{"id":1264,"date":"2010-07-10T18:01:19","date_gmt":"2010-07-10T17:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/?p=1264"},"modified":"2010-07-10T23:40:25","modified_gmt":"2010-07-10T22:40:25","slug":"back-on-the-cote-d%e2%80%99azur-now-in-architect-designed-circs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/?p=1264","title":{"rendered":"Back on the C\u00f4te d\u2019Azur, now in Architect-Designed Circs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturday 10th<\/sup> July 2010<\/p>\n

Yes!\u00a0 I\u2019m back on the C\u00f4te. And I still haven\u2019t finished telling you about the last time, two weeks ago, when I was at Cap Ferrat for Ralph Kitto\u2019s birthday. But I\u2019m going to work it in somehow.<\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019m at Virgil Grayson\u2019s house, west of St Tropez. He\u2019s got the Mediterranean laid out at the bottom of his steep garden. Right there. \u00a0I can hear it lapping. Utter seclusion. The public are not on view, nor any other dwellings. There\u2019s a private beach.<\/p>\n

The house itself was an unremarkable 30s villa a few years ago, until Virgil wrenched and knocked and flung and now it\u2019s an airy magical space, white walls, soft grey paintwork, red tiled floors, commanding balcony \u2013 simple, restrained and natural. He\u2019s an architect, you know. \u00a0Whenever you look out to sea through a window or door, somehow it\u2019s a picture.<\/p>\n

Yesterday morning Virgil called me from the garden where everything is species, no hybrids, echiums, succulents, arbutus, agapanthus, exceptional conifers, all rare, rare, rare, shades of green and silver. He does it all himself. He was trying to trim 6 inches off the top of a cork oak. I had to pull a branch over so he could reach. \u2018It\u2019s all about editing,\u2019 he said. He was editing the tree so it would grow in one direction to form a screen, at the same time framing the vista of the sea.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why, whenever you look out of a window or door in this house somehow it\u2019s a picture. It\u2019s all been edited by Virgil Grayson.<\/p>\n

What a triumph! But not achieved without struggle, of course.<\/p>\n

Poor Little Rich Gays do love to be architects. I have my own architect, Bruce MacBain, who was, as it happens, nurtured by Virgil. I keep him with me at all times. Architects seize big slabs of the earth and mould and shape them as they please. Which is perfect for Poor Little Rich Gays. What\u2019s more, you can spend hours and hours poring over tap catalogues, insist that the tiling is re-done for the sixth time and send for unlimited flooring samples, none of which will be right.<\/p>\n

In the evening, Virgil made a potato salad. New potatoes, you understand, not terrible old winter ones. All the same, he boiled, then peeled<\/em> them. Even I was astonished.<\/p>\n

And humbled.<\/p>\n

Attention to detail on this scale has taken Virgil a long way, I can tell you.<\/p>\n

\"A

A Vista of the Mediterranean Created by Virgil Grayson in the South of France<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Salad

Salad Made by Virgil Grayson with New Potatoes but Peeled<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saturday 10th July 2010 Yes!\u00a0 I\u2019m back on the C\u00f4te. And I still haven\u2019t finished telling you about the last time, two weeks ago, when I was at Cap Ferrat for Ralph Kitto\u2019s birthday. But I\u2019m going to work it in somehow. Now, I\u2019m at Virgil Grayson\u2019s house, west of St Tropez. He\u2019s got the […]<\/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-1264","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\/1264","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=1264"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1274,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264\/revisions\/1274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}