Sunday 24th August 2014

I shopped with Laura Malcolm in Tuscany. ‘How about mashing a tin of Whiskers into the mayonnaise for Vitello Tonnato?’ she suggested. Instead of tuna fish, you see. I was to revise Vit Ton for Ferragosto, having done a dry run of it for Connor Cadeaux and Cesar Kaiser the week before, with Val on mayo. That was when I said I’d commit if the veal was hard. It wasn’t. But it could have been cooked for less time. Val looked pained as the revision was discussed. It emerged that he’d have preferred the slices placed flat and coated with mayo rather than upstanding. I grew snappy.

At the end of our shopping, Laura and I suddenly remembered to visit the Cinzano corner. A few days before I had been dispatched to get Extra Dry vermouth for a guinea fowl dish but could only find ‘Bianco’.  Although delicious to the inexperienced mouth, Laura was not satisfied with the result. There was no time to re-cook the fowl in Tuscany but it would have been too awful to know that a vital opportunity had been missed. We had to revisit the Cinzano corner to make absolutely sure that Extra Dry was not after all available.  Great Mercy and Merciful Forgiveness, it wasn’t.

Buoyant, we left the mart. Our first course was a revision of the courgettes cooked on Sunday. Oh, I forgot to say about the mint. Twice on visits over 10 days I asked in the mart for mint. They said, ‘Try Arezzo,’ about 20 miles away. Then on this visit the Mart Fruit and Veg manager approached me in person  – ‘Mente!’ he screamed and flung himself towards the chill cabinet. There it was! And, as a visiting Tuscanite I’d been remembered by the Mart Fruit and Veg manager! Also it meant we could re-visit the courgette recipe which on Sunday had had to be done without mint as well as with not the best courgettes.

So now at last everything was going to be right. I lingered over the vitello as it simmered. Anna del Conte says, ‘About an hour.’ Helpful. After 55 minutes it was still running pink when poked. I was sure it wasn’t supposed to be pink. I ran it another seven minutes. Then Laura Malcolm came by and said, ‘Surely it should be pink.’ Well, perhaps it would have been all right when first poked, or after a further 3 minutes instead of 7. It was quite all right as it was, but perhaps just a little less cooked… But for me it was the final flourish of Vitello Tonnato, eaten on the correct day of Ferragosto itself, for this year in Italy.

Revisions will have to wait for another year.

At the Ferra dinner we discussed hulk injuries. A hulk, if you recall, is the correct term for the traditional two-part Italian expresso machine you heat on the stove. We wondered what statistics lay down for our guidance as to the number of hulk-related injuries occurring every year. They blow up, you know, or splatter the curious who lift the lid prematurely to see what’s going on in the upper chamber. Matt Driver was informative, on a related topic, as to the harm done to humans by cafetieres in the Fulham neighbourhood.

So ends Tuscany for another year. We left Tuscany last Saturday morning for the very last time this August after 14 very happy days. We are glad to say we left it in a much better state than we found it.

My Second Vitello Tonnato: I Did do it Flat After All. Taken on Ferragosto Itself in Tuscany

The Courgettes with Mint, Also Revised from the Previous Sunday, and Re-cooked for Ferra in Tuscany

The Right Cinzano At Last Found in Waitrose London with Plans for Revising the Guinea Fowl Recipe

Saturday 23rd August 2014

We never lit a pizza oven in Tuscany in the old days. In recent times, Angus Willis, international food stylist, writer and chef, now King of Hastings, his Home Store dining facility visited by Sir Bobland Geldof, Angus Willis has been with in Tuscany at the villa and fearless with a wood-burning oven. Last year he achieved a temperature of 400 degrees with ease.

So we thought we’d launch out and try to get a pizza oven going at the villa without the aid of one of the most experienced wood-burning-oven experts alive today (Angus began at Carlucci’s in the 80s). It was a drive for new experiences in later life. Naturally Commander Jonny Webber was i/c fire-lighting. He was ‘up’ with Twirly Godfrey and Val and is now under-cover. So our pizza oven was lit by one with inside knowledge of the Ukraine from looking at heat-sourcing maps, deep, deep underground. Commander Jonny throbs at the heart of our Nation like Lord Arrowby.

He consulted Youtube and followed procedure. Laura Malcolm was dough-mistress in the kitchen. She planned River Cafe pizzas with treviso and pancetta. There was marvellous rising of the dough. Flames licked from the pizza oven meanwhile then died down correctly. What could be more promising? We were going to make pizza without Angus Willis. A small hitch occurred when the first attempt stuck to the paddle and could not be released into the oven. But Laura bucked at once with a stiffer dough and soon an item was sitting in the oven and apparently cooking. There was some anxious peering but after ten minutes it was to be done.

Poor Little Rich Gays hummed at the oven door. Ten minutes was not quite enough. Nor was fifteen. Some Poor Little Rich Gays suddenly announced that they’d been harbouring no confidence in the pizza oven from the start. After twenty minutes, Laura Malcolm herself was elsewhere. Suddenly the pizza oven was over. Commander Jonny Webber said it was too big. A much bigger fire was called for. In the kitchen, it turned out, Laura Malcolm  had already got the indoor oven on. ‘Oven-dried pizza,’ she declared, ‘isn’t the idea’.

Poor Little Rich Gays were joyous in defeat. With joyful abandon we abandoned the project and took the ordinary oven version. There was some calibrating type of talk while consuming as to the exact improvement the wood-burning oven might have brought. Matt Driver didn’t like the bitter Treviso on the pizza but was roundly condemned. For me, Adrian Edge, it occurred to me with some force that as an only child from a certain background the family pizza evening was not familiar.

Do not despair – we’ll light a pizza oven in Tuscany before our days are done.

The Pizza in the Pizza Oven – Looking Lost

The PIzza as It Came out of the Pizza Oven

The Mary-Berry-Type Claw of me, Adrian Edge, Lifting the Oven-Dried Pizza

Wednesday 20th August 2014

Last Wednesday we came once again to Cortona, across the plain from Lucignano. Cortona has been threaded through the years of Tuscany. Here in ’83, Robert Nevil was required to park the handbrake-less vehicle in the vertical street and wench that same car up the dirt track to one of the early Tuscan villas at the back of Cortona, passing another residence on the way which later turned out to have associations with Blanche Spain herself. So a different web was forming. Germaine was nearby too but never known. On the ’83 visit, Anthony Mottram and I were not on speakers at all, possibly because of the pasta-pie which took days to make and had to be cut with a power-tool when complete. Robert Nevil was the conduit for communication. The next year, Val was of the party along with Twirly Godfrey, who later became a theatre critic, and his wife, Misty. They’d all been ‘up’ together. Twirly did imitations behind his back of the way Val subjected the pieces of bread at breakfast to ferocious inspection before flinging them back in the basket. Misty bought oven-ware for a few lire in a desperate bid for domesticity but there was never any hope of getting it back unbroken even to the villa.  Twirly departed every cafe at least 70% water-marks from where, in the toilette, he’d attempted to clean the latest spillage.

Now by another thread in the web, it just so happened that Commander Jonny Webber,  these days a friend of Prince Dmitri’s through a swimming bath connection but also ‘up’ with but only remotely known to Val and Twirly, was of the villa-party last week. So imagine the thrill of being able to show him, in Cortona, one of the cafes where Twirly poured his drink over himself.

Cortona was not seen again until ’94 or so. At the St Michele Hotel (4-star and so cheap in those days) the great ‘It isn’t hot anyway!’ incident took place in the vast empty dining room. The ancient breakfast maid dropped an entire tray of coffee etc. Middle-class English lady and husband, only other breakfasters, were so concerned maid might have scalded herself. ‘It isn’t hot anyway!’ the Gay Mother shouted across the room. Here also the Gay Mother took the lamb cutlets at La Grotta restaurant the like of which we have been in quest of ever since. This lack, plus the lack of really hot drinks, have plagued the Gay Mother’s life.

When first known, Cortona was a rustic town of great charm. Now it is full of horrible art galleries and tourist shops. But if you look up, it’s just the same. La Loggetta, the restaurant we seemed to be able to afford in student days, is still there and still the best. Thirty years ago, travelling down to Tuscany by train, I explained to Laura Malcolm how Anthony Mottram evolved the idea that the Queen’s handbag contained an incinerator and if you looked carefully you could often see a thin plume of smoke trailing out of it. ‘A bit mysog,’ I said to cheer her up. ‘What an outfit being injected into Tuscany,’ she said.

La Grotta Restaurant, Cortona, where the Gay Mother took the Ideal Lamb Cutlets in the Early 90s

In Fact it’s Still Called ‘La Loggetta’. Cortona’s Top Restaurant Which We Penetrated in Student Days Even

The Very Cafe Where Twirly Godfrey Spilled His Drink Over His Person

Cortona Today at Eye Level

But If you Look Up, Just the Same

Friday 15th August 2014

Today is Ferragosto or Ferra or Ferragamo, if Val is to be believed in continuing bulletins as the Titular Abbess of Aleppo. The novices, Antonia and Nigella, are coming along very well doctrinally, by the way.

On Wednesday we visited Florence privately. Prince Dmitri’s friend, Carolina Bellinegozi, until recently in charge of all the shops of a certain designer in Europe except Regent Street, met us at the Impruneta exit of the Strada. We were escorted into Firry and passed a sign saying ‘All You Can Eat Diner’ in English. At once Laura Malcolm texted from the other car recalling the Toby Carvery at Buckhurst Hill, Essex, whose 6pm-on-a-Monday Happy Hour was so beloved of her mother’s late bridesmaid.  Our first halt was a secret viewpoint for the ancient walls of Florence never seen before by me, and the sloping gardens coming right into the city, also San Miniato where Cousin Teddy and Cousin Lunetta’s grandfather is buried. So redolent. We probed further the English connection with Tuscany and Florence at its centre. From there, we drove on to the station car park (fearsome heat) and went straight to the roof-top of the Hotel Minerva, right by Santa Maria Novella, for exclusive views. This hotel, the Hotel Minerva, was one of the 4-stars we weren’t staying in when I first visited Firry with the Gay Mother and Father and Aunt Olive in 1973.  I spent many hours outside it peering in, longing for a more international life.

Over lunch at a new fish restaurant by the station which Carolina had personally selected, Val’s bulletins from the Abbey became more concerning. Sister Dymphna was launched on making her own pici, the adored Tuscan speciality pasta which nearly destroyed Val’s digestion for good after he took it in the villa and about which he became increasingly bitter while still here.  Then the Abbey pici were finished. They were like old rope. At lunch Sister Tobira’s teeth were undone by the pasta. She was heard to curse and take the Lord’s name in vain, so terrible in a nun. Val himself was fast descending into fury. ‘You’re on that phone the entire time,’ he screeched electronically. It was time to cease to read but the first line of the next instalment was unavoidable: ‘Compared to me, you’re ESN.’ If you don’t know, that means, ‘Educationally Sub-Normal’, a term no longer in use.

Bottarga featured at lunch. Have you ever tried it? Challenging? Also octopus. Laura and Matt were thrilled with the lunch. Laura had Carolina’s sons at her end and they loved her and could suddenly speak English. They like football and meat. With me, they froze. On the Minerva rooftop though, Laura and I had managed to explain in Italian, not English, to these ragazzi that Laura has two sons but one daughter, who came last and is a blessing because able to undertake maiding work and ideal for trying out clothes, hair and make-up. They seemed to grasp this very well.

On the way to Santa Maria Novella after lunch, where we were to make an Art Visit, I suddenly had a brain-wave re: Val. He’d mentioned while here that there was something v. special to see at Santa MN but what? Why not just call him and sweep aside all the cruelty about the pici? So I did that. He answered, in a manner of speaking. There was much duchessy warbling but finally he managed to annunciate: Uccello: The Flood. I chirruped for the required amount of time on the line from Firry then came alive. The one thing I wanted to do was to see Uccello’s The Flood at Santa Maria Novella. Uccello, if you don’t know, is an important old painter. Val had informed previously that Uccello grasped perspective whereas Piero della Francesca, whose Storia della Vera Croce I took him to see last week at Arezzo, did not . We surged into the Church, ecstatic with purpose.Where was the Uccello? I decided to delay the great moment, skirmishing with the Church’s other treasures first. Very nice but not Uccello. No sign of a promised Botticelli Nativity. The leaflet hopeless, not mentioning the Bronzino but referring to a Botti Nat not to be found. At last, by now drooling, craving, tortured for the Uccello, I entered the Cloister where it was. All the way round I went. The works were marked, one after the other, ‘Unknown Florentine Artist’.  Then there were three blank spaces and beneath a sign ‘Paulo Uccello: Il Deluge: In Restauro’.

So that was that. Back to the quest for the Bott Nat. There is a magnificent cycle of The Life of Virgin by Ghirlandio behind the altar but I didn’t fancy it.  I hunted high and low in that church for Botticelli’s Nativity. Could some interfering flower-arranging ladies have put it away in a cupboard? At last, at last, behind a glass case – well, it was a Nativity. But could it be by Botticelli? What do you think?

So we left Santa Maria Novella. In my early days in Firry, in the 80s with Anthony Mottram, with whom I made a world for 43 years, we thought it full of boiling primmys – that’s primitive paintings only fit for boiling rather than roasting. Not the best. Now, after 35 years of visiting Firry, Santa SM has offered up its treasure or will do soon – when the Uccello is back.

Leaving  on foot, Laura first of all wanted to hang around to see some nuns going through a door. Then she espied a figure: ‘Is that not,’ she cried, ‘the Titular Abbess of Aleppo elle-meme.’

Private View of Firry – Why So Loved of the English? Does Firry Recall an English Cathedral City

Firry – as an English Cathedral City?

This Section of the Facade of Santa Maria Novella is by Alberti: Seen Privately from the Roof Garden of the Hotel Minerva, Firry

The Ghirlandaio Life of the Virgin at Santa Maria Novella: Not Sure Who this Blue Figure is But Much Post-Carded

Santa Maria Novella: A True Boiling Primmy: Not the Best

Is this the Santa Maria Novella Nativity by Botticelli? Let the Public Decide

The Titular Abbess of Aleppo (Possibly) Sampling Perfume at Santa Maria Novella

Tuesday 12th August 2014

I survived the Vitello Tonnato. The veal wasn’t hard and dry. I didn’t have to commit. Nevertheless, it should have been cooked for less time and on Friday which is Ferragosto (or Ferragamo, as Val, emailing as the Titular Abbess of Aleppo, puts it) I will repeat a Vit Ton as it’s traditional for Ferra – this time getting it completely right.

On Sunday night, I led a small party, i.e. Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver, to Muriel Spark’s grave. We spent a few quiet moments there, meditating upon Death. Muriel in Death was somewhat pushed aside on this occasion. Laura and Matt were rather more taken with those who had died young in tractor accidents as described on their tombs. In the drama of the graveyard, Muriel didn’t quite win. Afterwards we looked at the little village nearby and wondered how you might fit in a swimming pool were one to buy a property there. Then we meditated on Tuscany itself and how nowhere else in Italy, however lovely, will exactly do – for me at least. Laura has condemned the butter of Tuscany as ‘quite dreadful’ and Matt has condemned the bread but to me these items are the essence of  the hard, pared-down, bare life of Tuscany, so beloved of the English through the generations and me since 1975.

I omitted to mention that Connor Cadaux, of the Australian Poor Little Rich Gays, and Cesar Kaiser were here last week for four nights. Cesar Kaiser immediately set out to destroy me. ‘Why do you write your blog? Nobody reads it,’ he said.  ‘It’s not Coronation Street,’ I explained, indicating his favourite prog,  ‘it’s my monument in my lifetime.’ They have recently married and are now given over entirely to high-minded sight-seeing, including Etruscan remains. This is a new walk of life, different from the highways and by-ways of all-night Vauxhall.

I will not be destroyed.

There’s also the question of Val and the pici – which is an adored Tuscan speciality pasta. But more of that later.

Muriel Spark, Lost in the Drama of her Own Graveyard

Muriel Spark’s Grave’s Flowers – Not the Best

The View from Oliveto, the Village of Muriel Spark’s Grave – Pure, Pure Tuscany

Oliveto, Muriel Spark’s Grave’s Village

Monday 11th August 2014

Such a packed programme – we’re to move in Firry society (that’s Florence) on Wednesday for a fish lunch. Laura Malcolm has arrived in the villa and is singing from The Sound of Music in the villa computer room. We haven’t got near any outlet shops and might have to get up in the night to fit in an extra dinner we’ve so many menus planned.

Several advances in depth of understanding of tomatoes have taken place. More later.

Laura was so thrilled with the low price of parsley in the Co-op she went back for more. We’re also stock-piling the fabulous smacchio tutti (all-purpose stain remover) only available at the Co-op.

Val has regained our Northern fastness and beloved homeland, and is now emailing as the Titular Abbess of Aleppo. There was much discussion around the pool yesterday as to what a Titular Abbess might be. Laura thought it would be one with tits. Anyway, news from the Abbey is that Sister Simonia has become a Papal Count IN HER OWN RIGHT. Nobody is quite sure what to call her. One of the other nuns is authoring a motet which recalls the Embalmers’Chorus from ‘Aida’. I fear Val is at the ‘life-and-soul-of-the-party’ stage as he re-embraces the bottle.

What is worrying is that grapes have given me most pleasure today – and Laura too. We’ve decided to live separately from the men in the villa,especially while they engage in lively debate about national security after red wine. The black grapes with a bloom came into the Co-op today. I knew they were the ones to buy – and I was right. So delicious with a perfumed taste. And only a few euros in price.

Last week we went to Monte Oliveto. Do you know it? There’s a fresco cycle there by Il Sodoma of the life of St Benedict. I can’t tell you the pleasure we had! Such delight in his light, free style with paint. And there’s not even an entrance fee. One of the scenes showed how St Benedict cured a monk who had fallen out of the monastery. I did wonder how often a monk falls out of a monastery. In another some bad women visited and were either converted or caused temptation.

I was going to say how rare it is that a cycle is complete and any good. This cycle is absolutely complete; every niche in the cloister is filled.  For ages, I’ve longed to tell you how I went to the Ducal Palace at Sassuolo near Modena in May on Dainty Lady TV business . There 27 rooms had been frescoed quite relentlessly in the 17th century. One room rather appealed because its theme was men who had been made foolish by love – such as Sampson. If only they’d got in somebody good  to do the painting though, the place would have been one of the wonders of the world. Sadly only the mediocre complete – or so I thought. At Monte Oliveto last week my theory seemed exploded. But now I read Il Sodoma didn’t  do all the painting there. The cycle was begun by Signorelli.

Some Peasants are Made Radiant by St Benedict

St Benedict in Youth in Bikini

St Benedict in Bikini: Detail

Can’t Remember What this One is But Frockage Fab

Lovely Way of Doing Landscape

Some Bad Women Came to the Monastery

This One Lost His Trews for Some Reason

I Like This Colour Scheme: Very Casa Pupo But Nice

Hairnets

Ducal Palace at Sassuolo near Modena: If Only They’d Got in a Good Painter

Ducal Palace at Sassuolo near Modena: Only the Mediocre Complete

Friday 8th August 2014

I will commit if the veal for the vitello tonnato is hard. This may be the last you’ll hear from me for some time.

Would Italy ever see Val again? Only ten days ago he was lost. But he has been here all week and tomorrow returns to our Northern Capital from the South. Prince Dmitri bought a priest calendar in Siena today. Each month is a new priest. It has been one of those glorious days of high summer, a hard, dry, absolutely consistent heat. We lunched in Siena, quite well and then had ice cream at Nannini’s. All very slimming.

Val is concerned with St Veronica’s towel, and the difficulty of knowing what kind of towel it was – whether  tea, bath or beach. At dinner on Tuesday he recalled Mother’s Pride, which was the housewife’s favourite sliced bread in the 1960s. ‘Steam-baked?’ I suggested, as we probed its horror. ‘Yes,’ Val declared, ‘by the Chorley Wood method, not to be confused, of course, with the Bretton Woods Method.’ This last, if you don’t know, is the system of monetary exchange between great nations established in 1944.

It is clear that Val must execute a fresco cycle of his own life on returning to London. ‘Val passing the mantle of camp moments with Joan Crawford to St Catherine of Siena’ will be one scene, to echo the great depiction of ‘Schubert handing the mantle of Classic Song to Brahms’. Val and Prince Dmitri have been poring over Joan Crawford’s first ever TV interview, where she says that you could call a young actor ‘ a lovely boy …. but it wouldn’t be nice.’  Another set piece will be the ducks re-materialising from the air after Val’s 25th birthday. That was because, after boning so many ducks for Duck Galantine and then boiling down their bones for the glaze, the duck aroma was so intense and essential in his flatti that he who was later to become a theatre critic for a national newspaper said that surely the birds would re-form from the air.

Otherwise, Val’s Italian has been as well-laundered but more operatic than the Queen’s French. The big disappointment though was that when the cleaner mimed ‘Is anyone asleep upstairs? (i.e. Can I fling a cloth about?) Val had esprit d’escalier and failed to respond ‘Nessun Dorma.’ Ever since he has been trying to work in opera phrases at every opp.

I’ll Commit if It’s Hard: The Veal for the Vit Ton. Val says, ‘The Veal’s Your Problem’. He’s i/c the Ton Sauce Which Has Been Declared Supreme by Him 

Priest Calendar: This is Monsieur February 

Priest Calendar: Holy Boy: Crikey

Priest Calendar: April’s Pleasure 

Thursday 7th August 2014

Prince Dmitri and Val are in the loggia disputing the True Cross. The Prince does not believe that it was taken from an apple tree in the Garden of Eden. Val says in his childhood church was a piece of it, so there. Yesterday we went to Arezzo to view the cycle of frescoes of Piero della Francesca on this very subject – as we do every year. Val thought the faces were best and that the battle scene lacked movement. I’d like to know more about Piero but doubt  I ever will now owing to weakening powers and many commitments. Last night I was explaining to the villa guests how to do clothes properly: three weeks perched on a gilt chair at the Collections, another three weeks selecting key pieces and a final three weeks fitting and accessorising. So that’s nine weeks twice a year, leaving only thirty-four weeks for cuisine, decor, gardening and hair.

The cleaner came into the drawing room just as Val, in the manner of Dame Edith Evans, was reaching the climatic moment in Hayfever when they re-inact Love’s Whirlwind: ‘What! Dead and never called me “Mother”‘… Later we did visit Muriel Spark’s Grave. But Val didn’t wear the self-made white linen jacket with Grenadan tea-towel trimming. The grave was looking older than when I last visited it and a bit worn out.

I know you’ll be wanting to get a feel for this villa, which is a new one, not taken before. It is low-lying, in woods; no other houses in view and the auto-strada, although less than a mile away (even worse than at Massivebury, the loathed Robin Smallmeal country seat, later pulled down and heaped in a pit, where the beloved M4 roared by and the Multis would always go to the attic floor to get the beauty of it loudest) can’t be heard at all. The restoration is much improved on previous villas – old wood and nice terracotta floors have been retained. The villa is a Hermitage, like the one in St Petersburg.

The Villa Cucina, Out of Which One Never Is

Woods Surround the Villa, Which is In Fact a Hermitage

The Villa Grounds

The Upstairs Loggia, Not Graced

Val’s Self-Made White Linen Jacket with Grenadan Tea-Towel Trimming: Fully Washable in Water

Val’s Self-Made White Linen Jacket with Grenedan Tea-Towel Trimming

Muriel Spark’s Grave: Not as Fresh as It Was

Wednesday 6th August 2014

Frantic in Tuscany! Not a moment to spare from the cooking and the visits.

Val did board. It was a miracle boarding. Not days before he was raving and up to his neck in refreshments.

Now he is singing Catholic hymns with Prince Dimtri (who isn’t Dox, as you might expect) in the Tuscan loggia, before undertaking fine sewing by the pool.  Connor Cadeux and Cesar Kaiser have also gained and now our party is complete until Saturday.

Val’s made a white linen jacket trimmed with a Grenedan tea-towel. He was finishing it off by the pool. I said to him: ‘There are a number of things you can do in Tuscany. You can visit Muriel  Spark’s grave, you can visit Muriel Spark’s grave or you can visit Muriel Spark’s grave.’

Val thinks the white linen jacket trimmed with a Grenedan tea-towel might be just the thing for visiting Muriel Spark’s grave. But the lack of a sleeve iron in the villa laundry room!

Come back later for more! Rushing to the next engagement. Frantic in Tuscany!

Val in Muriel-Spark-Grave-Visiting Self-Made Jacket Trimmed with a Grenadan Tea-Towel

Sunday 3rd August 2014

Eddie Sedgewick, that great maverick and self-invention, who was at school with Robert Nevil, took 60 years last Sunday. Rather, aided by frockage and alignment of the will,  he flung 60 years from him and carried on as before.  He’s not changed in the 38 years I’ve known him, not one bit.  It’s more than likely that he’s changed very little in 60 years, apart from the interlude of being a baby.

For his birthday function he was dressed as he would have been in the Sixties in purple drain-pipes and a Bridget Riley shirt. I gained the function direct from Normandy. Ronnie Ronnie, the cabaret artist, was already featuring substantially in hippie garb with a huge imitation drug joint. ‘It’s the first time,’ he said, ‘that I’ve worn a costume from a time I can myself remember.’ What does it mean when one has become one’s own costume? Other names present were Simpson Passmore, the MP for Whirly and Lorraine, Eddie’s live-in, although naturally Eddie’s not there all the time, Lionel Moore, now 95, and Robert Nevil, who rocked up late in embroidered muslim draperies to suggest the cheesecloth of the 60s, now no longer obtainable, thank the Lord.

We sat down to a delightful Italian buffet. Mercifully could sit down. Ronnie Ronnie’s buying an old Presbytery in northern France (extraordinary development). Its village is crowded with incident. There’s a clog museum and a taxidermist. The great event was in 1905, when  the church tower was struck by a balloon . He was much questioned about his hair which was worn very long and very blond for the occasion, like John Lennon after he went to the bad (although not blond). ‘It’s all my own,’ Ronnie said. ‘I can show you the receipt.’ Someone asked Lionel Moore if he’d ever known Marlene. No, but he’d once conveyed a cake baked by Marlene from Manchester to Marlene’s daughter. Marlene loved the domestic arts, especially scrubbing floors, so naturally she baked a cake for her daughter.  Her intimate friend, the vendeuse at Balmain, was to ensure its delivery, it would seem. Whether the vendeuse wandered aimlessly in northern towns looking for someone to take a cake baked by Marlene to Marlene’s daughter in Hampstead, I don’t know. Such luck, though, that she happened upon Lionel, who was able to champion the cake for London.

What conversation! You can imagine I was in Heaven. Then came the speeches. Robert Nevil rose to his tiny but exquisitely formed feet. Now, he’s been in the doghouse recently after refusing my offer of a completely free week in Tuscany because he simply must attend Mrs Westmacott’s Lectures on the Impact of Buddhism on Norfolk January 1805 to March 1810 (this is as far as she’s got, I assume). But, as it’s turned out, Val boarded for Tuscany, de-bottled and boarded. So there wouldn’t have been a free week in Tuscany.

I digress – Robert Nevil rose to his feet at his oldest friend, Eddie Sedgewick’s 60th birthday. What would he say? Would he break down? (unlikely) Well, Robert Nevil was a sensation. I couldn’t have loved it more. He said, Down with marriage, up with Friendship. Friendship, friendship, friendship’s the thing… How the occasion was falling perfectly into shape. It only remained for Eddie himself to read his own poem – veer not from Now, but screw the courage to step back enough to see it. New friends, he said, as well as old. New, new, new.

Thrilling.

Ronnie Ronnie Trifles with Illegal Substances at Eddie Sedgewick’s 60th Birthday Function

The New! A New Friend at Eddie Sedgewick’s 60th Birthday Function

Eddie Sedgewick: Not Changed One Bit in 60 Years