Sunday 25th May 2014

Like the Royal year, the Poor Little Rich Gay summer gets underway with ruthless aplomb. Glyndebourniana, Chelsea – will there ever be any room for variety? I doubt it.

Then it’s the Proms and Tuscany.

I realise I haven’t even covered my back garden tulips – getting too late. And the River Cruise and Bologna – so much … so much teeming life, not to mention the Jean Paul Gaultier Exhibition, Clerkenwell Design Week and the 29th (well, not quite) birthdays of Reggie Cresswell and Robert Nevil. They will  remain 29 now for a very long time.

But Chelsea. The Flower Show. Lord Arrowy was there with his mother in a rickshaw. Simon Limpney also somehow admitted, contaminating the Ground. Heard of but not seen by me, thank God. He is an arch enemy. My Christmas card, if ever sent, would read, ‘Forgotten but not forgiven.’

None of the main gardens except the Daily Telegraph garden appealed to our party.  Cleve West garden: no. ‘What’s that phallus at the centre?’ Laura Malcolm condemned. Best in Show Garden: not really. ‘Rather a lot of yellow lupins, ‘Aunt Lavinia, whose voice has boomed for England for centuries, boomed. Daily Telegraph garden: yes. Liked hard landscaping for once, because that’s what usually is such a disaster. ‘All too new,’ as Aunt Lavinia always says.

Matt Driver was awfully clued up. At one time he was deodorant marketing in Europe if not the world. I would have missed the touching ‘before and after’ 1st World War garden in the main tent. ‘Before’ was when the man of the house was tending the patch, neat row of vegetables, ‘after’ was when he was gone, garden gone to wild, onions shot etc. Very simple. Very touching. We also liked the potters’ garden in Artisan Row. Apparently there were some potters who made flower pots for Gertrude Jekyll. They survived the War. So their little plot with kiln and path made of failed pots broken up was recreated. For so many, the 1st World War was leaving a quiet rural idyll, if poor, for modern killing machinery.

In Main Row a 1st World War garden had a shell hole as a pond. We liked that.

Otherwise the Japanese Master Garden in Artisan Row was striking if soggy – acers and moss, with water wheel. Damp glass box to sit in.

Every time we went past the many hideous garden ornament outlets, Aunt Lavinia would boom, ‘Perfectly ghastly. Who on earth would buy this rubbish?’ regardless of proximity of stall-holder from whose soul these items might have been wrought if they had made them.

The great revelation and feature of Chelsea this year was Laura Malcolm’s attitude to the Chelsea Pensioners – she can’t stand them. We passed a noble bronze statue of one by a path. She wanted to wack it. When Ivy Driver, her daughter, was a girl, the Pensioners leapt out at every opportunity to complain about her scooting on her scooter and the danger posed to their venerable persons. ‘What wars did they fight it?’ Laura Malcolm queried. ‘They’re just a crowd of spongers who’ve had to be re-housed.’

Sir Beardshaw At Chelsea. Actually I Like Him But he was Enthusing in TV Style – i.e. Waving Arms About – in Cleve West Garden Which was Worrying

Nice Corner of Othewise Horrid Cleve West Garden

Classic Chelsea Male Attire

Great Madam Look for Chelsea: Classic Male

Daily Telegraph Garden: Yes. You Could Do this Yourself

Daily Telegraph Garden: Yes:

Designer Who Designed Best in Show: Perfectly Nice Man but His Garden??

Best in Show Garden: No

Garden Ornament: Perfectly Ghastly

1st World War Garden with Shell-Hole Pond: Yes

Japanese Master Garden: Soggy but Great

Gertrude Jekyll’s Flower-Pot Making Friends’ Garden: They survived the 1st World War

Sir Titchland Titmarsh, Britain’s Sexiest Man: ‘Thank you for so many years of gardening,’ some idiotic woman Said to Him

Don’t Know What This is? Does Anybody? Why Didn’t I Get a Graph of Before and After 1st World War Garden in the Tent? Why, Oh Why, Why?

Friday 23rd May 2014

I’ve gone on strike. I’ve got Dresden to cover, as well as Emilia Romanga, the Jean-Paul Gautier Exhib, the Chelsea Flower Show, tomorrow is Glyndebourniana, Monday I’m going down a Brunel tunnel with Reggie Cresswell whose 60th Birthday it will be; don’t event think about the usual backbone of dinners, functions, outings, seedlings to be tended.

I haven’t been able to get near the Prada shop in weeks. This afternoon, with Glyndebourne picnic hanging over me, I forged two hours for it. Caution was flung and I set out. I’m supposed to be living a rich life with infinite fittings, all day to perfect a tart but in fact I never sit down, tasks are always heaped up all around, at times I can barely breathe and all I’ve got for the Prada shop is two hours.

One nice thing happened. I opened the front door and found the Queen had been round and dropped off a package. It’s her Cookbook, delivered to me in person.

But in the Prada shop I stood and was ignored. At last an attendant took a slither of notice. ‘I’m looking for gorgeous, fitted summer trousers, in stretch fabric.’ Normally I sit on the banquette and they bring me delicious things from the back. But the slapper said, ‘If it’s not on the shelf we haven’t got it.’ Or words to that effect. I couldn’t believe it. ‘Where’s the book?’ I said. No book. Try upstairs. I try upstairs. Nothing but middle-aged golfing apparel. I go back downstairs. I stand by the counter. Am ignored. Assistant is standing there. I have to make first approach. Now the story is , they’ve sold most of the summer collection. Get some more, I say. I try again for the book. At last it is produced. I leaf through. Nothing but sacky, baggy jumper and skirt look (or trousers for men, if you must) with belt. Horror. I phone Joshua Baring, who has a finger in every pie. ‘Phone Miuccia and get the Summer collection cancelled,’ I say.

The Queen Sends Me a Package

It’s Her Cookbook

Royal Table Setting

Royal Menu

Wednesday 21st May 2014

I’ve been away on another mission for Dainty Lady TV, this time to Bologna. Bolog Sauce, you know. I sampled every variety, even in different nearby towns where it’s the same but different.

But back to Germany. I was river cruising down the Elbe alone with 75 elderly Americans. Val was sauced and unable to gain. At breakfast one morning I was explaining to a woman from New Jersey about the Tiaras Exhibition at the V and A years ago and how it was my favourite exhib of all time and how Debo had written an article in the newspaper about it which began ‘What are tiaras for?’ and how the Portland Tiara by Cartier was one of the best, with drop diamonds the size of a cough lozenge. ‘Very ostentatious,’ she said.

I digress. Wittenberg was very plain. It’s where Luther came from. Have you heard of him? He pinned some notices to the church door and caused awful ructions. This was in 1517, so hardly new. The Pope was furious. Thus the Protestant church was born, very plain, with no jewels because they were against money because they believed that it’s what’s inside that matters. God loves the inner being. The Catholics had been selling indulgences so you could buy your way into Heaven, and the Church spent the money on heavenly decor. It’s rather like the Multis wanting everything privatised, including the Police at one time. Why shouldn’t you get a better service if you can pay for it?

But in another way, Luther led to the Poor Little Rich Gays and also was one in being perfectly impossible and going on and on with his ideas until the whole of Europe agreed. Also what he actually thought: it was a beginning but he wanted hierarchies broken down and what mattered to him was the individual conscience. At Glyndebourne at Saturday I shall be wearing a red velvet jackette and plastic Prada jodphurs.

Thank you, Luther, for making this outfit possible – although you were yourself uninterested in frockage. Or decor. But I’m sure you would have understood.

Luther: Not Interested in Decor but This Portrait is by Cranach who Happened to be Stationed Next Door. So Luther Had His Portrait Done which is Very Poor Little Rich Gay

Mrs Luther: Also by Cranach. A Bit Grim But It was a Big Step Forward that She was There at All Because Luther Was Not Supposed to be Married

Luther’s Panelling in His Drawing Room

Luther’s Beer Mug. When He Had it It was Plain Wood. Silver Added Later to Honour Mug as Luther Item. So It Worked Round Again to Saint’s Relics Type of Thing, Which Luther was Against.

Wittemberg Main Drag: Plain

Actual Door Where Luther Pinned his Notes: Val Said, ‘Let’s Nail a Condemnation of the Pussies’ to the Door When We Gain’. Unfort. Val Never Gained Owing to Sauce. The Pussies were Old Friends with Whom We Fell Out – Or I did

Wednesday 14th May 2014

Cruisers were bused by the Bauhaus Movement in Dessau on the way back from Wörlitz. It was a non-visit drive-by but unexpectedly we were allowed to get out of the coach and take graphs for 3 minutes.

I’ve never really understood what the Bauhaus was except it was very modern. And very important. Our tour guide explained that it was modern architecture but with a craft feel. First of all were some office buildings but we could only glimpse owing to coach not stopping. Then round the corner was a whole row of houses by people like Walter Gropius and Miles van der Rohë.

Funny how you can like the Bauhaus as well as Sans Souci. But I did. Very cool and elegant, especially in the semi-woodland setting. But I don’t think I’d live in one myself.

The Bauhaus went to Dessau which is a tiny place because turned out of Berlin for some reason – possibly by Hitler.

Near the River Cruising Boat itself we saw another Bauhaus building, a river pavilion, by a different architect, not Grop or Rohë. It had round bits which was a novelty. At the beginning of Bauhaus they only had cubes and cuboids. Round not liked. But it wouldn’t graph for some reason. I hoped to capture it from the River Cruiser as it got underway for Wittenberg and the full Luther experience. Just as luncheon service was beginning I risked luncheon wipe-out (no lunch), dashing to the top deck with my graphing equipment. But it wouldn’t graph. Came out dark and nothing.

Bauhaus Office Building Glimpsed in Drive-by

Same Bauhaus Office Building – Other End. Glimpsed in Drive-by

Whole Bauhaus House in Dessau either by Walter Gropius or Miles van der Rohë

Another Bauhaus House in Dessau Either by Walter Gropius or Miles ver der Rohë. Tall Window in Restauro, You might Observe

Saturday 10th May 2014

I have entered the Czech Lands and am about to leave the Cruise and mount the air Business Class for London this evening at 20.15.

Huge news is that a direct link has been revealed to me privately between the Poor Little Rich Gays and Frederick the Great. One of our most prominent and loved (not just by private individuals but by the entire world) Poor Little Rich Gays has in his possession two paintings by an artist one of whose works is shown in the Picture Gallery at Sans Souci. But in very poor condition. In fact just a black square labelled ‘Parc au Clare de Lune.’

From this same source comes a new vision of the 3Rs: Reading, Writing and Rococo.

A life of decoration is deeply serious, you know. It is a life after all, just as purposeful as a life of pipe-laying or Alsatian training.

But back to Tuesday of this week. I River-Cruised to Dessau on the Elbe and from there was bus-ed to Wörlitz. Have you ever heard of it? Well, it was the summer residence of the Prince of Anhalt in the 18th century. You may recall that one of Zsa Zsa Gabor’s last husbands was a Prince of Anhalt and she got to wear the Anhalt Tiara when it was restituted by  the Communists. Very plain unfort.

But we digress. The Wörlitz Prince of Anhalt was in the 18th century and was completely charming and full of decorative schemes. His Summer Residence is just totally him, you can tell. So fresh and civilised. He opened to the public even in those days and thought they might pick up decorative tips. His home was a showroom for different marbles and also space-saving ideas. He had pull-down beds in cupboards in the drawing room. Frederick the Great slept on one of them. See graph below.  He also showed Scagliola, which as I’ve already explained you can do yourself at home. It’s a good way to use up all those marble chips you’ve got in your stock cupboard.

I just loved Wörlitz, even to the point of putting the umlaut in. Lots of windows, rooms not too big and such a joy pouring forth even after 250 years the Prince must have had creating it. Delicious painted panels, wallpapers; inexpensive but sumptuous decor. He had local craftsmen make suites of furniture in novel designs that seem to foreshadow Biedermeier. Floors and stair rails are done in woods available in the vicinity.  I was knocked down with the sense of a greatly civilised man quite without pomposity. In his library he had a desk designed that ten people could work at together, a community of scholars studying the philosophers of the Enlightenment. I have an idea he took in students. He certainly encouraged study which is not a favourite Poor Little Rich Gay pursuit but in this case allowed.

His wife was arranged and at first she had awful skin complaints. Later she became an intellectual and a friend of Angelica Kauffman. They lived separately but she was greatly in evidence as the Princess in the neighbourhood. Fetes, schemes for the Poor etc.

Wörlitz Summer Residence, near Dessau, Germany. Nothing Much on the Outside

Urn in Wörlitz English Landscape Garden (Germany’s First). This Urn is Part of the Cult of Sadness’s Joy. The Joy of Sadness

Stone Lady Enjoying Sadness (Part of the Cult of the Joy of Sadness) in Wörlitz English Landscape Garden, Anhalt, Germany

Interior at Wörlitz, Anhalt, Germany: So Delicious

Charming Dining Room at Wörlitz, Anhalt, Germany

Lovely Corner at Wörlitz, Anhalt, Germany

More Joy of Colours and Patterns at Wörlitz, Anhalt. Prince Anhalt Believed You Too Could Have this at Home

The Prince’s Fold-Down Bed in the Drawing Room. King Frederick the Great Slept Here

Wörlitz English Landscape Garden. View to the Artificial Volcano Which Erupts Every Five Years

More Fold-Down Beds at Wörlitz. King Frederick the Great didn’t Take this One

Scagliola at Wörlitz. You Too Could Have Self-Made Scag. Look up in a Book How to Do It

Friday 9th May 2014

Ever since I saw in a picture book Sans Souci, the Summer Pavilion of King Frederick the Great at Potsdam, I’ve craved it. That was in the 60s at Prep. In the 80s, Val and I planned to do our own Rococo but never got round to it. He was going to learn scagliola which is fake marble essentially done with Plaster of Paris and any fragments of stone you’ve got in stock. It’s the smoothing down and polishing that takes days if not years so a whole suite of console tables would have been quite ambitious.

The Rococo flowered from the Baroque which as architecture has no flat surfaces. Rococo went further; forms begin to dissolve. Some have suggested that it is an Art of glass and mirrors, tittering on the brink of disappearance, so fine and intricate and fragile.

So on Sunday at last I came to Sans Souci, bused in with the elderly American cruisers from the River Cruise and minus Val who was unable to attend owing to over-saucing. Such a shame. He’s lived for the Rococo.

It was a freezing cold day. Modern Sans Souci has become enmeshed in roads, the garden is a suburban park. The Pavilion sits anyway on a somewhat charmless bare gravel expanse. But what a Pavilion! No building like it. Really quite compact for a great emperor’s palace, more of a lodge, slung low on the ground, a most satisfying lozenge but at the same time swirling upwards with its bizarre decoration. Brackets support the roof out of which burst naked figures in stone. This is the freedom of the Rococo, the freedom to fly away altogether.

Within, you’ve never seen such a swirl of gilded carved palm trees and sea shells, mirrors and glass.  In the Music Room, sculpted flower garlands are strewn about the ceiling. The chandelier is flowers. But blank space, where decoration has exhausted itself and petered out, is part of the strange, unsettling effect. In the slender picture gallery the pink damask settees were purely decorative, too narrow to sit on but essential for colour and vigour of a more solid kind to try to anchor the filigree enthusiasm of the ceiling.

In ordinary life, the rococo is seen when somebody blows bubbles or scatters glitter. Sans Souci lives best in the imagination. When actually there it is troublesome that there are floors in particular and the rooms are so dark, as all historic interiors these days, with the blinds drawn. The light should be pouring in through the windows. But do go and imagine. It is a glory.

Sans Souci: Potsdam. Rococo Miracle

Sans Souci: The Figures Fly Forth from the Building

The Music Room at Sans Souci

The Ceiling Comes to Life in the Music Room at Sans Souci

The Picture Gallery at Sans Souci: These Settees are Too Narrow for Use but Essential for Decoration

The Skies Open, the Room Dissolves: The Picture Gallery at Sans Souci

A Drawing Room at Sans Souci about to Dissolve

The Atrium at Sans Souci: That Trumpet is Marble. The Decoration Spills over the Edge Alarmingly

Decoration Might as Suddenly Peter Out: Sans Souci

The Grave of King Frederick the Great on the Parterre at Sans Souci: He was Reburied Where He Wished to be in 1992, Next to His Dogs’ Graves.

The Graves of King Frederick the Great’s Dogs

Wednesday 7th May 2014

A stalwart Scottish lady said this morning at breakfast: ‘They come here to die. It’s cheaper.’ Cruise to die. The boat is a showcase for the old of a certain Nation. I’m here for Dainty Lady TV.  ‘It’s not worth three steps,’ the wife snaps at the shuffling husband with cane, so he shuffles away, never to see the admittedly not spectacular store room at the top of the three steps in the Schloss, where we are taking a guided tour. ‘Now we will visit the backside…. Now we will have an inside visit…Next is the music room. This one is a very beautiful room.’

One mustn’t mock the elderly and infirm but one does hear the canes and sticks clanking down the corridor from inside one’s cabin. It’s the skin colour of the men I can’t get over. I’m so worried about their state. It’s a grey base with broken veins and yellow patches, overall a livid, seething effect. How could they have got like this? Can nothing be done? Quite a few of them, and the women too, just stare ahead, with lower lip hanging.

Val failed to board, owing to sauce. He also missed the Claridges Party for the Photo Multi’s 50th Birthday last Thursday. Val is in a bad way. On Saturday I went to his flatti to collect him for the airport. He didn’t answer but could be heard shouting within. So now I am alone on board.  The Americans are friendly, but you can tell they can’t make me out. ‘He’s with a women’s TV Channel,’ they bellow at each other. Even so, it’s hard to get anything done with all the chatting. Where exactly is Ann Arbor? What was Bill’s business? Have you made a Living Will? Did you fight in the Korean War? Dinner is the hardest because I just have to hurl myself at any random group. They’re all in couples. The tables are arranged in rows, with six on either side. Last night both men next to me had deaf aids. One was not particularly old. I think he has Parkinson’s. He showed me a video of his son, only about twenty and hot, playing in a rock band. The other was the one who had managed to get a desk job during the Korean War. The younger men at the table quite freely admitted they’d done all they could to get out of Vietnam. They loved the British NHS and Obama, couldn’t bear Bush. So that was nice because I thought they’d be hard-line from the look of them.

But really something isn’t right. ‘He used to be a doctor,’ one old man says of another. In Britain, we’d say, ‘He’s a retired doctor.’ They live in retirement complexes, not in their own homes. They’ve moved about all their lives and then they make the final move to the twilight zone. It’s supposed to be a glorious existence, well-padded with money and unlimited cruising. But somehow they seem to be alone, in couples, driven back on each other, with nothing to do. They ought to be on committees, doing consultancy work, lobbying, in campaign groups, arranging flowers in the village hall, doing a bit of baking like Jill Archer. But there’s no village hall, no bring-and-buy – just endless apartment buildings idealised for the elderly.

View of River from River Cruise in Germany

The Lounge Area on Board

We See a Stork: Great Excitement

Tuesday 6th May 2014

I write from the river Cruise ship near Wittenberg. Last Thursday the Multis took over Claridges for the 50th Birthday of the Photo Multi. You never saw anything like the palatial hotel rooms banked with flowers, the champagne and purity of the canapés. There was a beetroot macaroon and a miracle asparagus cone (how was it done?), to name but a  few. Lady guests had given everything in frockage for the Gays . Among the greatest was Genevieve Suzy of the Magazine World: ‘Am I too Penelope Keith?’ she said on entrance. Not a bit of it. She had an Elizabeth Taylor piled coiffure and a long gown in turquoise, not eau de nil as advertised. She recalled Grace de Monaco at her height. She was supreme and her deportment, her sailing into the grand hotel showed complete command of any grand hotel.

Guests in every direction, jewelled, be-scarfed, in glory. Matt Driver came in black ten-gallon hat, his second son Kelm had a hot ‘Mod’ suit and a charm necklace adorned with heavy gold figures. Ivor Driver was fashionably late in a pearlised leather Elvis bomber jacket. His form was brilliant and he sat with Sebastian Archer discussing the Universe, on which the latter is an expert. Later Fergus Strachan, radiant in cream, had quite a set-to with Sebastian about the Universe. For me, every conversation lasted for two sentences. Robin Smallmeal, loathed, Head of Landfill in this country or whatever, shot poisonous glances which I forged through to shake hands. No light devastation was forthcoming from me in the end, but perhaps my great grace will be better remembered. Guests weren’t quite able to believe that they were there. So thrilled were they, many so generously included after one or two meetings with the Multis, but none after none, they cascaded diamonds. To be at Claridges, at such height, such largesse, such manna pouring down, few had ever hoped to know in their lives.

At 8pm, the Blond ‘Captain’ Multi made a speech. Like a world-class DJ, he was hooked over the mike, magnificently unmoving, his timing perfect. Then, unbelievable, fish and chips in miniature chip-frying baskets was produced and after that small bowls of Indian food. Astonishing! The Multis had introduced the Lahore Kebab House, London’s cheapest restaurant and their favourite (an extension was built especially for them to sit in), into Claridges. Waiting staff looked bemused. But what could they do? I flashed with Angus Willis in Romanian Shoreditch look. His Tudor House, Hastings had been on The One Show just hours before. By the way, the poor Geldofs, including the widowed husband, visited Angus’s Hastings shop on Monday.

So many people, many known to me, but could I remember their names? Much trauma. Then César-Kaiser, the lover of Connor Cadoux of the Australian Poor Little Rich Gays, attacked my stomach as protruding so I pulled his nose. He’s quite a bitch. Previously he said that someone had dutifully mugged up on the ‘Poor Little Rich Gays’ only because he was lunching with me. He and Connor are asked to Tuscany this summer but he doesn’t want to go so they’re not answering.

It was time to depart the splendid function, which seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see in vastness, before the jewel cracked and shattered into tiny fragments.

Wednesday 30th April 2014

My top terrace, created by my private architect, Bruce McBain, commands London and from it I can see what everyone is doing. I envisaged blue and purple tulips but because nobody ever sees this terrace I tend to veer wildly off course. Somehow I ended up with ‘Ballade’ which is a murky mauve with a white edge. When it first came out I reeled in horror but as time went by its dinginess became more lovely. With it I had ‘Bleu Aimable’ which is one of the greatest of tulips, both in colour and shape. So no sin there. But why did I make the third in the party ‘Spring Green’ which is cream with a green stripe? The whole point was to have tulips of similar colours, not contrasting, this year.

Really the whirring mind of a Poor Little Rich Gay.  I like ‘Spring Green’, although it is rather tasteful, and haven’t had it for a few years. I must have so yearned for ‘Spring Green’ my mono-colour idea got overridden. I can’t think of any other explanation.

The final effect is somewhat ice-cream but agreeable enough.

More and more I’m liking the dot planting approach with tulips. Not massed in pots – as much as they will mass. Wait ’til you see my main garden tulips.

‘Ballade’, ‘Spring Green’ and ‘Bleu Aimable’

‘Ballade’, ‘Spring Green’ and ‘Bleu Aimable’

Tuesday 29th April 2014

A whole page in today’s Daily Mail ! Angus Willis is glorified: ‘Meet the man whose DIY makeover took his home back 500 years’. Yes, Hastings! The Tudor House, with rope stair rail and barrel-as-lead-lined bath, which overflowed through three floors (very tiny Tudor ones) when Sid Id sat in it. Or perhaps it was Muriel McGlorian. Angus in person is pictured in a Shoreditch-bought Romanian Tudor peasant outfit in the newspaper.

I don’t know about DIY. Every builder in Hastings underwent destruction of the inner being. A special ward had to be opened up at Hastings General. £500,000 is given as the budget. £500,000 to achieve full Tudorisation, with furniture pecked by Romanian hens over several centuries, Orkney chairs to snag your cardy on and a hazardous ‘London’ gas cooker to replace the four-door Aga. Genevieve Suzy and I once had an exhibition lunch in the part of the Tudor House where the Aga used to be while the paying Public milled about, some of their number approaching: ‘Excuse me, are you Genevieve Suzy…of the Magazine World?’ Mercifully, I, Adrian Edge, was unrecognised.

The Tudor House, Hastings, is open this coming weekend. You absolutely must go. The BBC are filming for airing on Thursday. The Now Show.

The Tudor House, Hastings, rapidly approaches world-icon status. Get there before it’s too late. Sadly I’ll be on a Viking River Cruise and unavailable.

Angus Willis: Full Page Spread in the ‘Daily Mail’. Some Poor Little Rich Gays Loathe the ‘Daily Mail’ – Except When In It