villa was en fete. Staff were in evidence and guests. Massed ranks of cars. What a fool though – the art dealer. To think that some of the most important people alive were standing outside his villa, having been paying tourists at Hellbron. And he didn’t know.

The Fan and Leaflet Stand that Brought Harry Rollo to the Brink

Europe’s Loveliest Registry Office

A Good Starter Archbishop’s Palace, Harry Rollo said. Hellbron, Salzburg

Inside the Palace: Quite Nice

Young Man In Chinese Wallpaper Room

Young Man Attending to Shoe Laces: Reggie Got this Shot: Perfect for a Ceramic

Young Man: Back View: Shoulders Globed

The Archbishop’s Wine Table: Watch out for Those Holes in the Seats

A Hazardous Grot at Hellbron: Squirting Risk at Every Turn

Pissing Floor within Grot

The Music’s Sound at Last: the Pav where ‘I am Sixteen Going on Seventeen’ Took Place

Sunday 7th August 2016

Salzburg is up in lifts and funiculars, then down again. The castle was devastating. I fell asleep outside the torture room. Doorways needed further thought. What is the point in a good-sized room if you’ve got to crawl through a tiny opening to get into it? Somehow we failed to see the gilded apartments despite endless crawling through displays of armaments, rush matting and gruel bowls. Instead our attention was riveted to the Jerry Hall/Rupert Murdoch wedding. This was as we recovered in the café. One of our party had been present. Guests became coated in caviar. Lachlan read aloud from his father’s email correspondence with the bride. Have no fear – this old gentleman is magnificent of limb and organ still. In the church, the vicar assassinated the character of the groom.

Also up a rock is the modern art museum. They used to have two Klimts, but they had to give the bigger one back to its true owner. They’d got one Schiele and maybe 15 works by other artists whose names I can’t remember but they were awfully good. Reggie didn’t think much of the paintings by Schonberg, done while he was trying to work out 12-tone mu in his head. The display in the museum was intended to convey that Salzburg was really a hotbed of progressive, liberal experimentation, not a bit Nazi or nasty. So there was a huge photo of psychoanalysts, including Sigmund, gathered at Potsdam and another of Stephan Zweig, also elsewhere. The fascinating thing about this latter was that the famous author was wearing a shorts suit in white, forcing me to reconsider that mode very deeply indeed. The lady psychoanalysts also had interesting hats – or one of them did.

I should mention at this point that Rufus Pitman and Raj Zoroaster were very much promoting leiderhosen during their time in Salzburg. Rufus also acquired a cuckoo clock watch. Their devotion to the Germanic Alpine life is exemplary.

Come later for more – Europe’s loveliest registry office and an exceptional watery visit.

Rufus Pitman: the Cuckoo Watch

Salzburg Modern Art Museum: View from Terrace

Salzburg: the View from the Castle

Ceramic Model of the Castle on view in the Castle: Not Typical of the Work of Reggie Cresswell