Saturday 9th May 2015

So the Rich are back. Poor Little Rich Gays could get worse as well as richer. Last week I bought tickets for a one-man show at the Menier Chocolate Factory about Barbra Streisand. Amazingly the Multis agreed to come for the Photo Multi’s birthday. As you may have noticed, I’ve  seen them a lot less recently. They’re running a café and in any case they feel they’ve given enough. As I feared back in 2009, the largesse, the Tuscan villas, the lavishness at La Pont de la Tour, have not lasted. No more thrice weekly champagne outings with the Multis. But on the Photo Multi’s birthday the Multis were charming although not at that time at all confident of a Tory victory. They entertained me pre-show at Zucca and couldn’t have been more radiant. They loved that I’d bought them tickets for the show. Their delight was so child-like and simple, in contrast to their great grandeur at other times. The show about Barbra was a sensation. One man, an actor from ‘Ugly Betty’, did all the parts including Barbra. She has a shopping mall in the basement of her Los Angeles home where are displayed in appropriate shops the overspill from her vast collection of antiques. That much is true. The idea of the play was that she would employ a Gay to run the Mall and appear intermittently to ‘shop’ there and buy her own possessions. Of course, she gets a little too intimate with the Gay and finally invites him upstairs where they fall out terribly. He accuses her of caring only for decor. He is frozen out at once. The whole thing was a Poor Little Rich Gay life to perfection. The endless quest for decor and items. ‘It’s never quite right, is it?’ the Gay says to Barbra one day. She has to admit it isn’t. When finally he gets upstairs into her actual home as opposed to the bargain basement, he finds that only the ‘family room’ could actually be lived in and scarcely that. The others were museums. But in the family room, Barbra began to stroke his hair until he realised that she was only considering it as the perfect shade for cushions for the family room.  She’d been seeking that exact tone for months. He flares up and is dismissed from the room. The next morning the secretary tells him it would never have lasted as she hands over an envelope full of cash. Earlier Barbra complained that nobody ever dropped by. But how could anyone drop by on all those antiques and show rooms with a mega-diva ensconced within, worth millions and millions? Also, her mother had never called her pretty, she confided, back in the Brooklyn days. On the day the Gay was fired, he set about refurbishing his apartment.

Monday 4th May 2015

I’m just back from Beth’s – driving all over the country looking for Salvia Sclarea var. Turkestanica. Vital for my July border. At great spire of washy mauve, silvery. Smell described by Graham Thomas as ‘barmaid’s armpit.’ At last found it. No sign of Beth today. Last time Robert Nevil and I circled her house which is in the middle of the garden, with the idea of megaphoning – ‘Come out, Beth. We know you’re in there.’ Then we saw her at the kitchen sink.

Anyway, my tulips – these proud, imperious flowers dominate the early season. It occurs to me that they’ve designed themselves to fill the garden and indeed the space allowed in the universe for flowers, when all else is in its infancy. I always combine three different ones, often chosen at Chelsea. But, owing to economy, I order from an on-line wholesaler at reduced prices. This year, Abu Hamza, which is a rich orange-red with orange flashes, was to be with Arabian Mystery, which is murky mauve with a white fringe, and Recreado, which is black. What came up was a lot of yellow tulips with some Abu Hamza and a quite nice purple one. That was in the back garden. The front area was as intended: Cairo, Princess Irene and General de Wet – all brown, as I imagined in November when they’re planted. The reality is orange in different shades. On my top terrace – well, the vulgarity!  Thank goodness, only a select few who are ushered into my private quarters, can see. China Pink and Bleu Aimable were ordered but what came up was a similar colour, but wrong tulip. Owing to ordering while actually at Chelsea then forgetting about it, Shirley, which is the tulip I thought horror beyond all horrors (white with raspberry ripple effect) but without warning came round to, and Belle Epoche, which really is brown, got mixed in.  But I tell you, I’m going to try it again.

Brown Tulips in my Front Area: Cairo, Princess Irene, General de Wet

Brown Tulips in my Front Area: Cairo, Princess Irene and General de Wet

My Back Garden: Yellow Tulip was Not Ordered: Abu Hamza is the Deep Orange One

Top Terrace: Bello Epoque is the Brown One. Otherwise Shirley has the Ripple Edge 

The Top Terrace Slightly Faded

The Photo Multi’s Tulips

Friday 1st May 2015

You may remember that my first visit to the Alexander McQueen exhibition was curtailed by the telephone announcement of the death of Aunt Smidge. But Bruce McBain, my private architect, kindly showered a further opportunity to visit the show. Arriving at the Museum for the evening viewing, I was surprised to find the Multis in the vicinity. I hadn’t realised they were to be present as well. They’ve been less seen recently as they battle for perfection to defeat pain.

I wanted to talk about Alexander McQueen. This practice of according fashion designers museum status – I’m not sure how new it is. Last year there was a huge exhibit of Jean-Paul Gaultier at the Barbican which struggled to sustain interest. Very few of the pieces fitted the mannequins on which they were mounted. There was just too much of it. For how long can you go on being subversive and very expensive in different fabrics? The V and A exhibition of Alexander McQueen is infinitely more successful. Each room is strikingly different and music is used to great effect. The Cabinet of Curiosities, which I suppose is the centrepiece of the whole thing, quite takes the breath away with glass cases stacked up seven or eight high to the ceiling. It helps that McQueen experimented with different styles from his early cobwebby Gothic rags through the nightmarish feather phase to a more playful Chinese preoccupation latterly. The individual pieces are astonishing in their workmanship, inventiveness and lavish use of fabric. The vision is of course highly original, or at least extraordinary – fashion as a form of torment, garments that imprison or render grotesque or are just plain terrifying, like the black feather dress. If there is a justification for putting fashion in a museum, then Alexander McQueen makes a good case. But the curators push it too far. The convoluted explanations on the wall claiming some kind of fathomless sophistication only highlight that the designer’s  brilliant but limited imagination.   Bizarre and jaw-dropping this show certainly is but what also is this wistful sadness pervading? McQueen’s own death, perhaps, but also the sense of  the ephemeral. The fragility of some of the work, barely 20 years old, is all too evident. Already the fabric flowers have begun to fade. Clothes, even ones like these which are essentially dressing-up fantasies, never to be seen clucking along the High Street, lose some of their efficacy when the moving human being is taken out of them. Can the fashion moment live on in a glass case?

These Flowers Already Fadeth: What about this Shape? 

One of the Bird Outfits: The Skirt has Grown Grimy, Sadly

Frockage as Cruelty and Bareness with African Mud Hem

Slabs of Braid: What is This? A Suit of Armour? A Punishment? Stunning Though

A White and Red Phase

The Tragic Ghost Dress

The Cabinet of Curiosities

The Last Room

Saturday 25th April 2015

My fashion story is huge. I visited the shops for you and gained such insight. I saw it whole. At Liberty’s, Harvey Nicks, Harrods, Joseph, Browns, Selfridges, Zara and The Library, a miraculous unity emerged. How do they do it, the houses, making it new twice year? You’ll be relieved to hear shapes are the same. Jackettes are still jackette length – so flattering. You see them almost everywhere now, any office young man without question will be in a jackette truncated half way down the buttocks. I don’t see jackettes ever dying now. Think of flares or trousers with front pleats – they were seen off twenty years ago or even 30 years ago in the case of flares and have never dared to re-appear. Speaking of trousers, they’re still spidery, Thank God. If you’ve got any fabric flapping below the knee, hack it out at once. So what is the stunning new element for Summer 2015? So simple – it’s pink. Pink is huge and new this season, either as a slack, or top or jackette or suit. Pink, pink, pink. A silvery, mauve pink or glaring Germolene pink. Get your pink right. Wear it with florals, carried on from last season and not recommended by me or with heavy embroidered carapaces by Paul Smith, where the embroidery is mounted on foam techno fabric that sits off the body – fascinating.

Pink – You’ll Find it Quietly Lurking on All Fashion Rails This Summer

A New Look at Pink This Season

A Paul Smith Embroidered Carapace – £480

With Its Shorts – £375

Another Paul Smith Shirt Option for This Season

A Dries Conception for Summer 2015

Lord Arrowby in Articulated Jumper by Kenco: Note How this Remarkable Government Figure Leads the Way in Fashion – It’s Pink 

Wednesday 22nd April 2015

My fashion story – still huge, still looming – has been delayed by a rural interlude, down on Robert Nevil’s farm. ‘We must walk the dogs,’ he said. One of them ran away. As we re-entered the farm yard it whirled out of a gateway, having crossed several fields and a road. It’s a whippet, which is my favourite kind of dog. So elegant especially if in taupe. Also they don’t smell.  Robert Nevil’s Gay Mother said the whippet was disobedient but I think she only knew her name if it was called with a terrific hunting horn emphasis and a huge rolled W which is how Mrs Nevil, Robert Nevil’s Gay Mother, would summon the animal who is named after a chocolate bar. She is unable, to the moment, to walk the dog herself. The other dog was more manageable, a black Labby, quite young, although very keen on leaping up to muddy one’s outfit. No outfit lasted more than five minutes on the farm.

Otherwise I explained that my Gay Mother loves corrugated iron in the countryside, the more rusty and bashed-up the better. There are some fabulous corrugated iron roofs in the Nevil farmyard, which I graphed for the Gay Mother. Then it was time to walk the dogs again. It really was astonishing how you had to keep on doing it. Barely back from one walk and it was time for the next. How do dog-owners get anything done? While on the walks we took an interest in wild flowers and the Spring scene in general, as well as which land belongs to the Nevils. There was also a lot of worry about the cat, which was capable of getting into the bedrooms and sitting on one’s clothes. Its house-trained certification was doubtful, especially if its mood were bad which, judging by the look on its face, was most of the time.

But I note a shift, possibly fatal, in myself. Really I quite got used to being covered in mud and animal hairs. All that polish and urban grooming dissolved in an instant. I have always said: I’ll never give in. Is it possible that now I will?

Mrs Nevil is the living embodiment of the French and Saunders idea of farming women – you remember that sketch: one of them burnt her finger on the Aga so the other chopped it off with an axe for convenience. Years ago on the Nevil farm a visiting child foolishly played with a grinding machine in a shed and emerged howling almost at once, having ground its hand. Some claim to have heard the crunching of bone. ‘For Goodness sake, stick it under the cold tap,’ Mrs Nevil said, not getting up from the tea table. Now she is mid-80s and not awfully well but all the same she entered the garden one morning mounted triumphantly on a mowing machine and vroomed all over the lawn. Then she lay on her chaise-longue in her garden. Her borders give her pleasure.

Out Walking the Dogs on Robert Nevil’s Farm: this One Prefers to be Addressed in a Brum Accent But We Found out Too Late 

Out walking the Dogs on Robert Nevil’s Farm. The Whippet Ran Away One Time

Spectacular Corrugated-Iron Examples on Robert Nevil’s Farm

Wednesday 15th April 2015

A great event in Hastings, although champagne was drunk in appalling conditions, possibly not equaled in horror since the Multis bought their Kent desmesne. It did occur to me that Angus Willis’s Tudor House in Hastings is one of the most important new interiors to be added to the Nation’s stock in the last twenty years if not longer. Never before has such an effective and convincing restoration been achieved in such unlikely and imaginative ways, using furniture pecked by chickens in Romania, 60s crockery from car boot sales and bakelite light switches to create an authentic Tudor feel. It’s what seems old to us, you see – that’s the trick of it. When the Tudor House was shown on TV recently, estate agents were asked to value it. One tottering blonde was completely defeated. ‘Nobody would want to live here,’ she said. But actually casual visitors, initially terrified by the extraordinary conditions and quantity of hen-pecked furniture, the splinters, the chipped white enamel pie-dishes, the ‘London’ gas-cooker of lethal aspect, are finally over-awed, transported into the Tudor past, profoundly moved by their experience. But now I was summoned to Hastings to mark a further acquisition. A viewing was planned for 4pm but Genevieve Suzy, who, as you may know is also a property-owner in Hastings, cut up rough. Despite the momentousness of the occasion, she almost refused to go unless the time was re-set. Suddenly she was determined upon a formal tea. ‘Why should I go at the time he gives,’ she stamped.  But the appointment couldn’t be re-set despite unlimited texting and calling and after a quarter of an Ecceles cake, accompanied by texting and calling, she dragged off, screaming all the way. We reached the door of  the property newly acquired by Angus Willis. The story is that Charlie Hurling, the one who thinks of the worst thing to say and says it, also thought of the worst thing to do and did it. He bought a property in Hastings to be refurb and let as a single unit for weekend parties and so forth. His style is black and white wallpaper and Louis Quinze furniture. So Angus had the entire banking system turned upside down to acquire a rival property and at last this was achieved. A Regency town house, terraced, bow-fronted, with balconies,on five storeys, with sea-views. There we were at its front door, being photographed prior to entry. What would be within? A dark hallway, then a blue front room with a vast paper lantern hanging from the 70s. Little examination revealed the utter delapidation. We advanced further. Wrecked Habitat features of 40 years ago, such as silver wallpaper, eau-de-ni bamboo print wallpaper, white paper lanterns, but never finished even then. Otherwise, holes in the walls, collapsed ceilings, sodden carpets fit only to be burnt… someone had been living amongst all this only a few days before. This had been a home. Another friend of Angus’s showed up and nearly wretched in the gim-crack smelly kitchen. I will say no more. From the lowest rung of Hell, Angus must now ascend to decor and a whole. It will be achieved. Just you wait. It cannot be any other way.

Angus Willis: New Property in Hastings

Angus Willis: New Hastings Property: Someone Had Been Living Here a Few Days Before

Corridor of Death in Angus Willis, New Hastings Property

Angus Willis, New Hastings Property: General Condition

Angus Willis: He Bought This

Angus Willis New Hastings Property: Can You Believe It?

Kitchen Horror: Angus Willis New Property in Hastings

Gorgeous Carpets in Angus Willis’s New Property in Hastings

Friday 10th April 2015

My Easter Message suddenly came through. Easter eggs, and choc-y Easter bunnies come to that.  How do you get into them? An intractable lump with no opportunity for biting into emerges from the foil. So you bang it in the drawing room. It shatters and makes crumbs. The worst known crumbs… waxy, indelible and perpetually crumby. Lethal to upholstery.  So Christ’s Thorns stick through the Easter joy and will not go away.

Otherwise Val has texted about the Saharan Dust which threatens us in the Capital. ‘Watch out for the Saharan dust!’ he says. ‘We’ll need to do something creative with scarves and gloves.’

I’ve such thrilling news of Hastings. Come back later for more. On Sunday, all being well, I go down to the remote far West, where  Robert Nevil has been swilling out the chair covers in preparation.

Monday 6th April 2015

No Easter message this year. Except to say that this Easter has been more Easter-like than usual with the right weather and flowers. I dusted and vac-ed the Gay Mother’s public rooms after Church and laid lunch in the dining room with some silver and primroses. Of course, there’s no Aunt Smidge, so we Easter alone. We fought it with flowers, heirlooms and the Gay Mother decided upon a Claudia Roden recipe where you insert herbs under the skin of the lamb’s leg. Not as easy as it sounds. Lovage, majarom, thyme and rosemary. The Gay Mother had them all in her garden. Just imagine – at 91 completely re-thinking the Easter lamb!  It was a great success. Challenging but great. Then we rested, then we gardened until 8pm. The Gay Mother was dead against ‘Poldark’ but I insisted and she was less against by the end. Lovely views of Cornwall and a bit of a story was the verdict. She’d ordered smoked trout to be sent by post from that place in Kent – Whitstable,that’s it! – to have with ‘Poldark’.

Today I’ve finally made my Easter cake although no crystalised violets to be had – ‘But they’re an Easter Essential,’ I shrieked in the aisles. Then Aunt Lavinia and Cousin Lavinia said, ‘Why not use real violets?’ Miracle. So I will. An Easter cake, by the way, is a Vic Sponge with orange juice inserted into the mixture and orange icing (therefore primose yellow for Easter) decorated with crystalised violets. Not a Bake-off winner, but a classic.

Thursday 2nd April 2015

Today I’m fetching Val, not seen since before Christmas, and we’re going to the Orleans Tower in Richmond for lunch and for me to collect a Jamaican artwork by Rudi Patterson (he who lived in a Notting Hill council flat and painted and painted Jamaica). Val said, ‘You can distribute Maundy Money while we’re there.’ I said, ‘But you’re just as Royal as I.’

Otherwise I had a breakfast meeting with Lord Arrowby at Borough Market. It very nearly didn’t happen. I texted to announce my arrival at 10 am. He goes: ‘I’m already here, having a Spanish full English.’ I protested. He says, ‘I’m very busy, you see.’ ‘Yes,’ I go, ‘seeing me.’

Anyway, there Lord Arrowby is in the cafe of which he is a Trustee or something, in blue cords which turn out to be from the same set as my swimming silvery off-white ones. ‘Did you know there’s a tiny branch of Paul Smith near here?’ He wants me to ski with him next year. I said Yes, if spared. But when I look at my summer schedule for travel I want to die. Somehow, of course, I’ll get through it. But at present I’m just gasping for October. Not to mention all the gardening to be done and outfits to be bought and worn. We picked over the forthcoming election. As a Government king-pin, he can’t comment of course. But he’s very concerned about budgets. The figures don’t add up, he says. I wondered whether he might not open Parliament if the Queen’s not up to it. He was keen. ‘I could wear Dolce e Gabbana just to wind up all those outraged Gays,’ he quipped. Such a delightful silly side.

Later in the day it emerged what ‘busy’ meant. Illustrated texts arrived from Lord Arrowby from various important centres such as Liberty’s. ‘Amazing Dries collection.’ He bought one piece and also an articulated jumper by Kenco. He’s seen below wearing it.

Lord Arrowby in Articulated Jumper by Kenco

Monday 30th March 2015

Almost March’s last day and it has been a month. Through the vale of death the lunches, dinners, outings and pre-dinner drinks have bulldozed on regardless. On a Thursday I ascended an improvised lift up the side of the Battersea Power Station to where a show flat had been parked in a box at the top. Here Royston King was having a Trustees’ Meeting, with a fund-raising party afterwards. Lady Ribalt was expected but didn’t show. Some Royal gardeners were present who refused to say what are Majesty’s favourite flowers. Royston complained that too many guests were unlikely to contribute funds but were younger Gays in outfits. One youth had on a suit that was barely a spec for a doll although his broach was conspicuous. He had met on Gaydar 3 years ago a larger young man also on view. I thought another looked familiar and on closer inspection found one of Lord Arrowby’s friends from the telephone world now admirably filled out, nolonger a slip of a thing. How he came to be there, Lord alone knows.

The next day was an early start for Glyndebourniana with Aunt Lavinia. It was Members’ Open Day. Our lunch was a school-trip-type bag with a hommous sandwich and a tangerine and flapjack, eaten in the windy loggia. We toured the backstage area, a huge cavern full of head-dresses in the form of trees, and the costume and prop department like a school art room. How is summer Glydebourniana to bloom from this intriguing muddle ? But it will.

The City of Mahgony at the Garden the following day, I found a curiosity but I can’t say I was thrilled by it. As Anthony Mottram, ‘consultant’ of Prague, said, the Alienation Effect is so alienating. It wasn’t until the following Thursday, after a there-and-back-in-a-day to the far West for my own Trustees’ Meeting, that I was once again bolt upright at a home concert in a Westminster mansion. The concert was given by the nephew of the house and by coincidence a nephew of Anthony Mottram’s on piano. They’re all at the Royal College and very gifted. The concert was held in the 1st floor drawing room. Then we ascended for a seated dinner for 30 on the floor below. Then we went up five floors by lift to the rooftop penthouse kitchen and entertaining area for the ice-cream course.  Conversation was largely confined to the decline of the elderly.

Over the weekend, Frankie-Doreen gave a dinner at which gossip that would rock the Nation if it got out was supplied by one who herself throbs at the core of our Nation’s history. One item concerned David Cameron and the other Alex Salmond. On the Sunday Genevieve Suzy had her birthday lunch in a restaurant at which we all admired each other’s outfits. When the pudding came, Genevieve didn’t make as much fuss as she might have done about the blonde hundreds and thousands on the rhubarb Ils Flottante. ‘They’re crumbs,’ she screamed, ‘not hundreds and thousands.’ Fortunately during lunch, Lord Suzy, Genevieve’s husband, continued to sell pictures although at lunch. Afterwards in his gallery, whence we retreated, he sold more pictures although it was a Sunday. One buyer, living over the gallery and indeed allowing on one occasion his bath to overflow into it,  seemed to cause a stiffening in two of the birthday luncheon guests. The second he was out there was an outpouring and the bitter story of the sacking. A customer trembled through the door. ‘Have you got lots of money?’ Genevieve Suzy bellowed. The customer quivered that she was hoping for a framing facility.

I forgot to mention that I had low outfit satisfaction at Glyndebourniana Members’ Open Day. I was wearing my pink bobbly jumper by Paul Smith. I didn’t feel up to it having been ill. I wore it again yesterday in Hastings and loved it and me in it.

Oh yes! Hastings. Huge developments as well as a kidney dinner.

Glyndebourniana: The Fly Tower

Glyndebourniana: Huge Drum Directly Behind the Stage for Storing Operas

Tree-Head-dresses Backstage at Glyndebourniana

The Actual Silver Rose from ‘Rosenkavalie’r Made of Silver for Glyndebourniana 

The Conductor’s View of the Audience at Glyndebourniana

The New Rose Garden at Glyndebourniana

We Inspect the Greenhouses at Glyndebourniana: Annuals and Tender Plants

Here is the Wet-Weather Picnic Tent or Will be at Glyndebourniana