Sunday 22nd October 2023

The Gay Mother’s doctor’s surgery has been expertly sited on a bleak promontory of a housing estate with full exposure to Atlantic gales from the West and Siberian blasts from the East. On Wednesday it was both. The advantage is that if the elderly are blown down trying to get to the doctor’s, the doctor will be there to attend to them. So from the safety point of view it makes perfect sense.

That’s what the Gay Mother said as she battled through and was indeed nearly blown down.

We were told to wait in the waiting room. Nurses called persons for ‘vaccination’ from two different doors. Those that went right were never seen again. Those veering left re-appeared, to cross the waiting room for departure.  Mr Grumpy was most prominent in the room, with his thunderous sighs and murderous consultations of the watch.

The nurse called for ‘Bowden’ and an ancient white-faced gentleman on sticks with springy lady companion staggered forth. I wondered if any relation of ‘Miss Bowden’ whom the Gay Granny had known. She was very much a cut above on the over 60s  village outings to Woolacombe or Bude – good gloves and bag. But the Gay Mother said it was a common Far West name. Think of Foot and Bowden, after all. Of course. What a firm. Lord Foot, of Foot and Bowden, was a brother of Michael Foot, of the donkey jacket at the Cenotaph fame.

These Bowdens came and went. A funny little woman like a Beatrix Potter mouse was next. Her ensemble was pink, fawn and white and she had stiff curls placed on her head in which a mouse could have nested successfully. Upon return from ‘vaccination’, she was some time putting herself back together – quilted jacket and scarves to be managed. When she’d conquered all that, she declared, ‘Well, I hope it’ll be worth it.’

Mr Grumpy was called to the right so he had his final huff, ‘Not before time’ and was never seen again. The left-side nurse then re-appeared and called for Bowden. ‘You’ve already had them,’ I said helpfully. So she retreated to consult her clinic roster. A small boy was now in the waiting room, accompanied by a mother and sister who plainly hadn’t a hope up against this phenomenon. ‘Longer one,’ he boomed at the sister. He was playing with some wire thing through which you thread bricks, kindly provided by the medical authorities for the amusement of infants. Now it was his turn. But what about the Gay Mother? Did she count for nothing?

The small boy returned and whipped his entourage out of the room. At last, the Gay Mother was summoned. Meanwhile a high priestess type had appeared. ‘Where do I go?’ she proclaimed to the ceiling. There was an aura of blindness, although not actually blind, but seeing through to the Beyond. Watching the Gay Mother getting across the room with her stick, she wailed, ‘Oh, she’s in pain.’ ‘She’s 99,’ I said, ‘nearly 100 in fact.’ i.e. that’s what being 99 nearly 100 looks like.

When the Gay Mother came back from ‘vaccination’, Mystic Meg embraced her. ‘You’re doing so well,’ she urged. The Nurse had apparently given the same chant for the Gay Mother.

Later, I had to explain the conduct of Mystic Meg and how she had thought the Gay Mother in pain. ‘I am in pain,’ the Gay Mother said with pride.

Who would have thought that a dreary doctors’ surgery with strip lighting could prove so diverting?

I couldn’t have enjoyed it more.

And with outfit interest too.

Friday 13th October 2023

It was important to see how the Rich are getting along. Frieze Art Fayre in 2021 – there was an attempt to de-face those attending, without success. But the state of the Rich was masked all the same.

In 2022 I did not attend.

The other theme was: how could we know we were at the true VIP event? Horrid rumours swirled of another event the night before.

Royston King had already scored George Osborne before I teamed with him: ‘I told him: “Your leadership is excellent…. you’re doing a marvellous job….and how many works were lost?” … He said, “2000”. ‘

‘But George Osborne’s my relation,’ I cried. Royston not amused. ‘You praise and then they love you so much it all pours out,’ he explained.

I’d already encountered Joshua Baring in the road outside the Fayre. He’d been in since 11. Slight worry because our tickets were Admission 2pm. What could that mean?

The Rich are in a terrible state. In the gathering area of Frieze Art Fayre, they were screaming. And the look was: just tumbled out of the washing machine or not even ready to leave the bedroom. Dog-earred, grubby at the edges, great sacks of horror. Not a look at all really. Just given up.. nothing left to live for.

Later I saw a woman who was at least finished, in a prim all-white shirt-waister, rigidly pleated, broad pleats, A-line, winged at the shoulders. The whole effect – fantasy hospital nurse crossed with nun.

I scored Lord Arrowby – in a marina ensemble… Royston said that Lord Arrowby didn’t trump George Osborne. Who else did we score? There was somebody with a jaw we both couldn’t place. Maddening.

Lord Arrowby said John Aspinall did not plunge Lord Lucan to the bottom of the English Channel. John Aspinall came up because George Osborne’s grandmother, who was my grandmother’s 1st cousin, was also the mother of John Aspinall.

I curtseyed to the Andy Warhol of her.

It was getting severely barren. When suddenly Royston bellowed, ‘Eduardo!’ Two small people rather startled… ‘Chelsea Flower Show… ‘Royston boomed. ‘How’s the Cotswold garden?’  Royston remembered to bow and the correct form of address: ‘Your Royal Highness, this is Adrian Edge.’

I was presented at Court. There’s no denying me now. Can you imagine?  – at the vital moment I forgot to curtsey..

In the presence… her granddaughter… the direct line to the Conqueror… these Isles and all our history.

She was honed. Instantly took command. The skill in ending the audience. All learned from her for sure. But human. The Cotswold garden is mood boards at the moment. ‘The sculpture,’ she said, referring to the outdoor display in the Park for Frieze. Classic Royal minimal, but saying everything.  ‘No, it’s my sister who works for a gallery.’

Astonishing … so human. Royston thought she was the other one, Princess Eugenie, it emerged.

After that, we gained Frieze Masters. Oh that 15 walk between the two.  Will it ever shorten?

There, Lord Browne of Benninglow – ‘May I introduce Lord Browne of Benninglow…’ Royston goes. So charming. He said Frieze Masters was busy. His weekend home is in Venice. His youthful companion was glowing with wealth and power.

Lord Arrowby again. He condemned John Minton, Christopher Wood and Keith Vaughan as not very good and letting Gays down.

But oh golden –  George Osborne, cornered this time. No escape from How we are Related. Royston furious. ‘Our grandmother’s were 1st cousins,’ I shrieked. ‘It’s not remote.’ Full explanation given and I was welcomed as a new cousin by George Osborne.

‘You didn’t say who you are?’ Royston reprimanded.

‘The Landed Gentry aren’t forward,’ I said. ‘We never say who we are.’

Royston wanted to retire for comfort or ‘opportunity to tidy’ as it says on Royal Schedules. But he didn’t come back. I collapsed in front of a Canaletto. Still he didn’t come back. Then I thought: I know how to find him, he’s bound to booming somewhere. Sure enough, from ten metres I could hear him. Philip Mould, this time, looking shattered after all-day on feet on stand at Frieze Masters.

But great news… Philip Mould confirmed. This was the true VIP event… last night had been… less mentionable.

Philip Mould’s got an Inter-racial painting. He’s sure it’s the earliest known. Cost him a lot of money at Christie’s last year. Provenance: the American Museum at Bath. The idea is it should be bought by America – since it is an American picture. Philip Mould’s been planning this all year. No doubt Fiona Bruce has been consulted. But Royston said, No, the National Portrait Gallery must have it. That’s where I want to see it. Philip Mould too shattered to resist..

By the way, there’s Art for sale at Main Frieze and Frieze Masters. Main Frieze, the art – utter, ghastly drear.

Philip Mould’s Inter-Racial Painting – Ordered for the National Portrait Gallery by Royston

Canaletto of Westminster Bridge. Worthwhile

A New Way to Bake a Potat0

Grubby

Damion Hirst

Not Sure if this is Freida Carlo or Paula Rego. Can’t tell the Difference and Don’t like

Painting is Big Now

It’s a Work!

Only Thing I liked: Actual Humour. Lady as Handbag with Body Made of Poles. What Many Ladies Want to Be

Art Buying Look

Greatnesses: the Brilliance of One having Short Skirt and the Other Having Long

Attending

In Black and in Torment

Thursday 12th October 2023

The landmark of this summer was that the Gay Mother forged a new path with redcurrants. Apart from redcurrant jelly, summer pudding and redcurrant sorbet, what do you do with them? Well, now, thanks to the Gay Mother, you can have German redcurrant cake. Anything German in the food line so rare… Val tried to promote German Breakfast sausage without success. There’s that opening of a chapter in Kingsley’s book about the old people in Wales. At one of the morning Soave parties, somebody says, ‘It was a German recipe,’ which is hilarious because a given that nobody could be interested in such a thing.

German Redcurrant Cake though – a cake/pastry base, a redcurrant layer with sugar and a meringue topping. Tres facile a faire. Tangy in the middle. Simply super.

You must try it at home – if spared for next summer. Or even winter.

The Gay Mother has never pursued a health regime of any kind. Her only menu priorities are that it isn’t tinned sweetcorn or colesaw (other than home-made). Yet she has gained 99, reasonably trim and still alive. Which was what she said one day: ‘Others got things wrong with them. They’re not here any more. But I am.’

Thursday 28th September 2023

Robert Nevil and the Maharajah picked the damsons. I made jam. Their cleaner has left. She said the cleaning products which weren’t hers but she said they were had been interfered with. So she flung down her cloth and left the stage in fury.

I couldn’t help mentioning that they’d got a cobweb in the doorway.

We had a dinner on the never never at Boisdale, Canary Wharf. Beamish O’Halloran lavished, being paid in Boisdale pounds for each of his words that appear in the Boisdale magazine.

Laura Malcolm said, ‘What’s your conversation?’ I said: ‘My main topics are: my change of energy supplier and my health check at the doctor’s (cholestrol at 5.4)’. She cracked open with boredom.

The Cruisings came but we hardly spoke because of the cabaret starting up. It was an Aretha Franklin tribute act. On the whole the clientele was from Canning Town – the only people who have any money these days are plumbers, electricians and builders. A surprising number of the men looked Gay even when in a conventional family configuration – what Ivy Compton Burnett called ‘a full normal life’ which she said she wouldn’t have wanted.

There was a strange daughter who went down in the lift writhing and proclaiming  her mother wanted dancing for her 73rd birthday. She was like Cassandra from Up Pompeii!  We got out on the ground floor but she stayed put and rode back up again.

Unusual.

Robert Nevil and the Maharajah visited the Gay Mother. Whole day doing Hindu temple cooking in advance. The Maharajah was not so humous-keen though. I’d made a vat. On the second day it was found to have gone off. What will the gardeners make of humous on the compost heap. The Gay Mother couldn’t have enjoyed it more… picking over the Archers with Robert Nevil. Other topics included: management of cows in India. I wove a web re: old families of the neighbourhood. We saw where one was run over chasing after her puppy in the road in 1934 and also her grave. Our programme was full: Viennese-type cafe and kuken morning visit to our family mansion where rellies were staying – a different Dutch painting is suddenly the most valuable; evensong in the private family chapel of the neighbouring  family related to HM the Queen, who has been in that chapel (the connections), another church visit where the Carnocks are buried (v. difficult to get the Maharajah and Robert Nevil to take much interest, even though two Lord Carnocks were brothers of Harold Nicholson and the present Lord Carnock is Adam Nicholson although he doesn’t refer to it). They were Instagramming some other headstones in that graveyard of unusual design in slate.

The Gay Mother loved the tomato curry.

I also took a private evening at Wisley (£5000 pls, for a Fellowship), Rheingold and Peter Grimes.

That’s enough for a life.

And I forgot to mention: the saga of the Gold Handbag in the Sue Ryder Shop, plus the Freddie Mercury Sale at Sotheby’s where 15 Rudi’s fetched £68,000. I wore Sandro for the sale. Needn’t have bothered. It wasn’t dressy.

The Long Border at Wisley – One of the Greats Now, having been One of the Worst

A Rare Rudi Not of the Caribbean. Belonged to Freddie Mercury

Damsons from the farm: Robert Nevil and the Maharajah picked them

Saturday 2nd September 2023

The usual Norman retreat was delayed this year on account of Kelm Driver expecting a baby and that having to be diarised. At last Laura Malcolm was able to say: ‘We are a Grandmother.’ The child is a small Inca God, fierce but fair. Your head might get lopped off at a moment’s notice but at least you can be sure that you deserved it. No clothes are worn by this person.

I told Kelm that any future babies are to be born at a more convenient time, like in the winter.

Old folk don’t want their routines disturbed. We climbed into our gravity loungers on the lawn, gasping after the delay, and moved little for the next week. Except for the Laird, of course. He’d brought a full-height barbecue furnace, as well as projecting equipment and numerous computers for his lecture (the wires, my dear!) – all packed into the Toerag which has now achieved half a million miles or thereabouts, mostly conveying vital solar panel opportunities to the people of the near West.

The lecture was billed as a roam through language but really it’s more than likely the Laird knows the origins of every single word in English. What a vast vista of knowledge, whirling forth without notes – but with slides. What’s more there was a musical interlude of masterful irrelevance, where the Laird sang a song by somebody called Jake Thackeray who was apparently unhinged.

The lecture was given on the Sunday and afterwards there was a fete champetre. Thirteen lunched. Roland Malbuoys de Rollup was rolling up in the bushes, self-exiled. Hall is more and more a ringer for Grace Monaco, with the same translucence of one who might apply for the Sainthood. Grace Monaco, if you remember, was rejected by the Vatican on account of having followed fashion too much. Some thought Roland de Rollup might be finished. When asked about his children he said he believed they were at university.

Some old prosecco was found for the evenings. Laura Malcolm said prosecco is a soft drink. Sooner rather than later prosecco was served at luncheon as well to enable a more comfortable afternoon in the gravity loungers. One day Moira MacMatron was in turquoise in the morning but by evening had a lemon gown. She described how she had once been massaged in Funchal by man masseur who seemed to think she should reveal her upper lady parts. There was no further outrage mercifully.

Moira’s vet left a voicemail saying her pug’s test results were in: please ring back. Poor Moira writhed in agony for 24 hours before she could get through. I consoled: ‘You can always get another.’ Laura Malcolm’s dislike of the pug is well-known. As it happened the tests were deliriously all right.

In the loungers matrons wondered what homes to put their menfolk in. There must be a specialist unit for old Red Top heroes, ideal for Beamish O’Halloran. You’d think it would be in the Reigate area, but who knows? In the kitchen Laura Malcolm was manipulating a collapsed suction bag… what was it? I was struck as if across the head that it was a disused catheter. But it wasn’t. It was the interior of a wine box. Earlier Matt Driver, that great mogul who is still an important world-taste shaper, had tried to get a wine box ‘going’. You have to pull the tap out from its little storage hutch. In his thoroughness, Matt Driver dismantled the wine box almost completely with no real progress in the matter of the tap. The next day he was to be seen putting it back together again with the same glaring concentration that made him what he afterwards became.

Otherwise Matt Driver was glaring in his shed. After several days, its shelves had been nuked, or emptied. The shed is to be knocked down as the chateau fragment extends eastwards or it might be westwards, with a new kitchen wing.

The Laird launched a drone. It couldn’t reach as far as Paris for stealing things from the Hermes shop, worst luck.  Filming was its main function. Sound of Music style aerial shots of the whole Norman desmesne were produced, with the residence looking incredibly billionairesque, I thought.

The Men’s team lost the Quiz as always, although not as badly as in previous years. How much longer will there be men and women, anyway? Tempers flared a little less. Laura Malcolm handbagged the Quizmaster quite a bit, although the Laird seems to stand up to these assaults very well. But just a few bars of an ABBA song and he’s in floods. What a man!

I thought the Winning Women could sing a song, to the tune of ‘Take back your mink…’ from ‘Guys and Dolls’ but with different words: ‘Zip up your minge… and only unzip for some other man…’ That bit scanned but I couldn’t think of any other words to fit..

We went to look at the hornets’ nest. Hall and Roland Malbuoys de Rollup were brought back for a dinner. Laura Malcolm had made a guacamole with his corn chips. This meant holding the bowl while guests tried to scoop. ‘I’m bored with this,’ she said, snatching away the guac. At least Roland Malbuoys de Rollup was back from the brink of extinction. ‘Have you heard of furry parties?’ he enquired. He said his son had told him. Likely story. People foregather got up as children’s soft toys which is so exciting informal congress breaks out.

How we roared.

The Norman Scene: loungers Reign Supreme

Wednesday 23rd August 2023

It was T&G whether she would make it. The last few years have been a cacophony of illnesses. But Royston King’s sister safely docked at 90 years this month.

Her preparations were either a fateful final burst or a sign of better things to come. Twice to the mart, more and more invited, quiches stored… in the end 140 took tea in the village hall.

Village Hall ladies swirled in the kitchenette, which was in fact a full catering kitchen. Sausage rolls rained down. Easily 40 pints of milk were heaved into the fridge. There’d been a quiche crisis. Those bought in advance were found to have been beyond the sell-by date at the time they were put in the freezer. So condemned. Another 80 quiches bought last min. Royston King’s sister had averted a village mass poisoning. But there were cakes, iced fancies, dainties of every kind brought as offerings in addition.

The largesse of the village these days…. cards, cash donations to the Food Bank piled up. Royston King’s sister abandoned her walker. She stood throughout. She delivered a speech. She’s not a gusher. But how that village cleaved to her. Commanding, I would say. No nonsense. The backbone of England. A Canon of Winchester Cathedral was present as well as a multi-millionaire former nursery owner. There were even Gays. Then ranging up to pensioners on sticks kept going by the NHS. What a range.

When the function was over, the ladies surged out of the kitchenette for the stacking of the chairs. One lady of high birth had trouble with her husband. ‘He disappeared twenty minutes ago, looking for a dustpan. What am I supposed to do?’ She was stranded in the middle of the hall with her pile of debris. Later she was seen rocketing into the Canon’s cott, presumably to be cleansed of her Fury and given strength to go on.

The Hall was to be left exactly as found, of course. Walking back to her home, somebody asked Royston King’s sister if she were tired: ‘Tired is hardly the word,’ she said. ‘I’m on the brink of existence.’ But she carried on through a small drinks party and seated dinner in the pub next door with an inner circle of relations. Death’s scythe has been through that family; some members had fallen desperately upon temps dur, almost to the point of death, others – their businesses had not done so well, their second husbands had died while their first husbands remained alive, their children had gone to Australia or turned out to have genetic conditions. But they had borne it all and not flinched in their path. They’d gone on with their small businesses, they weren’t having any nonsense, no dogma for them. The backbone of England.

My Gay Mother would have thoroughly approved of this event as a triumph of village life with Royston King’s sister as a Christ-like figure at the heart of it.

Saturday 12th August 2023

It’s the Glorious 12th. I only just realised.

Oh for the days when Uncle Harold was on the Moors at Chatsworth (or was it Bolton Abbey) for the Grouse – which Debo wouldn’t touch, of course.

With the Gay Mother I was talking about how Aunt Lavinia once lived at Sonning. ‘Sunning,’ the Gay Mother corrected at once. Later we were listing the mansions in a part of the Far West where they cluster – rather like Rhode Island. Flete, Delamore, Fitzworthy, Mothercombe, darling Blachford, of course. Which one was built as a summer residence for the Empress Frederick? The Gay Mother wasn’t sure but her mind was led to Queen Victoria and Ponsonby, her Sec, whose family were from those parts. ‘There’s another one,’ she said. ‘Punsonby, not Ponsonby.’

One day one of her friends rang up to pick over the Battle of Waterloo – not so much manoeuvres, more Who was There.

At the Family Reunion in Yorkshire, the Gay Mother remained in the Far West but somehow was connected by Zoom in the afternoon… I think Cousin Monica put her up to it. Anyway she and Cousin Monica were the stars of the Zoom, riffing freely not necessarily aware that 50 people were listening. Cousin Monica said that in 1800 or thereabouts another wing had been intended for our mansion but never built: ‘Thank Goodness for that,’ the Gay Mother said. Indeed another wing would have been killing. The upkeep.

It is thought more than likely that the Gay Mother will gain 100 in February.

Thursday 10th August 2023

I think I mentioned Glyndebourniana – we took La Dialogue des Carmelites. Aunt Lavinia was in the party with Prince Dmitri. ‘I can’t say I enjoyed it,’ a woman was overheard saying in the car park. ‘Enjoy is the wrong word.’ Too right.  It was shattering, completely believable as well as horribly topical. The abuse of women by men – it just never stops. Why can’t men stop abusing women?

In this case, it was nuns in Revolutionary France (they should never had had that Revolution). It was decided by men that their heads must be chopped off – just because they were nuns.

Not quite what one goes to Glyndebourniana to hear, in the upper echelons. But right. Our picnic came off well. Aunt Lavinia did the duck.

Simeon Bond, in his mask, was nowhere to be seen. Prince Dmitri couldn’t believe it. We always see Simeon Bond wherever we go.

Holland Park opera – more picnics.

Otherwise I’ve become a fixture in the side stalls at the dear darling Royal Albert Hall. Bertram DiBantry caused an outrage. ‘What a load of rubbish!’ somebody shouted at the end of his perf. Isn’t it rather high-handed to shout? What if others think differently?  I suppose the person couldn’t help it. Bertram DiBantry won’t be deterred, I’m sure. He’d taken a scale such as a child or somebody with no idea would pick out and repeated it for twelve minutes. There was dislike of mu while pushing it to extremes of misty nothingness at the same time. It all made perfect sense.

The idea now is that only massive works with a cast of millions are to be performed at the Royal Albert Hall in the Proms season. So Sibelius, Shostakovich and Mahler. Not my usual choice but salutary to try and get used to them. No Bruckner this year, thank goodness. He really is utterly ghastly drear.

The National Youth Orch gave the Prom last Saturday. Works of unutterable tedium – Copeland 1st Symphony. Something by Hindemith, supposed to be humorous.  Only Four Last Songs super. But the encores – utter heaven. Gospel singing and finally the Basin Street Blues, with individual orch members riffing.  Sitting next to me was ludicrous figure in a bow tie. Classic Prom bore. ‘In the know’, pompous, huffy. The worst of England.

Harry Rollo and Mercury Mr Kitten received quietly on a previous Saturday evening. More and more people are becoming ‘non-binary’. I must say one of my regrets is not wearing more jewellery and carrying a smaller handbag. Even today I get dirty looks for carrying a large handbag.

Harry said they must leave for Los Angeles to attend to the outer reaches of their Empire.

The Buckingham Palace Press Preview of the Summer Opening took place. Display v. much reduced.  The Queen’s shoes looked just a little grubby. But you could see the dogs embroidered on her Corrie frock. The diamond collet ‘Coronation’ necklace the only jewel.

The big news is that that stain on one of the banquettes in the Picture Gallery has disappeared. Banquette recovered by the looks. The King must have put his foot down. It really did appear as if someone had had an accident. Just the sort of thing old people aren’t bothered about – like the Gay Mother and her drawing room curtains in ribbons.

Stained Banquette at Buckingham Palace Picture Gallery, graphed in 2015. Now GONE – stain that Is. They must have Found some more of the Fabric in a Remote Cupboard

Wendy House Put Round King at the Coronation’s Most Solemn Moment

The Queen’s Coronation Frock

The Queen’s Coronation Shoes

One of the Queen’s Dogs – name of Gus

Cecil Beaton Graphed Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, as Queen Elizabeth, by This Vase, Thereby turning her into the Fantasy Crinolined Queen she Afterwards Became

Buckingham Palace Garden: Rewilding, which seems to mean Stinging Nettles

Close-Up of Stingers in Buckingham Palace Garden: Should Rewilding just mean Stinging Nettles?

Monday 31st July 2023

The two branches of the family are thought to have divided in the 16th century. Nevertheless a Family Reunion was considered worthwhile. So I boarded for Yorkshire – a long way from the Far West, I’m sure you’re thinking.

Best not to ask – anyway, I don’t know the answer. There were mansions in the offing, so 1st class conveyance was more than justified.

A Family Reunion is often no such thing because one has never met them before. The first encounter is always excruciating because in addition to the standard awkwardness of meeting strangers is a nightmare entanglement with the family tree. Who are you and why?

One of the mansions was being renovated. There was aristocracy and editorship of one of our foremost decor magazines heavily present on the side married into, our side resolutely Landed Gentry of course. So the renovation was absolutely purring, only the kitchen questionable being evidently really some other room. What a mansion – the dream suite of drawing rooms at the front with floor to ceiling windows and the spiral staircase by a protege of Carr of York – important.

The other mansion could only be penetrated through paddocked barriers. ‘Burglars,’ the owner said. ‘We don’t insure the contents and they’re gradually leeching away.’

This owner was said to be a terrible driver. None of the others would get in his car. The car itself was more of a toy car of an unknown brand, a tiny box, despite huge commercial holdings of this twig of the family. Where was the limo and feur? The driving was not so much bad as non-existent. Could you call it driving? Just wheezing along in 1st gear and stopping randomly in the middle of roundabouts.

On the Sunday we visited the graves of the Yorkshire family. There was one small cremation tablet set apart in a sea of mud. ‘Lump!’ somebody shrieked. ‘Can’t she be moved?’ ‘Who was Lump?’ I inquired. The nanny, it seemed. What devotion, I said, to be buried with her employers through all Eternity. How right. But also right that she should be apart, in the servant’s quarters, as it were.

Didn’t go down well.

I recall Rufus Pitman’s favourite phrase, applied usually to Royalty dying in exile: ‘Her maid was with her to the end.’

Now surely we are ready for the final leap – that the maid or nanny is buried with the mistress or master, bonded forever in service.

Thursday 20th July 2023

The button came loose like a loose tooth just as I was getting into the car for the Longborough opera (Gotter: it was great). This was at the beginning of June. So the luck of being able to save the button. Just as when, twenty years ago, an exclusive button engraved ‘Prada’ fell from my Prada mac, in the Prada shop onto the highlighting fawn carpet, then a feature of Prada shops throughout the world, now a lost world.

The falling off of the present unique button from the cuff of my Paul Smith dress shirt, the one with horizontal bands of sateen, was a parallel event: it could never be replaced. Staying overnight in the Swolds after Gotter, I carefully squirrelled the priceless item away.

Some weeks later, dressing for Glyndebourne (The Carmelites: it was great), I re-discovered the trauma of the absent button on the cuff. I’d forgotten all about it. Forgotten also where I’d concealed it for safe-keeping. The same thing happened to the Gay Granny with a Hester Bateman spoon that could never be found.

For weeks I’ve been jabbing here and there in desperate quest, like a cat that’s lost her kitten or that time our cat killed a pheasant’s chick and that pheasant’s frantic distress was terrible. I’ve burrowed through all three of my handbags, I’ve mined every crevice of my sponge bag. I’ve turned out my wallet and my back-up wallet. At one point I wondered if I’d buried the button in a sample pot from SpaceNK. All the drawers in the drawing room, every ornamental box – all seized on. But nothing.

What could I have done with it?

Seriously, I was facing Button Queen in Marylebone (what’s the betting it’s closed down). Or even worse, hysteria in the Paul Smith shop in Covent Garden.

This gone Sunday, just as the Men’s Final was beginning, sudden flash… my Aly Cappellino holdall, which definitely accompanied me to Longborough. It was a vision, a bolt, a voice calling me to the Grail in sure and certain hope. And there, sure enough, in one of the inner pockets of the holdall, it was.

I’m sure I looked in that holdall before. How could I not have done?

So, I was able to relieve the agonising strain of the Men’s Final by sewing it back on.

What a glorious day. That which was lost was found. And the Men’s Final.. Anthony Mottram, presently boiling in Cyprus, texted beforehand: ‘May the new Kitchen win.’ But all looked to be lost. Then it wasn’t. What a thrilling player is this new Kitchen – although I’m not sure he should pat the King of Spain on the arm in a matey way but really one will forgive him anything. I’ve not known such uplift since the Response to the Pandemic and the end of the world as we knew it.

One mystery: why did Her Royal Highness’s Roland Mouret crease? Her Late Majesty never creased in 96 years. It was Eve Pollard who said, commentating on Royal Ascot for TV: ‘Royalty are marvellous. They never crease or stain.’

I think it was the strange weather: it’s very humid although it doesn’t appear to be.

It was quite tiring having to get up to curtsey with so many Royalties present: four Royal Highnesses and one Majesty. Later it turned out the Monacos were there: lucky I didn’t know because I’m not sure whether one curtseys to them. I think not.

That Which was Lost was Found

Back On! Hope Resurgam