Friday 27th March 2015

Aunt Smidge, since her sad passing two weeks ago, is already coming more sharply into focus as a person. Her funeral service splendidly reflected her horror of attention being drawn, her quiet life of almost nun-like contemplation in a country cottage for many years not undimmed by a taste for gossip and the ridic plus unconventional interests for a lady of her class and background, not least Ottolenghi. We all felt much better for it. Extraordinary how much mention of clothes at the funeral, before, during and after. The Gay Mother’s suede coat, bequeathed to her by Aunt Frankie in 1979 and recently refurbished by Val, was seized upon the second she disgorged from the limo. My Topman tweed two-piece suit was admired by a man of 85 plus from the James Bond era of business in London, i.e. the Sixties, now living in the country’s depths, the flat in London long given up. I said, ‘It’s Topman, meant for teenagers. £150.’ The Gay Mother couldn’t believe the mention of prices. He said his was Marks and Spencers. And very fine too. Aunt Smidge had a younger half-sister, tres riche, richer than Multis for sure, whose trouser suit made a huge impact. The Gay Mother and I got home and battled on in the garden. I’ve always said that frockage is such a huge part of the battle against Death.

Friday 20th March 2015

A small party was got up for The Magic Flute last Wednesday at the Royal Opera House, Covent. Prince Dmitri, Robert Nevil and Bruce MacBain. We had the Rich Ladies’ Small Table in the Paul Hamlyn Bar in the interval but unfortunately only one example of a Rich Lady was on view: gold whooshed up hair, a plum bouclé suitlette and massive multi-strand necklace. I couldn’t graph her as she was too near. Already I was weakened by my viral cold with sub-normal temperature and inclined to burst into tears at the slightest thing. All day long I had been repeating the old Dimbleby TV commentary which without fail sets me off: ‘Air Force One, arcing through the air from the Andrews Airforce Base, Washington DC, begins its descent to Heathrow Airport, London bearing the first black President of the United States of America and Mrs Obama on their first visit to this country as President and First Lady.’

So all through The Magic Flute I was in floods. What an astonishing work it is! Everything is in it: the mad shrieking evil of the Night’s Queen, the heart-breaking pathos of Pamina when Tamino won’t speak to her, the grave solemnity and awe of Sarastro. But the sillier it gets and the more simple the music on the glock or the flute, the more infinitely touching and magical and fragile. At the Garden, the singers gave everything and were divine. I looked round at the audience a few times. That is magic too, how every face was enraptured.

All this was a prelude, of course, to Aunt Smidge passing the following the morning.

Wednesday 18th March 2015

Last Thursday I was recovering over breakfast from a horrible lowering virus with cold and cough, when Alexander McQueen came on the TV because of the great show opening at the V and A . I texted to Genevieve Suzy of the magazine world: ‘Alexander McQueen!’. She replied at once: ‘The press preview is at 10 am.’ It was then 9.40. So I had two minutes to assume one of the most important outfits of my life. It was my Prada turquoise mac with Prada stretch jodphurs. By 10.10 I was there. ‘Who are you?’ they said on the door, peering at clipboard. ‘I could be a number of people,’ I said, naming various emanations of Dainty Lady TV . None were listed, not even Dainty Lady TV in general but they let me in anyway. So I was examining the early work, much of which belongs to my neighbour who was Alexander McQueen’s right-hand woman from the beginning, thinking it wasn’t perfect, that there was a puckered fly or a rucked seam when a call kept coming through with the Gay Mother’s area code. Finally, in the room with the menacing bird jacket, with feathers laid as if an actual bird, I took the call. It was Cousin Smurry to say that Aunt Smidge had died. Thus in death-laden Alexander McQueen death came. Aunt Smidge was perfectly all right at Christmas, although 89. We always Christmas and Easter with her and Cousin Smurry who has more recently taken to doing Ottolenghi. Now she’s vanished. Quite gone. I was deputed to inform the Gay Mother and Aunt Lavinia who were both shattered but very quickly robust.

It was rather the end of the Alexander McQueen exhibition, although I recognised that it grew and grew in splendour and spectacle. In one room, exhibits are stacked to the ceiling. Suzy Menkes was in that room. She now has a minion to carry her notebook. Then I ran into the curator, who I’d seen on TV at home, about to do another piece to camera. ‘You’ve had a busy morning,’ I said. ‘Nice jacket,’ she said, of my turquoise Prada mac. If only I’d kept my frockage in storage through the years. No hope of a V and A exhib of my life in frockage for after I’m gone.

Early Alexander McQueen Suit Belonging to my Neighbour with Puckered Fly

Odd Stain? Early Alexander McQueen

Menacing Bird Outfit in the Room Where Aunt Smidge’s Passing was Announced

The Curator of the Show: She Admired my Mac

The Great Room, with Frocks Stacked to the Ceiling: Suzy Menkes Present

Saturday 7th March 2015

Suddenly in the night recently I had a vision. Have we wrecked homes in our generation? Only the Multis have always lived in new-build places. Otherwise we’ve been in agreeable period property. Into which we’ve installed minimalist bathrooms, halogen lights, sliding glass doors, glass extensions, concrete floors, shiny new kitchens, worktops. I fear all my life my decor has been itsy bitsy. Only Angus Willis and the Multis have achieved a whole decor. Angus Willis would have found electroliers to light my hall. He would be retained and re-created a period feel.

On the other hand, many of the great Statelys, including Chatsworth, have varying styles on a room-by-room basis. The private apartments at Chatsworth were done by some Belle Epoque person who also did the Ritz. Somehow the residents of Chatsworth have managed to keep going in this hotch-potch. The whole house, from the outside, is a bit…well… heavy. I’d rather have a charming Georgian front any day of simple classical proportions. Widecombe Manor House outside Bath is perfection, only low-lying and without extensive grounds. Combe Florey is divine although it has now been ruined, ironically, by some rellies of Angus Willis’s. Also magical is Reddish House in Broadchalke, Wilts, formerly home of Cecil Beaton, but Anthony Mottram (‘consultant’ of Prague), his mother said the other day that it was filthy inside.

Tuesday 3rd March 2015

In the end the Gay Mother and myself were the only survivors for her 91st birthday lunch. ‘I’m still here,’ she declared on arrival at the venue. We had fought our way through a vale of trouble with about six (too many to count) relations and friends, both young and old, in a various bad ways. But the set lunch menu at a Michelin One Star bought us to a sunnier upland for the time being. We managed to have the birthday. Some condemn menus, frockage, detail in the home as trivial. No, wrong! The chef’s art, the shopper’s drive – you start with nothing, then there is something. Even stain removal – all are gestures of hope against the odds as is all human life.

The Gay Mother was thrilled with the crispy fried quail parts with a dipping sauce and hot coleslaw. Coleslaw we are usually totally against but this was made new. Then there was lime-marinaded red mullet, with salt cod balls, broccoli and quails’ eggs. Finally a rhubarb trio. Only when I got home did I realise it had leaked over my light bone slacks through being served on a rimless bobbly glass platter. So I went straight into soak but not caring because style is all.

Lime-marinaded Red Mullet with Broccoli, Salt-Cod Balls and Quails Eggs

The Rhubarb Trio

Stained by the Rhubarb Trio

The Birthday Plate

Wednesday 25th February 2015

You remember when all I wanted was to get into the Ivy Club. That was after getting into the Ivy itself became too easy.

Well, for the second time I gained entré last week. Heaven! Arnie Gateshead kindly invited me to his 50th birthday, which took place the very day after Rufus Pitman’s magnificent extravaganza. I haven’t seen Arnie for 20 years easily and wondered if I’d know anybody. But strangely, as Death draws nearer and after great losses one minds less being amongst strangers. One learns to make the best of  things. Also, I feared an onslaught of Earls Court Gays, for Arnie, a gigantic corporate figure on the communications side in pharmaceuticals, was rather that world, as I recalled.

One figure, vaguely known to me as a classic Earls Court body fascist, didn’t bode well.  ‘Can I get that, with my membership?’ he announced when bar staff told him a gin and tonic would be on a paying basis. But then I was talking to Martin from Pangbourne about  his schooldays. He actually mentioned that he couldn’t afford something.  But what a sensation! No Earls Court Gay would ever not be able to afford something, whatever it was. A Poor Little Rich Gay might claim incapacity to afford but would either be lying or would already have bought it. Or would be below the bread-line anyway. So what has Arnie been up all these years?  Including normal people evidently. There were nice people at the party. Snaps of him were flashed in succession on a screen, from babyhood to the present day. He’s made quite a thing of being really rather sultry and quite suggestive from the earliest years. This has been intriguingly combined with a serious corporate profile. Recently he had a procedure in Harley Street resulting in emergency admission to an NHS establishment and morphine ever since. He thought he looked dreadful for the party so hired a lady to administer a temporary face-lift and other treatments with sensational results. Only about £220. He said that once he went to Brixton through Grinder. He was supposed to meet one black man but there were three and it wasn’t nice. One of the Gays nevertheless refused to listen, ‘Sounds fun,’ he said.  ‘It wasn’t,’ Arnie said firmly. I had to leave early through derangement after being at functions two nights in a row but sailed home a few feet off the ground, not wounded by the party, as can so easily happen, but uplifted.

Arnie Gateshead’s 50th Birthday Party at the Ivy Club

Arnie Gateshead’s 50th Birthday Party at the Ivy Club

Saturday 21st February 2015

How can I sing this glorious occasion? How can I hope to capture the magic? The great sweep of the Georgian room, floorboards and rugs, brass, silver and mirrors, furniture, everything in fact for sale; it was a mansion but also a shop, so Gays could shop as well as take canapés and champagne, surely a Heaven never before achieved. As Bruce MacBain said, No sign of an LED light. Instead a candlelight effect. Rufus himself was wearing, as a opening outfit, a garment of midnight-blue silk embroidered with gold curlicues of great beauty and impact. The cake was displayed, with Rufus and Raj Zoroaster on a boating holiday done in icing, on top of it.

What a panoply were present, with astonishing jewelled undercurrents. Robert Nevil was very trim in fitted bundee with rare frothy white under-blouse. Really this garb, although Indian, is worn in the English shires where it is a jerkin. Great whips of lecce across the room between Dhiren Dutta and Robert Nevil, although by cruel fate’s twist, they were in matching outfits but with different effect. ‘You’re in the same outfit as on Tuesday,’ quipped Joshua Baring to me, Adrian Edge. But I wasn’t.  My Tuesday slacks were more of a yellowy bone. For Rufus I wore my Paul Smith cords in miraculous silvery, greyish white which went much better with my red velvet jacket. And I had new bootees in suede (a doe shade) bought hours before. Susan Goodyear was seen briefly at the top of the stairs. What names! Muriel McGlorian and Sid Id in person. Complete shudder! Sid Id was vap-ping. Muriel said, ‘You came to my party and blogged it!’ I couldn’t tell if she was Rottweiller-ing me or not. ‘How do you square that with your work for Dainty Lady TV, then?’  I don’t know why she was complaining when she had household names sitting on her kitchen work tops and the limos of two pop stars throbbing at the door. She consulted the price tag of the chandelier above her head. She said that some years ago, on a certain newspaper, columnists had been obliged to include their email address at the end of their columns. Readers emailing Rufus Pitman, expecting their drivel to be given way to, were subsequently obliged to jam the switchboard in floods of tears. Don’t cross a Poor Little Rich Gay if you’re an ordinary member of the public is the lesson to be learnt from this. What magnificence! What mogul-dom!

Rufus announced that he would change his outfit and then make a speech. Lord Arrowby was not feeling well. He rather condemned ‘My Night with Reg’ on grounds of plausibility but actually remembered that I once had brunch with him alone in his flat. The other time was for his birthday when direct descendants of Asquith were present. Lord Arrowby was totally divine and was terribly nice to Joshua Baring despite the teeth episode of some years ago. Lord A is enormously proud of his teeth which are absolutely first class. Joshua Baring told me off for pursuing Dainty Lady TV business with Lord Arrowby at the party. I forgot to mention that it’s come to light that his parents, Lord and Lady Baring, have tremendous outbursts of temper about once a year. Finn Magnus, the hot boy doc, has a huge hole in his wall. He’s doing his first flat. Oh the long upward, life-long climb to decor. But he was pressed into service and couldn’t have been more caring when Gardenia Bellhouse sat down on a club fender (£4675) and went vacant. But soon she was back and completely sparkling. Marvellous practice for Finn although he might not see it like that.

Rufus was seen in the room in a new outfit. It was a panelled coat in black of exquisite work. I wish I had studied it more. Bruno-France Bruno said he’s moving to Madrid as well as some other places. Odd because before the splendidly masculine and gutteral Carlo de Los Manos, of Spain, was telling me the Spanish royal family are hated in Spain. I thought they were adored. Apparently ex-Queen Sofia can’t speak a word of Spanish. They hate the new Queen because she’s butcher’s daughter or equivalent.  I do hope Bruno-France Bruno won’t be subject to Revolution if he moves to Madrid, even part-time. But Bruno-France Bruno and Finn Magnus were wondering about the time difference between London and Portugal. Rufus was raised onto a plinth and nearly set fire to by overhead candles. He was moved forward and his speech began. The great thing was that we’d all come and the rabbit canapés. You couldn’t imagine a better speech without self-grandeur or gush. As I left, Rufus said, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been graphed in your blog.’ The awful thing is that I graphed his first outfit but the result is nowhere to be seen. What is to be done!

Rufus and Raj on Holiday in Icing

Friday 20th February 2015

Today is the 50th Birthday of Rufus Pitman. I leave for the function in 15 mins. Only just back from Selfridges with bootees from Paul Smith, suede in a doe tone. Huge outfit challenges mainly brought about by my mania to wear cream or off-white in the winter. Also brought perfumes. Tomorrow is another 50th birthday. It’s costing me about £300 to attend.

Last Sunday Genevieve Suzy of the magazine world collected me and we drove to Primrose Hill with her daughter, Gregoria, and her dog, MacIntosh. The idea was to exercise the dog. All the dogs there are pedigree and Ed Milly himself is nearby in his residence – does he have a dog? I doubt it. On the way, I gave directions to Genevieve but she said, ‘Can I drive my own car?’ and wretched the wheel in the opposite direction to the one suggested. ‘How dare you!’ I said. It turned out she wanted to drop off at a deli and get cakes. On Primrose Hill, withEd Milly nearby, I was put in mind of politicians. ‘I should think Ed Milly’s a bit squishy,’ I said. ‘If only the party leaders would do underwear ads like David Beckham, then it would be clear who will win.’ Genevieve appeared not to approve of these remarks, no doubt thinking them disrespectful. Lord Suzy is away, by the way, in the Caribbean where he yachts. Then Gregoria wanted the facilities so we retreated to a council house type building. Beside it was a children’s play park except it wasn’t, it was a fitness and work-out corner for Eastern Europeans, some of whom were topless in the freezing winter air. Genevieve and I were suddenly very keen that Gregoria should climb the frames and swing on the rings. ‘What do you think it’ll be like in warm weather?’ Genevieve wondered. We shall see.

Tuesday I dined quietly with Joshua Baring at 8 Hoxton Square. Superb. Him also. He’s written 50,000 words and is planning 100,000 more. I could never do that because of being away from the shops for so long. One Christmas Joshua was invited to Blenheim Palace for Christmas dinner. Luckily it was in the evening so he was able to fit in his family Christmas lunch at home. I was reminded of that epi of ‘Vicar of Dibley’ where Dawn French had to have six Christmas dinners because of some ludicrous mix-up with the invitations and not daring to offend anybody as vicar. At Blenheim they have footmen in private. The present Duke appeared in trackie bottoms and said they were a present from a relation when he’d been in jail. The other person Joshua’s had dinner with is Dr Christian. You can’t get into his flat for rococo furniture.

Genevieve Suzy’s Dog, Mackintosh, Waiting Outside the Ladies, Primrose Hill Park

Tuesday 17th February 2015

Some while ago the Gay Mother was rung up by the judge’s former wife; she was much preoccupied with hinges. Later in the day we went up the church to see what’s happening. The most frightful language was issuing from behind a screen where men were working on the West Entrance. We could see nothing. Soon the foreman emerged and was engaged in discussion by the Gay Mother re: the South door, which has to be pinned back against the wall so that the congregation can have in sight the small children playing in the new play-area to be established in the South Porch. ‘You can’t cut those hinges,’ I said. They are completely medieval and span the door’s width. It seems they can’t or won’t. They’ll put on other ones. But the Gay Mother’s thing in this church is the monuments. She had me scouring the visitors’ book to see if there are any more disparaging comments. Some visitors are furious, others overwhelmed by peace and love. In truth she’s not really so tuned in with Lady Marion about the hinges. We were mainly getting outraged in the chapel. She had me move some metal stands to the vestry which obscured the view but there was nothing we could do about a great bookcase dumped in front of General Elliot’s memorial which is by Bacon. The other Bacon piece also has a bookcase parked in front of it. The important tablet by Westmacott fortunately is unhindered.

Furniture Parked Before General Elliot’s Memorial by Bacon

Furniture Stored in Front of Important Monument by Bacon

The Monument to General Elliot by Bacon

The Monument to General Elliot by Bacon

The Other Monument by Bacon with Bookcase in Front

The Other Monument by Bacon

My Old School, Where, I, Adrian Edge, Began: Now a Res

Wednesday 11th February 2015

Quite a few things are improving, others are going backwards. I have my cleaning staff to thank for a marvellous innovation in the styling of my bed when I’m not in it. Always each morning I give 4 minutes min for manipulation of my Indian cut-work bedspread from a rare shop in Golborne Road. Perfectly maddening when you think you can go downstairs but, stepping back, it’s wonky. Some days it’s never right. Last week I came home after the cleaner had been. Look what I found! A completely new treatment of the raw, turned-down edge. I’m beginning to get the knack of doing it myself. Fingering fabric to get it to do what you want isn’t just a skill, it’s a mystic art of which few are possessed. Val is one of them.

Now lighting. As you know, I had LED lighting put in my hall and downstairs bathroom. It’s supposed to be more organic or something. My old lights needed changing anyway. The idea was that I’d get used to it. But I didn’t. Bruce MacBain, even, was at a loss. He sent me to a promising-sounding shop near Archway, but it was the same old story – there’s either cold LED light or warm. Naturally I’d already chosen warm. Who would want cold? Then suddenly there was a call from Bruce MacBain. He’d discovered Basis Lighting in Kentish Town. I was over like a shot. It’s thin men in polo-necks with Designer glasses. I had a consultation. They suggested I try a different lamp, the Osram Parathom. Well, it’s a whole world of difference. The mistake, they said at Basis, was going for warm. With LED you don’t want warm because warm means murky and dingy like an old-fashioned hanging light bulb. What you want is cold or at least not too warm.

Pricey though! £78 for six bulbs. And I’ve more to get. That’s the trouble with the LED. It never wears out. You’re stuck with it for life. So it’s got to be right.

On to my marmalade. Disappointing. It’s so important to catch it at the perfect moment of jellification. I used jam sugar with added pectin. In the past I’ve been traumatised by marmalade not setting. But now it’s too stiff – and a bit mealy. I should have used some jam sugar with added pectin mixed with normal sugar. I’ve toyed with throwing away all 36 jars and starting again, but really…

The Old Crude Styling of My Bedspread

The New Styling, First Done by My Cleaner

New Improved Styling of My Bedspread