Tuesday 12th January

Robert Nevil and the Nizam were sealed with me for Christmas in my London home. Don’t ask. Only Poor Little Rich Gays could achieve such a rare configuration. To the world in general, it will never be explained. Such a web. So many dimensions.

We only diverted from the strict Hindu diet for the actual Christmas dinner. For Christmas Eve we had Mushroom Ragu in Egg Foam. There was a hiatus re: pudding because Robert Nevil and the Nizam clung to the idea that food should be nice. But there were some dried sour cherries to be finished up. I’d soaked them in grappa. The Nizam doesn’t touch alcoholic beverage. Even a whiff could send him delirious. Nevertheless he sampled the dried sour cherries with minimal 2% yoghurt and found them sour. Damnation, they weren’t cleared. I spent the rest of Christmas trying to force them down the guests. It was hopeless.

Robert Nevil and the Nizam curl on the sofa and post. There’s a lot of subsequent pinging. That’s the comments coming in. They look at the comments and comment. There’s a huge tangle of commentators all connected in ways yet to be understood. Otherwise there’s TV. It was a tussle between Bridgerton and Black Narcissus. Bridgerton I thought lovely. Lovely colours, particularly on my new screen. So vivid. Frocks and wigs. Good, well-thighed young gentlemen with ungentlemanly tendencies. What more could you want? I never knew that George 111 made a lot of people of African descent into Dukes etc. Did you? It was because of Queen Charlotte being also of African descent. Where are they now? Robert Nevil and the Nizam were aghast. ‘Why are we watching this?’ the Nizam cried. They wanted Black Narcissus. But that was even worse, surely. Since leaving my premises they’ve kept up the attack on Bridgerton. Black Narcissus is conveniently not mentioned. But it was incredibly awful. Photo-shopped and the message you could grasp in the first five minutes: don’t bother being a nun. It’s more trouble than it’s worth.

On Christmas Day we went for a walk and saw the New River, brought by Sir Thomas Myddleton from Hertfordshire into London. The day after Boxing Day we took another walk. Who knew that St Paul’s Cathedral, the Temple Bar, the Old Bailey, St Bartholomew the Great are within the compass on foot of my home in London? I showed the Nizam the place where Queen Victoria’s carriage stopped at the foot the Cathedral Steps in 1897 and she remained in the carriage while the service of Thanksgiving for her Diamond Jubilee was conducted out of doors because she was too infirm to descend. The Gay Grandmother was somewhere lurking about then. She had a medal from that Jubilee. We also got a sense of where the Royal cars would sweep, arriving at the Cathedral. Then we delved in the part below the Cathedral towards the Thames and found the boards in a passage said to date from Shakespeare’s day. Also the King’s Wardrobe and the Society for Unloved Churches. Returning past the Old Bailey (Robert Nevil and I know someone who was jugged from there. RB even has gone as far as Belmarsh on a visit) we saw the new private wing of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, not quite opened, where I hope to end my days. Finally we found dear old Betj’s front door in Cloth Fair which I’d never seen before.

I forgot to say that when Royston and I went to Glyndebourniana, owing to current restrictions, we pissed the lawn in the dark.

Christmas Day Lunch by Robert Nevil

The Christmas Table

Dried Sour Cherries Soaked in Grappa: Still not Finished Up