Friday 27th June 2014

Merle Barr, formerly Head of Children, said, ‘Let’s go to Wimbledon.’ So we did. No tickets. I did the ballot again this year. Nothing. On Wednesday I dined with some Gays. One had debenture seats from his Gran and another was going to the Centre Court Thursday. But I was having a breakdown waiting for a bus near Wimbledon station. Finally we gained Car Park 10 and The Queue.  To have sunk so low; the only resort was staging loud conversation about one’s tax situation. The queue was about three miles long. But it began to move. The attendants were quite encouraging and nice, as well as middle class. We ploughed along, talking about the Groucho Club. The boy behind was from Uni of Portsmouth according to his polo shirt. I noticed a certain level amongst the queuers. Perhaps they played tennis themselves. Would you believe it, within 1 1/2 hours we were in the ground? Straight up Murry Mound, picking around picnickers, to the Returns booth for the Show Courts. We gambled on the queue for No 1 Court as the shortest and fastest moving. But when we got to the very head of it, Sharapova won her match and the attendants said it might rain. Referee’s office were holding on a decision as to whether to put a fresh match on No 1 court. We began to get caught up in the drama of it all. Attendants were all retired businessmen. Rather marvellous. Decisive but polite. Fearsome frockage. Bombarded constantly by half-wits wanting to know how long matches would last, which queue for which show court they should join. 12 hours of this apparently; they do a 12-hour shift. Another Major-type steward was blowing up a boy for kicking his ball into the queue. People were getting return tickets for the Centre Court for £10. They were going to see Federer. The miracle of it made one of the great moments in their lives, you could tell. Look of utter wonder on their faces. They’d gambled on the queue for Centre Court returns and won. Off they lunged to get in. Meanwhile queue for Court No 1 still stalled. The Met Office itself was advising the Referee’s office. At 7, Merle said we should cut our losses. Spots of rain could surely be ignored. Skies were clearing in my opinion. We found a match on Court 18. Two huge men were opposed. ‘We must see at least two strokes of tennis,’ Merle said. Which we did. But I made her forge on to Court 11 where Boris Becker was playing. On the way, Roger Federer flashed by at the end of a corridor, coming off the Centre Court because they were shutting the roof. When we got to Court 11, the match had just finished. We took a Ladies’ Doubles instead. The Japanese umpire got off her ladder to feel the court for rain but play continued. One and a half points later she changed her mind and declared full rain although it wasn’t quite. Merle wanted to go back to the whippy, slamy men’s match. She’d rather never have left it. But by now it was bucketing down. We took refuge underneath the Centre Court. Awful cement bunker. After toilets, though, developments. I found that you could glimpse, by peering up a staircase, you could actually see into the eaves of the very Centre Court itself. Much carry-on in the bunker. More of the wondrous drama, the life-long quest to get in. Some were begging tickets directly from people leaving. There was jolliness with the guards as well. A young man in a good pink jumper seemed to think they would simply admit him, ticketless. Some small boys were waiting with balls. Apparently they would be allowed in at the end to get the balls autographed. We engaged with the guards. Everyone was having such a good time, especially the people doing jobs. Finally, it seemed they would let us into the stands at change of ends, just to peek and take graphs. But would it really happen? We hung about. This bunker was seething with life. Troops of linespeople passed by. Press persons. Best not to catch the eye of the guard too much. Mustn’t pester. But suddenly we were beckoned. Up the stairs and there it was. The Centre Court. All my life seen on TV every summer from the days of Billie Jean and Margaret Court, in black and white. In fact, not like itself at all, not just because the roof was over – a vast cavern, with stands reaching up into the darkness under the eaves, overwhelmingly dark green, a great plateau in the middle with a slumped figure sitting on a chair. That was Federer looking like himself.

After this triumph we went home. On the District Line two out-of-town ladies were saying how much they’d enjoyed the Queue – such chats and camaraderie. Merle Barr had to address me through them because we were separated owing to crowds. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, in Greatness, to the ladies, ‘I’m talking through you.’ When they got off at Earlsy Courtsy, they said, ‘Well, Adrian, now you’ll be able to sit next to your wife.’ I have to say I was wearing my Balenciaga cardy.

But it was a perfect day, and I ended up with a wife.

I Joined the Queue at Wimbledon: Have Never Sunk So Low

Linesman on Outside Court: Nice

We See Federer!

The Players’ Entrance to the Centre Court, Easy to See From Outside

Underneath the Centre Court: Good Pink Jumper Hoped to Persuade Guards to Admit Him

Finally, After A Lifetime, I Gain the Centre Court: Federer Resting

My View of Wimbledon 2014

More Fashion and Looks Beneath the Centre Court

Yes But It Rained Later: Balenciaga Background

Wednesday 25th June 2014

You remember the Queen sent me her Cookbook? Well, the latest plan is to invite her to my home where I will offer her her own dishes, cooked by me. This will make a feature for Dainty Lady TV. No doubt we will chat about cooking obstacles and presentational challenges.

I do hope she can come. The deadline is Wednesday week. How will I manage Crown of Asparagus with Crab and Mango or Cutlets Windsor with Sauce Paloise or Langoustines Lossiemouth? Everything must be served on Sevres and crystal should ideally have been a present from the King of the Belgians in 1854.

Never have I felt more poignantly the true role of Royalty – to be the rock to which one clings in tempestuous waters. I haven’t even got all the shops covered for the Sales.

This is the Standard of Style I have to Achieve for the Royal Dinner

This is How My Table Must Look for the Royal Dinner

Have I got Ware of this Standard for the Royal Dinner?

A Simple Look – I Must Achieve This for My Royal Dinner

Monday 23rd June 2014

All the way on the bus to Tottenham (the National Gardens Scheme Garden Party was to be held at the Broadwater Farm Community Centre), Royston King and I regaled the other passengers with inside information about the Royal Family: the condition of the Duke of Edinburgh’s prostate, how the Queen lost an earring on the staircase in Northern Ireland, how the maid came in while she was talking to the Secretary of State and said, ‘Your bath is drawn, M’m’, how Royston, leaving the Royal plane in the Caribbean in the 90s, to get ahead to take pictures of her disembarking, brushed against a curtain and revealed the Majesty of England standing like a statute behind it, preparing to resume her Majesty.

Then we gained Tottenham for the Garden Party. I was invited as one who had opened his garden under the National Gardens Scheme, Royston because he had given millions for the improvement of the place where the party was happening. Royston had been lunching with Princess Anne in the City and before that visiting Epping Forest with the Lord Mayor of London. We walked through Tottenham to the Broadwater Farm Estate, the scene of riots and the death of PC Keith Blakelock.  Royston showed that Tottenham is full of history and we stopped to compliment an Iraqi man on his geraniums. I was wearing a pale grey suit by Zara with a black trim and an embroidered scarf. We saw Robert the Bruce’s English residence. Royston had had a hedge lowered in the park to lessen the barriers between difference races, one race very much using the football pitch behind the hedge, and other races not. Then we gained the Garden Party in the Community Centre. With Royston, one forges straight to the top, thus the Chair of the National Gardens Scheme. ‘You really ought to be a Dame,’ Royston said and they were heads together to see about it.

It was  a charming party with Caribbean chicken thighs and spicy vegetable wedges. We saw some Gays and they saw us. Royston is highly visible, not least for being Black and always mentioning it and other things such as What’s a typical Black surname?  in a voice that carries some miles. Royston said, ‘I’d probably have got the ginger one.’ But we were leaving anyway to inspect some flower beds that he’d given millions for. ‘My legacy,’ Royston declared. So we never knew whether the really bronzed Gay, as opposed to the ginger, would have been any fun.

The flower beds were lacking. Everything was dead, owing to water-logging. If alive, in the wrong place, such as half a hedge of raggedy santolina that petered out. Awful wasteful planting of trees right next to other trees. Really utter moronism. Royston said he’d see what he could do but really Tottenham must help itself more. How many more millions?

The Park at Broadwater Farm is impressive. Lots of sky and air, some interesting features, such as a learning-to-drive facility from the 50s. The actual estate, where riots and death occurred, could be conceived as a modern mansion lived in by one family and then everyone would love it and it would be one of the wonders of north London.

Robert the Bruce’s English Residence at Tottenham, as Remodelled in the 17th Century

The Park at Broadwater Farm Estate, Tottenham

The Broadwater Farm Estate in its Park: Think of it as a Mansion

The Broadwater Farm Estate, Seen in its Park.

Wednesday 18th June 2014

On Sunday 8th June my garden was opened to the public. I open with neighbours in a group. Some of my friends visited the other gardens and said they were all Gay.

Beforehand I gave a scratch lunch: I did a white bean and salami salad with roasted fennel and toasted fennel seeds. The salmon was wrapped tightly in clingfilm with herbs and two leaves of leaf gelatine in between the fillets, tied with string, re-wrapped in a tea-towel and also tied, poached in simmering water for 4 minutes then left to cool. I didn’t like the result. There was also a chicken salad. I spent much of the previous week discussing with Angus Willis the exact cooking of chicken and salmon to avoid a hard, dry result, the bane of the summer Cold Table. He thought: chicken – try poaching for 30 mins then leaving to cool. This was just a little too long, even for a big bird. The clingfilm method for salmon was Angus’s suggestion. The trouble is it produces a soft salmon which is much treasured in some circles but you get the jelly all around it from the two leaves of gelatine inserted between the fillets – as if by magic.

The pudding was an apricot fool. The salami and bean salad rendered the collation incoherent.

Nine lunched. Robert Nevil and Joshua Baring talked amongst themselves in a nasty way about Kernow Hellizon, against whom I will not hear a word said. His latest novel is everything a book should be: short, light, exquisite, silly and terrifying. Other guests included Aunt Lavinia, Ned Czernowski and Peter Achraya, Bruce MacBain, Genevieve Suzy, her husband, Mr Lord Suzy and their daughter, Allegorica – who found a dead fairy in the garden.

At 2pm the public arrived in droves. Lord Arrowby threatened to scratch owing to illness but dragged himself in. The public were bowled over by his sex appeal. ‘I looked in your main room too,’ one of the visitors said. ‘I really did. I looked in.’ For three and half hours I received the Public, while Lord Arrowby manned (yes, a real buck) the queue in the street, Bruce MacBain sold the tickets, and Peter Achraya, Ned Czernowski and Genevieve Suzy, with Robert Nevil entertained the public as they waited.  What a line-up of Talent! Can you imagine my gratitude and how jaw-on-the-ground the Public were? At the very end, Genevieve produced Rose Prince to collect her for departure. Rose Prince is someone.

The afternoon raised over £1000. I wore jodphur-type jeans by Zara in putty-grey and a Balenciaga top in black with banding. The public were not openly hostile. I hope, upon reflection, they will find their lives changed forever.

The Salmon Bandaged as Instructed by Angus Willis, One of the World’s Leading Stylists and Foodists

The Salmon After Cooking: Jelly Magicks Around It

My Garden as Seen by the Public: Many were Never the Same Again

My Garden as Seen by the Public

Wednesday 17th June 2014

Shirley Conran gave a party in the Aston Martin garage in Park Lane to launch her new Maths App, aimed mainly at girls but also those struggling with Maths in the teen years or at any age. She couldn’t have been more charming or more admirable. Genevieve Suzy and I were greeted as if already known but she was engagingly vague and much preoccupied with some missing leaflets although more than willing to talk to anyone were there but the time. Really it might have been a village function except it was Shirley Conran in Park Lane. But she’s been beavering away all these years, not too well, at less glamorous projects, trying to help. In her speech she thanked the Managing Director of Aston Martin for loan of the garage and said he’d given her his book, the history of Aston Martin. She’d thought it would be dull as ditch but loved it and read at one sitting. It was 8pm before she’d finished – which suggests she was under-functioned, for that day at least. And who was going to do her dinner? Such an inspiring story even for the non-car-ist.

Genevieve and I met Mrs Alencar, Shirley’s sister. She was in a superb cream coat, by Jasper ‘of course’ as was everything, including her husband who was exhibited in Jasper. She couldn’t have been more charming. ‘I’ll leave you to enjoy yourselves,’ she said as she graciously moved on.

Anne Robinson! Anne Robinson was glimpsed. She is now a solid block of terracotta from which face carved. Absolutely marvellous. Blouse and skirt, A-line skirt, in tan and indigo with wrap-around blouse – fresh, young, slim, straddling evening and day, above all free. Then Sir Moss appeared. Of course, it was a garage. Only 84 in fact. Tiny, a little shaky but brilliant white shirt front with small stand-up collar. A woman wanted me to take her picture with him. Sir Moss’s companion said, ‘He loves a pretty woman.’  Genevieve said the companion wasn’t a carer but his wife.

We talked to a couple from the City. They were delightful. They’d met at Bond Street tube despite being very high in the City. Much talk about his weight which used to be more. She’d got a dress specially made by an unknown dressmaker she was supporting. A good dress. In fact clothes was the topic although they could have been a rich football-loving couple by the look of them. But they never mentioned football. He must be in charge of Shirley’s money. We mentioned to her that we’d met him: ‘Oh yes,’ she said.

Shirley Conran Launching her Maths App at the Park Lane Aston Martin Garage

Herr Muggler Who Wrote the Enthralling History of Aston Martin

Anne Robinson!

Anne Robinson!

Nice!

Shirley’s Sister, Mrs Alencar and KATHERINE WHITEHORN

Sir Moss!

Saturday 14th June 2014

We know that Her Majesty is carrying out a heavy programme of engagements these few weeks at 88 years of age. For me, there was just one day to rest after Robert Nevil’s 60th birthday dinner before undertaking my programme for Wednesday 4th June: private breakfast at the Royal Academy courtesy of Aunt Lavinia to see the Summer Exhibition at 8.30. Lunch with a rellie at St John Bread and Wine before going on The Carmelites at the Garden (nuns in obscure religious crises but heads chopped off anyway). Thursday and Friday was the lead-up to my garden (actual garden as opposed to The Garden) opening but I was wrung out by the D-Day commemoration at the same time. On Thursday I attended Shirley Conrad’s launch of her Maths App in a garage in Park Lane. Saturday I dined with Prince Dmitri Hersov, Princess Irina Hersov, her new boyfriend and Sandy Carmen, whose paintings of women in their underwear often have to be removed from art galleries owing to outrage. She is looking for lesbians in mythology. Prince Dmitri played ‘Happy’ by Pharrell Williams on his room-sized ‘sound system’ and I liked it better than before. On Sunday was my garden opening. Lord Arrowby was almost unwell but struggled up and was a sensation. Not just one of the six who runs the country (when he travels it is usually in the Royal Train) but hot, in pork pie hat, very fitted blue shorts and not much else.

Really how Britain has changed.

175 members of the public visited my garden on Sunday afternoon. Monday and Tuesday were rest days, but I was beginning to worry about how I’m going to cover the Sales. Then I was asked to do a piece to camera on Camilla for Dainty Lady TV. On Wednesday Merle Barr took tea and in the middle of it, Royston King suddenly loomed. Not seen for years. He’d been lunching with Princess Anne in the City after a garden visit with the Lord Mayor of London to Epping Forest. He’s not giving millions to London heritage anymore but it is completely fingers in every pie and looking at his legacy as well as on other Boards of course. He will have a prize seat at the Trooping, as will Lord Arrowby. Together we went to the National Garden Schemes Garden Party at Broadwater Farm Tottenham. All the way on the 76 bus we regaled the bus with insider information about the Royal Family. Royston’s commentary, when he was Royal Correspondent of the BBC, is glued forever to the footage of Her Majesty returning to Buckingham Palace after the death of Diana – when she got out of her car before the gates.

Thursday I dined with Frankie-Doreen and Giles. Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver attended. Frankie-Doreen is not entirely loyal to the Throne but recommended a new homeware shop. Then yesterday, Royston said Why not drop in on the way back from Acton, where my Official Car had been serviced.  So I did and he produced a 3-course lunch. I went on to dinner with Hewn Hudson and Maximillian Reindorp at their palatial apartment (Gustavian crossed with Versailles crossed with Art Deco) in Bayswater where I picked over the Queen’s diamonds with the Head of Marketing for Clark’s Shoes The Americas. One of the other guests had had the Duchess of Cambridge in his antique shop. I was the only one with just one home. Hewn was wearing some superb blue linen slacks by Prada or Balenciaga from Zara.

Friday 6th June 2014

Am wrung out after all day D-Day on TV. And that after Robert Nevil’s 60th Birthday, and the State Opening of Parliament. All thoughts of Shirley Conran’s Launch for her new Maths software for girls in the Aston Martin garage in Park Lane last night swept aside, even though Sir Moss present.

I’d thought to be quietly catching up with my German River Cruise, even my tulips, my Bologna visit, but events have been overwhelmingly. When they sang ‘The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, is Over’ at the Service in Bayeux Cemetery this morning – just unbearable. It’s not just D-Day itself, the great noble cause and astonishing boldness, the awful subsequent fighting. But the memory itself now is fading. This is to be the last such commemoration. The veterans are in their late eighties at best. But only the other day they were sprightly, and these anniversaries were quite jolly affairs. Suddenly it is all slipping away. Those who remain have grown frail in more senses than one, are more inclined to tears and to recall more frequently perhaps the horrors they faced at 19 or 20, and their companions who were lost either at the time and afterwards.

So I can turn to the elderly Americans on my River Cruise last month who seemed at first ridiculous with their tiresome complaints, ruthless vacation schedules and doddery old anecdotes. But you had to give it to them in the end. Staggering past a tourist junk shop, some of the wives contemplated going in. ‘Don’t bother,’ said a very old man, forging on up the 100 steps the guide had warned about. ‘Whatever you buy, your kids will have to chuck it out sooner or later.’  Or one husband to another: ‘You know the secret of a happy marriage in retirement? You say, “I’m sorry… it’s all my fault….I won’t do it again…’ Yet there they all were, carrying out the 4-hour visits, the guided tours, attending the lectures, clambering on and off the coaches…

Finally I come to Dresden. I’ve been dying to tell you about Dresden and what a miracle it is. I had no idea. I thought it would be a ruin. But it rose again from the ashes. It was rebuilt. The Zinger is astonishing. I thought it must be Belle Epoque, late 19th, but in fact it’s 18th century, rococo, I suppose. I’ve never seen anything like it.

The Zinger at Dresden: It Rose Again from the Ashes

The Zinger, Re-built after We Bombed Dresden: Unbelievable

Wednesday 4th June 2014

Robert Nevil, biographer of the Pony Club and leading Poor Little Rich Gay of our time, wished not to mark his 60th Birthday on Monday of this week. I had to point out that the occasion was not about him. It was about Our Nation, Our Sovereign, Her Majesty the Queen, the Pony Club of Great Britain and his valued inner friends. So an intimate dinner was arranged to take place at my home.

Robert Nevil arrived doing a wicked impersonation of a very old person with limbs flying in all directions. Eight figures, including me, Adrian Edge, were assembled to do homage, amongst them some whose presence might give rise to surprise. Oh yes, very slowly, great plates are shifting as agonising feuds draw to their close.  Robert Nevil, so all-embracing and paradoxical himself, even contemplated including the Multis despite the horrors and wrong of the past. Poor Little Rich Gays suffer more than others, eschewing the full, normal life, but, at the last, heal and cleanse, while remaining impossible.

Robert Nevil was born one year to the day after the Coronation of Her Sovereign Majesty the Queen and in ways that may not be obvious has throbbed, like her, at the heart of English life ever since. Scampering and skittering, irreverent, naughty, gossipy, scholarly, with deep feeling running deep out of sight, he was brought up with dogs and at times as a dog, competing on the floor for scraps thrown down by his mother for labradors and off-spring.  Later he was wounded at Prep and Public and in other vales of suffering into creation. By further telling coincidence, his 60th year falls on the 100th Anniversary of the start of the 1st World War, an event central to Robert Nevil’s imagination.

Robert Nevil’s new book will be a deep and fearless probe into the heart of Englishness. For him England is a school-masterly figure circa 1890 in a tweed get-up on an earnest wild-flower-spotting walk, accompanied by a divine blue-eyed golden youth whose fate is the Trenches. Passions run deep and buried but above there is much nonsense and dressing up as foreign lady Royalties in the evenings, while the wives provide cocoa. I feel sure that Her Present and Sovereign Majesty would understand. Herself a simple country lady, by nothing more than by accident of birth the throbbing burning heart of Our Nation. In her private person, witty, self-deprecating, seeing the funny side, in her public person the thundering embodiment of the Majesty of England.  In this very week, we see the heart of England. It is the 70th Anniversary of D-Day when our Great and Glorious Nation, accompanied by the United States of America, liberated Europe from  Evil for ever. At the same time, the Queen has this morning opened Parliament. Enthroned, emblazoned in 40 million pounds’ worth of jewels, she read a speech about how the Government aims to improve the removal of plastic bags. Only in England such nonsense and solemnity at once as Robert Nevil has achieved too in his life.

Before dinner, in the drawing room, I made a speech, read out owing to the height of emotion. Robert Nevil, needless to say, barracked: ‘I didn’t say I was difficult. I said you’re difficult.’ But he did. He said, some years ago, ‘It’s amazing we’re still friends because I’m so difficult.’ I was able to mention, of course, that, from the Poor Little Rich Gay point of view, not being difficult is Death’s equivalent. My utterance culminated in us all joining to sing ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’ and there was not a dry eye … Later we sang Happy Birthday and Jerusalem. The Sheep Cake from Waitrose (Robert Nevil was also brought up with sheep) made a splendid entrance with champagne-bottle candles and  a 6 and an 0. I hadn’t expected much of the cake but it was disappointing that it was vile. Also the sheep wooly icing fell off all over the floor. The dinner itself was greatly aided by Joshua Baring, of the youth branch of the Poor Little Rich Gays, doing two of the courses and greatly impressing and heartening older guests with his particularity as to pastry and pasta-making. He is to attend a One Direction concert this Sunday, it should be added. All the same, I would commit sui over a failed dinner dish as over nothing else and my requirement of perfection increases with age. I hardly dare now to cook a chicken.

But after two days, this great and momentous occasion, the 60th Birthday of Robert Nevil, begins to glow and will live forever more in memory.

Monday 2nd June 2014

Events are careering. Last week was the 60th birthday of Reggie Cresswell. Exactly one week later comes the 60th Birthday of Robert Nevil. Both were born within one year of Her Majesty’s Coronation, Robert Nevil to the day and both have throbbed at the heart of Our Nation’s life ever since, despite appearances to the contrary.

I must get on with my speech to be given at tonight’s small dinner for Robert Nevil’s birthday plus preparing the song sheets. As well as the dinner itself. Robert Nevil was determined on no celebration of any kind. But I said, ‘This birthday isn’t about you.’

By great good mercy, Joshua Baring is doing two of the courses, so I haven’t got the full burden.

Thursday 29th May 2014

On Monday Reggie Cresswell took sixty years. Some time ago I heard that the Brunel railway tunnel under the Thames between Rotherhithe and Wapping was to be open for public visits at this time. I only wanted it because it was rare and near impossible to get tickets for. Amazingly Reggie was willing to go even on such a day. It was the very first tunnel under a river anywhere in the world but really built by Marc Brunel, father of the gorgeous, sultry Brunel we all adore who was appelled Ismabard Kingdom Brunel. Remarkable that one of the greatest men of our Nation had such a name. What a miracle!  I said to Reggie, ‘I don’t want to know too much about Ismabard Kingdom Brunel. That picture of him looking sultry in front of those chains is enough. And that name!’

So we walked along the railway line from Rotherhithe Station to Wapping in blue plastic gloves for fear of rats’ piss. But the tunnel was immaculate, beautifully kept. When it was first opened, a dinner was held in it. Later it was a foot tunnel and stall holders had the arches between the two bores. It became disreputable. To this day Gays and some Poor Little Rich Gays, who are not very sexual as you know owing to shopping, running the country, career-work, decor, making works of art etc, are found in ‘clubs’ beneath railway arches.

We wondered who else was in our party in the tunnel which is in fact two tunnels.  The answer: railway enthusiasts who wanted to know why the number of the up bore was not sequential to (or is it ‘with’?) the number of the down bore. I thought maybe Richard Curtis with us but Reggie said it wasn’t.

Later Reggie took a mansion for an evening party. The Ghanaian Ambass did not attend. Not asked. It was not an official function. Ordinary members of the Public may not realise quite how it is for an internationally-known figure like Reggie. Embraced by the entire world, yet he is far from home, far from Ghana’s palmy shores (I assume Ghana has palms that grow on the shore. Has it, even, a shore?), far from the simple sandy hut of his schooling where the waves crashed outside during Latin.

But a charming evening function took place. Guests were either high or low or both. A French film actress of supreme renown was glimpsed, Harry Rollo played privately the piano, which would normally cost £700,000 (not the piano. I mean, the player). He played ‘Happy Birthday’ and the ‘Tombeau de Coperin’. Rufus Pitman was present but not spoken to by me. Other guests were very whippy, in tiny outfits, and young. Arse was superbly lacking. I mean attitude. There was much healing and embracing. Hot topics were: should the National Portrait Gallery acquire more photos of Brunel (no! no! no! – only the one with the chains, please) and the Kim Kardashian wedding – my God!  that was a hot topic. Bruno-France Bruno, the great mystery Poor Little Rich Gay, arrived in a short silver coat with easily 40 minutes to spare before the party’s conclusion. He was full of The Carmelites, by Poulenc, which is being given at the Garden. It seems we’re all to go to it and he’s supplying tickets. So one is going. Marvellous. I didn’t book previously because I’ve heard that all the nuns’ heads get chopped off at the end and it’s a bit ridic. Also he said he’d been to the mansion before, for a wedding where the Bride was in tears. Reason: he, Bruno-France Bruno, had overslept and therefore failed to play the Bridal march for her entry.

Best not to dabble with a live artistic temperament. Stick with canned. Also the vanity and self-importance of the Bridal entrance.

A cohort, including Reggie, was assembled for Soho and has not been seen since. Others ambled quietly home well-pleased and warmed. Reggie has never become an official artist. He was lived on the brink, rooted still in the real rackety world.

The Setting for the Opening of Reggie Cresswell’s Sixtieth Year: Brunel’s Tunnel under the Thames, the First Anywhere in the World

Stall-holders of Ill-Repute had Their Stalls in These Arches in Brunel’s Tunnel Below the Thames

Brunel’s Tunnel Beneath the Thames: Not Quite as It was Built, of Bricks, but Subsequently Re-inforced with Concrete