Thursday 4th August 2016

At last the great event. Mercury Mr Kitten arranged personages on the red carpet where Rufus Pitman did a piece to camera for German TV. Cars were drawing up and all three Austrian Presidents were delivered, although not seen by us. Mrs Merkel was also given as present. There was a high red carpet feel – gowns and frocks and wraps and hair and faces such as never seen in the glaring light of everyday walks of life.

But beneath was trembling. It had been released into the ether that the perf would begin before it began and perhaps never end. I said to the the German TV man, ‘You’d better come back later. The audience might be unrecognisable or no longer in existence by 10pm.’

Anthony Mottram and I took our seats. There was something odd about the clatter of pre-performance which was that it wasn’t the clatter of pre-performance. Somebody was doing something deliberately. Then the performers appeared in some of the greatest Dior-esque couture ever seen. They were trapped by why? They could not leave but there was nothing stopping them. Were they dead or being punished for being rich? Or perhaps alive? Perhaps this not being able to leave is just like life, which is hard to leave as every Poor Little Rich Gay knows, as he or she forges on through suffering. The performers got grubby and smelly and their couture frayed. They had various ideas of what to do. Committing, or just plain dying was one of them, but really they gained little in that way, those that took that path. Others thought that were they to kill the owner of the house, then everything would be all right. But they rather forgot about this plan in the end. It was terrible that there were only teaspoons. One performer soared with lyric searing beauty, lamenting the lack of the right kind of spoon. So true: in life the little things are just as big as the big ones, if not bigger. Lourdes was mentioned: they would go there upon release and acquire a washable rubber Virgin Mary. Finally it turned out that they’d got stuck because they’d dropped a stitch further back in their life-knitting as it were. It was a question of finding the place and weaving back to it. Not easy, as knitters will know. But it was done, and the soprano sang her song as she’d failed to do the first time and they all could leave the room, those still alive. But… well, it wasn’t quite as simple as that.

The actual audience were able to leave at what was possibly the end, and brilliance at once poured forth: ‘Oh, yes,’ Kernow Hellizon said, ‘every time I think I have gained freedom, it turns out to be another trap.’

This performance was astonishing and completely new: this is what must be grasped. Nothing like this has ever been attempted before. Such a massive assembly of performers, in the first place – that in itself was remarkable. But then to get them to constantly dissolve and re-form, dissolve and re-form. So daring, such a risk. It could all have been a horrible mess. How to keep the great grandeur of performance, the dynamism and assertion, yet have them shift and fold into one ambiguity after another. So utter greatness and newness.

Unique Greatness: the Audience for the Performance at Salzburg

Normal Street Wear from the Performance

Not Necessarily Alive

Raj Zoraster Leaves the Hotel for the Performance

Rufus Pitman in Austrian National Costume, Leaves the hotel for the Performance

Wednesday 3rd August 2016

Last Wednesday to Salzburg for Harry Rollo’s event. I was expecting a chamber feel with a few of our greatest English performers weaving and arching superbly. On the aircraft were Reggie Cresswell, the Ghanian ceramicist, and Kernow Hellizon, whose launches always feature Sir Mickland Jagger. Reggie said that when they switch on the aircon in the cabin great gales of germs are released. I encountered Kernow by the lavs. He was travelling separately in a family setting. So nice to have somebody to talk to who understands what it is to be of a certain kind of family. He was most sympathetic about the terrible mineral situation before homing in on the doctor’s box stowed in the hostess area. ‘There’ll be morphine in there,’ he said. ‘Shall we try and get hold of it?’ I said.

We gained our hotel while Kernow transported his family straight to the Sacher. Our hotel had no air con but I rather liked the heavy German doorways and cupboards. Staff were off their heads. In the garden, I stepped on a border full of nothing but bindweed (I was on the verge of suggesting Round Up) in order to get closer to where Rufus Pitman, like some strange trapped figure in a German fairy story, was trying to speak to me out of a window. He said that Raj Zoraster was holding him by force in their room. At once staff were upon me, eyes popping, and clapping their hands, ‘No, no, thiz is a garr-den.’ No concern whatever for Rufus’s desperate plight.

Later we fell into the hands of some crazy school-boys pretending to be waiters in the dinner restaurant but actually pursuing some long-standing feud. Reggie didn’t believe the dumpling wasn’t meat-based and left it so they all but threw it at him.

Harry’s great perf was the next day, Thursday, which was a day devoted to waves of Greatnesses arriving by air from London – their luggage unfortunately not accompanying them to a degree not laid down by statistics for our guidance. At 4pm I attended at the railway station, where Anthony Mottram arrived by train from Prague. There was much to talk about, as we re-positioned in an international way from our Bulgarian experiences of only a few days before. The big news is that Anthony Mottram’s mother, 95, trying in vain to persuade her off-spring to give a concert in the communal drawing room of her sheltered Court accom, finally came up with the unturn-downable notion that it would be a pre-funeral concert. Her funeral, that is. Like a pre-dessert. So it’s going ahead for September.

Anthony Mottram was appalled by his room at the hotel which was a heavy German monastic cell.

Finally, finally, after snacks, we were geared for the perf

Salzburg: Clouds Gather before Harry Rollo’s Great Perf

Salzburg: Reggie Cresswell Liked the Gravel Finish in this Square: Fountain also Almost as Good as Firry

Salzburg: The Russian Quarter

The Door to Anthony Mottram’s Room in the Hotel: Horrors Within

Saturday 30th July 2016

The final call was taken and almost immediately a grim bus drew up and the Plodiv children were taken away in tears to Plodiv. On Sunday morning was the final, final farewell to the remaining orphans. The set had been struck, only the bare wires from which the cloths had been suspended remained. After that our van was brought round, we were put in and driven away and our Poor Little Rich Gay life wrapped us round once again like a travel rug as might have been laid over our knees by staff had it been winter, which it wasn’t.

Although it was on a previous van journey that Val had noticed a dead cat in the road and cried ‘Something for the nature table!’ And, some days before that Anthony Mottram, coming into the hotel after the daily washing of the stairs, declared: ‘Rotten mop smell.’ Val was much pre-occupied by night-time starvation. It is a serious threat apparently and vital to have a Milka bar to hand in case it should strike in the night.

Now, winding down from the mountains, we got stuck behind slower vehicles: ‘This isn’t any good,’ Val barked. ‘I can’t do anything with those letters.’ He meant the number plate in front. He was trying to make words. ‘Overtake at once,’ he ordered the driver, who didn’t. Anthony Mottram described the lavatories in Serbia where he had recently been bicycling for health and novelty. ‘You can hardly see what they are,’ he said.

We gained the 5-star in Sofia, went up in the lift and into the bathrooms. That was it. L’Occitane products. Later Val said Robert Nevil and I were pronouncing it wrong. We dined in a women-run ‘dirty’ restaurant, i.e. expensively distressed. Where were the orphans now? A Bulgarian entrepreneur from whom the van had been hired visited us as we dined – a huge fan of Cliff Richard. Val said Cliff Richard should be denied the oxygen of oxygen. Apparently the orphans are quite different after drama. So reports from the outlying institutions suggest. They are less cankerous and inclined to fight each other.

Varashmarti’s Crown: Front View: Val-Made

Varashmarti’s Crown Made by Val: Back View

The Revels are Ended: Only the Wires Remain

My Main in Sofia ‘Dirty’ Restaurant: Val Went Mental on Tasting it: Said the Pomegranate Molasses Sauce was Sweet, which it Wasn’t. Val Can’t Bear Sweet with Savoury

Sunday 24th July 2016

Yes! Their perf was a triumph. The girl who stained my Balenciaga cardy with her hugging – in a green sari she was transfigured. Her presence was statuesque. Little Stoyan did join in, gripped firmly by one of the artistes well disguised in costume, it is true. But he wore his mask and his black robe and copied the moves as best he could. There was yoga, martial arts, a puppet show and the Indian tale of the prince who, finding his dream princess, fell into post-marital depression, abandoned her, but finally after much travail they were reunited and lived happily ever after. The swans were enchanting. What fluid swan-like movement! When the Prince gambled away his kingdom and cartwheeling sprites embodied the crisis, it was thrilling. At the end came the glorious sunburst of the traditional Bollywood finale; we were delirious.  Great bevies of Princes and Princesses assumed the stage.  Val’s silver costume for Becho was a triumph. I threaded his necklace, I’ll have you know. Val was hours on the belt, collar, and wrist and ankle cuffs, trimming, sewing on the eyes, gluing on the jewels.

So on the beat-up old playground before the communist-era school and orphanage buildings, with the stunning back-drop of mountains and the little town of Shiroka Laka, out of chaos and sadness and wrong, art was wrought which wasn’t any of those things, if only for an afternoon. It wasn’t shimmering perfection by conventional standards but it was perfect enough. Excuses don’t have to be made for children who otherwise have nothing like this, who have been clobbered before they start by circumstances or physical or mental damage or being born Roma.

She Stained my Balenciaga Cardy: Look at her Now in the Perf

Stoyan Joins in Firmly Gripped

The Tumblers’ Spectacular: This was in Fact part of the Martial Arts Section

The Enchanting Swans

The Magic of Swans

The Bollywood Finale

The Bollywood Finale: Pure Joy

Rapture: the Bollywood Finale: Stoyan at the Front in Black 

Friday 22nd July 2016

Our driver is a coming young man from Sofia who speaks English, not a Poor Little Rich Gay. He keeps tarantulas. We drew up at Shiroka Laka from Sofia in a white van. Where one of the back doors should be it isn’t there. Part of an economy drive at the van factory presumably. It’s gas-fired but internally swathes of it fall off if any attempt is made to use them for their purpose. A black mafia Mercedes to draw up at the Orphanage in wouldn’t do, although possible of course. We must be simple and try to mix. I’ve even bought a High-Street perfume and left all my niche ones behind. It’s Hermes Terre – fume so awful after niche but there we are.

Up the cracked drive to the orphanage each morning we go. The orphans rush up. They high-five, then show their biceps, if boys. Small boys under ten are not discouraged by comparison with fitness-model types of 16, of whom there are a number. Really they could be in health magazines. I know, in case you’re wondering, because of the borderline necessary display of chests at the artistes v young people/children football match on Tuesday evening.

After the high-five, the orphans hug, whether girl or boy. Arms are flung throughout the day: hug, hug, hug. The artistes who prepare the children for their performance, which will take place tomorrow, hug especially when a child is failing or has just attempted to climb out of the window. Little Stoyan, who’s only been in a month (must be about 8) and can’t sit still one minute, is either restrained in a tight embrace until he wriggles away or, when he’s pushed past what can be endured, taken out of the room, coaxed and hugged in the corridor, then brought back in radiant triumph holding the artiste’s hand. He knows he’s superbly winning. But progress is apparent. On Sunday he was wandering in the playground or disrupting a class where he didn’t belong. But it seems he will now participate in tomorrow’s performance – in the right role. What horror lies behind it all or what future for him, we don’t know. He’s not really an orphan as most of the others are not. His parents have failed in some catastrophic way. Roma, as, sadly, is often the case.

After a morning in class, Robert Nevil and I withdraw, shattered. And we’re just sitting on the window sill. We return to hotel life and nonsense. Others must carry on. The children – well, some have learning difficulties, they’re all mixed up as to age, others are monkeys, nice but impossible. They come and go, sometimes quite literally, either leaving the room altogether or randomly shutting down in the middle of something. Occasionally there are temper-tantrums; they kick the waste-paper basket and slam doors. Maybe Stoyan swallows a staple or gets hold of a lethal pair of scissors from the mask-making box.  Jesus is offering unrequested cartwheels, Antoinetta is eyeing up a nearby rooftop for later life-threatening climbing and Angol is obsessively writing down the names of the same pop songs over and over. Danka’s T-shirt proclaims, ‘Oh s..t it’s Monday’ but it’s Sunday. Some days I return to the hotel feeling as the Queen Mother must have done after her wartime visits to the bombed out East End, when on returning to Buckingham Palace her lavender ensemble was covered in dust. But somehow at the end of it all they all blossom into being there in a joint effort of some kind, although quite what is yet to emerge. There’s only one who just can’t. A boy called Ivan who paces about, muttering (no sense apparently). He takes calming medication. But even he, I like to think, knows that something’s happening, that we’re building up to an event.

Back in the hotel we’re getting fatter and fatter. The chips! The waiter is frozen in permanent alarm. Val requires hot milk. Anthony Mottram can only abide cold. He has brought his own tea-pot, the only one known in Bulgaria. Once the milks were the wrong way round. Val was icily gracious. Vinegar is one of his bete-noires. He’s even quite offended if others have it and refuse the Waitrose Essential lemon-shaped lemon juice dispenser with which he arrived from London equipped. We love the Bloc. As you know, Anthony Mottram has done so much for it even to the point of living in it; for the Bulgarian Orphans he’s now planning to spend 60,000 euros on refurbishing the old baby orphanage as a music and arts centre. But we couldn’t not mock. Some of the things we say about the orphans wouldn’t look well if we were being filmed for a TV documentary. We’d be condemned by the public. Robert Nevil, as you know, was brought up on a farm. On the other hand, we’re not having any preciousness about poor little waifs with one dainty tear trickling down a pathetic cheek. Not least because the orphans are delirious with good cheer mostly although you see an unknown pain flashing in their eyes from time to time for sure. This start in life will be a scar whatever they manage to make of themselves.

In Bulgaria many buildings have a double-function. I’ve already mentioned the wedding-funeral parlour where Anthony Mottram and I attended a wedding in 2003 approx. Now we’ve added to the collection a toilet-theatre (it’s the little theatre here: awfully smelly) and the trout-sewage farm-restaurant. This arises because going along the valley by road, first of there’s a string of sewage farms, then the trout-farm restaurant. Are the two related in any way, we wonder?

Poor Little Rich Gays are a bit warped, I expect you’re thinking. Or even delayed as to growth? Isn’t it time to develop? The answer is: no, no, no.

Rachel da Thame Leggings Worn by 8-Year-Old in Dance Class

Young Musician Bus-ed in from Devin Each Day: Gold Top Hair Thought to be Administered by a Colleague: V. Good Effect

Stoyan Sitting Still for Once

Aiming High: Stoyan in Goal against the Giants

Asen: Loves iPhone 6. V. Nice Boy, Anxious for Order

Mask Workshop

The Show Beginning to Take Shape

Thursday 21st July 2016

We’re with the Orphans once again. There’s a big evening event this evening in Smolyan, a town quite large nearby where Anthony Mottram and I attended a wedding in the wedding-funeral parlour in about 2003.

Last time with the orphans was 2009. In deepest Bulgaria, the wildest mountains, where the beasts kept the orphans out of sight. It’s all different now, but not quite. About 70 children aged between 7 and 18 are taking part this year in the drama festival. The performance is to be on Saturday. It’s an Indian theme. Robert Nevil and I have been to classes, where we are much hugged. This morning, in fact, my Balenciaga cardy (weather’s not been good) had damp patches after hugging. There’s a girl whose whole life is hugging and apparent joy.

Well, I’ll just give you a few quick snaps. We flew out with some fashion models – or so it seemed. He had fallen prey to the no-socks and short trousers look.

On Flight Out: Fashion Couple On Gaining Sofia: He No Socks

No Socks Look Arriving at Sofia

Shiroka Laka, General View with Orphanage in the Background

Hotel Corridor Cheered up with Ornamental Ironing Board

The Hotel Room at Shiroka Laka

An Enticing Pastry Display in Sofia

Tuesday 19th July 2016

I was down in the Far West. The Gay Mother is themed around summer soft fruits at the moment. Redcurrants and blackcurrants are insatiable croppers but gooseberries are also pouring in. We had Poulet au Gooseberry Sauce as well as Pork with Gooseberries and gooseberry puree for pudding. Absolutely outstanding. She grows two kinds. Later she will make redcurrant water ice. The blackcurrants are pureed and preserved with brandy.

The Gay Mother has heard from Independent Age that old people are being ill-treated as an upshot of the referendum so she’s more or less got her pitch fork out. We spent a lot of time on her computer trying to send some photos to Natural England of a rare wildflower which she thinks the pheasant shoot people are abusing on the riverbank. I saw that she gets emails from Archbishop Cranmer among other Anglican figures. Otherwise I weeded the garden for 3 days and vac-ed and dusted.

Redcurrants Secreted Elsewhere in the House

Summer Fruits: Blackcurrants Pouring In

The Garden This Year: Light and Airy

The Front Border: Superb Rhythm

Monday 18th July 2016

I missed the Private Breakfast for the Summer Exhib at the Royal Academy owing to being with the Gay Mother in the Far West. So had to gain the show only as a Member. Other Poor Little Rich Gays, such as Reggie Cresswell, Rufus Pitman, Robert Nevil and Harry Rollo qualify for the Royal Academy Annual Dinner in the presence of Camilla Cornwall and the like.

The Summer Exhib is a challenge for one in a frail mental state. Over 1200 works! At one time a joke, the Exhib has greatly improved in recent years. But such a clamour of different voices you seem to hear as you pass through the rooms. I wonder whether attempts to ‘curate’ different parts of the exhibition, i.e. arrange works by theme, doesn’t make even more confusion. I recommend two approaches: 1) pick out works by people you know or artists you’ve got in your own collection. 2) ignore the catalogue because it won’t mean anything. Just pick out a few other works you think you like and carry on liking them even after you’ve looked in the catalogue and never heard of the creator.

Further stimulus: shopping aspect. Many works for sale!

Gilbert and George: Ralph Kitto has One

Craigie Aitchinson: Ralph Kitto has One

Tom Hammick: I have Many: the Artist is a Personal

Top One is By Merle Barr’s Friend: She accompanied me at the Academy

Conrad Shawcross: We Know his Mother

Matthew and Judy Collins: Tremendous Friends of Genevieve Suzy

The Multis’ Home

Gillian Ayre: Reggie Cresswell once Took Me to Her PV. Do Like These, Though. Better Not in Oil

This is the Kind of Thing I Like

I like This: Not by Gillian Ayres but Similar

Wouldn’t Want It but Interesting: Ghastly People: Wouldn’t want to be Looking at them all The Time: in Style of ‘Mr and Mrs Andrews’ by Gainsborough

Horrid Thing by the Chapman Brothers

Liked this Texture

Saturday 16th July 2016

Going back to June’s beginnings – Joshua Baring saw to it that we penetrated to the core on that visit to Norfolk and Sandringham St Kil. Not only did we take Holt, where Princess Kate Middleton shops for cushions, we drove on to the scene of Normal for Norfolk. The TV series had only just finished. The owner of the estate is not the hapless incompetent as shown on TV. Joshua had insider knowledge. He also knew how to find the place and we drove straight in. It was packed, of course, having just been on TV. Lunch seemed a distant dream, but Joshua secured a shelf in the luncheon room for us. So we perched and lunched, feeling exceptional. I bought a lupin from the man himself.  He has twirly eyebrows suggesting bogus-ness but was running a delirious plant stall and luncheon room as well as fruit-picking Pick Your Own and holiday cottages. His old mother, exceeding 100 years old, was on view, as on TV. She had one dead leg, but perhaps not significant at that age.

Later, at Peter Beales Rose nursery, Robert Nevil produced a note-book. He had to buy a yellow climbing rose with scent for the wife of one of England’s greatest, who staged the Olympics but can never be forgiven for that toilet scene when the small boy plunged in.

I paid a visit to Val a few weeks later. We’re looking at a new curtain plus hard upholstery pole for my back bedroom. But Val had the valance to finish off so while he was doing that, I went out and bought a variety of magazines. One of them told me that Kylie is having a dream wedding. ‘So not a real wedding,’ Val said. ‘ A phantom wedding like a phantom pregnancy.’ We had Singapore Fried Rice as envisioned by Val before setting out for Chelsea Harbour. I think I mentioned that Lord Arrowby is also homing in on Chelsea Harbour. Lewis and Wood was heaven – the fabric place now. Then I could not find the Official Car in the car park. It really is too bad that it is not brought round. How many have never found their vehicle left in an underground car park? You could roam for days. Only luck produced a man in an orange coat who revealed that there was another level.

All this was before Brexit, in another world. As was Glyndebourniana. The Meistersinger was ravishing. I’ve never understood it before. We were so near the orchestra. Very loud but I was in the mood to love even the faults – such as several singers not loud enough and the orch v. loud. But voices refined, not bellowing. We had a brief sunny spell on the lawn before a gale threatening rain got up. The Meistersinger is fascinating: it’s about art, sincerity, obeying the rules, time, age and love. I felt so intimate with it, so entwined in its ever-shifting pulses and glorious energy.

So thank you Glyndebourniana for The Meistersinger.

The Luncheon Room at Normal for Norfolk’s – as Seen on TV

Normal for Norfolk’s 100-Year-Old Mother: One Dead Leg but as My Gay Mother said, ‘There She is’.

Joshua Baring Holding a Foam Item he Thought of Buying at Peter Beales’ Rose Nursery

Saturday 9th July 2016

I’m actually just dashing for Ab Fab the Movie in Kilburn. Last night I took to the stage at the Wigmore Hall and sang Schubert: Die Musik. Such a favourite. I wore biscuit and powder blue, Topman and Zara. Miss Lamore Cellina had just given her show at 10pm, so afterwards the Hall was available for further performance. All that was necessary was to clamber up onto the stage and sing. I sensed the audience, the rows and rows of seats, and reached out.

Last week, Robert Nevil launched his book: England, Through Pony Club Eyes: it’s not actually a Brexit publication. The function was held at a central London bookshop location and many big names were present: Miss Linara Girdle who made millions from commas, of course; Miss Susie Poole-Cooper, dressed as a blue-bottle in iridescent raw silk and matching hat – her work on ponies at war (oh the suffering!) is second to none. Miss Pearl Barley, whose novel, My Forgotten Pony, was twice short-listed for the Booker Prize. She is now so legendary she is pure presence, beyond speech. ‘You are so unspeakably great,’ I said. Reggie Cresswell, the Ghanaian ceramicist, whose novel in ceramic showed the graves of many gay ponies and won a Pony Club Golden Hoof (Book Branch) four times in a row – well, I had the great good fortune to be graphed in deep and intimate conversation with him by the Loella Parsons present who then listed me, Adrian Edge, as one of the important people there along with Laura Malcolm and all the others. I had on a new dress coat in silver grey by Topman.

At a certain point a door below ground was opened and an onslaught was admitted from a prominent nearby twilight home – there’s a secret tunnel, you see. Up the stairs they surged, in their pre-War outfits (pre 1st World War, I mean): ‘Who on earth are you?’ they barked. ‘I don’t remember a thing,’ before hurling their drinks over the best stock. Springs were flying out (imagine a Jack-in-a-box). ‘I so much enjoyed your address to the Pony Club Boy Branch’. ‘I’ve never addressed the Pony Club Boy branch.’ ‘Have you heard of chem sex?’ This was Peter Wildwire, with whom Robert Nevil and I were at uni. ‘You remember that professor who was often off his face… well, he’s written a book all about his son’s adventures with chem sex.’ ‘I haven’t been to bed for days,’ Joshua Baring exclaimed. ‘Have you been having chem sex?’ I said, mainly for effect. No, he’d been picking over the aftermath of boys with Patrick Lockyer all night. ‘What happened to the Bournemouth connection?’ I inquired. ‘Oh, he called him “Daddy” and that was it.’ ‘Sex is just skin,’ announced Jamie Horn, the paramour of Ronnie Ronnie.

It was time for Robert Nevil to address the throng from a balcony, in the manner of Evita. He made a charming address and we all felt England and what ponies have done for England  – as opposed to Argentina. Then they were off again. ‘I don’t remember a thing – do you?’ Eddie Sedgewick was in a tiny jackette. His special intimate, the MP for Whirly and Lorraine had to fly off to address 1000 a Girl Guides – or whatever. ‘I’ve come from the madhouse,’ he said – meaning the Commons House. I quite failed to recognise Hugh Mary, the biographer of Firbank. I thought he was the manager of St John’s Smith Square. ‘Hello, Bertie,’ I said. ‘I’ve been at death’s door,’ he said. ‘I’ve got afascia,’ he said, which is inability to recognise faces. But it was me, Adrian Edge, who had that. Ronnie Ronnie declared his wig shade for summer as Marsh Mink. Iron Lady is planned for autumn. Reggie Cresswell had to leave for a Civil Partnership. ‘At this time of night?’ ‘It’s for tax reasons,’ he said. Or it might have been sex, I can’t quite recall. Marmion Beaufleasance I glimpsed only for a second: no news of the Queen.

I went to a marvellous party. I couldn’t have enjoyed it more.