Friday 2nd November 2012

Hotels are at the core of Poor Little Rich Gay Life.

I know, I know. Bodies are still not recovered from the dèbris on Staten Island among other places.

Harry Rollo, the impresario and performance artist at present weirdly blended with (his perf. features a storm) as well as commanding all New York’s admiration, is full of hotels. It was him who said: ‘5 stars, Heaven, 4 stars, Hell.’

The Poor Little Rich Gay hotel – what is it exactly? Is it boutique? On the whole, yes. The Poor Little Rich Gay must be clasped on a hotel bosom, not parked on the 30th floor with room service. However rich and final the outpouring of luxury, it’s as nothing if there is no sense that some quite impossible person, perhaps the designer once and then the room manager subsequently, has stood before every lighting fixture, every tap, every towel, every flower arrangement, and said, ‘It must be this way and not that.’

6 Columbus, that being its address although in fact in 58th Street, is only 14 floors. It’s done in the Sixties style, which means brown, dark grey/blue and parchment. Reggie Cresswell, the Ghanaian ceramicist of international renown, wouldn’t take it because of the Sixties style. He stayed at the Shoreham in 55th Street, also boutique and entirely cream and with a difficult coffee machine in the breakfast room.

I thought the corridors of 6 Columbus quite menacing and Psycho or Cohen Brothers. They are lined with a woven paper painted over in heavy navy blue.  Everything dark. But good. I think once the hotel was another hotel, a run-down place of desperation, with invisible permanent residents presumed to be rotting in their rooms.

Especially now, with bodies still unrecovered elsewhere in New York. Poor Little Rich Gays, unlike the Earls’ Court Gays, do not slam out completely with money or willpower the elements beyond control or the painful poor life. Some Poor Little Rich Gays are more poor than rich anyway.

At 6 Columbus, the rooms have no hint of country house but the carpet could not have been more comfortable. Plain but with squares woven into it. I’m not sure how to describe. And the bed linen! So much to be learnt! The thread count, probably uncountable, and some exquisite soufflé pad laid over the mattress to lie on.

America is a nation devoted to bed linen and hot water.

The bathroom I loved. It had a window and simple elements – just navy tiles, grey marble mosaic floor and plain white fittings of unusual design. The colours and crystalline quality of the floor aligned with the refreshing tones and materials chosen through centuries for the watery places.

Do you know? I hope I’m not losing my Poor Little Rich Gay grip. But I must mention it. The tiling module in the bathroom was not perfect and the grouting just a wheeny bit messy. Bruce MacBain would have had something to say.

But I was not enraged. I failed to demand a reduction. I was consoled. Comforted by a touch of scruff, I felt that maybe my own home would just about do.

Finally in the breakfast room, you go Japanese. It’s done as Sixth Century Japanese, entirely in wood. Quite beamy. The booths all wood with integral benches.  I’m assuming 6th century Japanese. But what do I know of Japan?

The actual breakfast comes in a black lacquer box. The coffee, or tea, goes into impossible stone mugs, impossible to lift and, with a squared-off rim, to drink out of. The Gay Mother was on and on at them about the lack of hotness of their water for tea.

The stone mugs made the hotel for me, more than anything else.

6 Columbus Hotel, Manhattan. New Heights of Bed Linen

Delightful Bathroom at 6 Columbus, Manhattan

Comforting Mis-Management of the Tiling Module and Grouting at 6 Columbus, Manhattan

A Leak Sprang from Here and Dripped into the Bath Below in My Bathroom at 6 Columbus, Manhattan. I Failed to Demand Money Off

Lacquer Breakfast Box in Japanese Style at 6 Columbus, Manhattan. This is the Yoghurt and Granola option. Otherwise You Could Have Japanese Porridge. Impossible Stone Mugs also in Shot

Tuesday 30th October 2012

Only last week we were there. The Gay Mother just rang, v. worried about that little house on Liberty Island. What will have become of it in the storm? Speaks knowingly now of ubër-gay locations: ‘Oh, yes, Reade Street.’

Have those Bultis who gave the party in TriBeCa and whose bench bucked the Gay Mother had ingress of water into their lift? Thank goodness their honed loft conversation is in the loft and only three storeys up. They can walk if no lift.

I do like a merging achieved on Twitter of the Statue of Liberty with the celebrated Marilyn Skirt-Crisis Over Vent moment. It looks very convincing. Liberty must have legs after all.

In another age, the Gay Mother and I tripped out on a steamer to Liberty Island last Wednesday. You get a marvellous view of San Gimignano from the water.  Close too, Miss Liberty strikes terror. She’s so big and thrusting. Once she didn’t do too much for Poor Little Rich Gays but now she does.

Oh, I’ve my New York thoughts to come. As you know, we’ve long pondered America. Anyone with claims to gravitas and the mind’s life ponders America. How do you belong in America? I’ve been rather against, on the whole. Too much uncompromising uplift, no misery, too many bleached teeth and liver-coloured bricks.

Well, you’ll have  to come back and see. Maybe I’ve found another path.

I was astonished to discover that you can ride right in the front of a Subway car, as if you were the driver. The driver in fact is lodged in a tiny box to one side. You can see his frock through a chink. More terror. What if someone were to self-hurl before the screeching, screaming train as it howls at massive speed into a station? You’d see it all and have to have counselling.

In Manhattan you never know what’s going to happen next. It’s all rather made up as it goes along.

The View of San Gimignano from Beyond Liberty Island

Liberty Standing up for Poor Little Rich Gays Here and Throughout the World

Liberty: Could be Impossible if Refurbishing a Penthouse, I’m Sure

Riding in the Front of a Subway Car

Coming into the Station: View from the Front of a Subway Car: I was Returning from Downtown Prada and Topman on Broadway

Vision of Hell: View from the Front of the Subway Car, Riding Back Uptown from Downtown Prada and Topman on Broadway

Monday 29th October 2012

Just can’t believe it. Not ten days ago we dined with Raj Zoraster and Rufus Pitman on the 29th floor in the Midtown West, Murray Hill. Now the whole place is swaying, water surging in the lavs, window glass flexing  (of which there is so much). Rufus has put a video on Facebook: really psycho.  The ceiling light swaying, eerie creeking noises…

The latest is the power has been shut off deliberately for 18 to 24 hours in the Murray Hill area, to save the grid. No joke in a tall building. Can’t get out presumably without the elevator.

No word of Harry Rollo and Mercury Mr Kitten, half way up a tower in the Midtown East except that some scaffolding near them collapsed earlier. A crane was shown on TV, bent in half, hanging dangerously. I saw it last week. It must be 58th Street, right behind Central Park South where a new building is going up, at least twice the height of all the others around.

Oh dear! Oh dear! Raj, on Facebook, is making light. He says: ‘Darling, just warm up the din din and look at tellie…’ But Rufus says, ‘My husband is now messaging me on Facebook because we’re TOO FRIGHTENED to speak to one another.’

And what of Mrs Pfinnin and Cabriolet T. Krisp ? Have they been shut down? Are all the penthouses of the Upper East Side plunged into darkness? Have they only their diamonds to light them?

Sunday 28th October 2012

Harry Rollo, through self-devised performance, is adored in London, in Paris, in Los Angeles, in Sydney and Santa Fé. He devises his own performances, which are completely new. But New York… could he conquer New York? There is no greater height, no more gruelling pinnacle.

With the Gay Mother, I was present in Manhattan, as were Reggie Cresswell, Simeon Bond, Rufus Pitman, Raj Zoraster and, yes, at the last minute Bruno-France Bruno, the mystery Poor Little Rich Gay, was announced – direct by air from Sydney via London (so not exactly direct) – and went straight into the front row despite being ticketless on arrival.

The audience was lavish with diamonds and hatchet, growling low, ready to tear with jaws… the Gay Mother and I sat in the vast gilded cavern, awaiting the commencement. Her wow factor was G’ma’s embroidered evening bag (self-embroidered by G’ma) and Aunt Amy’s garnet necklace. Next to us was an unknown tiny Upper East Side exquisition with chinchilla wrap and many, many tiny diamonds mounted on white silver. ‘Who is this Harry Rollo?’ she asked. We found out all about her: her husband has passed. Now she goes to perfs. She could take a friend but she’d rather go to 8 perfs than 4 so comes alone. Her husband was an ambassador but in America you can talk to anyone.

I’ll leave it to others, and to history, to evoke Harry Rollo’s great performance. It was astonishing. Chinchilla wrap loved it and even came back for the second half. The Wall and the Times, the next day, raved and raved. How to describe? sights are sounds, and sounds are sights. A human on the stage becomes electronic. Nobody knows how Harry does it or what exactly it is.

At the end, the reception was massive. There was ovation, on feet. Rare in New York, where patrons of the institution especially must make a point of leaving 10 seconds before la fin.

Then we were ushered privately into the Cabriolet T. Krisp Grand Tier. Harry was once in the same house for a perf. by another. ‘Hi, I’m Cabriolet T. Krisp,’ a whooshed Greatness said to him. Going out for a sandwich in the interval, he discovered that she was also a Grand Tier.

In America, I should explain, a Grand Tier is outside the auditorium; it is a reception area.

There was to be a buffet in the Cabriolet T. Krisp Grand Tier: great silver dishes with gas burners underneath (faint whiff) were in view. This Grand Tier’s red carpet, by the way, goes up the walls. It’s a heaven of plush and cream, with chandeliers. Nearby a woman appeared: her Star Trek-style pants suit (the top half a ‘top’ with no opening at the front) was rose silk overmounted with mauve net with a deep pattern woven into it. For the shoulders and arms the rose silk was discontinued and only the net covered the lady. But she was up to it,although over 50, toned and svelt either by machine or own exercise. She was wearing all her jewellery, with an egg-sized diamond ring. ‘I’m Mrs Pfinnin,’ I heard her say.

Just couldn’t believe it. It was actually her.. I never thought to gaze in person…. Harry had told me all just a day or two before. $4 billion. 4 storey Pent on the Upper East. Art collection, different region for each floor. Harry and the other performers had been received. It wasn’t ‘Red or white?’ but ‘Montrachet or Haut bages Libéral?’. The Gay Mother said, ‘She looks perfectly normal.’ In the face, she meant. But if you looked carefully you could see that she was actually a different colour.

Rich people are a different colour.

Meanwhile the Gay Mother was in danger of shutting down. She was becoming dangerously inert. Not much chance to tell the story of her recent pheasant bite, should a Manhattan greatness with hooked, crow hair descend – which looked unlikely anyway. Other rural topics a dead loss surely.

What to do ? What to do? Who would we talk to? Then I thought: ‘This is America. The free’s land. We’ll do what we like.’ There were tables laid, for billionaires only possibly. We commandeered anyway. The Gay Mother was installed on a banquette, the dinner fetched and Bruno-France Bruno joined and was charming to the GM. The previous week in Australia he’d given a musical evening with Cate Blanchett. By great good fortune he hit on the topic of Salmon Rushdie, which is a favourite because the Gay Mother can’t bear him. Then we moved to another table and the Gay Mother talked to a poet about the High Line garden in New York which we’d visited a day or two before.

So there we were, perched on this precipitous world pinnacle in Manhattan, after all perfectly at home.

Monday 22nd October 2012

It’s tomorrow – the great day. Harry Rollo’s perf to storm New York.

Yesterday I sensed from a shudder that Reggie Cresswell, the world-class Ghanaian ceramicist, had come into the City, so far from Gloucestershire, so monstrous and astonishing. On Saturday Rufus Pitman and Raj Zoraster gave an intimate pre-perf dinner in their 29th floor apartment. Raj is here for a while, bringing nations together. Were you to be sitting on the window seat and, forgetting that the window was open, lean back, you’d hurl at once to your death.

Such a strange way to live. But then that’s New York. You keep thinking – why not spread out a bit? There’s plenty of room all around. You don’t have to be crammed on this little island with one park.

Rufus is very pro-America but can’t be doing with Brunch. At the butcher’s he’d had to explain what a leg of lamb is. We contemplated going up the Empire State Building but Rufus said, The trouble is you then don’t have a view of the Empire State Building. Mercury Mr Kitten (that’s his real name, made up of course), who is Harry’s adorable new partner (thereby hangs a tale of Poor Little Rich Gay life), has made friends with a 25-year-old from New Zealand here in New York who operates in text language. She doesn’t laugh but she says LOL instead.

At dinners, the Gay Mother, 88, who has ventured with me to New York for the second time in her life, the first being when she was 82, is like the Queen. She only ever says two things, usually in some way connected with Radio 4 or Bath. Highly impact-making. But she’s fascinated by New York, which is really quite surprising.

Then last night we were bidden to a second pre-perf event at TriBeCa, a ferociously expensive slum.  The penthouse loft apartment, belonging to an old friend of Harry’s from England, was on two floors with at least three roof gardens right underneath where the Twin Towers were. But we very nearly didn’t reach it. The lift was overloaded with greatnesses, including household names who are to perform in Harry Rollo’s perf. The doors shut, the elevator juddered but failed to move. The doors wouldn’t open. It was rather hot. We stabbed at all the buttons and bells started ringing. The major duomo of the apartment, who turned out to be a whippy young man in normal clothes, ran down to winch the car into the basement where we were able to disembark amongst the cleaners’ buckets and mops. Finally getting upstairs the Gay Mother wanted to sit down but the bench hurled her to the floor, being aero-dynamically catastrophic. Luckily she was unhurt. ‘What an evening!’she said. ‘Misfortunes always come in threes. What will the third be?’ Fortunately it came almost at once. The dog licked my Paul and Joe black slacks with a slight sheen. It was a highly specialist dog or hound, about 4 feet high. I was wearing a New York outfit – i.e. no colours, grey, white and black, Prada, Marc Jacobs, Paul and Joe and Prada – all reduced of course.

I think massive money, while kindly offering to receive perfect strangers to honour Harry Rollo, had to bite back a bit.

Oh the apartment! Wood, wood, wood, museum-scale, even bigger than Anthony Mottram’s in Prague. In the middle of it, a whole room with glass walls  – the wine cellar. Six windows across the street front, a hundred could easily have been seated for a concert or even a home staging of Aida. Plenty of room to bring the elephants in from the side. The kitchen area was curtained off while the chef operated, then outside staff flung back the screen to reveal a choice of beef Wellington or Japaned Salmon on a pea pure-ray.  The pudding was Eton Mess styled into two huge glass items which were very definitely vayses not bowls (see graph below for yourself).

I think the Gay Mother wasn’t entirely sure that it was an actual home such was the level of staffing and seating for a considerable number. ‘Do they actually live here?’ she kept saying. ‘Where are the rooms?’ Launching up the stairs for a tour, she passed an artwork by a world artist. ‘I wouldn’t want that,’ she said. I reminded her that we’d seen one by the same in MOMA earlier on. ‘I know. I was quite frightened of it,’ she said.

But really we were very much at home. We sat most convivially with Rufus Pitman at dinner. The Gay Mother mentioned rationing and Rufus said, ‘In America you can never have a dirty plate in front of you for more than two seconds.’ We were so comfortable with chic male waiters and world names all around but not actually speaking to them.

Absolutely engraved on the soul, this evening.

TriBeCa Eton Mess and High, High Macaroons to Celebrate Harry Rollo’s Forthcoming Seizing of New York

New York: Guts Showing: This is the Back of the 21 Club Homeless Person was Proclaming with Great Aplomb to Anyone who would Listen: ‘Doesn’t it Look Seedy?’ But Fearless Expose of America Not Listened To

How They Get Married: In Central Park: All the Guests in New York Black

Saturday 20th October 2012

New York is suddenly girlish, bashful, with shoulders swinging vacantly from side to side. All over the city banners proclaim the coming event. On the Upper East Side, Multi Billionaires and at TriBeca, Bulti Billionaires are air-brushing the asparagus for one last time. They’ve vied for years to be the ones to receive him privately – just a little buffet or a round-table luncheon, just  10, or 20 or 500 seated.

Last night only a call from one of the great institutions of the City could secure a table at Balthazar, Spring Street.

The Gay Mother and I arrived on Thursday, direct by air from London. Tomorrow Reggie Cresswell also gains. Rufus Pitman is equipped with a New York apartment for the occasion and hosts a sumptuous pre-event this evening….

…for Harry Rollo, that great performance artist and impresario, is to give a perf in New York.

Even below the streets, it’s hotting up. Workmen came to dig up Fifth Avenue last night and look what they found…

Even Below the New York Earth’s Crust, Harry Rollo’s Performance is Anticipated: Fifth Avenue Last Night

Wednesday 17th October 2012

Massive pre-boarding tension: tomorrow to New York with the Gay Mother for huge events. The temp there is 19c in the daytime. Hell from the frock point of view. Will I ever wrench forth from summer clothes?

‘This is a summer outfit,’ said Joshua Baring, puzzled by my get-up at his party. I was in that white crooner jacket with the satin cowl collar,  a Prada (factory shop) flower-power Corregès-style T-shirt and the little Prada (full price! horror!) khaki slacks. My shoes were Prada (factory shop) light mahogany with outsize fringed tongue.

I just can’t get out of cream, white and white and cream. Last night I took the Waitrose book launch in cream – my Topman cream suit. Jenni Murray and John Humphrys were there, with Rachel Johnson – she had fuchsia clucks with a bottle-green draped light wool frock.

Robert Nevil was at the Hilary Mantel party with Cousin Matthew from Downton. Get him!

Dear Blanche Spain has asked for more on the frockage at Joshua’s party: volumes could be written. Mama Baring was in spots – white spots on navy, a gown-style, knee-length ‘top’ with black trousers and important mother-of-pearl clip-ons (that’s earrings). Young men were in jeans with waistcoats and ties (a new look for Autumn), Patrick Lockyer was totally pointy: tiny, tiny black jeans,absolutely clamped to the entire leg, black winkle pickers and black leather indoor bomber jacket, some necklaces.

What about Joshua himself? He had a burnished silvery jacket (not jackette), glinting low in the candlelight, and underneath a butterscotch-whip knit  with plunging neckline worn next the skin, an exquisite wool soufflé or froth, an incredibly rare piece.

I should mention that Joshua’s brother, ‘Bovver’, real name Benson, has cut-glass vowels.

Odd too, how the birthday centre person at their own birthday celebration evaporates just a little. It happened to Harry Rollo last year and just the other day in the neighbour street, to Muriel McGlorian. Perhaps a mystique surrounds, they’ve already begun to ascend a little, as the Virgin and Our Lord did.

There’s been another astonishing turn of events – arising out of Frieze Art Fayre.

More to come, more to come.

Monday 15th October 2012

Joshua Baring, our youngest Poor Little Rich Gay, our great future hope; this gone Saturday night; a Georgian town mansion, in the neighbour street to Sid Id and Muriel McGlorian’s, as it happens, whence I crashed the other day. Candles, good antiques, a pale salon, gilt mirrors, family portraits, upholstery, off-whites.  English 18th century with a continental lift.

It’s his 30th birthday! A select selection of young people, including Joshua’s older brother, Benson, known as Bovver; then Robert Nevil and me, Adrian Edge, of the parental generation, as well as the actual parents, Mama and Papa Baring.

Huge purring elegance in the drawing room. Massive array of pre-eats. And champagne. I wasn’t sure – was this it? But sneeking downstairs, I was unbelieving in amazement. A whole wedding-style dinner set-up – gilt chairs, a conservatory flung out into the garden, 30 at least to sit down, table-styling, table flowers of outstanding originality done by Mama Baring, lighting. The tones were pale, pale grey-green and jewel-like red from chrysanthemums.

Mama Baring was once fitted by Catherine Walker, you know – before she died. Catherine Walker died, that is. Sadly.

Set in this decor – what guests! Robert Nevil and I were entranced by Bovver, Joshua’s brother. A het is irresistible, I’m afraid, especially one who’s already been a husband.  He was v. naughty at school and in the end the housemaster said, ‘Do go home at weekends.’ Lashings of delicious family rivalry, all gloriously displayed, esp. later when Bovver had sunk a little lower towards the table.

I was thrilled with these young people, not least because they proved me right. It’s all different these days. No mania for a girlfr or a boyfr – quite the opposite. My neighbour at dinner described a marvellous complex of relationships. She’s got a live-in but he was nowhere to be seen and is on a contract – he’s not getting a drop of her flat. At midnight she flew from the table to meet her ex-boyfriend. ‘Isn’t it awfully late to be meeting an ex-boyf…?’ ‘With others,’ she said.

Meanwhile Joshua’s intense intimate and absolute bosom, Patrick Lockyer, had become unstable. Some said he’d not slept for a week – such intense lawyering. My own feeling was so many people had fingered his hair he’d deranged. You may remember, he maintains a miraculous upward whoosh with a keratin gel in a honey tint. It’s a wavy hair and astonishingly sumptuous and absolutely right, which hair very rarely is. It’s hardly surprising that it is worshipped.

So Jesus put Patrick in a taxi. Jesus – now there’s a story. He knows Lord Arrowby somehow or other. Goodness knows what’s going on. Jesus said he was so disappointed when people announce on Facebook that they’re married.

We so agreed. No, no, no… Poor Little Rich Gays embrace a complex web of relationships, although there is always one and only one who is completely in your heart and that is not usually the one you’re married too. A leading Poor Little Rich Gay said to me on the Continent the other day, where we happened to be sitting: ‘I’ve a Catholic view. There is only one.’

Yes, yes, but there’s also the complex web of relationships and not one.

Finally I manoeuvred to be next to Papa Baring so I could complain about the Christmas Card. I’m with the same broker as he’s high in. ‘Such an awful card last year,’ I said. ‘Can you do anything?’ No really his pigeon. He confided that investment yields are the highest ever, despite 2008. I had no idea. Thrilling insider information. Of course, my portfolio is so tiny and so low in yield – that’s why I like to drag it in.

‘Bovver thinks he’s not very tall,’ Mama Baring said. The situation was more that Bovver’s chin was considerably nearer the table than before. He complained that his girlfriend exceeds him by three inches: ‘It’s a lot.’ Then there was talk of the clearing up. ‘Special can be relied upon to do it in the morning,’ Bovver said before launching into a Greek-drama-style tirade but with English not-at-all seriousness about how Mama Baring had always preferred Joshua (hence ‘Special’), the adored youngest.

Mercifully there were no speeches.

Joshua Baring: 30th Birthday Wedding-Style Dinner: Flowers by Mama Baring

Table Styling at Joshua Baring’s 30th Birthday Dinner: Endless Detail

Saturday 13th October 2012

I’ve been lurched and wrenched. The Photo Multi messages: he hates it. Lord Arrowby is definitely to give it a miss this year.

On Monday nothing would induce me: the struggle and effort of getting in for free just too much.

Then on Thursday I lunched remotely in Maida Vale with adorable Skippy Lancaster: he’s just undergone a classic total Poor Little Rich Gay re-furb: acres of carpet, three or four new bathrooms, furnishings, flooring to pour over (or is it ‘pore’?).

Skippy is cute but hunky, therefore one of the most adored Gays of all time, especially by the Earls’ Court Gays. He’d got Patrick Cox’s dogs. Patrick Cox, the shoeist. Skippy was dog-sitting Patrick Cox’s dogs. He showed photos of them from the newspaper.  They were under the table at luncheon.

The other luncheon guest was a glamorous journalist who’d taken time off to write a novel. Guess what? She’d got her Press Pass for Frieze!  She’d got it the day before and found herself spending an unplanned 4 hours there. Frieze Masters or Frieze Classics is the thing. Lucian Freud, Matisse – not just the absolute contemporaries. It’ an extra bit of Frieze at the back of the main Regent’s Park show we all know and love. Nobody there, either, except some greatnesses buying a Lucian.

Some Poor Little Rich Gays knew Lucian, you know. In fact they were painted by him. Oh yes! It’ll all come out in time.

So… back home… I find myself veering towards Frieze. I fire off some emails. Within 8 hours, I’m in. For free. As a scribbler and blogist, I’m to be admitted.

Now Lord Arrowby texts: he’s revolved and is going! The Multis are also possible.

Tomorrow, in outfits, we’ll be there!

Skippy’s Contemporary 1st Course for Lunch on Thursday

Bathroom Styling’s: Skippy Lancaster’s Refurb

Vanitory Unit: Skippy Lancaster Newly Refurb

Invisible Shower Housing at Skippy Lancaster’s Refurb: Never Seen Before: Completely New and Unique

Patrick Cox’s Dogs: At Skippy Lancaster’s Luncheon, Thursday, Maida Vale

Tuesday 9th October 2012

I haven’t the strength to battle for a Private View card. For Frieze Art Fayre in Regent’s Park. It’s contemporary art. Massive fayre. All the international rich gain to buy. Grayson will be there. And AK – that’s Anish Kapoor. Boris-Claude France, met on the Côte the other day in cycling gear, referred to him thus. AK’s a client.

‘I hate Frieze,’ as the Blond Multi says, going. The Multis by the way spent the weekend in Hungary for Beatrice Cantor’s Show at Debrecen – such memories for me of the old days with Anthony Mottram in the bloc even when the Wall was up and Mottram’s expenses exceeded the Hungarian Prime Minister’s. Budapest was his first station, in 1987.  In his flatti, there was a money cupboard where the expenses hoard (or horde?) was laid out neatly, the notes in rank order. You just helped yourself.

The Multis have inadvertently packed two coat-hangers which emerge to be very dear to their hosts, who are English but living in Budapest. One is marked ‘The Dorchester’ and the other ‘The Harrington’. They must have them back.

As it happens, I’m mid-cycle. I’m being cycled through the Ring. Today’s the last day. More about that later. I’ve a new theory about the Wagnerian audience. The Ring is very Poor Little Rich Gay, as we know,  despite the early costumes, being about money, love and power.

Enfin, I’ve woven my own Frieze Art Fayre. And triumphed, you know. Just you see.  Last night I forged to the Saatchi New Sensations Private View at Victoria House, Bloomsbury Square. I happen to know a young art student whose work had been selected for the Show. Terrifying underground venue, concrete and white tiles. All the usual art students and older ladies ravenous for a find. I saw two boy-queens in jacket-ettes with excessively calmed 50s hair.

I find my art student and see her work, which has a room to itself and is significant. I wander round the rest of the show. Not impressed. Bumped into Flint Cantor, Beatrice’s sister, bad boy of art world, lives under the arches at Shoreditch, life devoted to art, real knack for publicity.

I encounter a friend of a friend and begin to feel known and loved. Everywhere I go I’m known, it seems.

Then word came through. I re-meet, having seen her by the work, a mutual acquaintance of my art student. She confides. Saatchi himself came round that morning. Messages were sent in the afternoon via an intermediary.

Yes, yes, yes. Saatchi is to buy our artist’s piece!

Projection By Young Artist Known to Me: Bought by Saatchi

Work by Young Artist Known to Me: Shown at Saatchi New Sensations and Bought by Saatchi

Other Work in Saatchi New Sensations Show: a Painting

Another Painting in Saatchi New Sensations Show

Different Colours: Work in Saatchi New Sensations Show