{"id":10923,"date":"2023-03-20T16:02:43","date_gmt":"2023-03-20T16:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/?p=10923"},"modified":"2023-03-20T16:02:43","modified_gmt":"2023-03-20T16:02:43","slug":"vanishing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/?p=10923","title":{"rendered":"Vanishing…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wednesday 15th March 2023<\/p>\n

So many brilliant moments, all lost.<\/p>\n

At the Garden Museum, Aunt Lavinia said, ‘That’s never a buddleia.’ It was a beautifully wrought exhib of Lucian Freud plant paintings, labels crisp and informative, no jargon or ideology. Many rare pieces. They mocked up Debo’s guest bathroom at Chatsworth with his cyclamen muriel. At his best, Freud paints plants with bracing ruthless neutrality, an intense pure gaze, ‘to an airy thinness beat’. But the buddleia in the dismal Paddington back garden is smudgy and the heavy pencil drawings I don’t like.<\/p>\n

The Garden Museum Cafe was closed for a fund-raising event. I could see the place-names through the window. I could also see our favourite Museum Director through the window. So, w<\/p>\n

ho is ‘Thursday Sembler’? Or ‘Noah Beatrice’? Or ‘Hilda Thurlough’? No sign of the usuals – no Stoker and Amanda, nor Ladies E and R?<\/p>\n

I made a plant discovery though: Heavenly Bamboo, growing in the courtyard there where Captain Bligh is buried and the Tradescants. It’s not a bamboo at all. A dark evergreen with showy clusters of bright red berries. Good enough for the Garden Museum…<\/p>\n

So lunch in exile at the Cinnamon Club. Fixed price menu good but not hot. Not hot is a new feature of restaurants since the Time of Wrong. Possibly anti-climate change measures.<\/p>\n

In residence I had the madeira dinner. Stefan Jaeger proposed it months ago. He’d got a bottle of madeira from 1827, the year of Beethoven’s death. Harry Rollo and Mercury Mr Kitten were to dine, me, Adrian Edge, to menu around the madeira. As the day drew near, increasing dread. How ever to live up to a Madeira from 1827? What if the bottle broke in transit? Or, on being opened, was found to be empty?<\/p>\n

One was on a knife-edge with ruin. First of all, Mr K went to the North and got a sore throat so couldn’t come. He said he would never go there again. But I expect he will. Well, the bottle arrived in a back-pack. I’d been granted a vision of the menu which I was able to make earthly but only at the last could I find a butcher offering filet beef at an imaginable price. So: little squares of pain polane au raisons mounted with pat\u00e9, taralli with the first of the madeira in the drawing room, then filet beef with rosti potatoes (to give a German feel, although rosti are Swiss) juniper and port jus, purple sprouting broccoli. Poached rhubarb and ginger with self-made madeira cake, plus some rare Italian cheese called Stracchino to polish off the madeira. I got the cheese free because it was beyond the ‘best before’ date – a miracle and going some way to making up for the cost of the filet beef. As Maria says in the Music’s Sound, ‘When God closes a door, he opens a window somewhere else.’<\/p>\n

In the end we were knocking back that madeira at \u00a33000 a glass (Stefan Jaeger got it from a rich lady whose cellar was flooded so all the labels washed awff, slashing the value). How did we dare approach? Really a reverent sniff followed by a backwards withdrawal without looking back as if from the Cenotaph should have been the limit. I’m preserving the bottle and inhale from it regularly. A transfigured grape arises, incredibly material although a smell. But a living liquid alive when Beethoven was alive, unlikely to be encountered again and impossible of description. How would you describe Madame Makropulis, were you to meet her? There were three layers at least of quite different experience when the madeira was consumed, not sweet, not dry, not heavy, not light, with a strange fumy ‘finish’.<\/p>\n

But what of the brilliant talk? Harry Rollo and Stefan Jaeger – so many remarks. All lost. Evap.<\/p>\n

\"The

The Actual Bottle: Madeira from 1827<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Aunt

Aunt Lavinia: ‘That’s never a Buddleia’<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Lucian

Lucian Freud: Messy<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Lucian

Lucian Freud: Medieval Quality of Tranquility<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Lucian

Lucian Freud: An Olive Leaf. Incredibly Rare Early Work. Superb<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Lucian

Lucian Freud: Chatsworth Bathroom Cyclamen: Stunning<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wednesday 15th March 2023 So many brilliant moments, all lost. At the Garden Museum, Aunt Lavinia said, ‘That’s never a buddleia.’ It was a beautifully wrought exhib of Lucian Freud plant paintings, labels crisp and informative, no jargon or ideology. Many rare pieces. They mocked up Debo’s guest bathroom at Chatsworth with his cyclamen muriel. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adrain-edge"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10923"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10932,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10923\/revisions\/10932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}