Thursday 7th March 2013<\/p>\n
What a year it’s been for Conrad Matheson: first of all a massive Bruce MacBain refurb with finish and silicone work faultless; then a champagne launch of same in September (also Val\u00e9ry’s 40th birthday); then a New Year’s Eve party of outstanding brilliance before the last tier, the absolute Godhead, not veiled but face to face – his 50th anniversary of birth in a private room at the St John Restaurant.<\/p>\n
What a happy occasion this was! 18 dined. Intimate. Not gooey, of course. That wouldn’t be the Poor Little Rich Gay way. But a bracing warmth for one who is hot and just about the least catty of the Poor Little Rich Gays. In fact not catty at all. But who fights and fights for decor, rare reading and funding to fight disease.<\/p>\n
The guests were a scatter of diamonds, hard to catch. Rufus Pitman, in a kind of Edwardian cycling outfit as envisioned by both<\/em> Jean-Paul Gaultier and Vivienne Westwood, and Reggie Cresswell, the internationally-known Ghanaian ceramicist, were one minute sitting next to me: ‘Diana Athill,’ they cried, ‘Ghastly!’ Then they were gone. That was after the whole crab to be dismantled with mayo and pork cheek with unknown vegetable, possibly that curly thing they eat in Rome in the Spring but it can’t have been. St John only do English.<\/p>\n Mainly I had the enormous pleasure of Lord Arrowby, my former part-time love interest. I tried megaphoning (as it were) to him at the other end of the table: ‘How’s your mother?’ ‘How’s your brother abroad?’ He couldn’t hear a thing and was absolutely screaming at the nonsense of it. Down he came to my end of the table, in a bright blue jacket by Reiss and new shirt, black with Mondrian squares all over it (he usually buys a shirt on a Saturday, the more party-like the better ). His shoes were by Dries, one of his favourite houses. Tan and cream, incredibly controversial, exaggerated and fabulous. And there he stayed – at my end of the table. There was a new young man who works in the disease world with Conrad – they campaign and lobby – by whom we were all mesmerised, of course. No a silly young man, you understand. Very principled, by the looks of it. Earlier, in the vestibule, over the oysters, radish and carrot nibbles, I’d said to Lord A, or rather got half way through saying, ‘Won’t they make you ill?’ but he interrupted, ‘Will they make me randy?’ I couldn’t believe it. Anyway, over the mains of either pheasant pie or sea bass (or both), he imitated himself as a small, very coming boy singing a camp song in its entirety (with hands as well) while on a French exchange.<\/p>\n All this despite waking at 2 from a nasty dream that they didn’t want him stalking the highest corridors of power any more. Nonsense of course.<\/p>\n The puddings were a meringue cake \u00a0and a trifle of infinite creaminess – I couldn’t resist spooning to excess. Lord Arrowby was keen too.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thursday 7th March 2013 What a year it’s been for Conrad Matheson: first of all a massive Bruce MacBain refurb with finish and silicone work faultless; then a champagne launch of same in September (also Val\u00e9ry’s 40th birthday); then a New Year’s Eve party of outstanding brilliance before the last tier, the absolute Godhead, not […]<\/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-4371","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\/4371","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=4371"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4373,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4371\/revisions\/4373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}