Thursday 23rd May 2013

Chelsea Flower Show yesterday. You’ll have to wait. Aunt Lavinia, Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver were the party. Glamour. Matt came direct from presenting to Kraft in a hotel at Marble Arch. On the weekend, they stalked a long-time-no-see (language!) friend in the Arundel neighbourhood and ended up with Glyndebourne tickets.

Lord Arrowby embraced Chelsea on Tuesday. Robert Nevil, of course, took the President’s Luncheon on Monday. As always, Poor Little Rich Gays, despite complete absence of normalcy, throb at the core of the world.

Meanwhile, I offer a panoramic view of Poor Little Rich Gays here and globe-wide. Harry Rollo, the performance artist and impresario  regained London 1st class from Australia and was texting for builders within minutes of reéntre to his apartment. Cabin luggage not even released from the hand and he wanted a complete refurb. In Australia, accompanied by Mercury, Mr Kitten, his performances tended more towards music, although a retired soprano delivered her lines in a singing style but speaking, with line and tune not found and strange annunciation as if English never spoken before. It was meant to be like that. At the same time she did origami and tended a cement mixer. Harry is interested in the earliest times, before there were people but all the elements were in place, waiting to form.  All the same, he loves decor and shopping.

Now Lord Arrowby has been texting. You may recall he is my former part-time love interest and has now got a lovely little job behind a small door in Whitehall, absolutely at the heart of things. He writes down what they all say. He was asked onto Newsnight, but quite refused to appear. It was during a perf of ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ last Friday where he was with that hot go-er, Guy Bostock. But Lord Arrowby was texting throughout, either to Newsnight or me, refusing in all cases. No to Newsnight and no to Trooping the Colour. He was offered a special view from a Government room but said No, it would be too chilly. I said, ‘What about your plus one? Perhaps you could issue a correction memo to the effect that you will be attending after all, and your plus one will be… Adrian Edge, of the Poor Little Rich Gays…’

It is true that the greatly-craved, classic Poor Little Rich Gay full diary is achieved by will-power mainly. But, on the other hand, as we know too well, once a Poor Little Rich Gay has made up his mind…

Monday 20th May 2013

Not even the Queen has seen it – but you get it here.

Robert Nevil STILL at Chelsea. Has been there since luncheon.

He was within one foot of Prince Harry – he doesn’t smell. In fact is pretty close too. Also Eddie Redmaye, known to Joshua Baring from school days.

Hidjus (Robert Nevil spelling) Marc Quinn Object with Dolly Mixture Underlay Seen at Chelsea Flower Show by Robert Nevil

Chelsea Trash Selected by Robert Nevil for Condemnation

Monday 20th May 2013

As biographer of the Pony Club, Robert Nevil is being placed at the President’s Luncheon as we speak. The Chelsea Flower Show!

What a long way he has come from that supra-male-brothel flat in Brixton where he and Eddie Sedgewick were burgled every day and routinely exposed themselves to helpless passengers of any train halted unexpectedly outside the window.

What a week for Poor Little Rich Gays. I gain the Show on Wednesday at 5.30, with Matt Driver, Laura Malcolm and Aunt Lavinia, tickets funded by the Gay Mother. Royston King, who gives millions to London Heritage via his Committee (they do what he says), will be broadcasting all week, of course, for the BBC.

Then on Saturday – Glyndebourne!

Otherwise, Val was poisoned at Grosvenor Square; twice he fled the bus home to retch by a tree. This was on Saturday. Once home, he re-sauced and yesterday didn’t know the time of day. Today’s birthday drive to the G.F.Watts Museum in Surrey (closed anyway on a Monday) is awff.

As for me, trouble in fridge yesterday. Leaking of my carboy (as Val calls a 4 pint milk carton); what remained decanted into Pellegrino bottle. So now pouring milk from mineral water recepticle. World upside down. Also metal saucepan scourer found to be smelly for second time in a week.

The President’s Luncheon of the Chelsea Flower Show, Taking Place at this Moment

Place-Setting at the President’s Luncheon of the Chelsea Flower Show, Taking Place AT THIS MOMENT. Robert Nevil Thinks This Styling is Angus-Willis Inspired, But Angus Would Never Go Near Mauve

Greatnesses, Including Robert Nevil, Gather for the President’s Luncheon of the Chelsea Flower Show, Taking Place AT THIS MOMENT

Saturday 18th May 2013

Today, Val, one of our noblest Poor Little Rich Gays, at present unsauced, takes 56 years. He’s lunching near Grosvenor Square with some other friends. The plan is a Scottish walking outfit but done in chiffon to disconcert, with heather-mixture brooch – i.e. amethysts, topaz and diamonds. But perhaps glass for economy.

So the first of at least three annual visits to Great Dixter has taken place. Angus Willis, hero of Hastings, and I abandoned the aftermath of the Hastings May Day spring green festival, which was relaxed pub life,  for Dixter.

Dixter never fails, despite the near dead tree in the front meadow – just a pole with a few leaves at the top which has been there for years. Dixter never fails. Never, never, never. Which is strange for a Poor Little Rich Gay mecca. Not even the death of C Lloyd has interrupted Dixter’s stream of magnificence. On and on it goes.

Angus Willis has not always embraced Dixter though. He has turned away from Dixter: too messy, too many colours, overcrowded. But he was keen to go, strangely.

The utter thrill each year of coming up the garden path. Always something new awaits, yet Dixter never changes. C. Lloyd hated good taste, couldn’t give a damn yet knew what he was doing.

So we forge into the top garden. My God, they’re using ‘Shirley’, the most fearsome anaemic tulip, pearl with a mauve edge. Of course it’s a miracle. They’ve put ‘Shirley’ with grey and silver foliage and four huge euphorbias with their lime-green flowers. It’s a concept but not a bit self-important. ‘Shirley’ is just the right choice. On we go, more and more enraptured by tulips in outrageous colours, outrageously neighboured. Transports of joy. Whoever planned and planted was seized with joy. Angus is bending and takes photographs. We reach the Long Border (always the Dixter pilgrimage follows the same route). The huge yellow Euonymus is such a challenge. I’ve struggled with it before. It’s sickly-looking, variegated, evergreen – everything’s wrong with it. But suddenly, from a certain angle, you see the point.

Finally, Angus yielded and submitted to Dixter.

Tulip ‘Shirley’ an Unlikely Success at Great Dixter

Close-Up of ‘Shirley’: Not First Choice of Tulip but Transformed at Dixter

Love This Red and White Tulip: Will Seek it Out for Next Year: Don’t Know Name

Glory of Tulips at Dixter

Cascades of Colour at Dixter

Can You Believe It?

The Pots!

Classic C. Lloyd: Tulip ‘Queen of Sheba’ with Forget-me-Nots. Why is This Not Public Park, Which he Despised?

Tuesday 14th May 2013

To Hastings for May Bank Holiday, that ancient festival day of our pagan past. Hastings, as you know, is where Angus Willis reigns supreme with his world-famous Home Store (only opened a year ago but immediately world-famous) and his supreme, extreme Tudor House – it really is Tudor although it wasn’t when he bought it.

But Hastings May Day Ancient Festival of Jack in the Green, where a 12 foot leafy phallus is paraded through the streets, is something else. It’s a mass entertainment. You stand in the street for an hour while the procession passes. There are strange 12 foot dolls on wheels, operated from within by a person, as well as people of all ages dyed green and wound with greenery. Tremendous drums and whacking of sticks accompany. Somehow, although a rending of life into art of some sort, it is not Poor Little Rich Gay. Too much uncomplicated joy. No torment. It was a superb crystalline day, although chilly.

Fergus Strachan, partner of Angus Willis, the famous Celtic beauty, who doesn’t cook or do decor but works night and day on his face and hair and suffers from terrible nerves, was present.  He has championed Dermarolla, which is where you have your face rolled over with a spiked metal roller (£700). A deeper dermal layer which shuts down in later life is bucked off its arse and the face is re-born. Fergus is living proof that it works.

He had friends over and friends of friends one of whom knew the all-you-can-eat eatery in Buckhurst Hill where Laura Malcolm’s mother’s bridesmaid was a patron in later life. The bridesmaid had indeed been personal assistant to the head of Lloyds Bank but other pensioners economised by eating nothing all week in order to best benefit from the £7.50 before 6.30pm all-you-can-eat option. In the queue for the buffet, though, their hunger was such that frequently they would gnaw on the arm of the person in front of them.

We lunched in Battle which was delightful, then later we went into a pub. At 4.30 in the afternoon. It was packed for the Pagan Festival. Nowhere to sit. I had some trouble grasping. It did not appear that these people were resting in glamour in between investment deals. It was unlikely that later they would be  looking at fabric samples, paint samples, property details or alternative face cleansers. No, this was it. All their lives had come to rest in the pub at 4.30 in the afternoon and might remain there indefinitely. They lacked for nothing.

It just wouldn’t do. Angus Willis and I were agreed. We couldn’t sit or rather stand around in a pub – too many frontiers to push back. What next for asparagus? Could tulips be used differently? Angus is secretly cultivating Giant Hogweed. So we left for dear, darling Great Dixter …. of which more later.

Come back, come back!

The Angus Willis Home Store, Hastings, Decorated for the Jack in the Green Ancient May Day Festival

May Day Sex Goddess heralds Hastings Jack in the Green May Day Parade

Hastings May Day Jack in the Green – the Actual Phallus Paraded

People Dyed Green for Hastings May Day Jack in the Green May Day Parade

More Green for Hastings Jack in the Green May Day Parade

Man in Hat for Hastings May Day Jack in the Green May Day Festival

Hastings en Fête for Jack in the Green May Day Festival

Saturday 11th May 2013

Last Saturday the cabaret artiste and hero of the Blitz Club (circa 1972) at the dawn of Poor Little Rich Gay time took 60 years. He was dressed as Marlene in a red hunting coat, black velvet knickers, fishnet tights and S and M high-heeled boots. From that era of rebellion, outrage and dressing up, before Gays were normal, he has forged direct. No question of better behaviour or any of that dreariness. Also present were Ann Boleyn, Henry VIII, an archbishop, several Cleopatras, Marie-Antoinettes and mental health nurses as well as one Shirley Valentine and one tiger – Ronnie Ronnie’s partner, Buck. Wigs were high, high candyfloss and lit from within as were hats. The archbishop became abusive when photographed. Everyone else lived to be graphed.

Robert Nevil, who championed the Gay cause with Eddie Sedgewick, from a flat above a male brothel beside the railway line in Brixton from 1973, wore Chinese pyjamas. He was accompanied by Sebastian Archer in a Rhett Butler Southern coat. Whenever the Sevenoaks train stopped outside the window of that flat, Robert Nevil and Eddie, both of Public School origin,  would be sure to expose themselves to helpless commuters. Later Robert Nevil went mainstream as the biographer of the Pony Club. Sebastian Archer put a stop to that sort of behaviour. Eddie’s never gone mainstream, despite being married to the MP for Whirly and Lorraine. But he has no interest in politics whatsoever.  At Ronnie’s 60th birthday party, he was dressed as John Lennon. The nylon of his wig! Classic 70s synthetic. He’s thinking of leaving for New York, unloved in his own country. But he’ll resurge. He always does. He’ll make more Art.

Conversation at Ronnie Ronnie’s party was not the priority, except I discussed a new performance artist, Noo Noo, with Sebastian. Fay Presto, the magician, got fearfully cross at lack of silence for her perf but carried on anyway. In the end, jaws were on the floor. She made beer disappear inside a folded newspaper. It didn’t even manifest when she ripped up the paper entirely. Then  grasps as she poured the liquid from the shreds.

Buck read a message from Simon Doonan in New York. In fact it was a poem. Together he and Ronnie left Reading 43 years ago to discover the Beautiful People in London. Little did they know they only had to discover themselves. Or perhaps they did. The poem celebrated Ronnie Ronnie’s magnificence at all times, even when trapped in a thorn bush with knickers awry or when heaped at the foot of a staircase after excessive refreshment. Over the years there have been artistic differences, but all magnificent. Ronnie Ronnie was even a ‘c…t ‘ but still magnificent.

Oh yes! Ronnie Ronnie has lived. He hurls in. ‘I think I’m in love,’ he might say to a wildly attractive young man just met.

What a fine, free range! Two butlers served champagne. From the front, they were bare-chested but modesty aprons made them dainty in the mid-body.

From behind they were bare.

Ronnie Ronnie Facing up to Sixty

Butler Service at Ronnie Ronnie’s Sixtieth Birthday Party

Fay Presto Does Beer-in-Newspaper Trick

The Archbishop with Nefertiti: Shirley Valentine in Background

High, High Hair, Convenient for Lodging Versailles-Style Shades

Cleopatra – But in Fact Geri Halliwell

Shirley Valentine

Buck in Tigerskin – He’s a Go-er

Ronnie Ronnie Feted at his Sixtieth Birthday Party: Those are the Boots

The Great Eve Ferret with A Fine Porcelain Greatness

Nice

Hair Lit From Within

Thursday 9th May 2013

Every known young architect attended in sharp suits and thin ties. The chapel at Golders Green was packed. Standing room only, but Dame Maggi Hambling was seated. Reggie Cresswell, the Ghanian ceramicist, came up from his north London home. He said he had never before been further than Hampstead on the Northern line. The young blades were crowded at the back, ready to thrust forward, as it were. There was a picture of some of them, in swimwear at the Côte, in the order of service. Bruno France Bruno played the piano and a lady sang. There were three tributes, one by Guinevere Pelham. That was the ceremony. A single bunch of white daffodils lay on the coffin. The music was Debussy, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky and Charles Ives. Words and music were spun into a fine, spare shape just as Virgil made a building and was curiously in his being. So art and life were tempered into one at the end.

Outside on the lawn was social conversation of the long-time-no-see kind usual at funerals. Mr Pelham said it was impossible to tell, at dinners, who was an item and who not. He and Guinevere were bemused.

Then on to the wake at Virgil’s office. Go-go boys (or that type) but with clothes on, had been hired as waiters. Virgil used to do this if he had an office party. Champagne glasses were lined up on a black cloth.  High-honed canapés were offered. It was as if nothing had happened. The office itself of course is Virgil’s vision – an extraordinary transformation of an ordinary space into a floating, airy haven. He could not have been more there yet more absent.

But the office will go on. I consulted some of the young bucks. They’ll keep it going. The name goes on.

Saturday 4th May 2013

I applied some paint then tried to dust it. A mistake.

Tonight I plunge deep into the demi monde: Ronnie Ronnie, the cabaret singer and artist, gains 60 years. His Jubilee. Robert Nevil, Sebastian Archer and Eddie Sedgwick are to attend, in wigs, arc-ing straight back to the Blitz Club years, those pioneering days, the Wild West of the Poor Little Rich Gays, with Marilyn and Steve Strange.

Robert Nevil addressed the Colchester branch of the Pony Club the Saturday before last. Sensational revelations: in the 30s associates of W.H.Auden infiltrated the Club and were successful in introducing subliminal socialistic tendencies. Nobody has noticed before Robert Nevil who pored over tackle and bits and reins for years. What he found has shattered the Pony Club for ever. Yes, left-wing imagery secreted in the harness, the hammer and sickle even, saddles interlined with ghostly depictions of wretched poverty (streets now lovely after gentrification).

The reception was frankly hostile. Several members writhed in disbelief. Robert Nevil soldiered on. There was barracking. When he explained that Stephen Spender actually stole a pony and gave it to the East End, there were howls of agony: ‘Stabling!’ they cried. ‘How can the Poor look after a Pony?’

Up Robert Nevil flashed on his whiteboard an image of the very Pony, quite white, with ears pricked for revolution and wearing a rational Pony coat showing scenes from the Sidney Street Siege as well as the Cleveland Street male brothel, designed by Humphrey Spender, brother of Stephen Spender.

Absolute mayhem in the hall. ‘Politics,’ Club members brayed, ‘we’re above Politics. The Pony life is pure. Our simplicity is gone for ever.’ Some attempted to hack the whiteboard but Robert Nevil forged on, scholarly and detached, concerned only with the truth.

Members of the Colchester Pony Club: Very Upset

Trauma: The Pony Club Shattered for Ever

Friday 3rd May 2013

We attended at Golders Green yesterday the final obsequies for poor vanished Virgil Grayson. Afterwards a honed glamorous reception in his office, his design of course, with go-go boy waiters as he liked  but him not there. But I can’t face it yet. Lord Arrowby has been on the phone, comforting. He plays cricket tomorrow near Kidderminster. Hasn’t batted since Public school days.

On Wednesday the Photo Multi marked his birthday at Delauney where I’d never been before. I had a banana split as I used to have at Fullers in the 60s. Never thought to see a banana split again. After much champagne I talked rather too much about money and lawyers, which are topics I’m lured utterly into in company of top accountants and lawyers. The Photo Multi was glowing and divine. Wow-factor was his Swarovski crystal tie which had come in at £800. Poor Simon Limpney, lachrymose companion of Robin Smallmeal, head of landfill in this country or whatever, claimed that the original Swarovski crystal was found in the lady-part of a Siberian snow-leopard.

Here are some graphs of St Tropez, where I was a few weeks ago at the end of my cruise with Val (not on a paying basis). Out of season in sparkling spring shine this strange little rather bare fishing town delights. Best of all the art gallery there, L’Annonciade,  someone’s collection bequeathed, a rich life well spent, very good taste: one Seurat, quite small, a rather harsh Matisse, very good second rankers from the pre-Modern era. Absolute new find was Edouard Vuillard (Val already knew, of course) who did people consumed by their fabrics and wallpaper, fore-runner of Matisse.

I’ve not forgotten Robert Nevil’s address to the Colchester branch of the Pony Club about the socialistic tendencies of pony harness in the 1930s.

L’Annonciade, musée de Saint-Tropez: the One Seurat: Divine

This Might be a Bonnard: L’Annonciade, St Tropez

Vuillard! Great Find for Me: L’Annonciade, St Tropez

Another Vuillard: Glory: L’Annonciade, St Tropez

Félix Vallotton: L’Annonciade, St Tropez

The Rather Harsh Matisse: L’Annonciade, St Tropez

St Tropez at Her Best in Early Spring: There’s Our Cruise Ship

Bare, Abstract St Tropez in Early April