Tuesday 27th February 2013

I’ve been driving around the countryside with the Gay Mother, otherwise known as Mrs Garnet Edge, looking at social housing. Or anti-social housing, depending on your point of view.

There’s a reason, I won’t go into. We whisked by a development in the official car with Xenon driving lights. Mrs Garnet received a favourable impression. I was reminded of when Beatrice Lillie grasped the Noh Theatre. ‘I looked at it for five minutes. It was quite enough.’ She then launched her own version.

On Sunday, Mrs Garnet took 89 years. Now she is in her 90th year. Never has she bucketed about so briskly drawing curtains etc. We lunched at the village Gastro where the chef recently won a TV cooking competition. Very detailed food, requiring to be studied. No use wolfing down. I had venison suffused with chocolate (faintest hint). Great Aunt Smidge and the Gay Mother poured over their duck breast with intense interest, even summoning the waitress to inquire about the little black sticks. An excellent lunch, though; new and with a halt expertly called well before the frontier with fancification. At another table (or tables) were the whole village lunching for the churchwarden’s 80th birthday.  Someone had sold a farm for £7 million apparently. So the Gay Mother was double-feted by the Vicar and various others she’s known since the 50s. ‘What a war it was!’ a lady cried.

But these Lib Dem women! ‘Why didn’t they slap him?’ the grand dames chorused. I heard one of the unfortunates interviewed on the World at One yesterday. Lord Foxy or whatever he’s called was rather persistent but all he actually did was press up his knee. She said she was going to the ‘toilet’ as a way of pouring cold water on his fevered passion. When she came out, there he was, suggesting a drink in his room. Well, she got out of that, but she was so distressed she needed her daddy. Yes, that’s what she said!

The truth is complaints were made about this unsavoury character and he was got rid of.

What’s all the fuss about?

Monday 25th February 2013

Val was swaying for the Manet Exhibition at the Royal Academy and braying. Many from the Home Counties were first of all stunned, then disintegrated. As so often when Poor Little Rich Gays abound, little heaps of grey ash where once there had been a person needed to be swept up by staff.

‘Oh the Paris Salon!,’ Val bellowed. Apart from anything else the fumes from his various little helpers were enough to scorch a wheat field. ‘Picasso under the dryer. Degas having a marcel wave.’

Not quite right, but never mind. ‘Scarcely more than a caricature,’ Val lurched and boomed into the hush before the Portrait of the Tragedian. I found later that Brian Sewell, the art critic, thought the same. Inconsistent. Something wrong with the perspective in the reduced version of Le déjeuner sur l’herbe, too many trifles in the exhibition. To me it was all charming enough and a vast improvement on Van Gogh. I loved The Luncheon, sent over from Munich. Here a young man, possibly Manet’s son, is standing, not lunching, possibly about to leave. The background figures provide no narrative or explanation. Genevieve Suzy, in her review, admired the portraits made out of nothing but black and patches of light. Even Val liked the portrait of Desboutin, with dog.

The main interest for Poor Little Rich Gays is that Manet was frightfully rich – not from Art but self-monied. Was he too rich to finish? Many of his art works were not finished apparently. Was he too rich to bother? Perspective was left to take care of itself and he didn’t wait for the paint to dry before applying the next layer. This could have been a fabulous genius innovation or idle rich slapdash. Was he freed or crippled by money?

Val Said This Portrait is of Herbert Morrison; in Fact it is Berthe Morisot

Saturday 23rd February 2013

Last Sunday we forged north in my official car with Xenon driving lights  for lunch with the Photo Multi’s mother. What a radiant day! Val came, in a self-made tweed suit, also self-pimped and miraculously relieved of moth-holes.  He’s got a mending drive on. We fetched the magnificent Lady Newell from her manoir at St Mermantrude’s near Oxford. At 83, she’d been in bed for two and a half weeks with a chronic chest infection. Only downstairs on the Wednesday before but by last Sunday fully decorated  for the journey north with scarves and earrings. Her wow-factor was Jackie O sunglasses converted to spectacles. What a bulwark are things when they’re right.  She couldn’t believe the number of roundabouts but loved the power station we passed near the luncheon destination. Six round chimneys, 40 feet in diameter, 600 feet high, with sides curving inward,  at the base plunging directly into the ground without interruption, primitive, terrifying and important, like Henry Moore. Smoking also.

Lady Newell, you might recall, is the mother of Elsa Hodgeman, the Gertrude Stein de nos jours – the one who tried a salary and didn’t care for it. Neither mother nor daughter have ever cared for salaries. Employees never! They know everybody instead. Should there be legal proceedings over a cracked pavement slab, Lady Newell will be represented by the highest imaginable QC. After the War, she got hold of a West End mansion (in the Central of London) where Elsa now lives and where Miroslav by raging coincidence has been painting the double height vestibule.

We gained the elegant Gastro via the nearby Cathedral – a glorious lightening visit. The length and mystery of this Cathedral had not stuck me before. Inside it’s a forest of vaults and pillars, stretching without limit into a blaze of light at the far end. There’s no East Window, but an apse with temporarily clear glass while the stained is being restored. Here, in the choir, Marcus Cargill, now England’s leading clockmender, then a chorister, queened and preened at the age of ten. For in the Close of this Cathedral lies a place of pilgrimage for Poor Little Rich Gays, their fount, it might be said, where it all began. In the Cathedral Choir School, the Abu Ghraib of the Poor Little Rich Gays, were imprisoned in the 60s simultaneously Marcus Cargill and Anthony Mottram, now ‘consultant’ of Prague, as you know currently estranged from me, Adrian Edge,  after 42 years (but a mere 3 years of estrangement), and then, later, Ned Boule, the organist . So it was that from that black well flowered the horror and glory of the Poor Little Rich Gays.

The Multis lavished the lunch and couldn’t have been more skittish and attractive. The Photo Multi, although coughing terribly, was adorably cute. The Blond Multi wanted a 1st course but the Photo wanted more sides.  As a dog with bone, the Blond could not be prised from his 1st course mania, nor the Photo from his sides. How they tussled and lobbed, then plunged into self-knowing giggles, before resuming their lobbing.

The Cathedral Choir School Where Three of Our Number were Hurt into Poor Little Rich Gay Life

The Power Station Liked By Lady Newell, Seen in Wing Mirror by the Photo Multi

Monday 18th February 2013

A Viennese Whirl – a swirl of whipped cream atop the coffee – swansdown, taffeta, diamond-sprinkled, oyster satin, gloves, a fur living at the shoulders, circling, purring. So I cascaded up the gala staircase of the Hofburg Palace, in an evening suit concept by Claudio Tonello (jersey, with tiny jackette, of course) for the Coffee-House Owners’ Ball, a week ago last Friday.

In the morning, I attended, along with our group whose purpose was to show Vienna to the world and the Australian travel agents who later asked for room numbers (see previous Post), Dr Echmeyer’s school of dancing and etiquette. I was in my Topman tweed suitlette and Prada mock-golfing shoes (Prada Factory shop, Montevarchi). I felt that Dr Echmeyer had some particular reason for disliking a Poor Little Rich Gay. He was silvery and positioned and his smile was a sweep of glittery frost. With astonishing brutality he yanked one into the Quadrille positions.

But later, in the evening, in the ballroom, he was far, far away on the daïs while our group was papp-ed by the leading Austrian tabloid. We were exclusively at a table right beside the dance floor, absolutely ring-side for the Opening Ceremony. First of all, the arrival of massed débutantes in white, with their prematurely-aged but spotty boy partners, all trained by Dr Echmeyer, I believe. Then, oh thundering greatness, the procession of the Ball Committee ! Hair in meringue shades egg-whisked to unheard-of new heights! Former Habsburg ladies, iron within, whipped cream without, lazer smiles leaving heaps of ash amongst the on-lookers where a person had stood seconds before. They assumed the daïs before the opera singer, with coiled coiffure and microphone wiring, was received on the floor and gave Lehár – absolutely copper-bottomed, dead certain voice, top notes in the bag without fail. She was followed by a crouching, vampiric rocker (for modernity) and near-nude dancers as prelude to a ball-room dancing exhibition of the Blue Danube and the other famous Viennese waltz. Finally the débutante army carried out manoeuvres – I spotted one hot boy mover in the mass (see graph below).

So the ball was open and ticket-holders surged onto the floor and overwhelmed like ink the virginal white of the débutante îles flottant. Whether to Elvis or Michael Jackson, the Viennese, it seems, never fail to waltz. One said it was like Blackpool. How could he? The tiniest undercurrent of menace  flickered, the faintest ghost of the clicking of heels from former years – some had plainly never before seen a Poor Little Rich Gay in a dinner suit concept by Claudio Tonello. One young man shouted in English at another for bumping into him. But on the whole, the orderliness of the Austrians! At midnight, Dr Eckmeyer called out the moves for the Quadrille. Two thousand spontaneously formed opposing lines and although few knew the steps and our party and the Australians later asking for room numbers remembered not one jot from the morning’s lesson, the dance was executed. To participate was pleasure; how happy we were! On some parts of the floor, they knew how to do it. A thrilling sight – a Quadrille properly done.

The Coffee-House Owners’ Ball, Vienna: the Mise en Scène

The Ball Committee Assume the Daïs

Hair! The Ball Committee on the Dïas

The Entrance of the Opera Singer

Massed Débutantes and Boys

The One Hot Boy Mover with Débutante

A Gown by Issa, who Made ‘Kate’s’ Engagement Dress

A Miracle of Femininity

Thursday 14th February 2014

St Valentine’s Day – of little interest.

I was telling you about Vienna. Just you wait until I get onto the Coffee-House Owners’ Ball, which occurred last Friday night in full regalia.

Meanwhile, we look at Vienna’s buildings, which divide into heavy, pompous and dull and thrilling, new and fragile. The last Emperor, Franz Josef, ran up a gate to his Hofburg Palais in 1893. Bang opposite, at the same time, up springs a Rene MacIntosh-inspired, Arts and Crafts miracle of slender taste, luxury materials and challenging flat, non bits – the building-without-eyebrows. Emperor absolutely screaming for immediate demolition but had to settle for red geraniums in window boxes to supply the eyebrows.

Further away, at the bottom of a massive, dead-weight of Imperial boulevard, lined with boiling-standard facades is dear, dear Secession. Klimt said ‘Fuck off’ to the Academy and darling Wittgenstein, his father (I mean father of Wittgenstein, not that Witt was father of Klimt), paid for Secession with convenient industrial fortune. Such a two fingers to Habsburg Vienna. Secession is a art gallery, in case you’ve not grasped. For a start, it’s white, not putty like the rest of Vienna. Its surfaces are mostly blank and terrifyingly blind and decoration is occasional outbursts of gold and strange sinuous Art Nouveau flowers. Then the dome! Oh the dome! Of gold filigree.  A hand could crush it yet it blazes on, absolute gold. Within is Klimt’s Beethoven Cycle. A wall painting round three sides of the room showing the quest for happiness, questing in fact for much of the time through blank space, with rich, ornate episodes. First of all the Knight in Shining Armour, who directs merely to a phase of  lust and lasciviousness to be got through. Beyond that at last is Poetry with her Lyre and finally, finally, an angels’ choir and a hot man in perfect nudity (not sure he is really called for).

So, what of the furs of Vienna? Ladies are seen on the streets in furs, with strange Tyrolean hats displaying feathers of birds they have hunted and killed. Former Habsburgs, surely, ladies of iron, unspeakable greatnessess, what one of the Imperial buildings would look like were it to get up and walk. On the other hand, no. In their furs, they are their furs. Their own existence ceases. They are a moving fur.

In this way, we work round again to Secession, and the Poor Little Rich Gays, on the borders of existence.

Habsburg, now I think of it, went over the border and out of existence while Secession and the Building without Eyebrows have grown in allure with the years.

Too much existence will surely be the death of you. Hovering on the borders is a better insurance of existence continuing.

Stodgy, Crippled Imperial Gateway Run Up by the Last Emperor (Strictly the Last but One) in Vienna, 1893

The Ghastly Franz Josef Gateway: Apotheosis of Habsburg Vienna

Dear, Darling Building without Eyebrows, Put Up Dead Opposite Frightful Franz Josef Gateway at the Same Time

Dear, Darling Building without Eyebrows, Vienna

Dear, Precious Secession, Its Filigree Dome Crouching, Fragile yet Fierce

Furred Greatnesses of Vienna in Hats

Furred Greatnesses of Vienna: They are Their Furs

Unusual Sighting of Lone Furred Greatness in Vienna

Monday 11th February 2013

As I was saying – I was in Vienna Wednesday to Saturday for a coffee-house tour culminating in the Coffee-House Owners’ Ball on Friday night.

So marv. But the main thing was the PR lady conducting our group around. We weren’t paying. We were there to show Vienna to the world.  I must just mention the city though. Do you know it? In the late 19th century the Habsburgs rang up and said, ‘Supply five thousand yards of Imperial building.’ So pompous frontage everywhere with swirly bits and wings somehow not lightening the whole. But others had different ideas. Oh dear, dear Secession, with its gold filigree dome.  Art Nouveau.

Come back later for more. We must get back to that PR lady and her glory. Entering a tram, she hurled all her money to the floor. In the Art Museum she dozed agreeably through the lecture about the salt cellar by Cellini only stirring to ask the Viennese North Oxford curator lecturer lady how much it was worth. By the evening she still hadn’t heard back from the new Puerto Rican boyfriend as to date of their next liaison. Even doing the deed, he answers his phone, so why vital text not sent? Dinner was given over to Should she make a scene, put foot down or ignore? Expertise in Puerto Rican male mentality, over-emphasis on mothers, spoiled nature resulting and commitment phobia, exceptionally forthcoming from other members of the group, also involved with men of this type. Next morning in the breakfast room, dramatic development: ‘I sacked the boyfriend at 1 a.m. …. but re-instated at 4.’ Skyped for two hours. He said, ‘Maybe you could come out…’ ‘Don’t worry, darling, I’ve booked the flight.’ She’d done it while they were talking. ‘He said, “I carry you around in my heart all the time. I don’t need to text you”.’  PR Lady’s heart quite melted. Previous boyfriends she hadn’t liked. This one she does. But no good going on like this, with endless struggle to meet up, not having five years lurching about, then breaking up anyway….might as well break up now if it’s going to be five years of Will he? Won’t he? At my age…

On a previous Vienna visit PR lady had had trouble with a policeman while suffering from food poisoning. She’d crossed the road while the light was red. Identity papers were demanded. ‘If you don’t shut up, I’ll poo right here in the street,’ she’d said. This finished off even an Austrian politzei.

So, on Friday night we took the Viennese Coffee-House-Owners’ Ball. Oh the coiffures and procession of former Habsburg ladies! PR Lady had a red off-the-shoulder ball gown (and coiffure, courtesy of Vienna Tourist Board) surmounted by a convenient crumb-catching flounce. But there was trouble with the Australians at the Ball. Travel agents as it turned out, also guests of the Vienna Tourist Board. ‘The Australians were asking for room numbers,’ PR Lady bellowed in the breakfast room the next morning. ‘I know I wasn’t bad. It wasn’t anything I said. Just think of the boyfriend! …. My God , I hope I didn’t text him in the middle of the night.’ Chronically she scrolled her Blackberry. ‘No…Oh Lord! Just think of it… with the Australians asking for room numbers..’ But it was all right. She hadn’t texted.

Then we left Vienna. In the people-carrier for the airport, I said, ‘You’re always talking about your boyfriends. I’m always talking about the Gay Mother and Granny, who died in 1977. Does this suggest arrested development?’

Dear, Dear Secession, Vienna

Five Million Yards of Imperial Building, Vienna

PR Lady’s Ball Gown with Convenient Crumb-Catching Breast Flounce

Friday 8th February 2013

I’m here on official business. So much to tell. Not a bill in sight. The main thing is the PR lady – absolutely outstanding. 50-odd, heightened glamour. Limo-ing in from the airport,  her introduction to herself:  ‘I sold all my big clothes on E-bay and bought more smaller ones.’ I assumed she meant big labels but no. Undertook massive diet, ate only sachets of powdered food from a diet company of five months, then was halved in size, partly the body began to eat itself. She suffered hair loss, now has an odd two-inch halo of new hair along with the full length blonde tresses. New boyfriend since July. Likes him. Didn’t like any of her previous boyfriends. Turkish husband off scene for many years. New boyfriend Puerto Rican, living in Germany. Wouldn’t be able to manage hooks and eyes. Her knickers, you see. A friend gave her bra and pants from Agent Provocateur but they didn’t fit. Exchanged them for frou-frou basque (from the sound of it) and knickers with 100 hooks and eyes to be opened to reveal the main drama in a moment of passion.

But all the ladies on the trip (here to show Vienna to the world in new and exciting ways) full of mirth. All of their men quite clueless as to hooks and eyes. Would have no idea what to do.

This was just the start. Come back for more.

Now I must prepare for the Coffee-House Owners Ball and Horse-drawn carriage ride thence.

Wednesday 6th February 2013

As you know, Poor Little Rich Gays have taken this run-down sea-side town (DHSS capital of Britain) and re-made it from head to toe. The Green and Black’s lady tried but our own Angus Willis, internationally known food writer and stylist, with his Hastings Tudor House and now the Angus Willis Home Store in Hastings High Street (see every national paper for coverage) has won.

Angus Willis is Hastings now.

In his wake an art gallery has sprung up on the beach – the Jedward Art Gallery, built to resemble the tall black clapboard huts for smoking fish which sit next door. Last Friday there was a PV for a new show of Hastings artists. The Multis drove down as well. As it happens their invitations were gained through Ingrid Maxfield-Field, who is friends with one of the painters showing. The Photo Multi used to take photos of people such as Sid Id for Ingrid, who, like Genevieve Suzy, is in the magazine world.

But on arrival at 7.45 after a failed second attempt to ascend The Shard, the Blond Multi lay down on a banquette and wept – well, almost. He’s not enjoying retirement, among other things. Meanwhile, in another room, Angus Willis was progressing through the PV – utter adoration. Christ’s entry into Jerusalem not a match for…

For the Multis it was Calvary though. They had failed in their second assault on The Shard that day, had been denied the twilight view. By the time they achieved the Jedward, the champagne had run out. The exhib… was a bit dreary. Sorry, Jedward… no real call for it. Just random artists who happen to live in or near Hastings. Some horrid sea-pictures. Looked like blown-up photos with plastic on top. But worse was to come…

Ingrid Maxfield-Field said, ‘Bye! We’ve booked a fish restaurant. Must dash.’

The Blond Multi sank onto the banquette, head in hands. Slowly the story came out. The Multis had been brushed aside, stood up, crushed. ‘I thought we were dining with them,’ the Blond Multi said. ‘We came all this way…’

We retreated to a pub where fishing-net decor had collided violently with Christmas – twinkly lights. The Blond Multi revived. He liked the live singing of Frank Sinatra numbers. He could move to Hastings, he said. I was getting a whiff of disinfectant. The Blond had a pint (!). ‘The singing’s too loud,’ he said. ‘I thought you liked it.’ ‘No, I’ve gone off it.’ But by that time, word had come through. Angus Willis could give the Multis dinner in his back-up cottage at Battle, behind Hastings (the Hastings properties are for show and commerce).

So there was healing. The Multis had a chicory, roquefort, pear and walnut 1st course, followed by haricot of lamb whirled out of nowhere by one of the world’s leading food writers and stylists. The place Ingrid had booked, Angus confided, is utterly revolting.

Probably they were ashamed. Hence their shameful behaviour.

Nor is that the end of it. Earlier, we went upstairs at the Jedward, where the permanent collection is housed. V. small but there were hanging works by Roger Hilton, John Banting and Maggi Hambling.

Oh, great surge of hope! Poor Little Rich Gays have got them too. Yes, yes, yes! Poor Little Rich Gays own works by those artists. Legacy hopes, hope of permanency.

Work by Roger Hilton at Jedward Art Gallery, Hastings: Poor Little Rich Gays Have Got One Too

Interesting Whippy Outfit at the Jedward Gallery Hastings

Good Whippy Look: Jedward Gallery Hastings

Angus Willis Home Store Hastings: Only Concession to ‘Mr Selfridge’ as Seen on TV

Angus Willis Chicory, Roquefort, Walnut and Pear 1st Course, Created in a Jiffy

Monday 4th February 2013

Last week we visited Oxford for a student performance of Angels in America. I drove an unsauced Val up. He had his great days at the Oxford Playhouse with Rowan and Imogen and Hugh (but not Larry – too late for Larry), fitting these greatnesses for frockage, unsurpassed. Never again did they know such fit or cutting on the bias. Val has reigned supreme in cut and finish for 35 years. They just can’t find anyone who can match him.

I’ve long been interested to see this play, Angels in America, being too frightened of it when it first appeared in the  early 90s. It’s about AIDS, you see, and is actually in two massive parts. The students only did one part and that was three hours. I wonder if it was over-praised originally because of its subject-matter and for not being agit-prop or self-pity. Intelligent and at times funny, but it’s just too long and the dramatic technique,naturalism with flights of poetry and vision, is eventually wearying. Valiant of the young people to do it, very ambitious, and they were superb – American accents faultless, v. convincing as 80s types they can’t ever have known in real life.

Death came early to the Poor Little Rich Gays and that has made all the difference. Those mid-80s years when the shadow fell.

Val wanted to see the Ashmolean Extension so we gained  de bon heure. Of course Poor Little Rich Gays have been busy there already as you know, building and building their own monument. It’s a howling success. The public love it. In the China Room, I saw a Wedgewood plate. ‘I’ve got one like that,’ I said to Val. My thoughts fell to legacy as they had a week or so before when strolling in the National Portrait Gallery: some Poor Little Rich Gays are there already. All in time will be.

I said to Val, ‘We must look to our legacy, like Tony Blair.’ It’s all right for him; he’s already had his portrait painted – the one Poor Little Rich Gay who has at times been stumped for the bus fare home, but he’s aligned for legacy, with portrait fully painted. Then, sweeping into an Egyptian Room at the Ashmolean, glancing at the tomb, he declared, ‘I’m the incarnation of Khufu.’

So he’s double-immortal.

Wedgewood Plate in the Ashmolean: Just Like Mine! Legacy Potential

I’ve Got One Too! My Home of Museum-Standard After All and To Be Left to the Nation

Friday 1st February 2013

1st up – but in fact Rufus Pitman gained celebrity access a month ago.

The Multis are to double-ascend today, including at 4.30. But how will they gain the Jedwood in Hastings for 6.30 where we PV this eve?

They virtually built the Shard.

Our National River Wends Its Way

The Millenium Bridge – its Thinness as Never Seen Before

San Paolo, Whence Rufus Pitman is Soon to Drive for Service of National Thanksgiving for His Toe. But is This Cathedral a Lump?

Our Hub and Hope: London’s City of London

How Packed Our City and How Valuable

An Exceptional View with Very Special Building to Those in Know

The Home of Majesty

The Vista to the South