Thursday 11th June 2015

Peter Acharya received Gays in the Cheesegrater. It was a rare opportunity to penetrate this important building which is new, in the City, the tallest, apart from the Shard, and has got its lifts on the outside. It’s also not finished. The function was on the 29th floor. Absolute views. Also, once the lift has gone down again, you are left with just a flimsy sliding glass door between you and a mighty plunge to the earth. What if the door came open by mistake? I grilled the attendant who insisted it was impossible. Insisted just a little too much, if you ask me.

However we mixed with the Gays and the Multis gained. The Blond Multi was in a denim Woodstock-type suit. The purpose of the function was for Gays to be Gay at work and therefore more productive and make more money because more completely Gay and therefore complete. The Gays introduced were somewhat unforthcoming. Those that passed glanced in our direction then flicked their heads away with imperious dismissal. Gays have been doing that for years. It must be genetic because these ones, in tiny boiled down dolls’ outfits, were quite young. I tried bantering with one tough-looking Gay in a good suit by the window. ‘What a drop!’ I said. ‘Imagine if the glass were to break.’ Nothing doing. Just a flaring of the nostrils. Really these Gays wanted to have as little to do with other Gays as possible. Perhaps they feared being thought Gay. Strange really when the age is supposed to be so advanced and Gays completely embraced.

View from the Cheesegrater

Looking Down from the Cheesegrater

Gays in the Cheesegrater

Saturday 6th June 2015

The Multis, having been less in contact in recent years owing to opening a cafe, the need at Glyndebourniana to find their ideal picnic spot in their own way and angst over Tuscany – was all that villa-giving worth it and the relentless work for so little reward – are now suddenly in Greece.  I notice that the Greek Government did not repay £150 million (or was it billion?) on Friday so if the Multis were asked to help out, they must have refused. Their private economy, entirely self-achieved through pulling themselves up by the boot-straps etc, is comparable to that of a small African country or local Borough of the United Kingdom. When the Multis are far away, they are in contact more than when in London. Graphs arrive by the hour or more whereas at the height of my socialising with them in person, until contact time was reduced by them 18 months or so ago,  it would be at a maximum three times a week.

Now they are in the Royal Suite at the Poseidonian Grand Hotel, Spetsai, Greece. I’ve been sent a video tour of the Suite which lasts for two minutes. The Suite is limitless but there’s no art on the walls. Perhaps Art will arrive later.

The Royal Suite with Alexis Carrington-Colby-type Lift Direct into It. Anyone Could Ascend in that Lift and Start Abusing the Multis As Alexis Carrington-Colby found to her cost.

The Royal Suite, Greece: Its Terrace

Thursday 4th June 2015

I was going to tell of how I went up the Cheesegrater to a Gay professional event but suddenly realised I quite forgot to say how I overheard the following in Manchesterford the other day at that Gay wedding: ‘They’re on an Anti-Austerity march this afternoon but will be back in time for Eurovision.’

Then, you’ll have been wondering about that cream suit by Ann Demeulemesser. Joshua Baring was lordly after seeing it at Dover Street market. He only had to say it was Must Buy and it was, even at £1500. I went see it several times at Dover Street Market. My Zara cream suit …. well, Joshua Baring had no time for it. With great manipulation of credit cards etc. the Ann Demeule suit could just about have been brought. Its justification was that it is washable. However, as explained before, the trousers were never in evidence, in the right size. Finally I contacted Antwerp main store and they undertook to ransack the entire world as penetrated by Ann Demeulemesser in quest of the trousers. Well, there have been developments. Word has come through from Antwerp. In a way, it’s a mercy and maybe, as the Mother Superior said in The Sound of Music, when God closes a door he opens a window somewhere else – meaning good comes out of evil. So the news is: trousers nowhere to be found in the entire world. I am spared the Ann Demeulemesser cream suit. At present that means I am drifting through the summer without key pieces. My wardrobe is without key pieces. You remember also that I said that Pink is essential this summer. I haven’t even got that.  I have tried to find a good slack in bone, sand or cream or pink- but there’s nothing. Absolutely nothing. Now it’s getting too near the Sales to justify purchase at full price. Something will emerge. Pieces will somehow fall in view and be purchased. It’s a tense wait though.

Tuesday 2nd June 2015

Is gardening essential to the sanity of a Poor Little Rich Gay? Often this hobby is recommended for mental patients, the therapy being the soothing companionship of nature. But what about when plants die, or fail to flower or grow too big? There’s much that’s unpredictable and uncontrollable. Perhaps that’s part of the therapy too – learning to live with disappointment yet struggling on. The month of May was awful. My Ammi Visnaga, grown from seed since last September especially for the garden opening, started going black at the centre, then died. Not all of them, it’s true, but the survivors aren’t going to be in flower as intended for the Opening on Sunday because of the hostile weather.

I combined lunching with Multis (big news – Matt Driver ruptured his Achilles tendon from tripping in a badger sett while playing frisbee after lunch at the Multis. He’s in plaster for nine weeks. Laura Malcolm’s thinking of having him put down.) with a nursery visit and told the nurserywoman all about my Ammi drama. She was most sympathetic and blamed the weather. She produced some corn cockles which might just be in flower in time.

After that experience of life coming from death, I went on to Dixter. Fergus was much in evidence, fuming in the porch having just dropped a pot. ‘I’ve waited three years for that to flower,’ he cursed. Later he was guiding some people round: ‘That’s an accident,’ he said quite frequently of some delightful floral combination. ‘I’m quite pleased with this bit.’ Or, ‘These plants don’t like it here. I’m going to have to find something else.’ I adore Dixter because it’s human. To Hell with those that think it’s a mess. The work and agony that goes into it  you won’t believe. For me, it never fails. This time it was lupins – bi-coloured in the most outrageous ways or a magnificent deep red. Also some small pink poppies – papaver dubium apparently. Always something new. For my own garden next year I might copy Cornflower Black Ball and an upright Larkspur from dear darling Dixter this year.

This is England’s Essence: These Daisies will Just Spring Up here. Not Designed

Red Lupins a Complete Triumph: If You Go Again in August There Will be Something Else Here Altogether

A Tree Lupin at Dixter. Not Sure of Name: Possibly Aurora Blue

Fergus is Introducing Conifers into the Borders: Controversial and Bold

Little Pink Poppies: Papaver Dubium

Saturday 30th May 2015

I forged North last Saturday to Manchesterford and experienced the North/South divide. It is mainly political, at least from the view point of the Middle Classes. At the Gay Wedding of an old friend from the Twirly Godfrey years, not often seen, a fellow guest asked me about my work for Dainty Lady TV.  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘this week we’re covering Knickers on the Line – what will the neighbours think etc?’ ‘My goodness,’ this person exclaimed indignantly, ‘where I live people have to go to Food Banks.’  One didn’t dare mention that one is landed, let alone mineral. We had a Spanish theme to the wedding buffet, with champagne, and the cake was done as a section of one of those huge Manchesterford Victorian buildings in red and grey. I couldn’t have enjoyed it more. I thought I would know no-one but there were old faces from the Newcastle commune days where I used to visit in the 80s. My old friend now marrying was formerly communal. It was a garlic-eating vegetarian commune. I was remembered and re-embraced. They remembered and re-embraced me after nearly 30 years. The great gap of years somehow was a spur and warmth surged out. Some of the former communards seem to have gone quite commercial. One has a partner whose father was a miner but the son has gone up in the world, in the sense of not being down a mine. One must remember that latterly the miners were well-paid.  ‘You’ve got the heroic, hewn look of one whose ancestors mined,’ I said and the compliment was graciously accepted.

The next day I was South again and lunching with the Multis in Kent after a nursery strike and a Great Dixter visit (more later). Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver arrived direct from their Norman fastness where I am every July or August with French cheeses and that morning’s baguette from the Norman village shop. We toured the Multis’ desmesne of 30 acres. They’ve done so much estate and woodland work to create a private view of no other houses . The Photo Multi has embraced gardening with success but isn’t involved with the names of plants. Lunch was pork, although no ‘R’ in the month but the chilly weather justified it and it was excellent. On a previous visit the Multis were ripped apart when I left for London without doing any washing up. So this time I was meticulous in offering to help which was refused.  We all agreed that we’re drifting to the Right (the Multis, of course, have been fully Right forever) but voting Lib Dem all the same. We’re far, I’m afraid, from Manchesterford and the world of public service cuts.

The Manchesterford Wedding Cake

The Manchesterford Wedding Cake on the Inside – Note the Novel Grey Icing

The Flowers are Made of Sugar for the Manchesterford Wedding Cake

The Multis’ Lunch Table

The Multis’ Side Serving Table

Wednesday 27th May 2015

Jean Grainger was, from  a certain aspect, a woman of no importance. Unmarried, without off-spring or property, she had once been wardrobe mistress, then she was secretary to Lady de Veer, the widow of the composer. But all that was long ago at the time of her death, aged 85,  a few weeks ago in Hove. It was the day after Election Day in fact. Those attending her death-bed told her that Ed Milliband had lost. ‘Fuck!’ she said and died. Last Thursday Robert Nevil and I set out by Official Car with Xenon driving lights for Brighton Crematorium. I was in Bottega Veneta and Robert Nevil’s shoes were black suede by Louis Vuitton, bought at full price. We found Anthony Mottram, ‘consultant’ of Prague, one of the masterminds of the funeral, and Miles Kent, formerly of Radio 3, under a mournful crematorium yew tree. We were jolly in a way that would be unthinkable in Eastern Europe at a funeral, Anthony Mottram said. Then the hearse arrived with Jean Grainger in it, dead, in a wicker coffin. We were silent. The funeral had no religion and one hymn. Otherwise it was tributes, six of them in fact. Somehow, by the end of it, Jean Grainger had become a woman of importance. The dynamo of her friends, of creative people, of words, of people who speak the truth and do not fall back on cliches, was keeping her going. What is a human life? Certainly not achievement as commonly understood. Nor that you might once have kicked a irritating stranger  on an escalator in the Underground or had a friend who addressed a boy godson as ‘Duckie’.  Even so, in the Brighton crematorium, it was established that Jean Grainger was a presence. That presence was described.  Many have a lot less presence or none at all. Saying goodbye after the funeral wake in the hotel to the well-known actress who’d given one of the tributes, I said, ‘It has been lovely to see you again, even in these sad times.’ ‘But good,’ she said, ‘Good.’

Thursday 21st May 2015

Just rushing for Brighton Crem. An old lady cared for by Anthony Mottram, ‘consultant’ of Prague, declared ‘Fuck’ on being told that Milliband had lost, then died. Her funeral is today. Robert Nevil and I are driving down in the new Official Car with Xenon driving lights to Brighton Crem.

Suddenly realised that I had to get Clerkenwell Design Week covered. Today is the last day. Milled through one warehouse full of design outlets showing one spindly table, then had brain-wave. Give my press pass to my private architect, Bruce McBain, who wants to go anyway – and get him to look out for a novel floor covering, mat or rug for my dining room. So that slashed my time-debt.

But what about Chelsea Flower Show? Tuesday we were there. Bumped into Lord Arrowby who was in brown checks, Princess Irina Hersov, Prince Dmitri’s sister, and a friend of Bruce McBain’s who has suddenly turned out to be related to me. But on the whole it’s time someone stuck their neck out. There’s one rule for a Chelsea Show Garden: it’s got to have something hideous in it made of metal, wood or stone. Second, cow parsley is obligatory. I’ve said before, if this is the best of World garden design, it’s rather depressing. Well, now it needs to be said louder. Also, why did so many of the gardens have very similar plants and planting style if the Committee controls the entrants so strongly?

Mercifully, Best in Show really was Best in Show – Dan Pearson’s rocks from Chatsworth with many unusual plants, not necessarily in prime condition – absolutely outstanding and totally convincing. Connected to which, that’s who we saw in the street outside. Stoker Devonshire and his Duchess, the present Duke of Devonshire just walking in the street (although clearly forging for some kind of special entry reception after hours at the Show). Can you imagine – a historic Duke and Duchess just walking in the street?

Aunt Lavinia, as always, condemned the garden statues in full hearing of the stall-holders offering them: ‘You really could fill your garden with hideous things if you wanted,’ she boomed in her voice that has ruled England for the last 100o years.  She also mentioned, for some reason, a fridge magnet which says, ‘A clean house is a sign of an empty life.’ I was slightly outraged, as one who gives a lot to cleaning. Why is cleaning any different from gardening? Or making a painting? No, no, no cleaning is at the forefront of the fight against death, along with fashion.

Prince Harry Garden: Award-winning Hideous Pillars

Homebase Garden: Stunning Ugly Brown Thing

Eremurus Good: But White Ruinous White Lump of Stone Essential of Course

Islamic Garden: At Least no Cow Parsley

Truly Great Hideous Feature in Otherwise Charming and Different Tropical Orchid Garden

Interflora’s Contribution in the Show Tent

Cedric Morris Corner in Show Tent: At Last Something Old and Bashed Up. Charm

Dan Pearson Chatsworth Garden: Rough Ground

Dan Pearson: Different, Natural, Interesting Plants

Dan Pearson: Yes, Yes Yes

Dan Pearson: Design Feature that Works

Chelsea Flower Show: Nude Heels

Tuesday 19th May 2015

Weeks ago, Joshua Baring texted from somewhere called Dover Street Market with news of a cream suit by Ann Demeulemesser. These young people – really, for them, money is no object. Ann Demeulemesser is one of my struck-off labels in truth – it’s a madly expensive deconstructed homespun look. All the same, somehow I’m lured to Dover Street Market, which is in Mayfair right next to Bond, because of the colour – cream and sand and bone I’m drawn to more and more with age, possibly to mirror my own vanishing process with age. Dover Street Market has to be seen to be believed. It’s a pretend indoor market with scruffy concrete floors. All shoppers arrive by limo. The different Designer stalls aren’t labeled. It’s utterly utterly maddening. At length I find the suit except the trousers are missing. Some vague talk about how they might show up later and they’d call me. The jacket I did quite like. It has a certain luxury with bands in different textures. But £800! I said to Joshua Baring: ‘I’ve got a Zara cream suit which is 75% of the Ann Demeulemesser one but cost £170 if that.’ ‘But the cut!’ he goes. He’s never even seen my Zara. It’s out because it’s Zara.

So the Ann Demeulemesser cream suit has been churning in the back of my mind for six weeks at least. It’s great glory is you can wash it – in water, at home. It could be justified as a lasting addition to the wardrobe and a vital summer foundation garment. Also the struggle to obtain it as well as the complex moving around of money to fund it are an adventure in themselves.  I planned to visit all London stockists but was only half way through when, at Browns in South Molton Street, they said, ‘Try the main Ann Demeulemesser store in Antwerp.’ I imagined that I would set out at once but remembered the telephone. They were charming. The long and short is that, as we speak, they are ransacking the world for those trousers. I’m rather hoping and praying they don’t find them. I fear that with washing the garment will look even more artfully floppy. I tried on the jacket again at Dover Street market yesterday. It’s still there. Not sold. Went off it slightly.

Let’s pray that  I’ll be spared having to have the suit. In the meantime am struggling to buy anything else. I launch into summer with no foundation to my wardrobe. Terror.

Ann Demeulemesser Cream Suit Jacket at Dover Street Market

Not Considered a Fault: No Reduction

Shoppers at Dover Street Market

Sunday 17th May 2015

As we know the Multis have suffered. Does suffering increase with increased riches? Ed Jasper, the bedlinen expert, gave a small subscription lunch the other day but could not stay long. He had to get to John Lewis. He’s building a holiday villa. The furniture’s already arrived although the villa is not built. The only possible beds were sourced from the Cayman Islands. Now vast boxes are choking up one of his English houses. It’s a ghastly situation. ‘Will my cousins be coming to your summer party?’ I inquired deviously. They were a surprise inclusion at Ed’s party for Roland Mainflower’s 50th birthday last year. They’d been met at dinner at a mutual friend’s a week or two before and thought suitable.  They were lucky to get in, when most other invitations had gone out six months before. My plan was to stay with them if they were to be invited or to manoeuvre to get them invited. ‘Who?’ Ed Jasper said. His face was temporarily a wire coat-hanger that had come to the attention of Joan Crawford. ‘You know, my cousins who I was astonished to see last year at your party.’  ‘Were they the ones with that blond boy?’ Roland asked. But Ed was on to it by this time. ‘No,’ he said, ‘no. They haven’t taken any interest in us. We’ve not heard a word from them since…’ ‘It’s only a year,’ I whimpered, crumbling in the face of Ed’s pain, although life does roar on, doesn’t it? But no, Ed was too hurt, had given and given and got no reward. ‘No,’ he said, ‘they’re not coming.’ I thought of suggesting to my cousins that they stage an emergency healing dinner but really it’s too late. It wouldn’t look convincing. Besides Ed cannot dine at the last minute – his party is only six weeks away.

Thursday 14th May 2015

I had always thought Highgrove impossible of access so when Cousin Lavinia told me of an opportunity to visit via a charity (seated luncheon and tea included) I seized the op and forked substantially. There was a drama with Val having to be sacked from the outing and Royston King, one of our ruling Poor Little Rich Gays who distributes millions, installed instead. We arrived at the hotel near Highgrove in the Official Car with Zenon driving lights. Royston had directed a route through Park Royal and pointed out several historic mounds and forgotten residences which he hopes to save with his millions. In the hotel we were seated with what might be called upper UKIP retired folk. ‘I know that voice,’ one of them said. ‘Yes, you would,’ I said. ‘Royston’s commentary is glued forever to the BBC footage of the Queen returning to Buckingham Palace after the death of Diana. That nail-biting moment when she got out of the car before the Palace and could have been mauled to death by the crowd at once.’ Our nearness to the Throne and the sense that Royston might say anything alarmed the UKIPees. Luckily the only wild lady was seated next to him. She was up for Royston absolutely who demanded to see her notebook in which she’d listed garden plants seen in various places. ‘I’m black, you know,’ Royston explained, ‘so not expected to know about gardening. Now you must focus properly on your garden design course and not get distracted by garden visiting,’ he told the wild lady who had an elderly mother with who might never have lunched with a black person before – although now I think of it, she mentioned a Bermuda connection.

We were bused to Highgrove by a roundabout route. ‘Who’s going to use that toilet?’ Royston inquired re: the facility installed in the bus. It was impossible to work out how one would get into it so we flung open the door. The wild lady’s mother was quite entertained by this toilet exposure at this stage but others clearly required a deeper reverence in Royal circles. This bus drove round and round. Surely it was an attempt to disguise exactly where Highgrove is? But why weren’t we blindfolded? Finally we gained the car park. The Police hut at the entrance is all Cotswold-ified to resemble a dry-stone wall. There’s a ghastly new-build complex in olde-world Cotswold with bizarre bulging pillars recalling Knossos. At once there was a chance to buy scarves and hats. ‘How clever to put them here!’ Royston exclaimed. I thought the attendant at the stall was an under-cover agent who might open fire in response to Royston’s intense grilling re: source of goods, price and suitability of a baker-boy cap for a person from Jamaica etc. Our guide was an Honourable. It said so on her badge. Before she had been with Rosemary Verey at Barnsley. She was charming and die-away and Royston was probably one of her most challenging guidees. At first sight the garden was simply frightful – fussy little hedges, no well-established plants, dreadful Buddhist junk littered about. Right in front of the house there used to be a cedar tree, much beloved of ‘the Prince’. But it died. So instead an extraordinary nooky-wooky beamy structure with a spire was installed. Then some other tree started growing so a hole had to be cut in the nooky thing for it. It was all rather dismaying. The house itself is plain Georgian so is romantic, semi-wild planting right next to it quite right? The famous golden yew walk with the yew domes cut into strange shapes is striking but creepy. There were some very ordinary shrubs growing against the house – nice enough but not choice, not the best. We were then led into a wood, where traffic noise was quite bad. Highgrove in fact is right beside a main road so any fool could find it. Here were more striking plant choices, some unusual magnolias and azaleas, all only about five years old. There was a charm to it, despite the traffic noise.  More strange garden buildings were pointed out before we entered the stump garden featuring neolithic-looking upturned tree stumps. This was extraordinary although hardly delightful. I began to get the point. There’s a kind of engaging lunacy at large in this garden, something beyond just having unlimited resources and 10 gardeners. Under one tree were three large wooden mushrooms.  The Honourable Guide lady said, ‘Oh look, a dragon fly’s appeared on one of them. I hadn’t noticed that before.’  It had too. Someone had gone to the trouble of acquiring a wooden dragon fly with the purpose of sticking it onto the wooden mushroom.  I think I’ll return to see how the garden’s getting along at a later date. In fact you can book on the Royal Collection website. Access is possible without charity lunch and tea at nearby hotel.

No Graphs Allowed at Highgrove

Highgrove Chicken Jug: My Gift Shop Purchase. Royston Bought Baker-Boy Cap at £65

No, Take it Away! Installation to Replace Cedar Tree with Hole Cut for New Tree that Sprouted: Pic from Highgrove Book

Hedges by Sir Roy Strong: No Thank You: Pic from Highgrove Book

Yes, But Untidy. Right for the House? Pic from Highgrove Book

These Shapes: Gardeners were Give Free Reign by ‘the Prince’: Pic from Highgrove Book

Stumpery: Striking and One Begins to Get the Point: Pic from Highgrove Book

Yes! Success. Dank and Victorian but That’s the Point: Pic from Highgrove Book