Saturday 6th October 2012

Unbelievable fact: rain all summer, not a speck of sunshine. It’s been a marvellous year for gardens. Moisure is life for plants after all. The roses had more flowers than ever and longer lasting; with no scorching sun colours have been more luminous and enduring.

In her 88th year the Gay Mother’s garden was been a howling triumph. I show you below her borders in late June and then again in late August. As already mentioned, she showed three rare hydrangeas, hydrangea involucrata hortensis, hydrangea quercifolia and another unknown.

No ghastly chemical blue mops, such horrors.

Thank goodness the golden rod has been reduced or even abolished in the front bed. It’s such a ferocious yellow. Tasteful gardeners won’t have any yellow at all. Poor Little Rich Gays and their parents beat against this barrier of course – but there are limits.

Instead the Gay Mother’s got lots of cloudy purple and mauve, then a brilliant touch of orange in the middle of it all.

There are two ‘boys’ (both over 40) who come once a week for 2 1/2 hours. Otherwise she does it all herself.

The Gay Mother’s Front Border in late June

The Gay Mother’s Front Border in Late June with Terrace in Background: In Foreground, V.Violent Evening Primrose, in Background V. Rare sulphurous Eve Prim, Oenothera stricta’ sulphurea’

More of the Gay Mother’s June Garden: A Rare Evening Primrose, Oenothera Stricta ‘Sulphurea’

The Gay Mother’s June Display in her Entrance Border

The August Scene in the Gay Mother’s Garden: Hydrangea Involucrata Hortensis

The Three Great Rare Hydrangeas in the Gay Mother’s Late August Garden: Hydrangea Involucrata Hortensis, left, Hydrangea Quercifolia, centre, and an Unknown Hydrangea, left

The Same Front Border as Seen in June, now in August with Orange Fleck in the Middle

That Rare Unknown Hydrangea Close To

Tuesday 2nd October 2012

Autumn modes, small plates, the Westfield Centre, Topman – oh, there’s a plethora!

But last Thursday I was in Venice for the day. Peter Ainger launched his book about Longhena, architect of the Salute, in the front room at the Doge’s Palace.

What is it about Venice? Can anything more be said? I gained Venice first in 1976 and thought: there’s no dip here on first seeing, as with everywhere else. This place exceeds expectation and possibility. And so it has continued on every subsequent visit. It’s the absolute absence of similarity to anywhere else, the architectural style which is quite strange and unEuropean, the undiluted ancientness and dilapidation, no modern buildings, and cut off in the middle of the Lagoon as it must always have been, and the drama of the water, its unique colour and behaviour, especially when you come across it unexpectedly in the middle of the town.

I lunched with Peter in a bar where gondoliers lunch – little bits of octopus, croquettes – small plates in fact. Peter was full of a palazzo behind San Marco, one of 15 world-flung residences of a Brazilian, flung open for the Venice Biennale in August, only ever flung open for the Biennale in August. Dinners were given every night this year. A leading curator gained from MOMO to invite the guests. The food was carefully eked from night to night. Peter thought the little rice mountain with a cap of peas offered him as a first course had been the night before’s risotto.

In the afternoon, I studied the Salute, since Longhena was the day’s theme. I’ve always been worried by the pedimented boxes (if you’re inside they’re the chapels) clamped to its sides – aren’t they too tall and narrow? But really the building is completely wow and massively experimental essentially because it’s round in every possible way and larded with statues so teetering from some angles on the verge of anarchy.

In the way back I caught my favourite Venice aspect – the bleak, abandoned Guidecca part round the back. When I first saw this in 1976, I gasped. So close to teeming San Marco this wild place, now a little less so with civilisation. Here in 1974 Robert Nevil, with an early boyfriend of great beauty, suffered from rotting wet laundry in a youth hostel. Clothes washed elsewhere, bagged not dry for travel; on arrival mouldy.

Then at 5.30 it was time to gain privately at the Porta della Carta of the Doge’s Palace and be ushered privately to the private presentation room. The superintendent of the Palace was present herself along with the architect in charge of the restoration of the Salute, an academic from Rome  and the photographer of the book. The presentation in the Doge’s office lasted for one hour and was entirely in Italian. I was bolt upright in a my Topman blue/grey suitlette (the one that got grazed and had to be rebought).

An important function in a foreign language little understood is a new challenge to me and one I thoroughly recommend to any Poor Little Rich Gay. In the gloaming, we bucketed out into the Doge’s private loggia where the canapés were laid in rows on the table. It was magical. I thought: What shall I do? I speak so little Italian. So I launched with a topic: Tiepolo. You may recall when in Venice in December I had struggled with Tiepolo.  Peter produced various art historians and their boyfriends, all intense intimates of his at one time or another. ‘Excessivo,’ I said, ‘in vedere Inglese.’ ‘Ma, no,’ said one. ‘Deva vedere Tiepolo in Palazzo Cordalino o a Wurzberg.’ Then another came up: very glamorous, with superb front lick of hair, the kind of Italian who in previous years would have frequently been duelling. He spoke English. ‘Tiepolo!’ he said, ‘it is luxury. Why not?’

By that time the party was all but over. Marvellous. The Italians don’t linger.  It was like speed-dating. Or some glorious firework whooshing up, gone in seconds..  And conversation, despite no language, had actually gained ground for once. My Tiepolo problem solved.

Zinging I returned to London by air immediately.

On the Watery Side: Acqua Alta at Venice last Week

Fortuny Museum: Disappointing: No Pleated Dresses on View: Whole Place a Ratbag

Essence of Venice to Me: Giudecca Side: So Bare

Il Redentore: Rarer and Most Specialist than San Giorgio, Also by Palladio

Inside of the Salute by Longhena: Impossible to Graph, So Soaring. Also Badly Restored by the French in the 70s, According to Peter Ainger. Needs Re-Doing

The Salute: Bordering on Anarchy: Not Sure about the Side Boxes

Front Room at the Doge’s Palace where the Presentation of Peter Ainger’s Book on Longhena was Held

Important Hair: Always a Feature of Ladies Anywhere Near Poor Little Rich Gays

The Canapé Table on the Doge’s Private Loggia

Greatnesses of Venice and Art History World Gathered for the Lightening Party

The Doge’s Private Loggia: After Hours

Saturday 29th September 2012

I’m giving you one graph – just look at it! One of the most famous buildings in the world, after hours, closed to the public, completely looking out to the lagoon and San Giorgio…

What a week! I’m inert on the sofa. Monday: Trustees’ Meeting in the country; Tuesday: return from the country, Lewis and Wood shop opening in Chelsea, then on to Angus Willis’ birthday dinner at St John (Archie Brahms and Charlie Hurling have opened a shop. boiled wool sofas to be huge for Christmas. Charlie didn’t think of the worst thing to say and say it. All he said was ‘My sofa’s rejected me.’); Wednesday: jet to Venice in the evening, gain one-night cheap at 1 a.m.; Thursday: day in Venice, lunch with Peter Ainger in gondoliers’ self-service restaurant, Peter Ainger’s book launch at the Doge’s Palace in the evening, return to London, regain official home at 3 a.m.; Friday: dine with Frankie-Doreen May and Giles Ullerston; Saturday: dine with the Multis and Prince Dmitri Hersov.

But last Saturday! Huge, huge! Muriel McQueen’s 50th birthday. I managed to gain entry. By rights I’m not at her level. But Princess Irina Hersov, Prince Dmitri’s sister, and Muriel have bonded over the fallen parapet. I lobbied through Fergus Strachan, who is absolute bosom with Muriel from uni days . ‘How much to go to the party?’ ‘The price of the parapet,’ he said. Finally I was fielded as Princess Irina’s lady, free of charge.

Classic Poor Little Rich Gay: in two ways I know Muriel McQueen and Sid Id. Oh belonging!

With Princess Irina, I entered the throbbing core. Sid Id himself, modern legend and master of the house, Muriel’s husband, was in the hall. ‘Drinks are downstairs,’ he said in that unique dead-pan tone known to millions. Later he was seen opening a champagne bottle, so hard  for he must not touch a drop, of course. Hearts bled for him, or at least mine did. Secretly I’ve a bit of a pash for Sid Id.

Sir Nicholas Cave! He’s a Gothic Singer, or Pop Musician. Entirely new shape of head . Barry Humphries – no! John Humphrys: ‘I was on your show!’ No recollection, of course. He was exceptionally nippy in movement. Almost flying about. Up and down the stairs. Tiny man.

On the kitchen work-top – Janet Street-Porter. Marvellous fresh skin. Imposing. Aubergine rinse.

Oh, it was beginning. A cascade. Everyone who’s columnar on the Guardian, all in torment, wearing fashion versions of school uniform. India Knight, statuesque, God-like,  with Eric Joyce: ‘You must meet Eric Joyce,’ she cried. That’s Lord Haw-Haw, I thought privately. This Eric Joyce was a friendly Irishman, apparently entirely unconnected with journalism and the world of books.

Suzanne Moore! Still in the fuck-me heels, despite Germaine’s horridness. Another household name, delightful to meet, always remembers me, Adrian Edge, not a bit journo, intensely preoccupied with Stoke Newington affairs.

There was an interlude for Muriel’s speech. She described a hospital death bed scene. A lady dying but a festive riot of friends and relations all around her bed. She jolly too but intermittently she’d throw back her head and wail, ‘If you didna come, I’d have nobody.’ That’s how Muriel felt about all of us. Sid Id was in the front row disrupting in some way I couldn’t quite hear and not at all in the grotesque manner of banter required on such occasions.

Muriel then gave herself up to the dance floor. She’d chosen 50 songs, one from each year of her life. The Gilmores had arrived! Lady Polly, whippy in huggy black and white splodgy frock and elegant black clucks with 4 inch spike, was jiving. The head of Bird’s Nest Books appeared. ‘I’ve been reading your reviews.’ What reviews? ‘They loved the interlude in the marsh.’

????

In the garden Sid Id was attempting to drive guests out of a flower bed. ‘Could you try not to step on the plants.’ He was not seen again but later, we heard, descended to usher guests who had become interminable out of the house.

At last, at last, Angus Willis and Fergus Strachan arrived. At once Angus was lionised.  ‘Your review!’ they howled. ‘Your review in the Guardian!‘ Oh, oh, oh! The triumph. It had appeared that morning. The Angus Willis Homestore in Hastings has recently opened for food as well as wire-brush shopping. The Guardian woman went down with claws out for poor Angus but ended up adoring.

As well she might: a shop may not be much to you, but Angus’s gift for food and interiors is as valuable as the vision of the person who might bring running water to the half of India that hasn’t got it.

So Angus and his review in the Guardian were the bedrock of the evening. Hope to cling on to! Hope!

Car and Driver at Muriel MacQueen’s 50th Birthday Party

Yes! I was There! Come Back Later to Hear

Thursday 27th September 2012

I flew in late last night and out again tonight on 23.25 flight.

Couldn’t resist Peter Ainger’s book launch at the Doge’s Palace at 5.30 this evening. Am to wear that blue/grey Topman slub suitlette (the one that got grazed and had to be re-bought)and my new Prada clucks in the style of golfing shoes (Prada factory shop)and then travel back to London in these pieces.

But really am not rich enough for this kind of thing. Should have flown business class on expensive daytime flight. Taxis throughout. 4 star hotel min.

But have plunged to a 3 star one-night cheap. Great irony. It’s bang opposite the Ca Pisani where I ought to be and indeed have been.

Room bearable but the breakfast suite smelly and run by depressed slattern who had put cyanide in the fruit salad, I’m sure of it.

You feel unloved in a three-star.  Or in danger of death.  All I’ve got to cling onto is my Frederic Malle Geranium pour Monsieur, bought on the way to the airport yesterday at Les Sentiers, Belgravia, the niche perfume specialists.

I’m having to rebuild my collection after it got blasted by the heat of Tuscany. Sel de Mer by Heeney lost its staying power and Millésime Imperial by Creed just went bad.

Be warned, Poor Little Rich Gays here and throughout the world. Keep your niche perfumes out of the heat.

Buy a portable perfume fridge.

Now I must stir myself for the Fortuny Museum. You remember when I was here in December it was in restauro.

And I’ve so much to tell you about last Saturday’s party – given and attended by some of the biggest names on earth. Cars and drivers at the door, rest assured. A household name with an aubergine rinse on the kitchen worktop. A huge, huge inter-planetary mega-figure, if you like pop music, and his whippy Polynesian wife on the dance-floor.

You’re dying to know.

And an entirely new and unexpected way of ending the party was found.

Electric styling in the Venice 3 Star

–

Monday 24th September 2012

Enormous privilege: to take the Ballgowns Exhib at the V and A with Val, whose cutting on the bias is second to none, despite his freedom with the decanter, and his old friend, Augusta Briar-Wilmot, who has fitted a Royal Duchess and a top wife: these two, frockists, cuttists, needlewomen, manipulators of fabric, supreme of their generation.

Val withered Viv Westwood’s grasp of the corset: ‘All the bones showing,’ he condemned.

The two experts gave a huge tick to a Julien MacDonald tube dress, a single piece of stretchy fabric (see graph below), a ghost of a dress, also see-thru, as wholly modern, easily folded,portable,under-stated, to be taken off and put on in a jiffy.

Great thrill and nearness:  Would you believe it, I’d sat next to three of the ball gownists on view at dinner: Bruce Oldfield, Sir Hardy Amies, and, of course,Taroudant. Sir Hardy said he’d never seen the undergarments of the Queen.  At fittings, he remained in another room while she was inserted into his creations. Most indignant at merest suggestion he’d viewed her petticoat: declining grammar of the Nation also enraging but no restraint with graphic blow-by-blow of ag on lav of an over-90.

I’ve  heard, on the other hand, that at Belville Sassoon, Diana accepted a simple knicker-ed state.

Bruce Oldfield, dining,  took an interest in educational affairs, while Taroudant, whose highly unusual brown and taupe ensemble for Helen Mirren was greatly admired by Val and Augusta, is crinkly and shy to look at but enquired into more deeply intensely muscular.

Superb Gown in Stretch Jersey by Julien MacDonald

Novel Ensemble for Helen Mirren by Taroudant, Known Rather Well, to Me, Adrian Edge: We Love the Polished Fabric and Colours Tending so Spectacularly Away from Evening

Val and Augusta Briar-Wilmot very Taken with Technical Innovation of this Alexander MacQueen Dress: Strange Ghostly Angel Print

No, No, No, Viv Westwood: Fearsome Corsetry, Val Said

Yuki! Do you Remember Yuki?

Saturday 22nd September 2012

Absolutely frantic: huge, huge party this eve I’ve managed to gate-crash. A 50th. Completely massive. Janet Street-Porter could be there.

Fighting stains all day; also editing wardrobe, editing coat hangers, editing socks.

On Sunday, with Aunt Lavinia to the Alice Temperley Show at the Grand Connaught Rooms this time. Aunt L wearing a black fedora by Alice Temperley, given her by Cousin Barley. Also a scarf which she said was designed by someone who formerly designed airports but had switched to scarves. Bought in August in Maine, on visit to farm of those friends of hers who mainly live on 5th Avenue. It turns out they’re old money; I’d always thought they were sitting tenants. Alistair Cooke lived above.  I said, ‘You might like the exhib of diamonds at Buckingham Palace. Granny’s Chips on view.’ She said, ‘I’ve only been to Buckingham Palace by invitation.’

We were seated for the show. Last time we were standing. No great pre-whirr as before, no fashion journo greatnesses doing pieces to camera, no explosive arrival of Pêches de Geldoff rogered by cameras.

The occasion was indescribably great of course and by invitation only. Charming dresses. Silk for next summer, ladies, Dior-revival, big skirts, little waists. Temperley masterly with the difficult fabric, getting movement, freedom but also shape.

Only afterward did we see Anna Friel, who’d been in the front row all the time. I’m not really sure who she is but I loved her look and her clucks. She was very swingy, very movemente, in a tiny blue silk shift dress and clucks dyed to match. Fabric clucks. So thrilling.

We lasted ten minutes at the after-party. Some kind of whisky cocktail on offer and loud music. Fashion industry guests of outstanding brutality, taut with grooming and the effort of bending the will to the ephemeral. A noble calling but costly, their work indispensable.

Anna Friel at Alice Temperley Show: She Didn’t Want to Stand on the Catwalk for Graphing but the Graphers Made Her

Anna Friel: Her Clucks and Her Friend’s Clucks

Greatnesses at the Alice Temperley Show

In Front Row at Alice Temperley and Singled out for Graphing but Who?

Friday  21st September 2012

This was last Saturday.

I’m behind because of September. Reborn after August, Poor Little Rich Gays are seething and glorious. I’ve never known the engagements. A dinner came through in the night. Angus Willis, the international food writer and stylist, his birthday, next Tuesday. I’ve a shop-opening the same night so will come on.

Tomorrow – hush, hush – I’ve managed to penetrate a function of gigantic proportions. We really could be looking at Sir Mickland Jagger all over again. And Janet Street-Porter, who sadly failed to engage with Reggie Cresswell’s many-roomed ceramic….

Reggie Cresswell, who was at Valèry and Conrad’s and gave Valèry a scarf  for his 40th birthday. The party was for that as well as to launch the refurb.

Where to start? A classic refurb conducted by Bruce MacBain, our private architect. When have Poor Little Rich Gays not got the builders in? A Victorian two-bed terrace now with massive glass-box kitchen surging out into the garden, smooth white (highly specialist white, you can be sure) walls and dark wood floors throughout , new bathroom, a roof-rethink to provide third bedroom, and a six-person stove (‘batter my heart, three-person God’).

Never have I seen a home so honed. The finish! Ukrainian builders, not Miroslav. I’m sorry to say I was demolished by Gay envy, or, more properly, crushing inadequacy. You should see the silicone work! Absolutely immac.

The guests: world-class Poor Little Rich Gays, colossi of the international stage. Only Harry Rollo was missing, detained in New York in advance of his massive opening there, which we’re all to attend, even the Gay Mother. Otherwise it was Ned Boule, the percussionist, Rufus Pitman, novelist and critic, dressed for hiking as a German schoolboy with gay tendencies and rare niche perfume, Reggie, as already mentioned, the Ghanaian ceramicist, radiant prior to boarding flat-bed for Jo’burg (reasons unknown). He’s also booked a junior suite in New York for the Harry Rollo opening.

And Lord Arrowby! Who runs the country. He’d woken at 7 but got back to sleep. Feeling and looking marvellous. Now that marriage is off the cards for at least 100 years, we’re back to our old teasing ways. ‘You’re very rude,’ he pranced, beaming. I think I said, ‘You’re never running the country. You’re always at Trustee meetings or shopping at a by-invitation-only boutique in Antwerp.’  He took a text from a cabinet minster as we spoke confirming a getting-to-know-you evening visit to an art installation on a council estate in Poplar. He was head to toe in Dries. Lord A, I mean, not the cab min.

Otherwise Poor Little Rich Gays were riddled with crisis, of course. Locked out by impossible,multi-pierced boyfriends, subject to violence, having to start all over again as usual.

Champagne was lavished. A most refreshing collation, including a sauce with tamarind, outstanding cheese and cake.

Oh, I forgot to say: suddenly Bruno-France Bruno, the mystery Poor Little Rich Gay, living in either London or Paris or both,Picassos on loan from concealed source, loomed out of the floor, as it were. Always a late entry, never before 11pm.

He’s thinking of a refurb too.

Six-Personned Stove: Now Essential

Bruce MacBain Bathroom Refurb at Conrad Matheson and Valèry Duplessis’

Perfectly Honed: Conrad Matheson and Valèry Duplessis’s New Bathroom

Reggie Cresswell’s 40th Birthday Gift to Valèry Duplessis: Paper not Cheap Either

Lord Arrowby in Dries: ‘It’s New!’ He Protested. ‘Everyone’s Saying I’ve Had It for Years.’

Sunday 16th September 2012

Just back from the Alice Temperley Show! Yesterday Conrad  Matheson and Valèry Duplessis’s party. My God, those Gays have refurbished! Bruce MacBain, private architect to Poor Little Rich Gays, has drenched their interior right through with sheer brilliance. Builders in for nine months.

The finish! – I wanted to slit my wrists.

Diamonds and Ballgowns also this week, with Val. At Buckingham Palace we gazed on Granny’s Chips, as already mensh. Yesterday to the V and A for the ballgowns.

Last Saturday Prince Dmitri’s petit dinêr for the Multis and me. A new way was devised for measuring distance. Where is Chambèry? Prince Dmitri asked. ‘Half way between London and Tuscany?’ the Photo Multi said. From now on all distances to be measured like this.

If this level of engagements continues I’ll have to be re-Tuscanied, prone, in weeks if not days.

On Friday Robert Nevil arranged a visit to the Sally Bowles play in a smelly railway arch near London Bridge. Good though. Was nearly sick in 1st half from blend of stage smoking and suppurating mould smell. Sally Bowles, who was played by Liza Minelli in the film ‘Caberet’, was inundated with engagements and often up all night. But she lived in squalor and had no care for stains or the loveliness of the home – so not really Poor Little Rich Gay.

Afterwards we explored the seething new metropolis of Bermondsey Street, in London’s Borough neighbourhood: so much for recession! Every bar and restaurant packed with young fashionables, like saucepans on a hob, all coming up to a sex boil.

But last Sunday – our bi-annual pilgrimage to Great Dixter – except I have a feeling that, owing to pressure of engagements, we’ve missed the early summer visit. So only annual this year.

Vital – Great Dixter! Great blooming of that monumental bitch and brilliance, Christopher Lloyd, still kept on in the spirit, sweeping aside slight drawback that he is dead. Not just a garden, but for Poor Little Rich Gays, the source of life. Like that dripping tap in the old lady’s garden in Donaueschingen, said to the source of the Danube (dreadful day when she gets drip fixed). Were Great Dixter to go, I doubt that Poor Little Rich Gays could continue, any more than fish without water.

Robert Nevil and I were accompanied by Vic ‘the seed tray’ Housego, on the ground in Stepney for generations, former allotment holder in what is now the Olympic park, gardener to two schools, in boyhood wrongly thought to be German and thereafter erroneously associated with Nazi memorabilia.

Dixter – the outrages and wonder,as always. Magical place, never disappoints. Always thrilling. And so encouraging the paths are a bit tatty. After Dixter I can face my own garden  and home.

True greatness does not crush and overwhelm but inspires and soothes and makes the lesser life greater.

Christopher Lloyd as Boy: Destiny as Attitudinous Gardener of Violently Clashing Colours, Certain, Wouldn’t You Say?

Vic ‘the Seed Tray’ Housego: Exemplary Great Dixter Wear

What are They up to Now at Dixter? Pink and Red!

Must have These Zinnias for Next Year. What a Mixture!

Plant of Great Freakishness and Wonder: Phlox Norah Something or Other

Horror Dahlia Size of Dinner Plate

More Hideous Clashes that Work

The Long Border at Dixter: With Garden Assistant: How Many Such Patches 100m x 10m Have Commanded Attention of Entire World?

The Great Long Border at Dixter: World-Famous

Newly Restored Barn at Dixter with Exhib: Comely ‘Lads’ a Feature in the Early Days, It would Appear

Friday 14th September 2012

Utter recklessness: I’ve booked Venice. One night in Venice. £94 return on British Airways. I’m to attend a book launch at the Doge’s Palace. Massive strings being pulled for me to stay at Peggy’s, or at the very least Pegeen’s.

Il Poggino was the first important villa of the modern Poor-Little-Rich-Gay-villa-with-pool era. Taken by Anthony Mottram, my oldest and closest friend now estranged, in 1995, on the first great flowering of profits from ‘consultancy’ in the old Bloc, the opening up of the Central of Europe after Communism which he at that time was leading.

Poor Little Rich Gays shaped the Bloc and made it what it is today.

All our Poor Little Rich Gay lives since 1976 have been threaded with Tuscan villas. Starting out at £40 a week, there was the Molino di Castagnoli, with stream running through the kitchen but no other running water. Then there was La Primula, the Cortona villa, belonging to the parents of one who became a massive literary figure.

Recently I have struggled with the iconography. What do Poor Little Rich Gays want? Why Tuscany?

What Poor Little Rich Gays want is to be rich but real. Can’t bear Tuscany to be hotel-ified. We must shudder through History, bound in, not mere nail varnish lounging on the millionaire’s white plastic of a Monaco yacht.

So it ended up being Tuscany.

How we loved Il Poggino! For many years, Anthony Mottram had a photograph of it above his desk in the ‘Consultancy’ in Prague. Not coming from money, it meant so much to him to have the money to pay for it. It was the Platonic ideal. We were all there – Rufus Pitman, Bruce MacBain, Robert Nevil, Sebastian Archer (who said, ‘Which of us will get obituaries?’) and Connor Cadoux, of the Australian branch of the Poor Little Rich Gays. The Multis were not known then. They only came in in ’97 and that was before they were Multi.

We couldn’t believe the view up to Brolio from the swimming pool at Il Poggino, which, in memory, had rough grass growing right to the edge and was raised up on a mound. We’d never known the like – a modern luxury item in a sublime natural setting. The house was paradise. The owners had died and left all their things in it, so no Ikea or Villa-issue beds.

So, the other week, staying at the Multis’ second Tuscan villa of the summer, the one said by Captain Blond Multi to resemble a Guildford 4-bed, I went back to Il Poggino. It was only across the valley but impossible to find, all the same. The route quite misremembered. My little wire hire-car wrenched up many a wrong road. But finally, finally, there it was. I’d thought: they’ll be a villa-party, I’ll have to explain and forge through hostility. But it was quite shut up. Rather like Manderley, expect that was burnt down. And dried up too. All the grass around absolutely brown, although someone had been watering some pink geraniums.

I didn’t stay long, fearing the sudden appearance of a caretaker. How small it looked, and rough. And the pool, really rather a mess, in need of grooming and with horrid brick edge that surely wasn’t there before.

Oh dear! Il Poggino must have been in the second rank of Tuscan villas. Really more of a farm outbuilding. Poor Little Rich Gays of today have expanded quite beyond it.

Il Poggino, the First Tuscan Villa of the Modern Tuscan-Villa-with-Pool Era, Taken by Poor Little Rich Gays in 1995

Our Lunch Table at Il Poggino, Still There after 17 Years.

The Kitchen Entrance to Il Poggino: Within the Great Risotto War Took Place Between Rufus Pitman and Bruce MacBain

Il Poggino, Shrunk and Shrivelled through Time: We Were Here in 1995

The Magical Pool at Il Poggino, Not as Remembered

The Treasured View up to Brolio from Il Poggino

Tuesday 11th September

We remember 9/11.

But do not release the Olympics. Not least because at 9pm last night Poor Little Rich Gays went live to New York for the final of the US Open – and won. Then this morning, with Val, at Buckingham Palace, I gazed on Cullinan 3 and 4 – yes! Granny’s Chips!

No, we cannot say goodbye to the Olympics and will not until: the hymn sheets have been given out and ‘The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, is Ended’ has been sung by the entire Nation in uni.

Followed by ‘We’ll Gather Lilacs in the Spring Again.’

Followed by, according Boris, National sexual congress.

Yesterday I had Missed Call. It was Royston King. Damnation! He was surely underway for the Guildhall Reception for the Athletes – you know he’s on every committee. But suddenly I was out of the house myself.

I took to the streets. I stood at Ludgate Hill, the corner with Farringdon Road and saw it all. Never to be forgotten, to actually be there. Massive procession of athletes, without grandeur, in track suits, coming by on floats so near the crowd. Some reached out and touched. Some held hand-written placards thanking their sponsors. Mo himself looked as if freshly plucked from the tree, so glossy.  Or perhaps better a conker the moment it is removed from its casing. Will I ever see again a man so healthy?

Others though- of course you hoped for hot men – but they’re not like the gays in the clubs with their luxury gym-induced physiques. I suppose it’s a strain being an Olympian. Or did they just look as a large collection of English people would look – which was nice. Above all, happy. No mania, nor self-congratulation. Just happy.

I had thought to call up Marmion Beaufleasance. His Royal College was said to be on the route. I could have viewed exclusively from his office. Except the Royal College wasn’t on the route.

So that was two paths to the core not taken by me.

The volunteers have made the Games. We hadn’t known about them, that they would be in all parts of London in their sports beige slacks and purple tops offering help and a friendly word at all times without fail and transforming our Capital entirely into a giant jolly village without crime or anyone being left out. On Monday they lined the procession and organised joke relays to pass the time until the floats appeared, first of all amongst themselves, then for children in the crowd.

Nothing could be further from the Poor Little Rich Gay world.

After 22 floats of athletes had passed, I was wondering what to do when who should appear from nowhere but Merle Barr, former head of children’s services. She’d gone Olympics mad. ‘You must see the fly-past,’ she said. So we wended to Trafalgar Square where, would you believe it, word came through that the Blond Multi was present. At last we found him, bronzed, strapping, leader of men, the only one in a suit, with pointy boots, in a commanding position at the top of the Square.

So, for the very last time, Poor Little Rich Gays were on the streets, mingling with the crowds.

The Police of Our Nation Herald the Procession of Athletes: Just Feel the Swelling Scene

Don’t They Look Happy?

Sir Mowland Farah, Lui-Même

Sir Hoy

Jessica Ennis As Seen

Alistair Brownlee, Triathlon Gold Medal Winner, Said to be a Character

Ellie Simmonds, Para Swimming Medalist

Many Medals: Not sure Who

Nice!

Boxing Gold, I Believe

Miss Clare Balding, of Our Nation

Greg Rutherford, Gold Long Jumpist

Love Them!

The Red Arrows Fly Past