Thursday 20th July 2023

The button came loose like a loose tooth just as I was getting into the car for the Longborough opera (Gotter: it was great). This was at the beginning of June. So the luck of being able to save the button. Just as when, twenty years ago, an exclusive button engraved ‘Prada’ fell from my Prada mac, in the Prada shop onto the highlighting fawn carpet, then a feature of Prada shops throughout the world, now a lost world.

The falling off of the present unique button from the cuff of my Paul Smith dress shirt, the one with horizontal bands of sateen, was a parallel event: it could never be replaced. Staying overnight in the Swolds after Gotter, I carefully squirrelled the priceless item away.

Some weeks later, dressing for Glyndebourne (The Carmelites: it was great), I re-discovered the trauma of the absent button on the cuff. I’d forgotten all about it. Forgotten also where I’d concealed it for safe-keeping. The same thing happened to the Gay Granny with a Hester Bateman spoon that could never be found.

For weeks I’ve been jabbing here and there in desperate quest, like a cat that’s lost her kitten or that time our cat killed a pheasant’s chick and that pheasant’s frantic distress was terrible. I’ve burrowed through all three of my handbags, I’ve mined every crevice of my sponge bag. I’ve turned out my wallet and my back-up wallet. At one point I wondered if I’d buried the button in a sample pot from SpaceNK. All the drawers in the drawing room, every ornamental box – all seized on. But nothing.

What could I have done with it?

Seriously, I was facing Button Queen in Marylebone (what’s the betting it’s closed down). Or even worse, hysteria in the Paul Smith shop in Covent Garden.

This gone Sunday, just as the Men’s Final was beginning, sudden flash… my Aly Cappellino holdall, which definitely accompanied me to Longborough. It was a vision, a bolt, a voice calling me to the Grail in sure and certain hope. And there, sure enough, in one of the inner pockets of the holdall, it was.

I’m sure I looked in that holdall before. How could I not have done?

So, I was able to relieve the agonising strain of the Men’s Final by sewing it back on.

What a glorious day. That which was lost was found. And the Men’s Final.. Anthony Mottram, presently boiling in Cyprus, texted beforehand: ‘May the new Kitchen win.’ But all looked to be lost. Then it wasn’t. What a thrilling player is this new Kitchen – although I’m not sure he should pat the King of Spain on the arm in a matey way but really one will forgive him anything. I’ve not known such uplift since the Response to the Pandemic and the end of the world as we knew it.

One mystery: why did Her Royal Highness’s Roland Mouret crease? Her Late Majesty never creased in 96 years. It was Eve Pollard who said, commentating on Royal Ascot for TV: ‘Royalty are marvellous. They never crease or stain.’

I think it was the strange weather: it’s very humid although it doesn’t appear to be.

It was quite tiring having to get up to curtsey with so many Royalties present: four Royal Highnesses and one Majesty. Later it turned out the Monacos were there: lucky I didn’t know because I’m not sure whether one curtseys to them. I think not.

That Which was Lost was Found

Back On! Hope Resurgam