Tuesday 12th April 2016

I was low yesterday driving back from the Gay Mother in the Far West. Was it all over for the Rich? As you know, I’ve been wracked about inequality. It comes in bouts like swelling and bloating.  No more shares. No more off-shore funds. Cameron hauled over the coals. How long before the regime of Jeremy Corbyn and a white B&Q front door for all? No matter that it was a lot of wrangling about £30,000 in the off-shore fund and all the tax was paid. Cameron was to appear in the Commons House later in the afternoon. Would he survive? Would the Government have fallen by tea-time?

Well, the worst now seems to be over. They’ve shut up about that further £70,000 of shares that were sold. Cameron saw them off and robust voices spoke up in favour some families being richer than others. This is good for our society and produces people like me who decorate the world. Not that I have a penny of course and could crash to penury at any moment.

Now we can contemplate these tax returns. Apart from Boris, it’s really quite embarrassing how unrich these top people are.  Without their salaries they’d be struggling. Osborne (my relly, you know. The Gay Great Granny left his Granny a leggy. Lady Osborne wrote an arsey letter to the Gay Grandad about it) is doing well enough at the moment. On £200,000, with a wife and kids, he can probably manage the Royal Opera House maybe twice a year and Glyndebourne once. V. little disposable. No servants. His rather ghastly wife, who doesn’t allow her inability to string a sentence together to stop her from writing books, would have to do the Glyndebourne picnic herself and carry it from the car-park. But what if Osborne is kicked out of Office? Then he’d have to go and live in the house he is currently renting out while residing at numero onze and would be reduced to £44,000 of uncertain income from the wallpaper company and his MP’s salary. So he’s surely having to save in his present windfall years. Cameron is in much the same position: massively salary-dependent, wife doing the cooking, much of her frockage probably out on loan for the night from the shop, no jewels of any importance.

People have really got no idea. Boris has questions to answer. With all that money, why are his clothes so dilapidated? Why does he seem to be actually dirty in his person? I know because I see him all the time in my neighbourhood on his bicycle. Of all the people I have seen in the neighbourhood over twenty years, he is far and away the grubbiest. Why is this on £500,000 a year?

The trouble is that so many people earn so little. Salaries must increase and tax thresholds be lowered for middle earners. But you’re not rich on £200,000 with dependents and a mortgage. You’re comfortably awff. That’s a different thing. Rich is £1 million a year absolutely reliable investment income, ideally £3 to £4 million (i.e. capital holdings of £100 million plus), no borrowings, at least 8 staff, two homes, staff in both, car at the door, new clothes from the Collections twice a year, at least 4 Old Masters, important jewellery.  Even then there are things you can’t have. This new Caravaggio, for instance, they’re saying it could be £27 million if genuine. What is one to do?

Yesterday Laura Malcolm said, ‘In the interests of transparency, do you think we should all take our Tax Returns to the cafe opening on Thursday?’ More on that cafe opening later.

Sunday 10th April 2016

We went down to see her self-driving back from Church. Royston King said, ‘You must know Windsor to know her.’ This was all in connection with my 40 minute piece to camera for Dainty Lady TV. We stood at the top of Long Walk while Royston discoursed on the Reign. He was on the inside for many years and really still is. The night before, Robert Nevil had informed me that I am ‘very, very minor Landed Gentry.’ I wonder whether to believe a word he says about the Pony Club. In fact we were the professional backbone, admirals, doctors, art collectors, lawyers. Massive in our county. Not to mention bishops. And landowners. In my own time, we have come near the Throne. Royston is inches from the Throne. He had much to say about what she has done, especially re: the money. After a while it was apparent she wasn’t coming. The bollards weren’t down. Nobody was in the hut by the gate. How would she get through? Also, there was a Fun Run in the Great Park which would obscure her route. Royston revealed that usually she is away around the time of her birthday, staying at Highclere for Newbury Races. There she was encountered by a friend of his in an upper corridor in a Chinese dressing gown. She mingles with the other guests as one of them. So simple. Just a maid. No suite. She revealed an interest in Sigmund Freud. Apart from horses, she’d talked about Sigmund Freud with Lucian Freud while sitting for the latter.

We abandoned the Long Walk and any hope of seeing her. The next destination was the Coronation Oak plantation, planted one month after the Coronation, one oak tree per Commonwealth nation, planted by its head, Edinburgh and the Queen also planting. They wouldn’t let us in. Rather the officer said, ‘You’ll struggle to get through.’ But Royston produced various insignia and badges of office. Suddenly we weren’t struggling but in. It was quite boggy. Sometimes I’ve had enough of outdoors and Nature – so messy and untidy. The oaks haven’t grown very much in 63 years. But the Queen has planted so many trees and was annoyed, Royston said, that at GCHQ they got rid of her tree. Royston knows all her trees and they tell a Royal story and a National story as yet untold.

After the oaks, we inspected the model village. The parish notice board was of special note with the order of service at The Chapel Royal of All Saints displayed for a forthcoming service for ‘A Royal Birthday’ How many church services begin with the National Anthem? Then we proceeded to the Saville Gardens with an organic visitor centre designed by the Duke of Edinburgh. Royston explained about the Royal finances. I couldn’t believe it. She’s got the Crown Estates back! Did you know? Well, she has. And nobody has noticed. So no more unseemly wrangling over the Civil List. The Monarchy now gets 15% of Crown Estate revenue, a sum far larger than any measly Civil List allowance from Parliament. You may not know that the Crown Estates were surrendered by George 111 in return for the Civil List, a thoroughly bad deal. Well, she’s put all that right and exploited the great love the people have for her because she is so old to secure the future of the Monarchy.

At the Saville Gardens, there were some other black people there and in Windsor Farm Shop there was old-fashioned cruising going on big time. A pear-shaped queen with scarves and orange skin was lurking by the leeks, murmuring suggestively as one passed. Royston and I made a quick getaway with our Royal meats and smoked salmon.

We drove back through Feltham and Hanwell. Royston knew them all. His speciality, apart from the Royal Family, is saving London’s much despised outer suburbs. Everywhere, even in Ealing, he knew of forgotten mansions, factories, churches and public parks. ‘Stop here,’ he commanded. I parked the Official Car beside some mock-Tudor semis. ‘Follow me.’ We walked onto a bridge. ‘This is Brunel’s last work,’ Royston proclaimed. ‘Three bridges criss-cross.’ The bottom layer is a railway line. Brunel was putting a railway line underneath the Grand Union Canal. This was his last work. Who would have thought to find such engineering in the flat lands between Heathrow Airport and London proper – not far from the raised section of the A4? We walked along the canal, in itself an phenomenon of locks with a fabulous early industrial wall along one side. A little picturesque lock-keeper’s cott. We peered over the wall at the back of Ealing Hospital. That world was there but on this side of the wall was another world. ‘You see that building there,’ Royston said, ‘my uncle was incarcerated in it but allowed out for Sunday lunch.’ It had been an asylum, not long disused but built in the early 19th century, built to match the wall, an uncompromising London-brick edifice of staggering  plainness. We saw some allotments and tin shacks, as allotments always used to be,  beside the River Brent. ‘All this will go,’ Royston said. ‘It’ll all be flats for migrants from the EU.’

Brunel’s Three Bridges Coincidence at Hanwell

The Road Seen from the Canal: The Railway line goes Underneath the Canal. Brunel’s Last Work

Brunel’s Last Work: Three Bridges at Hanwell

The Asylum and Wall by the Canal: They Made the Bricks as they Went Along. Incredible Early Industrial Austerity

Another View of this Remarkable Wall by the Grand Union Canal

Allotments by the River Brent: How Much Longer will they be There?

Thursday 7th April 2016

I’m sorry for absence but I’ve been consumed with Royal affairs. Dainty Lady TV required a 40 minute piece to camera. On Sunday I visited Winz (or Windsor) with Royston King in order to see and feel her. More of that later. Robert Nevil is in an orgy of cinema visits – tonight is a 4 hour film of an old woman recalling the heyday of Belfast – or perhaps its worst days. It will be incredibly hand-held camera and grainy and, shall we say, quiet. Despite my schedule, I’ve managed to launder, cook a Windsor farm shop chicken for Bruce McBain, my private architect – oh, and yes! Genevieve Suzy finally conquered the Ivy Grill on Tuesday so there was an emergency lunch. Yesterday I went into my drawing room after breakfast and forked for two tickets for Sunset Boulevard (only because somebody told me it was must-have). Massive amount. Then I bought an antique, from my drawing room. Then I found returns available for Nabucco with Domingo so more haemouraging of wealth. Mineral wealth hasn’t even begun yet, if it ever does. What could I have been thinking of? It’s slowly sinking in that Sunset Boulevard is Andrew Lloyd Webber, therefore unbearable. Andrew Lloyd Webber is one of the things we’re absolutely against, despite knowing the Managing Director of Andrew Lloyd Webber Inc in the 90s. I’ve got to find someone willing to go to it with me at a cost of £126. I’ve already tried Lord Arrowby but he’s dining with Lord Browne that night.

Anyway, I digress…. over Easter the Gay Mother (92) said: ‘I must try new recipes.’ So we had Mary Berry’s Foolproof butterflied lamb’s leg with preserved lemon, garlic, thyme and one or two other things. A few days later, we tried haddock with preserved lemon. Claudia said to put tomato slices. At the very moment I was saying, ‘What does this tomato add?’ the man on Masterchef was criticising the Doctor-Contestant for having no colour in his plate. He’d got honey-beige, beige, gold and veal (as a shade, but the substance – can’t remember what the food was). The judge said, ‘Where’s the colour?’ I thought: ‘No, no, no. Food doesn’t have colour at the moment. Colour’s out. Food is blond now.’

So there it is: don’t dare to put a tomato or a red pepper. Keep your food pale – beige, honey-beige, oyster, pearl, grey, dead green (as in capers). That is the palette for food this season.

Wednesday 30th March 2016

I’ve been meaning to complete the petit point from before Easter but terrorist bombs and Easter meditation distracted me. Harry Rollo gave a perf on a Wednesday followed by a dinner attended by late-comers who’d been putting the Graph weekend section to bed – blankets are back! And some fabulous new chocolatiers – that kind of thing. Dainty Lady TV but on the page. Marvellous.  I love the Graph – mainly because of the pictures. Miss Lamore Cellina couldn’t dine and was as good as helicoptered out of the venue. The perf involved men with hair bands and incredible textures and layers. It was all completely new although seen before and I couldn’t have been more entranced. When Harry Rollo gives a perf it’s an occasion and the other performance artists just give and give, so much do they love Harry Rollo. In the restaurant Harry said, ‘I haven’t got a drink,’ before recalling Imperial days in the European Courts. ‘More elitism, please,’ he said.

Before that, on a Sunday , I drove out with Robert Nevil to plant nurseries. He recommended at least three TV programmes on Channel 4. I thought I’d written them down but it seems I haven’t. One he’d heard about from Joshua Baring, so it would be for young people. It almost impossible to remember to watch everything on TV these days. One gripping quality murder story ends and at once another begins. One is breathless.

On the final Saturday before the Passion of Our Lord, Simeon Bond gave a lavish stand-up with early asparagus among many other delicacies. Stephan Jäger gained direct from a performance venue. I wish I could remember now why he was telling me that the words to the opening of the New World Symphony by Dvorak are commonly thought, in musical circles, to be: ‘I want to masturbate. Please leave me alone.’ Perhaps it was because that mu had been chosen for the arrival of Mrs Merkel at some world conference. My God, Mercury, Mr Kitten and Harry Rollo are under classic Poor Little Rich Gay pressure. Not merely was Harry in suspended animation for ten days or so in America. He went into a highly creative trance, which was all very well, but they’re supposed to be moving house in London as well as Harry giving a series of perfs in clinic-like places such as Lucerne and, to top it all, mounting an incredible entirely new perf at a massive summer venue in July. It’ll all get done. Poor Little Rich Gays aren’t special for nothing. But ordinary people would last about 3 seconds in this life.

Sunday 27th March 2016

I’m still side-tracked by time from my thread.  Harry Rollo and Robert Nevil’s TV viewing on hold.

Easter Day began with a radio appeal by Jonathan Pryce, the actor, for a charity that buys cows for women in Bangladesh and other such places where there is the most frightful poverty. He said that desperately poor people only have rags to cover their children and no proper roof over their heads. Please help them. I was at a loss because all I think about is antiques (at the moment) and how to give more importance to the further end of my drawing room. What to do? Oh what to do? The Gay Mother and I went to Church where the sermon was the tidal wave of faith and care that poureth forth from Jesus, if only we could immerse ourselves and give to him as he gave to us. Also that the accounts of the Resurrection have the ring of truth. The Gospel writers would have colluded surely if they were fabricating? No, the Lord really did rise again. Well, I don’t mind that. I’m all for Resurrection. Fashion itself is the fight against Death, with endless renewal every season. The same with the home, face, hair, cuisine – at all phases of life, there is hope until Death. The Gay Mother has been saying recently, at 92, that she ought to try new recipes. Well, I did begin to wonder, sitting in Church, whether it would not be a sin, where the opportunity exists, to fail to improve one’s drawing room. Does it not say somewhere that we are to embrace the abundance of what has been given: to turn away in misery is a crime? And so much has been given in terms of upholstery techniques, gilding, veneers, polishes, porcelain, glass, silver-work…

In any case, after Church a new woman in the village invited the congregation back for a coffee morning. Except it was prosecco. She’s been renovating her inherited farmhouse in the village. Georgian panelling uncovered, traditional iron coat-hooks re-made locally, a spiral staircase discovered, all the floors up, a concrete base, under-floor heating, reclaimed flagstones at £300 a square metre, more original pegs … it was a orgy of renovation and decor and we were back to square one.

Thursday 23rd March 2016

I must break off – I was going to tell you about Harry Rollo and Mercury, Mr Kitten, what Robert Nevil has been watching on TV as well as my Easter scarves. But yesterday it might all have come to an end. Yesterday, had things turned out differently, I might never have shopped on eBay again. Decor would have gone, along with menus, face, hair, outfits and herbaceous borders. Word reached me early of the explosions in Brussels. At once I thought of Ivo Driver. You may recall he’s suddenly outstanding, of great promise and has just taken up a position in the EU. Europe is his realm of expertise and his mind has a fine precision that draws out conclusions like diamonds. He’s only just gone to live in Brussels. He works for the EU. That metro station, they said, was right by the EU headquarters. Well, I sat there and suffered. Nothing, of course, compared to the suffering of his parents and siblings, Ivy and Kelm Driver. As always with these outrages, the networks go down, you can’t get through. You just have to wait, fearing the worst. This is what the terrorists do. It was brought home to me as never before, what they inflict. Mercifully, Ivo was perfectly all right, in fact already in his office when the attack occurred. Others will have waited and finally heard the worst. There’s no comparison. Most escape and have the luxury of resuming as if nothing had happened.  But I feel bizarrely grateful to have been brought closer to what this horror means and to have experienced at first hand in a minor way the fury it provokes. Laura too was furious – when it was all over.

Sunday 20th March 2016

I don’t think I mentioned my visit to the Downton Abbey location (a small Stately) with a Gainsborough, owned by a kind of rellie. Aunt Lavinia accompanied me on that occasion, as she did the next morning at the Royal Academy for the deeply private tour. That very evening I was bolt upright at the Opera. Then at the weekend there was a cancellation but something happened last min. Forgotten what. The next week was a dinner for 8 at my official home (you know what I’m like about dinner-giving: on the floor). A very important CEO attended, with shares as well as salary. In fact the richest person present although not a drop of Poor Little Rich Gay blood floweth in his veins. His wife, however, an old friend known to me, Adrian Edge, before her sensational marriage, recently was unable to even enter a certain ghastly hotel. But strangely, she’s got no silver.  Laura Malcolm and Robert Nevil declared class war at the dinner and had me reduced to maid-level. The menu was Parmigiano Bianco (i.e with goat cheese and a white sauce, no tomatoes), Nigel’s Chicken with a thyme and onion gravy (thought a little rustic, I think, by the guests). Then a rhubarb cake. The next day, Peter Acharya and Ned Czernowski, who’d also dined, beckoned me to a drinks in an architects office for Gays in the Property Sector. I have to say the architect who made the speech had a superbly well-fitted suit. But we didn’t really take to any of the Gays in the Property Sector and went lurching about in Soho. We attacked some kind of Thai walk-on restaurant that wouldn’t let us walk in. Peter is just not accustomed to taxis not arriving or restaurants not having tables. Genevieve Suzy, head of Dainty Lady TV is the same. She absolutely blew up in the Ivy Brasserie the other day: ‘How can a Brasserie be fully booked?’ This is an item. Send for the film crew!’ she raged. The end of it was Peter and Ned and I were on a banquette in Balans with a avo and prawn cocktail. Friday was the Antiques Fair at Duke of York’s Yard, King’s Road. Aunt Lavinia had been given cards by an Elizabeth Frink seller with whom she seems to be negotiating a purchase of some substance.  I knew one of stall-holders, of course. He said, ‘You can’t mention eBay here.’ The Antiques Fair sparked dissatisfaction with the furniture in my public rooms. I began surging on eBay and other antiques websites – with results. In fact, I’ve drawn up a list of improvements for the Official home. I long and long for some Empire piece – surely one little round table with a grey marble top can’t do any harm?

Well, look. I’ve gone on enough and I’ve Easter scarves to launder. Easter is a tremendous deadline but I’ve so much more to tell you. Laura Malcolm gave a dinner, Robert Nevil and I drove to nurseries in Essex and Cambridgeshire before watching TV. Harry Rollo and Mercury Mr Kitten have gained from California. Harry gave a performance on Wednesday and was seen at Simeon Bond’s last night as was Stephan Jäger who’s been looking at Grinder.

I’ve so much more to tell you. It’ll just pour out.

But no picture. More things have arrived from eBay. But not ready for graphing yet.

Goodbye everybody!

Friday 18th March 2016

Yesterday, I broke off from eBay and agony to improve my home (I’ve got so behind and haven’t been spending enough: no chandelier in the back drawing room for instance. How could I? ). Glorious Spring day to the Royal Festival Hall for the Launch of the National Gardens Scheme Yellow Book 2016. Thanks to Royston King for alerting me to this event which I was able to crash with the weight of Dainty Lady TV. Much cream bouclé and pearls. A pre-breakfast at 10.30. Royston introduced the President of the Royal Horticultural Society. ‘Don’t worry. You’re doing jolly well,’ Royston exhorted and the President looked grateful. Rachel Da Thame was spotted as well as Joe Swift of TV. ‘His mother is Margaret Drabble,’ I muttered to Royston. ‘And his father is…’ ‘I know that,’ Royston barked. ‘Who do you think I am? They sent him to a comprehensive school as an experiment. That’s why he talks like that.’ We had a Trustee of the National Gardens Scheme. All these Greatnesses have in common that they never show any arse. They treat one on equal terms. It was time to file into the Function Room for the launch. Royston said he would be sitting in the front row but finally sat with me in the sixth, right behind the former Chair of the London area and another lady who was a bit of a ringer for Lady Freelove. Somehow the Lady Freelove lookalike knew my fabricist and we had some unexpected Gay banter about what might be going on or not in a certain Gay bedroom, the former Chair lighting up tremendously. She’d done the flowers for the podium as emerged when proceedings began. The Chair, the Chief Executive, the Head of Equities (Charities) from Investec (they’d given Smarties for the goodie bag), the Head of Policy from one of the Charities, the Head of Policy from another, an actual MS sufferer, then the Chief Executive again. Below it all pulsed gardens. Royston kept muttering: ‘We must go to that one… we must go there…’ So many gardens to visit: Frogmore, Stowe… the Investec man’s wife’s Essex garden… the Chief Executive’s family home garden…. Gardens, gardens, gardens… at the core of English life and now found to be superb for the mental life and prolongation of life (with exceptions, of course). That Trustee we met in the pre-breakfast phase is a doctor and he said: gardening has health benefits. Sensa question.

Anyway… the Chief Executive was back on the podium. ‘Our President is outgoing,’ he said, ‘but where is he?’ Joe Swift of TV nowhere to be found. Much hallouwing for Joe Swift of TV. Finally he emerges from behind a curtain. ‘I’ve got Netflix,’ he goes. ‘I haven’t been out for months.’ At once we’re in the world of TV. But he was outgoing. So who was incoming? Great hush and tremble … ‘We’re so pleased to welcome…. so honoured to have…. such a figure… of infinite benefit…..’ At length a tiny figure comes out from behind the curtain in an intensely floral jacket. Yes, it’s that Tesore Nacionzale, that insuperable Greatness… Mary Berry elle-meme. Complete gasps and wonderment from the assembled…. total miracle of presence. Nobody can believe it’s actually her. She takes the microphone: ‘I’ve been opening for years under the National Gardens Scheme…. try to find someone who wants to sell their honey or jam… let them have a stall at your opening.’ But really she’s an awfully good speaker. Immediately arresting. No notes. Very natural. I’m a great fan of her TV, especially the latest, despite the food and certain other things. Her world is whole whatever you might think of it and she’s so watchable.

Former Leader at the Lifts in the Royal Festival Hall Leaving the NGS Launch

Outgoing!

Smarties in the Goodie Bag

Yes! It’s Her

A National Greatness in the Lunch Throng: I’m So Near

Saturday 12th March 2016

Aunt Lavinia and I to a deeply private breakfast at the Royal Academy, this time for the Monet to Matisse Garden Show. Royston King was there, as usual refusing headphones, and former Mark Fisher and Lady. Royston introduced him as a Lord which he isn’t. Apparently there is much miff in high circles over the failure of titles to materialise. ‘These are perfectly ghastly,’ one of the breakfast Greatnesses declared as we toured privately, sweeping aside an entire room. Attendees are supposed to give money. The one whom I once spied writing a cheque for £25,000 (that was at the Summer Show breakfast), Aunt Lavinia and I saw again at the Antique Fair in King’s Road on Friday.

The Impressionists are ghastly if viewed in a certain way (this show is mainly the Impressionists, despite its title): glaring, garish. In the final room, pink/mauve lily pictures by Monet stretch as far as the eye can see – well, that pink is quite a challenge. This time, after exposure to Monet at the great exhibition in Paris several years ago, I was stuck by two things: the Impressionists (Monet mainly) are bourgeois, not to say suburban. It’s a mistake to think of them as countrified. They were Parisian suburban in origin and they painted their surroundings. Hence the harsh newness of public parks, park planting, plants also that were new at the time and brilliantly coloured – dahlias, chrysthans etc. Glaring, popular flowers. They were also much enamoured of the new pigments which allowed greater brightness of colour than ever before.  My second thought: if they’d wanted to do pleasant tasteful nature pictures in subdued tones, they could have done. The retinal assault is deliberate and violent. It’s what gardens look like in bright sunshine, particularly the further south you go. The bare, stark glare of some of these pictures is actually quite frightening. As Royston remarked, ‘Monet’s painting of a dahlia is so much more than a painting of a dahlia.’ Quite what it is is hard to say.

Afterwards, Royston and I retired to the cafe in St James Park where he is Park Trustee. He told more me about those in high places who missed out on titles and left their wives for young men. Not much new on the Queen although we spoke of her, of course. Within minutes of parting from Royston at Embankment, she drove by – on her way back from Plaistow I found out later. The impression was of two hats, hers and the lady-in-waiting’s, going by with many back-up vehicles.

A Public Park by Monet: A Terrible but Wondrous Glare

Another Public Garden: This is How they Were and Still Are. Not Exactly Lovely and That Sky is Threatening

This is Monet’s Little Garden in the Early Days: Paris Suburbs: Self-Painted

Here is Renoir Painting Monet Painting his Garden: The Perfect Suburban Scene

Ferocious Chrysthans by Monet: They were New then

This One is by Sargent: Watch out for these Poppies

This is The Only Klimt: a Very Different Thing. Utterly Delicious

An Unusual Snow Scene: by Henri Le Sidaner, an Artist Recommended by our Private Curator: Not Much Known. You could Feel the Cold Coming Off this Painting: So Real

And So the Late Monet: One is Stunned by this Room, inspite of Everything: The Greeny-Blue Lily Paintings I Often Don’t like. They Really Do Look a Mess: But these Silvery Mauve Ones I adored

Monday 7th March 2016

No figure divides Poor Little Rich Gays more violently than Debo. Robert Nevil and Laura Malcolm could’t stand her on account of her cold treatment of other members of her family and general arse and grandeur. I have not cared: she did so much for decor, wrote a book called ‘The House’ (or ‘Hice’ in her pronunciation) all about doing up Chatsworth. Absolutely riveting especially for those that love possessions and antiques.  Her every word was priceless. When Evelyn Waugh sent her an advance copy of his life of Ronald Knox, he wrote on the fly-leaf: ‘There is nothing here that will offend your Protestant sympathies.’ ‘I would have looked no further,’ Debo remarked, ‘but a friend who was with me at the time happened to notice that all the pages were blank. The perfect gift for the non-reader.’ A few years ago, I drove all the way to Chatsworth on a Saturday in my Official Car because I’d heard that at the Edensor Open Village Day (that’s the village for Chatsworth where she lived latterly) she was fully on view and you could go in her house and ask for eggs, whereupon she would enquire of her Butler whether there were any. But I was too late. By the time I got there she’d already gawn in and the house wasn’t open. I think she was beginning to fail.  I heard a youngish woman saying to a small boy lower down in the village that they’d go up and see ‘Granny’. Then she was saying to someone else, ‘She’s getting rather vague.’ I’m sure they were talking about Debo and she must have been a Cavendish. To me it is beyond belief that Ducals are in the street and can be overheard.

So last week, I heard that her things were up for sale at Sotheby’s. I absolutely dashed last min to catch the viewing. They were putting Debo up for Auction. Well, I’ve heard that she didn’t get on with the new Duke, her son. The first thing I saw was her Lanvin denim gardening coat, plus a rather awful old chimney pot in which she kept walking sticks. Then there was the glass case room, with jewellery, bits of chicken junk, some dusty quite common glasses etc. You could imagine the heirs deciding what to discard. Debo’s dining room was mocked up in the next room except it was more of a garden room, all flimsy painted Regency furniture and a lot of floral and country fabric, even gingham. Some quite good, perfectly ordinary, antique sideboards or so on. Her drawing room, as mocked up, was almost at a three-piece suite level. Most bizarre was the bedroom. The suite was cane. Not particularly important and the bed presumably the one in which Debo died. They’d put a breakfast tray with eggs and toast on it. No, the whole effect couldn’t have made Debo look more dead and house-clearance.

I left bids on three pieces: a tapestry fender stool (big flowers on a chocolate ground), a tapestry carpet (chicken border) and the breakfast cups from Thomas Goode – they were lovely and I’ve been craving breakfast cups for ever and these were the Platonic ideal… they went for £6500. None of this stuff was actually worth a great deal but everything went for ten times the estimate, total £1.8 million.

Debo’s Lanvin Denim Gardening Coat

Even Debo a Bit Damaged: Encouraging

Debo’s Chicken Junk

Debo Bought this with Proceeds of her Book, ‘Counting my Chickens’

Debo: Dining Chair Cover: A bit of Vicose in that Fabric, If you Ask me

Debo: Her Dining Table

Debo: the Grim Death-Bed Scene

Debo: Three-Piece in Drawing Room