Saturday 19th July 2025

June was Glyndebourniana twice. Before Parsifal I nearly died with the strain. A Wagner picnic is something else, like the normal Glyndebourniana agony x 6.

Then I left my tablecloth behind and still they can’t find it. It must have got mixed up with the ones the ‘dining team’ provide. I suppose nobody is left alive who can tell the difference between double damask and shiny polyester.

The Marriage of Figaro went off more smoothly. I did go to Ottolenghi for the main course – damp, cold salmon with a vague curry aura.

For The Merry Widow at Holland Park Opera I did Tom Parker Bowles’s Royal Chicken Salad, regularly gobbled by Queen Victoria apparently. Quite nice.

There’s been my National Garden Scheme Garden Opening – 10 lunched in the drawing room and 6 took a seated tea in the dining room. Joshua Baring couldn’t stay. 124 members of the public were admitted to the garden with Robert Nevil and the Maharajah on the door and Joshua Baring kettling in the kitchen. Royston King was also present in the drawing room.

The Ragged School staged their piano festival again with those heroes of the pandemic response (i.e. giving concerts), Samson Tsoy, Pavel Kolesnikov and Elisabeth Leonskaja. Samson and Pavel have taken to having huge flounced frockage. It was a Schubert evening.

At the Royal Academy, the private breakfast was for the Summer Exhibition. Dame Anna Ford was present. She said she was going to write to the Pope; the Herbarium at Kew she’s had enough of, although by all accounts it will not move to Reading. Previously Royston King had attended a dinner at Kew. At the mention of Dame Anna Ford the whole place blew up.

I’m come to the content of these events another time.

Trooping the Colour though… Royston King got VIP seats. We were seated with the Minister of Defence, the Head of the Italian Airforce, the Head of the French Army, the Chief Constable of the British Transport Police and other Greatnesses. The Royal Family were sublime. Her Majesty is now a shape, as the late Queen was. You’d know it was her from miles away. Royston King didn’t think much of her having to hold onto her hat in the wind. But she must have an enormous hat. The King was totally the King. Driving up in his carriage, he was a ringer for George 111.

It had rained the night before. The scene was radiant. The best bit is when the horses canter round the parade ground at break-neck speed and how they play their instruments while mounted and keep time.

Afterwards the husband of the Chief Constable of British Transport Police, a detective, launched into a blow-by-blow of the Hampstead Rapist which ought to have had a trigger warning.

In the background, I nearly forgot to say, all the time has been the re-colouring of the kitchen floor. Four boards needed to be sanded and start again. I thought I would surely be able to match the colour which I mixed myself 30 years ago. After 14 goes, I thought it would just have to do. But at the garden opening, Joshua Baring said the old colour was excellent and the new one not. Luckily he knows a colour expert. I can see it’s going to cost £££££.

Sunday 6th July 2025

Two have died and been spared the rising tide of Socialism.

Not that Manny Maude would have minded the rising tide. Sir Trerew Vyvan Trerew on the other hand…

I wasn’t planning to attend Manny Maude’s Mem but Rufus Pitman urged my presence and we lunched beforehand. Harry Rollo and Reggie Cresswell were also in the party. Harry has developed a new approach to ‘plant-based’… cake is plant-based, he says, sugar is plant-based. Why did nobody say this before? Only a genius can unearth the obvious when it’s been buried.

Manny Maude is important. At his lunches and dinners in the 1980s names began: Beryl Bainbridge was spoken of but never materialised. Her matching pair, Bernice Rubens, on the other hand did. So did Josceline Dimbleby and Tristam Powell. Jane Grigson and Maria Aitken hovered convincingly in the background.

Most important, Manndy Maude was the path for me, Adrian Edge, to Rufus Pitman and thence to Harry Rollo and Reggie Cresswell. There might have been other paths or there might not.

Once I took New Year on a regular basis with Manny Maude and his later husband, Denzel Lomax, who started out a semi-kitchen but ended a mogul. I was always round. But from 1996, after I’d moved to the other side of London and grown nearer and nearer the Throne, a frost descended. Manny Maude’s mother had been in service at Buckingham Palace. Royalty were not top of the list. Happily though, at Frankie Wainwright’s funeral in January 2024, I had one final jolly confab (as it evolved) with Manny Maude on the topic of Barbara Cartland.

Manny was a lasting writer. His mem was a big affair although outfits were deliberately reduced to a minimum. Within minutes of opening, the C word had been uttered. The Vicar, pinnioned in full view on a dias, had no choice but to roar. Then it happened again. So in closing remarks, the Vicar had to say it himself, as well as disclose the possession of a husband. Mega-stars did readings, famous musicians played music. One of the readings was about a terrible fart-gas incident in Rome following artichokes. Ethel Bellows, the artist, read out all the preposterous made up names Manny had put on the envelopes of the letters he’d sent her – inevitably blowing up her credibility with the postman and her wider neighbourhood, not that she could give a damn. They went something like: ‘General Leading Lesbian, Director of Lesbian Services West Norfolk Area’ or ‘Major-General Massive Lesbian, Lesbian Brigade, Salvation Army Lesbian Division’. She said that if ever one mentioned one’s own health, Manny changed the subject.

Manny was a bit of a nightmare. But great. His mem was a noble effort to stamp him forever on eternity but really there is no need… he’s already fully stamped on.

Sir Trerew, like Manny, was taken before Christmas. He’d already been mem-ed once at the cathedral of the far far West, so this was the London branch. Bang opposite the Academy for ease to access to the after-function. A sea of navy in the church, all the Royal Academy ladies of Rutland Gate and Ennismore Gardens suddenly out of their wheelchairs and clucking forth, even without sticks. Sir Trerew had been a stunner in his day, known as ‘Sir Pash’. Later his knack was for getting money out of people. Huge projects. Everybody said, ‘It’s impossible’. But he did it. To me, Adrian Edge, he always seemed somewhat vague. He never quite knew who one was, despite the Gay Granny’s best friend having been one of his tenants and his father’s before that, and his mother having lunched with the Gay Granny and the Gay Mother in the 1930s, which has recently come to light, as the Gay Mother has new memories. Maybe that was part of the perf. Anyway, he only had to murmur and wallets burst open, millions pouring out.

Aunt Lavinia was also on friendly terms. In December 2019, after the Messiah at San Paolo di Londra, Aunt Lavinia boarded a bus for Fulham and discovered Sir Trerew and Lady Trerew on the bottom deck (they were returning from a City dinner). The three of them yacked away until Chelsea which was the T’s stop.

The King and Queen, the Glou and Princess Anne were represented. Sir Trerew was only 85. So mem goers not severely ancient, just quietly turning. Still smart and neat in navy. Their like will not be seen again. Afterwards all three rooms at the front of the Royal Academy packed. Wine only. The new Sir Trerew a little the worse for wear by the end. All the past Presidents of the RHS (as are living), Christies, the National Trust (of 20 years ago), the Royal Academy greatnesses – taking one last look back.

Saturday 7th June 2025

Raining – but heating on at 5? Is that right for June?

Robert Nevil and the Maharajah seem to have turned the corner. Earlier in the week, Sir Squirrel came in with his menacing folder containing designs for Robert Nevil’s catafalque – which wasn’t encouraging. I feared it was going to be the demise of poor Prince Eddy all over again. Now a triumphant drive to San Paolo di Londra for a Service of National Thanksgiving for the Recovery of Robert Nevil and the Maharajah looks more than likely.

The Duchess Throckmorton (relatively new in the circle but it turns out we’ve always known her and people she knows) went in and tested them for that thing. But it wasn’t that thing.

There’s so much going on. Including a new concept – a Sugar Kitchen. I know it sounds a contradiction in terms. But one exists. One’s been found. A much younger man of private means as well as highly placed as to profession united with an older man over twice his age. A Sugar Kitchen.

I went to Prague for a week last month. Princess Alexandra said to Anthony Mottram (‘consultant’ of Prague but now sold up) in the box at the Royal Albert Hall, ‘The family love Prague.’ This was 20 years ago.

We rarely left the Museum apartment. It was a steady mitel-European life of steady routine with a German emphasis. Anthony Mottram doesn’t eat before 2. After 2 he has cakes, flatbreads, breads stuffed with cheese from Georgina, cold meats and hot meats. At 5 it’s time to go to a gymnasium to sit in a false bicycle for 40 minutes while reading a kindle. After that there is an interlude in Starbucks for tea and teacakes. Then back to the Museum apartment for music practice following which it is time for the restaurant. Once the restaurant is over, it’s Netflix in the private small drawing room on the upper floor of the Museum apartment. Whenever in the small private drawing room, I always made a point of saying, ‘How thankful you must be for this small private drawing room.’ The main salon which occupies almost all of the lower floor (although the hotel bedroom is also there) is quite terrifying. So vast. You couldn’t sit in it alone or even as a pair. So where would Anthony Mottram be without that small private drawing room? Although an oddity of it is the ficus tree in a pot which is now so enormous it’s difficult to get into the room.

Prague was once famous for its dustbins, which were displayed in rows outside historic buildings. Now it is incredibly tidy. A huge amount of gardening has gone on. No litter, not even in back alleys. It is almost a German city as it once was.

There was been another improvement. As you know Anthony Mottram almost single-handedly transformed the old Eastern bloc with his enterprise. But one thing stubbornly wouldn’t shift: always hot milk brought with tea. Anthony Mottram would have to say, ‘Tea.. with COLD milk.’ Sometimes even the direct command was ignored or not understand. But now, at last, the message has got through, the penny has dropped. No hot milk with tea. It’s not even thought of. Nothing need be said.

It just shows: if you keep on about something for 35 years, eventually a Nation will grasp it. The great ship of state will turn and get it right.

Monday 2nd June 2025

Robert Nevill isn’t well for his birthday. Developed a temperature overnight. Yesterday his cough was getting better.

The Gay Mother said that Lady Maristow was locked out of the kitchen. This was before she was married. In the night she got up. She fancied hot milk. But Cook had locked the kitchen. She must have been on an engagement visit to what would become the marital home in due course. Around about 1936.

Funny this has never been mentioned before. We used to encounter Lady Maristow on the platform at the station. She always mentioned how much the Gay Mother’s Mother, the Gay Granny, did in the county.

She maintained a Cook all her born days. We can only hope she was not locked out permanently.

It’s the same story with Mr Gandhi. ‘Oh, I saw Mr Gandhi from the top of a bus in Knightsbridge,’ the Gay Mother announced a few months ago. First I’d heard of it. ‘He had wrapped round what looked like a rather dirty piece of cloth.’ This would have been his self-spun fabric by which he set such store. Self-spun fabric was the future of India, he believed.

The Gay Mother lunched out in April. Amongst the neighbours a mania for wild garlic had developed. One had boiled bundles of it as if it were greens. ‘I don’t think the Gay Mother liked it,’ this neighbour said to me. Once she’d gone the GM said, ‘I don’t think I was obliged to eat it. It wasn’t very nice.’

Also disliked are the Fine Cheese Company of Bath’s biscuits for cheese. Peter’s Yard (the ones that are so artisanal they can gouge a groove in your mouth) have been discontinued in the cheese shop and replaced with the products of the Fine Cheese Company of Bath. ‘To the compost heap with them,’ the Gay Mother ordered. In fact they were displayed in her kitchen for some weeks, rather like the Head of Oliver Cromwell on a pike on the roof of Westminster Hall all those years as an example. ‘If you mess with the Monarchy, this is what will happen to you.’ Quite right too.

Possibly the biscuits in question were the vegan option, hence ‘like sawdust’. Other options might be possible from the Fine Cheese Company of Bath, including ‘Bath Squares’ thought to resemble the true Bath Oliver, which has been abolished.

Tuesday 20th May 2025

It was more than just the Royal Car at the gate, the Standard even when hanging limp on the bonnet so absolutely giving the Presence, as the Weeds came forward to receive Their Majesties.

That was at 4.30. From 10.15 I’d been on my feet , in an outfit, touring, circling the Dog Garden but really whirring – all the different levels of celebrity. For Prue Leith, Dame Stedman, Myleene Klass, Monty, lunch in the Newt VIP Suite, as for us also, Royston’s guests, Queen Lahoura, Dame Bennett (who once ruled our screens) and Sir Almond Pearl, from the Royal Household. For Fiona Bruce, on the other hand, the rope was lifted for the private drinks party on the Royal Horticultural Society’s lawn. The President’s lunch was the greatest rarity at lunchtime. Sir Nick Knowles of DIY TV was elevated to a speaking role, so we heard from Royston afterwards. But later there were tea parties and drinks receptions, one of those receptions the greatest of all.

Dame Bennett, released from months of solitary ill health, at once resumed the world stage: financial advice for Queen Lahoura, Sir Knowles she told not to let ‘Hello!’ indoors, he having sold his forthcoming wedding to that publication, and to the world she declared that children must be spared the Internet. She refused all requests to be photographed, massively incog, not fit to be seen etc… even some poor Gay whose mother was a fan.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking life at the Top is all canapés and champagne. Not a bit of it. The committees, the millions to be spent, or not spent, the intrigues, the Trustees, the missing Chairs… ‘Dame Agnes Bazouka!’ one of Royston’s guests who’d lunched with the President suddenly cried out as we roamed the show afterwards. Dame Agnes was halted in her path and Royston began a massive address about the memorial to Her Late Majesty currently being tendered for in St James’s Park. Dame Agnes is on the selection committee, you see. She turned out to be American and like Bette Davis: ‘See here,’ she cut in. ‘You keep going on about a monument. I’m telling you now, we’re not doin’ no monument.’ Even Royston was silenced, for a moment.

Then there’s Vincent Square, and the case of the missing Chair… not to mention another scandal that can’t be mentioned. All these balls being juggled at once. ‘Something must be done.’ ‘We can’t have this… we can’t have that… we don’t want him… we don’t want her… ‘

It’s thrilling but shattering.

Royston was greeted in person by the Mayor, who stood up for him. I thought the Mayor looked as if he’d lost too much weight.

At 3.30 even the greatest celebrities must leave. Spaniels appear, looking for bombs. And then at 4.30, the Royal persons and their suites. A hush over the ground but also the crude scramble and appetite of the photographers. They came round a corner and we were three feet from the Persons. The nearer they are the less real they seem. You cannot believe it’s them. The Queen carries no handbag. They went different ways.

So the King progressed up Main Avenue, the still everlasting presence in the midst of a manic mill of security men and press, the legendary figure we’ve known all our lives. Royston and I retreated in the Main Tent and were chatting to a nice country man who supplies leading trees and taught His Majesty grafting, when, without warning, the King was upon us. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘indeed.’ ‘This is Adrian Edge,’ Royston said. With the suddenness, all procedure evap. I dipped but didn’t curtsey fully. Whether I spoke or not I couldn’t say. The actual King was shaking my hand. V. firm handshake. He was five minutes or more in confab with the tree man about some oaks that were doing well in one place but not another and had the plum trees arrived at Balmoral? The Weeds, behind, were looking desperate because of the schedule. Finally His Majesty wafted forward as only Royalty can do.

Delirious we left the tent and found an elderly Royal Duke wandering about by himself. ‘Which is your stand?’ he said to Royston. Then there was David Beckham, stationed outside the Highgrove shop. Dazed, I assumed he had somehow become Royalty too, or had always been. It was quite normal. He was a strange colour, a little green, feeling of a drawn-on face, very black narrow eyes. A bit frightening. Odd woven, organic frock.

We had to get to the Reception, the greatest of the Receptions, before Royalty. The canapés had been upped, I can tell you. The Duch of Glou took a glass this year. At one moment she wandered the party unaccompanied. The Duke of Glou slumped on a chair with the Michaels of Kent and their friend who had an arrangement of small plasters on the top of his head. Really it could have been any pensioners’ jolly. The Michaels had to be buggied at the show this year. The Duch of Glou is exquisite. Perfectly formed and frocked to a dream. Last year she had six gold necklaces. The King and Queen arrived and there was a reception line and curtseying. It was quite crowded. Procedure dissolved. Her Majesty was going great guns with someone in a corner, like any party goer. But she’s the Queen. Edinburgh was stood with his brother the King. It was mainly Edinburgh talking as it was when he was with the Duch of Glou. They all seemed to know one another. Eugenie kissed the King then curtseyed. Just at the point when a danger was growing that they might lose their magic, the hot boy equerry was marshalling and departure was looming. Royalty are exceptionally good at leaving. They leave but remain, unlike most people who can’t leave and grind on to dust. Royalty evaporate but there’s no door slamming and really it’s more like what the Ascension of the Virgin must have been like.

Royston and I didn’t have a moment. The Gala reception for paying commerce followed immediately. We insisted on champagne from a stall and ate their canapés. Too late did we see the sign that said, ‘Guests of Chase Manhattan (or whatever)only’.

Nobody was at the Reception except the 3000 people who’d paid £700 each to attend. Royston had confab about Vincent Square and truly we might have drilled to Australia. It was 9.30 before we were in the street and there was Lord Snowdon mounting a cycle. He wants some new gates put to make a vista up to Kensington Palace. He explained with photos on his phone. I said, ‘They could be memorial gates to Your Late Mother.’ Then, oh no, St James’ Park… my feet couldn’t have been more killing me after 11 hours on them. ‘What do you think about the plans… your Late Aunt?’ Royston was off. ‘Can’t you get through to the King?’ ‘Sir Squirrel came to see me…’ ‘If he doesn’t like it we’ll all get to hear about it…’ Finally Lord Snowdon cycled away – no lights.

Monday 12th May 2025

In a moment of madness I booked the Garden Museum Exclusive Tour of Sandringham with the Head Gardener. There would have been a ticket for Royston King but he wasn’t quick enough – held up in meetings in the upper corridors of power. The tour sold out at once. So he said the Head Gardener could be dispensed with, only the King would do .. why bother with Sandringham?

I over-nighted with Herbert Morrison and St Anselm at Cromer. They did 3 courses. There were no outrages. Herbert Morrison has acquired some kind of mechanical violin, called a Nyckleharpa, from Glasgow at great expense. I undertook to fetch it from Ladywell whence it had been brought by another friend from Scotland. From there I motored it to Cromer. St Anselm said now he faced the horror of it being played which began at once. Otherwise the talk was of aged relatives and their carry-on.

The next morning arrival at Sandringham took place at 9.30. Glorious sunshine. Tour members elderly, some gays, deeply anonymous. No self-introducing. It would all have been different if Royston King had been there. I lack the killer instinct. One lady claimed to know what the weather is going to be all summer. We went through the wall into Sandringham demesne. The last time I was there ( seven or eight years ago) this was an experience almost of terror, a sudden plunge back to 1880, the hideous house lowering over a vast lawn, an aura of conifers and rhododendrons, a sinister lake where a recently drowned governess might have haunted had there been a recently drowned governess.

Now all transformed. Sensational. The lawn turned into a rough meadow, huge bulb planting and masses of acers (both Japanese and other). The ugly house blotted out, a wonderful verdant scene, enclosed by the existing trees, the essence of what a country house should be, where the outside world is shut out and within is a better place.

We went on the topiary garden right in front of the house. I’d no idea it would be so huge. One acre. Next to it is a sunken maze . The King at the last minute said, ‘ How about a stepped bank?’ Or rather he used a technical term which the Head Gardener had to pretend to understand. Making the stepped bank on three sides of a kind of basin in which the maze sits turned out to be quite complicated. They had to get their set-squares and slide-rules out.

Then we were shown a rockery that had sprung into being in the past ten days.

Well, it’s a great kingly scheme. Only a king could have done it – and all within 3 years. But poignant. Lilibet rather pushed out of the way. She’d never have spent millions on a topiary garden. The King must have been waiting to pounce. Now, though, we have important new horticulture, the most important new garden design likely to occur in the Kingdom for some time.

Luncheon was given in a Women’s Institute type hall. There was some banter. Those who’d been annoying on the tour with their attention-seeking non-questions turned out to be bearable. A man retired from banking told one of those stories in which somebody like Mark Carney or Keir Starmer had been a tea-boy when first encountered by him or somebody he knew millennia ago. It might have been true. Gays slightly gravitated and more so during the tour of the house. Now there’s a jigsaw puzzle Their Majesties are supposedly in medias res with laid out in the saloon (which is really the hall). In the darling drawing room I said to the apparent kitchen (or perhaps son) of a man in his 50s, ‘It’s all so unbelievably granny and bedroom.’ He had on a frock-type outfit in black and was more than up to my remark. We agreed that the panelling needed to be picked out in different shades, not just flat slamming cream.

In the dining room the guide said he thought the King was going to strip off all Queen Mary’s green paint (also flat, the panelling not picked out) and go back to the oak. We agreed that the nightmare of Nitromors didn’t bear thinking about. It’s possible that the King thinks so too. Two tables have been stripped but no more.

In the old reign such free and easy talk about paint finishes would never have been allowed. All Lilibet’s hard-wearing upholstery from John Lewis has been abolished.

Outside on the entrance front there’s some really frightful public park planting and new peculiar garden seats in odd colours. The husband or father of the young man in the partial frock was depressed by them. His theme of not liking gathered momentum, careered rather, until he was saying, ‘What’s the point of Sandringham? It’s time to get rid of it.’

It was a moment of madness.

Friday 9th May 2025

I was honoured to accompany Rufus Pitman to the Sandringham Exhibition at the King’s Gallery… which for some reason is wrongly announced as the ‘Edwardian Exhibition’. The sight of the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland produced in us a great deal of noise. Had there been the opportunity we’d surely have dropped to the floor in a dead faint. The tiara element was staggering – like a rare sacred showing, the Queen Alexandra Koloshnik and the Delhi Durbar tiara also blazing forth.

Those who have been in the presence, upon whom those diamond rays have shone, must for sure be elevated above other humans in ways yet to be known.

So many photographs of the family. Queen Alexandra had a box brownie. All their little vital bibelots (what is a bibelot?), the Fabergé must-haves ranked in glass cases. Outstanding was what I call a boudoir cupboard, curly and Frenchified, painted and gilded, glass panels. Obvs so plain and dreary there was nothing for it but to surmount with a porcelain monkey orchestra in many colours.

Rufus Pitman made two important remarks. I mentioned that I have always been mystified by the attribution of great beauty to Alexandra as Princess of Wales and later Queen. To me, she seems bug-eyed. Rufus said that whoever is Princess of Wales is a great beauty and that’s that. Which is so true. His other remark concerned a former Vicar or whoever of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge who unfortunately referred to his back bottie as an entrance. The doctor he was consulting at the time said, ‘Most people would call it an exit.’ The vicar once entered the pulpit on a Holy HIgh day and began his sermon: ‘Do you like what I’ve got on? ‘ He then gave fashion notes at some length.

Afterwards we lunched at Rufus’s club which can’t be mentioned of course. There were two very old men there who were identical twins but only one had a cough. The coffee room is a hundred metres long. Rufus talked of Ivy and her descendants. His dress on this occasion was not glaringly German but firmly anchored in the German tradition.

Some days later it emerged that Robert Nevil had also been at the exhibition for the purposes of condemning it in Joshua Baring’s publication. There must have been a moment of madness in the editorial mind. I am Sandringham. But Robert Nevil is a big name, especially now with his compendium of toilet stories in the post-War era. Robert Nevil didn’t even like the Tuxen – Queen Victoria and her Family in the Green Drawing at Windsor – which is adored and the artist only recently revealed to the public as existing at all and immediately adored.

In the next episode I go in person to actual Sandringham, although it’s hardily as if I, Adrian Edge, need to prove what is well-known: Sandringham, C’est moi, Ich bien Sandringham, Sandringham, sono io

Wednesday 30th April 2025

Few have died but lived to tell the tale.

But I, Adrian Edge, was wiped out by a ‘hacker’ in April 2024.

Grim nerds who were supposed to have the back-up with self-righteous pride failed to produce it. Then, one day, they did.

It wouldn’t work. The cold hand of the grave tightened. Even those attendant upon me and loyal could do nothing. Sinking, my comfort was that could I but live another ten years the legacy would be sufficient. Truly, though where was even the bare blog to be filled in?

It was the Maharajah who tamed death and then destroyed it. Of course, only somebody from the Sub-continent could have done it. They think differently there and better. I telephoned at once to the King to see about the Koh-i-Noor being returned in India. He’s mad keen, of course, but others stand in his way.

The Gay Mother suddenly said recently that she’d seen Mr Gandhi once from the top of a bus in Knightsbridge. ‘He seemed to have a rather dirty cloth wrapped around him.’ It was his self-spun cloth of course. Funny – she’s never mentioned seeing Mr Gandhi before.

What has happened to Poor Little Rich Gays in the meantime? There have been more elevations. Now there are two Poor Little Rich Gays who must be curtsey-ed to. Nobody has died, yet, or lost their money entirely. But Eddie Sedgwick – his sister, sadly, was took. Robert Nevil and I went to the pompes at Golders Green.

I now curtsey routinely to everybody I meet. Royston King is dead against it. At Chelsea Flower Show last year we were in the Royal Party. Royston suggested to the Duch of Glou that they stop on the way out to look at the small gardens at the back. ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘we can’t. We’re under a blue light.’

Now it’s almost time for the next Chelsea – and more Royalty.

Robert Nevil has had a huge success with a monumental work on the underground life of Gays in the post-War period. Much of it is unmentionable. Thank goodness Mr and Mrs Nevil, his parents, were spared being alive for the publication. He has toured the Kingdom, giving discussions, as has Reggie Cresswell. RC, in fact, has visited every town in Great Britain, with international engagements yet to come.

Laura Malcolm, also, has produced a work of fact disguised as fiction. I don’t know yet whether it contains the usual unflattering portrait of her own husband, Matt Driver. He, by the way, is now I/C the residents’ committee for the Common where they live and losing sleep over one of the other members who is a troll and makes insinuations. To think, he once shaped world taste.

No Poor Little Rich Gays have been confined to a Twilight Home. But Anthony Mottram, ‘consultant’ of Prague (oh, but he sold the business for £££££££££ or rather €€€€€€€€€€€ ) has coined a ‘hashtag’ – #beginningtofail .

It’s not as if nothing has happened. The Gay Mother is now 101. There were two functions for her birthday in February. Robert Nevil and the Maharajah came to help me and join in. In the kitchen we made disparaging remarks about the guests sotto voce. You notice how the elderly fall upon any food with a particular kind of fury. Actually the guests were all right. They loved the Maharajah. Whispering about them behind their backs was just a way of relieving the strain of having guests.

It’s harder and harder not being Royal or at least worth £150 million with a retinue. Standards go up and up. As I’m always saying to the Gay Mother, who finds it quite difficult to leave her chair in the kitchen, we must always think of how things are done at Sandringham or Balmoral, not just indoors but outdoors as well. Standards go up and up, but more and more one has to rest in a chair before the next task.

Tuesday 16th April 2024

The Hurlings have become waterborne. It’s so unlikely. They said to go the Lidl at Limehouse. Dinner at 7.30. So I did that. There was the canal below, but no access from the Lidl carpark. What were you supposed to do? Jump off and somehow they would materialise?

Boats were in view but unoccupied. One looked terribly unprepossessing. I managed to get down onto the towpath. A vessel further along showed signs of life, indeed a puce and cerise combination was in view – it could only be Charlie Hurling lui-meme. But on the other side. How to get across? I thought perhaps if I launched into a sea-shanty, they would send out a barque.

The nautical world, the life of the ocean waves.

Well, it turned out there was a secret bell you had to ring to be admitted to the private quay, once you had found a bridge and crossed over. So at last I was on board! Such a relief. I was beginning to succumb to abandonment anxiety.

The great feature is the toilet arrangements. You have to be induced in how to use. The most likely consequence is you’ll do anything rather than ‘go’. Luckily I was spared. Charlie and Mr Blue Cassidy said toilet discussion was tremendous amongst boat-owners. Really there was nothing else worth mentioning.

You may remember that when we visited for a weekend the Hurling cottage in Norfolk about six years ago, I snapped the toilet flush lever off and the other toilet wasn’t working.

They’d done a 70s menu. Only trifle was missing. Prawn Cocktail – enchanting. Chilli con Carne with garnishes. Charlie Hurling said hot chilli often loses its power. He’d gone to Lidl to get more and only used half of it. Perhaps the Lidl product is especially nuclear. Guests were as good as blasted back to from whence they had come only by a mouthful. Evem Miss Miracle commented and she, as we know, is exceptionally adventurous. She’d met a man in Lidl but he was no good. Not the same branch as the chilli came from though.

Who knew Lidl could give so much? There was talk of a very old friend who had sadly passed. Terrific hiss and spit at the funeral followed by slamming of funeral car doors for some reason. Another guest who I had never met before explained how his sister had helped herself to the entire inheritance of their parents so he never got his share.

A cheese board with grapes was followed by mini-Twix bars. Some present got confused as to whether they’d had one or not. Merle Barr was only just back from Japan. But I hardly spoke to her. We dined off our laps because the table was occupied by Charlie Hurling’s penis jigsaw, which is proving a nightmare to complete. So many areas of vague shading. All you have to do to get a penis jigsaw is send a picture of a penis to a jigsaw-maker. Everybody must try it.

Olive Wildish was fresh from Henley, where she is winding up her late mother’s affairs. Three hundred pieces of Spode, once of value. The Cranberry glass collection has already gone. Mr Cassidy and I were ears-pricked – possessions! Spode! Olive had a photographic catalogue. ‘The last thing you need is any more things,’ she said to Mr Cassidy. How they cram onto that boat I’ll never know. They’ll hoping to consolidate all their residences into one mansion. Still the lock-ups all over the place, packed with items. Just like Angus Willis and the Multis.

‘Can you drive the boat?’ I asked. ‘Oh yes,’ they said, ‘We’ve been as far as Cheshunt. That’s in Hertfordshire. It took two days to get there and two days back again.’

Who would have thought it?

Wednesday 10th April 2024

Poor Little Rich Gays don’t get any younger. They don’t get any older either. The Photo Multi looked radiant but was battling with entrance agonies. I couldn’t remember how to penetrate the block at all but somehow I ascended in the lift to the penthouse eerie commanding all of London. ‘People keep going up that outside staircase and trying to get in from there,’ the Photo said. The topic was deeply triggering, clearly. By the Aga he poured forth torrents such as are usually reserved for socialists and the like. Total demolition of the entire block was on the cards. Then he rallied sufficiently to select wines. Perhaps there’s a case for living on the ground floor.

When Cesar Kaiser and Connor Cadoux ‘buzzed up’ things went more smoothly – up to a point. It turned out Fergus Strachan was coming too – but delayed. A card game was to be attempted after an elegant supper during which Cesar Kaiser kept trying to throw food from his plate onto mine.

There was conversation but really when the Photo Multi said, ‘I won’t be told what to do’ there was little to add. At the card table, Fergus Strachan pronounced the chart of instructions for the game too complicated and declined to read it. The Photo Multi said he wouldn’t be invited again. Play was interrupted by attempts to explain the rules to Fergus who is a novice although delighted not to listen. Before long we’d all been told we wouldn’t be invited again. Cesar Kaiser lobbed insults at his husband, Connor Cadoux, with the clockwork regularity of the guns going off in Hyde Park. At one point, when Fergus was being particularly argumentative, I said, ‘You’d better watch out for the Photo Multi – he bites quite badly.’ Which was very wrong because the Photo has never bitten anybody.

In the middle of one particular stretch of cacophony, Angus Willis rang up from Hastings in a fury. He and Fergus aren’t married but ought to be, so much do they tear at each other’s throats. Anyway, Angus slammed down – except these days you just press the red button. The drama is the same, though.

Really it was thrilling. This is the way to live. On departure, Cesar Kaiser said to his husband: ‘I’m going through the door first.’