Thursday 16th August 2012

So the Blond Multi has spent the summer learning Italian. Among other things. This is retirement on a cushion of some millions. His business was sold a few years ago and finally, after Christmas, he was able to leave completely. But he must have goals. One is to make pizza, as you know.

Every afternoon for weeks on end he was 4 hours at the Italian Institute in Grosvenor Square. In June he even took Rome itself – a week at the Inghilterra (not very good apparently) – for total immersion. His Italian speaking excites ladies who comprehend completely despite not the slightest trace of an Italian accent.

Now in the Tuscan villa afternoons he studies his reading book and listens through headphones. In the morning he is tutored in pizza-making by the villa maid.

It’s a ‘Storia d’Amore’ he’s reading in Italian. Very moving. In the 1990s, Valentina’s boyfriend was hot but common. She threw him over for Marco, of better birth and prospects. Now she finds Marco ‘snob’ and yearns for her true love and real values. Will they get back together?

The Multi has finished the story but not divulged the ending. He’s progressed to a murder mystery of the Campo at Siena.

He was so moved by ‘Storia d’Amore’ though. Valentina made such a mistake. She should never have embraced money and status over love.

Meanwhile the Blond Multi has achieved his pizza-making goal!

Love’s Story: the Blond Multi’s Italian Reading Book, also on CD

Valentina with Hot but Low-Born Boyfr in the rain in the 90s

Comprehension Exercises in the Blond Multi’s Italian Reading Book, Entitled, ‘Love’s Story’

The Blond Multi’s First Pizza, Made with Help of the Villa Maid

Wednesday 15th August 2012

Today is Ferragosto: The Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin. I’m to be in pink and stone (Paul Smith and an unknown house).

Last week I ventured to make coffee after lunch in the villa kitchen. A hulk was at hand. If you’re not sure what a hulk is, see graph below. Anthony Mottram, my oldest and closest friend, had a hulk of his own at Barrowborough, our rural public (that’s a type of school) where we suffered in the early 70s. It was one of the features that set us apart from the other boys.

Sometimes we would forget the hulk because playing a 78 of ‘Stormy  Weather’ on a Victrola (that’s a wind-up gramophone with horn)  and the coffee would boil in the upper chamber.

You unscrew your hulk and it comes in half. In the lower chamber you put water. For efficiency and danger, you can place the lower body over the gas while you fill up the sieve with coffee and screw the top part back on again.

Then you wait. After about five minutes of menacing inertia, your hulk begins volcanically to splutter, gurgle and rattle. This is the boiling water being blasted through the coffee section and into the upper chamber. Gingerly you must lift your hulk lid to check the process is complete but it might do a surprise final retch of molten coffee at just that moment.

The full-sized hulk (you can get baby ones) which is what Anthony Mottram had and what I was using in this Tuscan villa kitchen is one of the most dangerous known kitchen devices.

So I was standing over this Tuscan hulk, wondering rather at its failure to perform when suddenly from deep within there was a rumbling and a glugging then an unfamiliar thunderous roll before it howled and in one lash blasted its entire contents all over my Marc Jacobs cream jeans, the gas hob and indeed several walls of the villa kitc.

The wiping and sponging – I can’t tell you.

The villa manager paid a surprise visit. I said, ‘This hulk is faulty.’ She struggled so much to say ‘hulk’ although her English is generally excellent.

Fortunately I was not scalded. Later the adorable villa maid restored my Marc Jacobs.

It turned out that a vital filter had dropped out of the underside of the top section of the hulk. When the water boiled below, there was nothing to prevent the violent ejection of the entire contents from the machine.

In Montevarchi market, the Photo Multi bought 2 dozen bracelets with ‘Italia’ on them in different colours, kindly distributed amongst villa guests, 3 plastic ladles in green, pink and yellow, possibly a troll in a snowstorm (you know those glass baubles: when you shake, it snows) and a selection of wooden spoons,ashtrays (he doesn’t smoke), hats and belts. We recovered in the cafe where Cameron coffee-ed last year and didn’t tip the waitress, who was then hurtled into the Daily Mail.  With her we gesticulated and ejaculated: ‘Cameron!’ we went. ‘Si, si,’ she went. On leaving, there was a fearful puddle of mozzarella water under the Photo Multi’s seat.

‘I knew that mozzarella man was a crook,’ the Blond Multi stamped. But in fact the Photo Multi had pierced the bag with his chair leg.

Sweeping out, at the five metre mark, the Blond Multi returned to explain in his new Italian which he’s been learning all summer as a retirement project. He speaks well and with no attempt at an accent whatsoever. Italian women, addressed by a strapping blond hunk with several million behind him, understand perfectly.

The Tuscan Villa Hulk: One of the Most Dangerous Domestic Machines Known to Man

Cafe in Montevarchi Where Cameron Coffee-ed Last Year and We Left Mozzarella Water on Floor This

Monday 13th August 2012

V. jaded day. We were up until 3 Italian time to view the Closing Ceremony. The Multis were furious.

The Photo Multi said: ‘Why not just place a crappy old ghetto blaster in the middle of the stadium? Someone could make a grand entrance, switch it on and walk off again.’

My God! There shouldn’t have been a dry eye in the house by the end. And wouldn’t have been with mass singing of ‘The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, is Over’, followed by Jerusalem and Land of Hope and Glory for the finish as the Flame was extinguished.

I wanted it wistful, melancholy, rumbling, rousing and climatic – not random and interminable.

Where was the Eton Boating Song ? Or ‘Every Time We Say Goodbye’?

The Blond Multi only took 3 hours sleep, went for a three mile run, then frayed on the phone to Parcelforce about a croquet set that was ordered on-line to be delivered here, to this Tuscan villa, but is stuck in Milan. Nobody can do anything. He can’t get through to Milan. He didn’t quite hurl his iPhone to the ground.

We’ve been devising a reverse Closing Ceremony, which might have opened with Dame Evadne Hinge singing ‘Don’t cry for me, Argentina’ and ended with Jarvis Cocker’s cover version of ‘I was Born in the USA.’

Well, why not…?

Saturday 11th August 2012

Just as Poor Little Rich Gays crave full maid-service including meals (awful word) yet are absolute makers and know that no maid could rise to the required heights –  really they can’t bear NOT to do it themselves – so, when sight-seeing, they are riven. If it’s not for sale, is there any point in bothering? All art is an affront of a kind, when Poor Little Rich Gays make their own lives. Yet artists, even if not multi-millionaires, have more in common with Poor Little Rich Gays than almost all other species of human.

It has been said that the Multis would rather take Gucci than the Uffizi. At the top of Giotto’s Tower in Florence, whence we climbed on Wednesday, the Photo Multi pointed to a pole at the very summit of the roof. ‘I hope Vodaphone are paying a good rent for that.’

It was the lightening  conductor, as he knew quite well. Later he was cheeky: ‘Which would fetch more, do you think, at auction – the Mona Lisa or Michelangelo’s David ?’

We thought the Mona on account of size: more suitable for the home.

Well, come on! You wouldn’t want to be a culture vulture, overcome with earnestness.

But the Photo Multi was in jest. Oh the Multis are changing. You won’t believe it.

They’re quite new now. They’re completely new.

The Photo just couldn’t wait to get to Chiesa de Santa Maria del Carmine to see the Masaccios. There, the Blond Multi supplied us all with audio-guides, now on an iPad, for hire for 1 euro, and we studied intently.

Do you know the Masaccios? Done in 1425 approx, life of St Peter in frescoes in Brancacci Chapel of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. Glorious work, mainly pink, not all by Masaccio, but those parts that are stunning and entirely novel at the time of painting. Here perspective, thrust, movement, vivid emotion are seen for the first time in modern European art. Masaccio was only in his early 20s at the time of painting and possibly a little bit gay. His tutor, Masolino, was working with him but Masaccio veered off in his own direction and left his master behind in the Middle Ages.

Outstanding is the Expulsion from the Garden of Eden by Masaccio which introduces the cycle of the Life of St Peter. Three years ago we visited this fresco set and I wasn’t sure if it had been a success with the Multis. But no, this Expulsion has deeply affected them. The agony of Eve, her shame, as she is propelled from the Garden by the Angel … unspeakable!

The Fallen State, so redolent, the endless struggle ever since to maintain standards, dogged by failure and dread yet forging on, as Adam and Eve forged forth from the garden, in Masaccio’s vision.

The Photo Multi Hoped Vodaphone Paying a Goodly Rent for This Mast on Top Giotto's Tower in Florence: He Jested

Explusion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden by Masaccio: So Redolent for Poor Little Rich Gays

Baptism of Member of Rare Tribe: by Masaccio: Was Masaccio Just a Tiny Bit Gay with This Degree of Musculation

Short Frock-lette, in Line with Tiny Jack-ette Favoured by Poor Little Rich Gays: Look for Next Spring/Summer?

Short Frock-ette, Back View: Surely Poor Little Rich Gays Could Wear This Next Spring/Summer? This is Actually Office Wear for a Tax Inspector

Quelle Frockage! Some Gays Strutting in the 15th Century, by Masaccio: Little Has Changed in 600 Years

Thursday 9th August 2012

The light this year! Never have I known it so clear in August when usually it is hazy and there are storms.

The immortal Tuscan landscape, so monochrome, so bold, so minimal, so old, so crafted, such a blend of nature and artifice, has never looked so complete, every contour picked out in this absolutely rinsed light.

To tell the truth, we haven’t been into the Olympic TV room since Sunday.

A life is beginning to form in Tuscany. On Monday the poor Blond Multi was breaking up. You know how fragile Poor Little Rich Gays are. That is their glory. He has recently ‘retired’ (only a youthful 50) onto a cushion of some millions. But it’s not enough. The Photo Multi’s sister and her children (more about them later) did not report on time for departure for Siena on Monday. The Blond banged the table then his head against the pillar of the Tuscan breakfast loggia.

But now we have climbed two towers (of Palazzo Pubblico in Siena and Giotto’s Tower in Florence), the Blond Multi has ground for two hours a day at his Italian lessons and aims to make a pizza. He also tried to buy a gym in the supermarket .

He’s so much better.

In the park of the Tuscan villa we are going to run our own Olympic events. Marcus Cargill, England’s leading clock mender, in fact the world’s leading clock mender, has volunteered to be judge at the finishing line.

With his precision background, he’ll be first rate.

The Blond Multi has got an exercise book and a comprehension book with accompanying tape (it’s called ‘Storia di Amore’) for his learning of Italian. He loves ‘Storia di Amore’. It’s also got a test to find out how snobbish you are. Maria (whose ‘storia’ it is) finds her boyfriend’s friends very snobbish. Apparently if you like holidaying on a boat rather than in a campsite you are ‘multo snob’.

We’ve been inducing the Photo Multi’s nephew and niece who are glamorous but far from the Poor Little Rich Gay world. They’re teenagers! Peter Grisewood, 15, liked baked beans, corn flakes, football, frisbee and engineering; now he’s assessing the nose of chiantis in a blind tasting. He’s taken, in restaurants, pici with duck sauce, involtini stuffed with pecorino and a macaroon with strawberries and a black pepper cream.  Maia Grisewood, 17, appears every day completely re-thought as to exquisite tiny frocklette, jewellery and hair.

She is a challenge to Poor Little Rich Gays here and throughout the world. Her ambition is to make an Eton Mess with self-made not shop-bought meringues.

The Multis have never been more benign. They really love art. Of course Poor Little Rich Gays love money too. It’s such a struggle. The Photo Multi wanted above all to see the Masaccio Life of St Peter in the Chiesa del Carmine in Florence yesterday. When I suggested that for the Blond Multi to fulfil his ambition of making pizza it might be required to build or have built a pizza oven in the villa grounds, I was brushed aside.

More simplicity is coming in with the Multis. In part it’s this ghastly recession which is making us all more agonisingly human. I was worried about my lack of evening swimwear, not to mention my 3 or 4 year old day swimwear. But the Blond Multi is making do with last year’s Orlebar Brown (yes, Brown is a personal friend) swimming shorts for the older gay in pink and white.

He’s in last year’s swimming shorts. Such a relief.

Nevertheless the glory is undiminished although softened. Watching the Murray/Federer Gold Medal final on Sunday, the Blond Multi said: ‘Those Swiss watches are completely indestructible.’ ‘That’s right,’ said the Photo, ‘the only hope is to bash them up with a hammer  – if you want them  to stop working.’

The Light Never Clearer in August in Tuscany

Pasta Taken by Me at Le Logge Siena, a Restaurant Adored by Poor Little Rich Gays for 20 Years: a Rare Crinkly Pasta with Pecorino Cheese and Ground Green Bean Powder

A Macaroon Dessert Taken at Le Logge, Siena: Note the Black Pepper Cream Accompanying

View from Siena Tower (Palazzo Pubblico)

View from Florence Tower (Giotto's Tower)

Charming Young Person's Table Styling: the Photo Multi's Nephew, Peter Grisewood

Tuesday 7th August 2012

‘We shouldn’t be here,’ the Blond Multi says frequently. We rise for a self-sung National Anthem as often as possible.

‘Why are you here? ‘ all the Italians ask, incredulous. ‘Why aren’t you in London?’

But we are beginning to form a tiny pulsing embryo Tuscan life. A hulk exploded after lunch. My white Marc Jacobs jeans were splattered. I’ve yet to acquire any of that fabulous Italian stain remover from the supermarket.

The Blond Multi has shaped an ambition, as have I.

Poor Little Rich Gays must have shape to the life. We cannot loll, hopeless. We’ve also had some interesting exposure to hets. We lunched unusually in Siena yesterday. Ground green coffee beans were involved in a pasta dish.

New, new, new.

Come back later for more.

Such a Clear Evening in Tuscany

Such a Clear Non-Olympic Evening in Tuscany

Sunday 5th August 2012

When he won, we heard, from our Tuscan Sky TV lounge,  a great roar going up from surrounding villas on Tuscan hillside.

View from Tuscan Sky TV Lounge: This Entire Hillside Erupted When Murray Won

Sunday 5th August 2012

I’ve gained Tuscany in fact but wracked to have abandoned our Great Nation at this time.

Glyndebourne, Tuscany, the styling of a salad, the Gay Mother’s wow-factor Granny-embroidered evening recticule for Glyndebourne – all have been swept aside by the great Olympic tide.

Who would have thought it? All week I’ve been wondering: ‘Where do Poor Little Rich Gays belong?’ At Glyndebourne last Saturday, Royston King, that great committee figure who controls Lottery funding for heritage projects, was met unexpectedly. ‘Hello, you great Queen,’ he bellowed across the lawn.  He’s also black, as it happens, which is unusual at that level (not racist, but true). The sides of beef who run England (up to a point) reeled, while wincing at my cream and white ensemble – no black tie for me, never, never. I will not conform.

Then, in the Olympic Park, I experienced revolutionary urges sitting in the high attic of the Aquatic Centre with the patriotic roaring crowd kept so far from the pool.  Equally I craved exclusivity. It was awfully democratic in the Olympic Park in general, no sense at all of the hierarchy of our Nation.

Now I see it truly. Danny Boyle’s ex-wife lives next door to Robert Nevil and Sebastian Archer, two leading Poor Little Rich Gays. There must be some connection. That Opening Ceremony – it was shaped by the Poor Little Rich Gay spirit.

This is what has happened. At last I see it. I see it whole. Yes, the whole Nation has gone Poor Little Rich Gay. Or, perhaps, always was.

Our greatness as a Nation is our brilliant swirling on a knife-edge. That Opening Ceremony – sentimental, flecked with death, entirely new as an Opening Ceremony, wildly ambitious, massively ceremonial,  real and human. Team GB’s entrance was to David Bowie: ‘We can be heroes/ Just for one day ‘. And so it has continued: our athletes, ordinary yet great, our crowds entirely serious with their rich, steady deep patriotic roar (no senseless screaming)  yet their Union Jack outfits knowingly ridic.

What a great Nation we are! All others one-dimensional in comparison.

What Exactly is Meant? Union Jack Jumpsuits Seen in the Olympic Park on Wednesday

Thursday 2nd August 2012

Yesterday I was there. With Merle Barr, formerly Head of Something Big in a Local Authority. Last week at her dinner party, she explained how an utterly nondescript  man tried to lure her into a threesome with his wife. That was in Brighton. She was having  none of it.

How are Poor Little Rich Gays bearing up in the Olympic Park? Are they there at all? Lord Arrowby took the beach volleyball, but that seems to be right outside his office, where he throbs at our Nation’s heart, running the country from behind the scenes. Of course, Zaha Hadid, architect of the Aquatic Centre, is fearfully intimate with Virgil Grayson and was once seen by me presiding in blancmange-green Issey Mikaye (great accordion pleated structure projecting from her back: she was wearing one of her own buildings) at a small party in his home. Bruce McBain, my private architect, also knows her and a friend of the Multis is her Personal Assistant.

Merle and I entered the park at the Victoria Gate, on the Hackney side. Nobody there at all – to begin with. Quite a lot of junk lying about –  containers and cables and gawky fencing. We reached a huge open space, vast avenues stretching in every direction.  But suddenly there were gardens and the peculiar charm of the waterways that were there before. You’ll love the landscaping, Poor Little Rich Gays – acres and acres of meadow planting and the kind of trees that would grow there anyway, in a bit of industrial wasteland. Clever to retain the original rather bleak atmosphere.

We wandered for hours and miles. You can’t see the Aquatic Centre properly, because temporary extra seating has been stuck on the sides, but you’ll be thrilled by the wonderful scoop of the Velodrome and the satisfyingly plastic Basketball Court with its alternating convex and concave surfaces.

By the afternoon the Park was quite full. Great vistas of crowds but always comfortable to move about it. Not a frock or heel or glass of champagne to be seen. It surely wasn’t Glyndebourne or the Ivy. An absolute joining-in, a great swathe of democracy – yes, the dear, precious ordinary members of the public! We might have gone Communist. An English day out, a Bank Holiday crowd at Brighton or Blackpool yet it wasn’t – it was the Olympics, the Indian National Anthem to be heard from within the Hockey Stadium at the start of the match.

Our event was swimming. Never having taken a sporting fixture before in my life, I thought £40 quite enough to pay. We were in Row 52 of the extra seating, somewhere near the moon. Reasonable view of the pool, but you couldn’t see the other side – roof in the way, so excluded. Very little idea of what was going on, but we saw some names.  Every time there was a British competitor, however crap, the crowds in our packed-out £40 seats  just roared and roared and I was in floods for reasons not known. Feeling revolutionary too, that the ones who really cared were crammed in the attic, while poolside bored officials and volunteers papering out lolled.

The Olympic Park - Great Vastness

Unexpected Charm of Gardens in the Olympic Park

Exceptional Basketball Court and the Olympic Village: Strange and Bleak

Another Flowery Bank

Not Sure Whether This is Part of the Aquatic Centre: Lovely Curve Though

Sumptuous Velodrome: Merle Barr Explained that They Cycle Inside: I Thought This was the Track

The View from Row 52 in the Aquatic Centre: Roof in the Way

Famous Swimmers Swimming

Ryan Lochte Going Under Rope After Winning Race: No Tell-Tale Yellow Cloud in Water Nearby

Procession of Clothes' Boxes: Swimmers Put Their Clothes in Box: It is Removed During Race and Replaced by Empty Box for Next Race

Human Female Swimmer with Strange Breast Stroke Style: She's Awfully Well-Known

I Hope this is the Other One, in the Coat: Michael Phelps

Swimmers Leaving the Pool

Monday 30th July 2012

Friday by boat with the Gay Mother and Aunt Lavinia to the Multis’. They can see the Olympic Stadium, more or less, from their wraparound.

Never to be forgotten. Great day of days. Val, on brilliant form, texted throughout. The Multis provided a superbly concise, delicious dinner of antipasto, poulet au moutard and fine wines, then we were through to view on a vast drop-down screen.

The definition and colour. Unsurpassed.

Just loved the Opening Ceremony. Loved the vision of England’s green and pleasant. Don’t care if twee. The best bit was the fearsome boredom of  the official speeches laboured forth by Lord Coe and Monsieur Rog (?) from that resurrected English meadow with the dear, darling wild flowers of England carrying on regardless in the background.

Val, texting in, only lightly sauced, mildly refreshed, was mesmerised by the athletes’ parade;  of course he knew all the obscure countries (‘only momentarily stumped by Guam’)  but took exception to Monaco – ‘ That’s not a Nation State: a casino and a couple of streets of tawdry, knicker-pink hotels more like.’

The Gay Mother and Aunt Lavinia couldn’t grasp the Queen’s hair. ‘What’s happened to her hair?’ they kept saying. ‘It’s adorned with a matching hair adornment,’ we kept saying, to no effect. ‘She looks awfully tired,’ said Aunt Lavinia. Prince Dmitri Hersov and the Photo Multi were in the back row, recognising all the songs. Prince Dmitri, as you know, spends hours, scouring for ‘vinyl’.

‘Look, look,’ the Photo Multi called. Tower Bridge, in view out of the window, in real life not on the screen, was ablaze and fireworks were popping out of its top. We found out later it was for Becks, passing by in a high speed launch (his cuffs and collar look inspired by the Multis, now I think of it) with a kind of bowsprit in the form of a living maiden holding up the Olympic flame. This was shown on TV.

‘I must get onto the IOC,’ Val texted. ‘I could do the Katie Boyle tri-lingual schtick.’  He wanted, also, to get his hands on the maidens who, going before each team, bore the names of the countries on cruel-looking, S&M frames clamped to their bodies. ‘Why not proper showgirls’ headdresses, with stilettos and appropriate swimwear?’ he cried by text.

Then, at last, at last – 200 and whatever countries, the Arctic Monkeys, never before seen by me, but excellent legs, the Gay Mother saying she could study the whole thing all over again and no she hadn’t seen Rattie and Mole and Aunt Lavinia saying ‘Where was Peter Pan?’ and Prince Dmitri saying, ‘Peter Pan was there’ – after all that, at last the fireworks.

We dashed out onto the Multis’ wraparound, even the older ladies, to view exclusively the real thing. We all saw the Olympic rings in fireworks leap up from the stadium and rest, for a moment, in the air. Indescribable.

Tower Bridge Lit Up for Becks, as He Passed with the Olympic Flame, on the Way to the Opening Ceremony

The Olympic Stadium: Fireworks to Mark the End of the Opening Ceremony

The Olympic Stadium: Fireworks to Mark the End of the Opening Ceremony