Thursday 17th December 2015

As you know last Tuesday I was to drop off the end of the world with no further engagements until today, which is The Sleeping Beauty this evening. But Merle Barr at once came up trumps with Carlos Acosta. Then I managed to diarise Patrick Lockyer for Monday at Nopi and Merle Barr again for last night when suddenly there was a surprise turn of events and we were in a big scene. Today Genevieve Suzy has been on the phone. We had only one hour in which to generate snobbery about Christmas tree styling for one of our most lucrative organs (side work from Dainty Lady TV). On Sunday she and Lord Suzy roasted a beef piece they’d got at Sainsburys last minute and I was bidden. Also on Saturday morning I saw Lord Arrowby but I’m saving that up for later for it was huge.

So the sweep up to Christmas has been jewel-studded and garlanded after all.

Carlos Acosta – have you heard of him? He’s a ballet dancer, known privately to Harry Rollo of course. Merle Barr had a spare ticket for his farewell show at the Colosseum. He’s to return to Cuba, to from whence he came. I’ve not followed the ballet since the days of Margot and Rudolf. QF I wasn’t that keen even then. It all seems such a struggle and really a branch of gymnastics. The audience for Carlos was quite dowdy (Merle excepted of course) and ladies had brought their caramel-cardied husbands. Nevertheless when Carlos came on as Actaeon in tiny satin shorts and nothing else, you wouldn’t believe the frank animal noises made by these women.

Patrick Lockyer gained Nopi on Monday for an evening styled long-distance by Joshua Baring in New York. But it turned out PL had never been to Nopi before. It’s the high-end version of Ottolenghi, in case you don’t know. I tried the orange wine which is a new thing, a white wine made as if it were red wine – i.e. skins left in the mixture. Result fairly appalling: a cloudy sour drink. Patrick said it was like apple juice gone awff. He wasn’t wild about vanilla with lamb. My chicken was quite nice, just a little ordinary. I could have done it myself. The red salsa to go with was awfully sweet. Lucky Val wasn’t there. By chance he was on the phone this week condemning sweet with savoury not for the first time. Patrick as always was a great swirl of injuncting and adventures. He’s just back from a secret location where there were goings-on as well as injunctions. Local interest was intense and erupting out of every corner. Some of those wanting injunctions can’t even read apparently. Patrick was very prancing and glancing with devastating penetration on the subject of bombing Syria: what a legal mind which makes each point in a single stroke.

Then we came to Wednesday. Merle Barr managed to get us into Angus Willis’s Vietnamese dinner for Charlie Hurling and Archie Brahms at the priceless Shoreditch warehouse. I was hysterical with excitement. Charlie Hurling is the one who thinks of the worst thing to say and says it with thrilling effect. When we got there, we found that Muriel McGlorian was looming from the Guardian party. If I were to say that her fashion level and finish did not quite chime with one’s idea of the Left Leaning, she’d be the first to tear me to pieces. The family life of Charlie Hurling! More and more came out. What an environment! No girlfriend or boyfriend of the younger members was safe from the attentions of the older ones. Phone calls often went: ‘Mummy, Mummy, Daddy’s getting off with my girlfriend.’ Or, ‘Mummy, Mummy, Daddy’s getting off with my boyfriend.’ It was sex, sex, sex, I tell you. Now Charlie wants to wind down. He can’t go on taking 150 flights a year: the jobs in Vegas and LA, the endless openings, the whirling property portfolio. But when it came to planning skiing after Christmas, Charlie ruled out January and February because of openings… so I wonder. Can a Poor Little Rich Gay wind down?

Monday 14th December 2015

So we come to Saturday 5th December which was somewhat climatic although Robert Nevil, for reasons unknown, was unable to attend the Hove function. I travelled to Hove with Bruce McBain, my private architect. It would have been nice to have had two intensely intimate intimates with instead of one.  Hove was a uniform pale liver colour from the endless blocks of flats in the drear winter light. We arrived at Jean Grainger’s old seafront home. She died in May and Peter Achraya and Ned Czernowski snapped up her flat which belonged to Anthony Mottram, ‘consultant’ of Prague. Within weeks it has been whooshed to a required Gay standard of bare wood floors, new everything in pale and sheen, a black glass chandelier and ghost mirror. Jean would have been thrilled. She lived amongst theatre memorabilia, house plants, piles of papers and interesting bits of china. It was a carpeted life with clutter. But she would have been thrilled that she is re-born as a screaming bare wood floor, white walls and gays in every corner. Especially that on her glassed-in balcony were 17-year-old waiters – on secondment from A levels – showing early entrepreneurial tendencies. One of them offered a semi-nude photo to secure the job. Much time was spent by guests near the drinks table enquiring as to their UCAS applications.

So at 6pm, Bruce McBain and I set out from Hove for Brockwell Lido, Herne Hill where Miss Ferney Lee was taking 50 years. Really Bruce and I were less than exquisite after Hove but we were entranced by the Critall windows and thrilling ‘decor for the people’ feel of the entire 1930s Lido movement. It was thought rare that I, Adrian Edge, was at a Lesbian occasion. Lord Arrowby said afterwards that it was greatly liberating for the straight women. I’m not sure why. To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure how you tell which is which. Male gays are self-evident somehow but female gays … I don’t know their world. It’s a failing, I feel. I once heard someone standing in the street outside my residence, peering in at a dinner party in progress: ‘You won’t see any women there,’ the voice declared. Lord Arrowby also said that there was one present who was once viewed as a hot boy by the male gays – so we don’t seem to be getting anywhere. Some consider that the Lesbian world is lentils, peculiar fruit teas, a certain socialist puritanism backed up by aggression. Well, there was no evidence of that here. The canapés showed a love of life and a real feel of Brockwell Park – no manicured Kensington nonsense. There was a quiz which was marvellous and Lord Arrowby was one of the team captains, of course. Rufus Pitman was another. My captain was a woman who was terrifying but fun. Rufus was accompanied by a lady before the quizz who’d got rid of her husband and tried another man who was really more fancied by other men, Rufus Pitman being one of them. A bear-type, I think. She herself was not that keen. Raj Zoraster, Rufus’s actual husband, was in some kind of holding pattern in Paris owing to immigration possibly. Lord Arrowby was entirely preoccupied with frockage being in a lot of it. Paisleys, but incredibly masculine, and perfect for the shy and retiring type who doesn’t want to be noticed.  ‘Who are you in?’ he inquired. ‘Paul Smith,’ I said, ‘cap a ped.’ ‘One size too small, I suppose.’ ‘Should I go to Florida?’ he asked. He’s got holiday in January, as always. Florida? What could the Lord be thinking of. ‘It’s not really me, is it?’ he sighed. But it was nice that Lord Arrowby asked me who he is. Later Lord Arrowby and I separately engaged a younger man in conversation who wasn’t interested – in me, at least. Rufus had had a row with the shirtmaker in India about his shirt because really it was supposed to be an upholstery fabric. But Rufus said, ‘No, it’s to be a shirt.’ So it was and superb: old gold, ultramarine and cerise stripes. ‘Do come to India,’ he said. He and Raj are going too, independent of Lord Arrowby who travels alone. Oh so alone. Hyderbad. I am tempted but have always feared India because of the hygiene. Also it’s not quite clear where one would sit down out of doors in India except in that place where Diana sat in that awful fuschia and purple outfit before the Taj Mahal and gained a lot of pity. Can that be the only park bench in India? And she bagged it.

I should mention that I was excessively fingered at both Hove and Brockwell lido. Only on returning to my res did I grasp that it was because of my velvet. People couldn’t keep their hands off the lovely Paul Smith chestnut velvet. I don’t think it’s marked.

Peter Achraya’s Clucks for the Hove Opening of Jean Grainger’s Old Flat, Now Gay-ed

I was Found to be Stained on Arrival in Hove, but Triumphed with some Q-Tips (Kindly Lent) and a Tiny bit of Fairy Liquid

The Hove Buffet Table

Thursday 10th December 2015

I’m subject to moods these last weeks. There have been black days with ruin in the face staring. Terrible days on the metal markets and other markets, such as the social one. As I mentioned from this Tuesday I faced a blank diary. But I’ve been saved. Some last minutes have come in. This time of year is a trial for Poor Little Rich Gays who are not violently given to delirious happiness nor hugely well-anchored or who have suffered losses. If Poor Little Rich Gays are truly cared for, they will probably spend these days elsewhere, filling their diaries with those that care for them less to show that they have no needs. But I’ve had Genevieve Suzy very much at my side. We launched December and the great lurch to Christmas with the Historic Palaces Reception at Kensington Palace – so historic and haunting. We were there for Dainty Lady TV, Genevieve, although now the Head of Dainty, unusually in the plus-one role. Later at the Daily Mail Weekend Section Christmas Party I was back to plus-one-hood. All through the evening, Robert Nevil was hissing and splitting in the background via electronic means. He can’t bear Lady Lucy Worsley, who is the back-bone of the Historic Palaces and was installed at the party almost as an exhibit, this year in a non-speaking role. Nor can he bear the Daily Mail. Well, I love it, especially when they’re paying but it is a certain kind of world, to say the least. Genevieve loves it because it is male even when female and men love her, especially in Roland Mouret as she was. Somehow they must please her, even though they’re Chief News Editor or Head of TV Listings. Her power terrifies and thrills them.

On Wednesday I recovered from the Daily Mail Weekend Magazine Christmas Party and Robert Nevil was a bit nicer down the phone. On Thursday I thought to go nowhere but wanted to hear more at first hand about the Queen. She had been mentioned at Kensington Palace by an old aristocrat on one of the gossip pages who’d met her at a funeral after-party where she’d shown fascination with the folding glasses of the daughter of the dead woman. The only hope was Generalina’s art opening above a pub in Earlsy Courtsy.  Her grandfather was an absolute whirlwind of a World War 11 American General. She’s been going for years and Robert Nevil, in the 80s, returned tri-coloured pasta in her back kitchen after excessive intake in her front quarters which were rigged with tartan and called Balmoral although only 4 at the most could get into the room. I knew Marmion Beaufleasance would be there. And he was and poured forth with marvellous richness and was a marvellous tonic. Ronnie Ronnie also was present: his Tittles, mounted on his head, had been put on backwards by the powers that be – was also more of a chestnut as opposed to the previous russet shade. Other incredibly young older gays were cosying up with younger gays. I got back to Fitrovia from Earlsy Courtsy just as Eddie Sedgewick’s Art opening there was closing and we dined after I’d admired his new Paris terrorist attack art which is awfully good. So an evening flared up out of nowhere. Eddie got free champagne in the restaurant: we waited for the result of the war vote in the House of Commons: Eddie’s special intimate is the MP for Whirly and Lorraine. Next door some people from Gravesend were also talking about the Vote with no idea how close they were to the centre of things. But Eddie is rather depressed: he was annoyed that his Paris terrorist-attack art was hung in an obscure corridor by the kitchenette. The world is falling part, he said. The young are hopeless. The art world similar. He can’t think what more to give. But he’ll bounce back, you can be sure.

Come back, come back, oh come back later for more.

Kensington Palace: Lit Privately for the Reception Given by Historic Royal Palaces: Maille Mustard with Chablis and White Truffle was In the Goody Bag

Historic Kensington Palace Lit Privately After Hours and Recalling Queen Anne and the early Georges: So Haunting

Lady Worsley in Person: This Year with Grander Coiffure Involving No Hair Slide

We Leave the Darkened Deserted Palace where the Whisper of Ghosts of the Georgian Kings could Finally be Heard in the Empty Rooms

The Handbag of a Household Name on the Mail: Wth Genevieve Suzy’s Handbag

Eddie Sedgewick: Quite Gloomy but Great

Sunday 6th December 2015

I forgot to say that Prince Dmitri got caught in a shower on the way here for the Thanksgiving (without the American aspect) Dinner last week. His blue-chip  overcoat was quite soaked at the shoulders. A great profundity struck me: what can money buy? Prince Dmitri’s got a Porsche (although not in it last week obvs). His salary is, well, blue-chip… easily matching the takings of such as Matt Driver or Robin Smallmeal. But still the rain fell upon him and he was drenched. It really is incredible. Some months ago Anthony Mottram, ‘consultant’ of Prague, and I were wondering about money: he said he was checking the markets every ten seconds. It’s all psychological: how much one has depends on mood. Money is always in the future, never the present. If present money is spent, where will future money come from?  Last night Rufus Pitman asked me to join him in India in January. Somehow a couple of thou is just too much to hack from the reserves. There is no limit to what one might do. More money only opens up more possibilities which turn out to be impossible. The only way to be totally rich is either to borrow, or acquire a limitless fortune of at least 150 million.

The other thing that happened is that Robert Nevil attacked soft water at the dinner. He absolutely hates soft water, says it induces sliminess. He condemns it about every six months. It’s one of things he really cares about – how awful soft water is. I was brought up far, far away in the West. We had the softest wools and hair, just one flake of Lux soaped a whole bowl of water. We had lovely, lovely soft water. It was our pride. Often it was mentioned by the Gay Mother and Gay Granny: the heavenly soft water of those parts, compared to the harsh, skin-lashing hard water found elsewhere. How we hated hard water. We didn’t know then, not having access to that kind of detail, how it scales up pipes and kettles and actually can split the hands after a hard domestic day. Bruce McBain, my private architect, favours a water softening plant to be installed in all homes. Every time I hear Robert Nevil putting down soft water, however hard I try to see the point of view of others, it is as if a knife were being twisted in my heart. I’m sure the Virgin feels it too.

Thursday 3rd December 2015

Two art shows to cover for Dainty Lady TV – Artist and Empire  at Tate Britain (Val attended: ‘What I want to see is a portrait of ME by D’Laszlo’. Because there was a lovely one of two Indians by D’Lasz.  But Val was so up in all those old Afghan battles of the C19th – and massacres. It was his idea to cover it. While there we bumped into a Ghanian friend of Reggie Cresswell’s who said the exhib was like someone’s not very good essay on the subject of Artist and Empire. But in the end I found it valuable that they’d got out all those hoary old Victorian story paintings. Fab one of Queen Vic conferring a Bible on a black person called ‘The Secret of England’s Greatness.’ ) The second show was ‘The Story of Charles and Ray Eames.’ They were husband and wife who designed modern chairs (very good if you like modern – either ply-wood or fibreglass – and they were amongst the first to mass produce). Their bonkers side less interesting. They had an idea to educate India who involved producing pictures of nice doorways and so on in India that had been designed.

Otherwise last week was quiet. On Tuesday I attended a table quiz in Wanita (that’s Wandsworth) for the charity Homestart. I love to go for the experience and this rare unknown part of London. The blond mulit’s uni friend, Arabella von Gardendoor, resident of Wandsworth, is a supporter of Homestart. Thousands of middle class in couples or families were packed into the Town Hall and a chilli con carne supper was served made by family ladies in their homes. All the raffle prizes, as every year, came from this or that boutique in Northcote Terrace. I have never seen Northcote Terrace but can imagine it and crave it. It must be Wanita’s golden heart.

Friday was the big day. I gave a Thanksgiving Dinner (couldn’t think of any other menu) for Princess Irina Hersov and Prince Dmitri Hersov, as well as Robert Nevil, Sebastian Archer and Guy Mann, Princess Irina’s new man, who’s getting keen on his garden which is nice. Of course Princess Irina lives next door to Sid Id and Muriel McGlorian. Robert Nevil was exceptionally perky. I did a capon, quite a revelation, 4 kilos, cooked for less than two hours, then rested for one hour. For once I didn’t loathe the menu. I didn’t break down and crash into blind panic. It really was quite a nice dinner. A lot of Nigella – for instance sweet potato with marshmallow crisp top, beans with lemon.  Of course, her avo on toast as a pre-main in the drawing room. But Robert Nevil was up to no good. ‘The gravy was a bit lacking,’ he chirruped during the re-liver pudding (rhubarb). I banged the jug with the gravy remains down in front of him. There was plenty left. ‘I held back,’ he sniggered. ‘Pull his nose,’ I should have said to Princess Irina who was sat next to the horror. She would have too, for she is a formidable woman. Her office is a trial when she has to sit in a corridor with people who scrape the bottoms of their yoghurt pots. Sebastian Archer, along with Robert Nevil when not causing outrage, were very anecdotal and entertaining: Sebastian said that in New York a duck was born in a class room for a school project and now the teacher has to carry it back and forth from her home every day. Robert Nevil described vegans calling for the end of pets. Sebastian said that at the beginning of the War, there was a patriotic surge of people having their pets put down. I never knew that. But Prince Dmitri’s cleaning woman is being troublesome. She wants to give excessive service, even as far as luncheon devotion on a Saturday.  Poor Prince Dmitri – for he is one of the very few Poor Little Rich Gays with any serious moral purpose. She’s been with for 20 years. We made unhelpful suggestions of how she might become live-in and eventually he could scoop up her fortune (if any), but really it is agony for the Prince and she will have to be paid off. One tries and tries with staff.

Monday 30th November 2015

Goodness, I’m behind. So many engagements, plus a capon cooked on Friday  and then the bones to boil up. But I see ahead my diary drops off from next Tuesday. Total blank. No run-up to Christmas for me.

‘What survives of us is love’, Larkin said. It bloody well isn’t. It’s decor. We took Lindley Sambourne House with Leighton House to create a Victorian Gentlemen’s day out for the Laird (his birthday was in May) and also because Laura Malcolm’s great-gran was a maid there. In the party were in addition Matt Driver, Beamish O’Halloran (fantastic old-school Fleet Street corduroy suit in vole recalling that Saturday world of the red tops in their glory days) and Charis Cameron, who thought two fishcakes a bit much at L’Orangerie, Kensington Palace where we lunched after Lindley Sambourne and before Leighton.

Lindley Sambourne House, if you don’t know it, is an ordinary terraced house in Kensington from the outside. Within it is untouched from the 1880s. Lindley Sambourne was cartoonist at Punch but also enthusiastic for photography and seemed to have graphed the maids nude. He developed his pictures in the bath. We were shown round by someone pretending to be Mrs Sambourne, in costume. ‘Do you know my great-gran?’ Laura kept saying. The whole question was gracefully avoided by Mrs S. ‘Did your husband knock her up? She became up stump alley while in your employ, you know. Your husband number one suspect with his dodgy photography.’ Mrs S continued to point out the kick-knacks and said that Really she had to dust them herself the housemaids were so awful. She showed us her water-closets. The house is perfectly hideous but absolutely marvellous. That dark, cluttered Victorian thing, light reduced to a min by stained glass windows, heavy embossed wall-paper, a kind of greeny-brown murk, walls jammed with framed graphs, etchings,plaster plaques etc. Lindley self-walled mostly, making it less costly. But it was whole, all absolutely right in its own ugly way  and my spirit was greatly enlivened  by it and the idea of Lindley Sambourne cartooning away (now quite forgotten) but all the time making his home a work of art to be later taken over by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and opened to the public for ever more. So – what survives of us is decor. Things! Things! Nothing to beat them and the great zest and human energy that brings them about and together.

At lunch the Laird led the way in condemning the practice of serving food on slates and boards instead of a plate. Do you remember that time the Gay Mother was given her pudding in flower pot? The Lairdess said that the Laird’s expandable cufflinks were acquired on eBay. She hasn’t consented to the purchase of another drone, though, although the Laird would like it: the last one lasted 45 minutes before becoming entangled in a tree above Usk main square. Of course, Beamish O’Halloran had much insider on the terrorist situation. All school trips to Paris cancelled – this has now come out but hadn’t ten days ago.

Leaving L’Orangerie, we remarked how vital the Round Pond had been in all our childhoods, although none of us lived anywhere near it. The Laird was brought in from Chingford for boating on the Round Pond, but either then or perhaps now, he developed a theory that it isn’t really round but a series of straight lines arranged a tiny angles to each other – something like that. He said, ‘This is Maths not Geometry’.

Finally we came to Leighton House. Unfortunately the Lairdess’s knee gave up. She can’t get treatment in Wales – NHS hopeless there under Labour. Laura and Matt were married at Leighton House – or that was the scene of the wedding reception. The Lairdess must have been there – for she was in Latin class with Laura at school (they are both awfully clever)  but I never knew her then. The wedding reception was very unusual. It was an evening function, on a weekday, if I remember and incredibly chic and rare, for Matt was already commanding a huge salary even in those days. Pagne and eats were lavished but there was no sugary nonsense. I suddenly think: how awful for the Driver children, Ivo, Kelm and Ivy, that they weren’t there. Is being unborn the same is being dead? Even worse in a way because one has no existence whatsoever.

Lord Leighton was jolly lucky for he was an awful artist. Terrible daubs from which he made a fortune and built this tomb-like house. From the outside, it’s rather like Wagner’s house at Bayreuth – a massive sarcophagus, great blank walls with few windows as if the idea was to self-monument while still alive and get entombed in one’s own res.  Well, it worked for Lord L, although his mansion now doesn’t have the zing of Lindley Sambourne’s more humble terraced home. It’s become a little institutional. The Laird took exception to the pool in the Arab court. He said it was the wrong shape for Arab.

The next day Laura gave a luncheon for the Victorian Gentleman’s Day out Party plus some young people including Ivo Driver whose trousers had ripped. But he’s getting on and following in father’s footsteps as far as driving onwards and upwards is concerned. The menu was Nigella and Otto, including Nigella’s actual avo on toast about which there has been so much outrage – but everyone is doing it. I wore champagne and cream. Luncheon was a misty cloud of joy in simple things like the new dark biscuit base for the chocolate tart. Finally the Laird and Lairdess departed for Usk in the Toureng which has recovered from its phase of breaking down all the time.

Tuesday 24th November 2015

Last Monday was a horse drawing show in Duke Street St James. I was asked there privately by a friend of Connor Cadeaux’s with the aim of exposure on Dainty Lady TV. Actually the animal drawings were superb. Jilly Cooper herself was not present but had supplied comments hailing another Stubbs. Michelle McCullagh is the artist. Do get hold of one of her drawings at any price – although they are low cost. She does other animals as well and her husband was Olympic Gold medallist for clay pigeon shooting in 2012. ‘That must have been nerve-wracking,’ I said. ‘It was,’ he said. Now he runs a stud farm which he described in gruesome detail. Basically it’s a brothel with wash-and-go sexual relations. The PV was small but Alan Duncan was present and suddenly David Blunkett appeared with dog and minder. He made a speech before returning to the Lords. His dog was quite woolly. Funnily enough Genevieve Suzy had pointed out his mistress – that American woman associated with the Spectator – at the Somerset House ice rink preview the day before. So there’s another coincidence.

The next day I boarded early by official car, with Aunt Lavinia, for the funeral in Oxfordshire with the afterwards at one of the Downton locations where we sat beneath the Gainsborough. We were greeted enthusiastically as family, although I don’t know them very well. She had been lost for some time to vascular dementia and was a don’s widow so braced against the chasms by brains and rigour before dementia. Mountaineering had also featured and strangely (I hope not to be misunderstood) we all felt much better for the funeral. A funeral is a drama in which one is caught up regardless.

We regained the capital in time for my evening engagement which was a charming supper intime with Ralph Kitto (rarely seen) beneath the Damien Hirsts in South Kensington with a head of fixed income and media lawyer who had heard of Patrick Lockyer (the one who is always on the phone to the Caribbean, where they require injunctions with extraordinary frequency). It was an all-male gathering. José Matilla did all the cooking, but Ralph said he’d done it. The moussaka, he insisted, was in fact fish, a new kind of brown fish just like mince. The head of fixed incomes has got a ballet dancer staying (a famous one) who is incredibly flexible in the drawing room. There’s trouble overhead in the Kitto/Matilla apartment because filthy families have children who crash about and the landlord removed the carpet without reckoning on grand gays below, ready with court orders from the best legal firms. Now a single gentleman, light of foot, has moved in and they’re thinking of inviting him for a drink. For years, Ralph has fought push-chairs in the common parts. Ralph got a filthy look from Prince Edward when he tapped him on the shoulder at a charity function to ask where the hostess was.

So Wednesday was blank and Thursday was a film premiere while Friday was an Official lunch followed by a home concert in the largest known (to me) private house. It’s in Westminster. Not to mention the weekend….

Good Animal Drawing by Michelle McCullagh

The Racing Scene: Michelle McCullagh

David Blunkett’s Wooly Dog at the PV

Thursday 19th November 2015

I was very usefully briefed some time ago by Anthony Mottram, ‘consultant’ of Prague, first met by me in 1970 at the housemaster’s tea-party, when, according to Anthony, I fell off my chair from daintiness and politeness. You’d have thought I’d remember if it had actually happened but AM never fails to mention it. So we’ve bickered away for 45 years. However, the great news is – so I was briefed by Anthony Mottram – that Thomas Picketty (do you remember him? He upset the monied classes by producing a huge book in which he claimed that the gap between the rich and poor was ever growing and an outrage and the only way to put a stop to it would be taxing capital) – well, it’s all rubbish. The so-called gap between rich and poor is much as it has always been. The figures are distorted by the large numbers of new workers coming into the labour market in emerging economies. So there. We can carry on as before.

The problem of money is not quite solved though. Anthony Mottram said he is checking the markets every few minutes. I am too. The more you have the more anxious you become. Is your decor good enough? Could it be better? A troubling landscape of infinite spending opens up. When I was young, I seemed to know exactly what I wanted for the home and, with careful, lethal waiting for the Sales, how to get it. Now there is only some remote unknowable perfection. Take my dining room mat, for instance. It needs renewing after 18 years. I could have ordered another piece of seagrass months ago for a few hundred. But somehow I feel I must rise higher as to my dining room mat. I’ve been to Chelsea Harbour. I’m looking at water rush at £120 a square metre (in fact, now I think of it, where’s that sample?). I’m contemplating a Queen Mother blue woven paper or a novel vinyl product.

Please help.

Woven Paper Samples for my New Dining Room Mat in Queen Mother Blue and Brown

More Samples: A Woven Vinyl or Nylon from Bolon

Sunday 15th November 2015

Before I get to What Perry Said, I must mention that it’s been a rich web of engagements and coincidences which has left me at the borders of existence. This is my failure. On parting from Harry Rollo, who dined with Prince Dmitri, Merle Barr and Mercury Mr Kitten (of course) on Monday, I said, ‘I don’t feel I’ve really opened up.’ ‘I’ve been completely open,’ Harry said. ‘Wide, wide open.’ How we roared. I might only see Harry ten more times in my life – if spared. I’m a bit tinged with melancholy and death seems to encroach at the moment. I must get over it. The slightest little thing and I crumble out of existence. Wednesday was lunch at Aunt Lavinia’s with Laura Malcolm: in her drawing room before lunch she announced that nearly everyone had died; she hadn’t thought to mention it before. She managed to miss all the funerals, owing to being alive essentially. But on Tuesday we set out for Oxfordshire for a funeral with the afterwards at a mansion that’s been in Downton. On the way back from Aunt Lavinia’s I managed to pick up some carpet samples from Chelsea Harbour. At this rate I might not live to see a new dining room mat in my home. On Thursday at lunch with Royston King in the middle of St James’ Park (he’s on the Royal Parks board), Royston said really one can only do 6 or 7 years as Chair before running out of steam. In fact now I think of it, Perry said the same of a certain editor: ‘He thought he’d become a National figure. He thought he could not bother to turn up for lunch with the owner.’  ‘Everyone’s dispensable,’I said. You had to lean over to talk to him because he’s almost 92, was seated and faint of voice. Can you guess who Perry is? Royston and I were lunching after the Press View of the Queen’s Dutch pictures. Genevieve Suzy had been unable to attend owing to pressure of work. But I was not alone because Royston was there and we had slightly impertinent banter with the Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures (a position which might have been accorded to the son of the lady whose funeral we go on Tuesday but wasn’t) and the Press Head of the Royal Collection about HM herself . I suggested the Surveyor make a TV show going round the pictures with HM, chatting away. It was on Friday night, where I went to Virgil Grayson’s apartment where Cedric Partridge now presides, that Cedric told me about the non-surveyor. Also dining was the curator of the Goya exhibition. This morning Genevieve suggested last minute going to the Press and Insiders preview of the ice rink at Somerset House  and there was the curator of the Goya exhibition whizzing round and round the rink with wife and child. His wife was also at Cedric’s dinner and is gluten-free.  Really no-one could be more deeply embedded than me, Adrian Edge, in the fabric of London. Yet I have always felt for the last 39 years, that I’m here temporarily, on loan from the country as it were. Before we know it, life will be over and one will never have really settled in either town or country, let alone pitched one’s decor up to a pitch of perfection.

I’ve just got two more Private Views to tell you about. On Thursday was Dr Jonathan’s. He’s also an artist as well as just about everything else, now 82. Into the Gallery were packed household names: Dame Bone, who gave up men and went into the House of Lords: ‘You must have a project,’ she said. ‘Or you could get depressed. I’m in the House of Lords. Everyone’s jolly old there.’ She really doesn’t look 83. Posy Mignonette of the Guardian is not anything like 80. ‘It’s been perfectly lovely,’ she coo-ed on departure – no hint of her left-wing Guardian claws. Dr Jonathan, like Perry the next night, was seated owing to a deep vein throm. He’s still reading about the brain, he told me, as well as producing art works of a certain earthy gravity and presence also involving carpentry. He was up -‘I’m so proud of my art’ – or he was down – ‘Well, I’m 82. It’s what it’s like’ – re: his deep vein thromb.

So finally we come to Friday and Perry. ‘You must talk to Perry,’ his wife said. She was huge on TV for architectural programmes once. ‘He’s awfully interested in Dainty Lady TV.’  It was Purbeck Crowhurst ‘s Private View at Trenton’s Gallery (fantastic new work: v. important: this is a true artist who has lead an artist’s life). Except there was no sign of Trenton. I wonder if he’s moved on. Like the Multis did. They moved on from Trenton’s gallery and from the art world altogether which somehow had not really loved them. The poor, poor Multis – so frail and so prey to hurt. I must call them after my Unfriending on Facebook by the Photo Multi. Anyway, there was Perry – a figure of great beauty in raspberry cords, pink knitwear and various scarves. Because seated and nearly 92 rather isolated from the main throng. He’d met Robert Mugabe, he said. ‘Perfectly ghastly.’ His wife said he’d been the last person to see Mrs Thatcher as PM and had met Carol on the way out coming in the sausages and beans in a mart bag. Once Mrs Thatcher had resigned as PM all facilities were chopped off just like that. It was doubtful she could use the lavs. Of Perry himself, I asked, ‘Do you still follow the world? What do you make of it?’ ‘Very worrying,’ he said.’ Nobody knows what’s going on. It’s out of control.’ Within an hour of him saying that, those bombs went off in Paris.

I don’t Even Know My Own Life: I Forgot to Mention that on Wednesday was a Private View of a New Block of Flats in City Road to be Built by Norma Foster: A lot of Grey

The Press’s Head of the Royal Collection at the Queen’s Gallery: Greatness and Frockage

A Dutch Picture of Charles 11 Dancing at Court: the Queen’s Gallery

An Irish Dutch Picture of the 19th Century

Girl Chopping Onions: A Tiny but Utterly Great Dutch Picture

A Rude Work by Purbeck Crowhurst on Show at Trenton’s Gallery

A Glorious Work by Purbeck Crowhurst on Show at Trenton’s Gallery

Wednesday 4th November 2015

In the hotel at Lyme, the Gay Mother announced that Lytes Cary was to be our National Trust destination. I’d never heard of it. I don’t suppose you have either. It’s actually in Mumerset, about my least fav county (whoops! who lives there of the Poor Little Rich Gays?) – I don’t know why. It’s mediocre somehow despite many glories. Maybe it’s the effect of all those dreary towns – Taunton, Ilchester, Ilminster, Yeovil… Our day for Lytes Cary was murky and the flatness of Mumerset was apparent. The medieval buildings were sitting there, with a much larger extension of more recent date, amidst the usual National Trust plant stall and shop. We entered a mini Great Hall. I was struck at once. As you know, nooky, beamy, wheamy , cotty is the least favoured mode for Poor Little Rich Gays. Yet the great irony is that the most important new Interior in England in the last twenty years, possibly since the War, created by leading Poor Little Rich Gay Angus Willis, the Tudor House in Hastings, is so chronically nooky Sid Id was barely able to get up the stairs (his height). There was something very satisfying about the mini Great Hall at Lytes – its mini-ness, the top lighting, the ocre walls, the limed furniture. We passed on through a stoney anti-room. The house was abandoned by the family of Lytes in the 18th century and only reclaimed by one Jenner (of the department store in Edinburgh) in the 20th. So essentially it’s a fake – rather like the Tudor House in Hastings. Then we came to the drawing room – at once I wanted everything in it. A thrilling room. Really I didn’t want everything it in because in my own home Jaco-tudorbethan won’t do and it’s not my taste. Knole sofas, black carved frames, stump work – no thank you! But it was the absolute rightness of everything in it for the room and the sumptuous living effect – although Jenner and his family, all stump-working away apparently, long dead. So it went on. Superb standard and wholeness maintained all through the upstairs quarters – not a wrong note. I was moved to think of re-starting my own decor work in my own home, which has lain fallow, fallen into the yellow leaf, for some time. Maybe now I’ll re-do to leave a living interior.

Lytes Cary in Mumerset: National Trust. The right-hand wing was Added in 20th Century

Lytes Cary: The Mini Great Hall

Lytes Cary: the Stoney Anti-Room

Lytes Cary: the Thrilling Drawing Room

Lytes Cary: Drawing Room Corner

Lytes Cary: Everything Just Right for the House of that Period

Everything just Right at Lytes Cary: Coveted this Lamp

Lytes Cary: a Bedroom