{"id":256,"date":"2009-08-17T16:27:12","date_gmt":"2009-08-17T15:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/?p=256"},"modified":"2009-08-17T16:27:12","modified_gmt":"2009-08-17T15:27:12","slug":"unbelievable-tuscan-scenes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/?p=256","title":{"rendered":"Unbelievable Tuscan Scenes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"bag

bag of pomodori styled by one of the multis<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0Monday 17th<\/sup> August 2009<\/p>\n

\u00a0Tuscany! I have gained. The Multis\u2019 villa is baronial and at the end of miles and miles of dusty track, utterly exclusive and surrounded by the deepest, deepest silence. We have already queened all over it but more of that later. No room is smaller than a tennis court.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Shall we go cooh, cooh, gush, gush over Tuscany? Do you know a ghastly book called Bella Tuscany\u00a0<\/em>by Frances Mayes? \u00a0Anthony Mottram and I were here first in 1976, at the Molino di Castagnole – \u00a340 a week, enormous house, half of it not properly indoors, stream running through the kitchen if it rained, six kilometre walk to only, 6 a.m, bus to San Gimini, Siena…where ever we wanted to go. Enchanting!<\/p>\n

Is Tuscany now de-based, wrecked by all the gushers and fantasists like Frances Mayes?\u00a0 No, it isn’t.\u00a0 At least from this mansion, the view is as it’s always been – ordered and sweeping\u00a0.\u00a0 This landscape is grave, simple and unsentimental.\u00a0 It might look like wild woods but the assemblies of hilltop dwellings, umbrella pines and sombre rows of cypresses are the human addition.\u00a0\u00a0Depicted\u00a0with calm, factual clarity in so many Renaissance paintings, it has become, unlike other landscapes, a work of art in its own right.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It is the right back-drop for gays, whose lives are more than usually artificial.<\/p>\n

\u00a0But we have little time\u00a0for any of this. Within the baronial halls and immediate environs there is much to attend to. Angus Willis, the internationally known food writer, is furious that the original vaulted kitchen has been turned into a redundant drawing room, one of three, and the huge stone sink is an ornament. I will tell you about his five-year restoration of a Tudor house in Hastings one day. We, with the Multis\u00a0leading the way, \u00a0don\u2019t like the floor tiles (too modern, not reclaimed) the ceilings (the same), the position of the swimming pool, the outside lighting, the\u00a0shape of the dining\u00a0table; \u00a0the extractor fan over the cooker is at the wrong level; Angus would have all the fake cotty, wooky, Cotswoldy\u00a0 fitted kitchen cupboards out in a jiffy. The Multis themselves, concerned for their guests and\u00a0attending to every detail, \u00a0\u00a0have been heaving furniture, wielding the weedy Miele vac, styling vases and fruit bowls.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It’s excessively stimulating.<\/p>\n

You will be intrigued to know that not even a multi-million pound fortune is enough to provide uniformed staff. We have Donatella, who is delightful, but amateur and a deep burnt-orange hue. She warned that this morning she would be late. She was taking her daughter to the doctor; perhaps this offspring is not coming up the same amazing shade.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s terrible to mock staff, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Nor is there immunity to Ikea. Last night at dinner, one of the multis quipped: \u2018I see we\u2019re asked to put the burglar alarm on at night.\u00a0 Not much point. We\u2019ll put up a notice: \u201cOnly Ikea within\u201d. \u2019 There was just was before Mr Fox (or rather Master Fox)\u00a0was discovered by the fridge, nicely settled for\u00a0a snooze.<\/p>\n

\"Vegetables

Vegetables styled by Angus Willis, later de-styled by Donatella and re-styled by Angus Willis<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Monday 17th August 2009 \u00a0Tuscany! I have gained. The Multis\u2019 villa is baronial and at the end of miles and miles of dusty track, utterly exclusive and surrounded by the deepest, deepest silence. We have already queened all over it but more of that later. No room is smaller than a tennis court. \u00a0Shall we […]<\/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-256","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\/256","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=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":259,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions\/259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}