Lunch at Gravetye: Old Rose Carpet Still Not Found: We Visit a Piggery: Cruise Not Settled Quite

Wednesday 20th March 2013

So we went to Gravetye. It’s the platonic ideal of the Country House Hotel and also, by strange magic, the source for Poor Little Rich Gay gardening because William Robinson lived there before it was an hotel.

Lady Carmichael, the Blond Multi’s mother, was already on a sofa in the hall when we arrived. She looked an absolute resident but had in fact gained 2 minutes before from her home.

You too could attach yourself to a Country House Hotel near your home in the same way. So much less expensive than taking a room.

Gravetye’s become more accessible! £35 set lunch menu. Such democracy and openness. Silent lunchers were in the dining room and a village boy with a bird. What a life for them to see all that! Country House life for all!  The Multis treated and we had fine wines and the only objection was the square plates.  Lunch was excellent. Lady Carmichael was seeking a source of complaint. One time she was at Gravetye and saw the rat-catcher in the drawing room. She phoned up later and they said it wasn’t the rat-catcher it was vermin-control. She was in Heaven over the square plates. There was a selection of coffee-rooms to choose from. I was soothed to see a polished table smeary. I felt I could face my own home if a table was smeary in a 5 star hotel.

The poor Blond Multi: I said, ‘Aunt Lavinia says you had rather a lot of her at the charity dinner.’ ‘What she means,’ the Blond flashed, ‘is she had rather a lot of me.’

We paraded in the garden then boarded for Pergola Trehair’s. She’s the Blond Multi’s sister, one of them. Her demesne is massive with stables and she offered a superb drawing room tea. Her youngest daughter, aged 4, reappeared as a Princess in gold lamé . In the middle of tea, the piglets arrived by Land Rover. Pergola, in good jumper and skirt and with figure carried her Spode cup and saucer into the yard and placed them on the trailer roof  before crawling in to drag out the screaming piggys. The Princess and her brother aged 9 were almost self-wetting with hilarity but Prince Dmitri Hersov, always with the vast Russian Steppe rolling before him, said, ‘They’re terrified.’ Once in the shed huddled together on a straw bed they were silent. Pergola’s husband, Bonas, said that after a day they would be quite all right.  They were suffering from mother and birth-home loss.

As are all Poor Little Rich Gays. Although the Mother is also to be outdone in décor and frockage, of course.

I’m nowhere nearer the old rose carpet (must be flat weave) for my stairs. Some more samples have arrived, all quite wrong. I see another visit to Chelsea Harbour looming. That place is to give itself over in its entirety to ransacking the world for my old rose flatweave carpet. Otherwise it’s massacre.  You might think me excessive but you’d be wrong.

The Cruise for after Easter isn’t quite settled yet. Val has agreed to come but we want to get off at St Tropez on the Sunday rather than go on to Monte Carlo on the Tuesday.

Now looms St Kil. Sandringham St Kil on Saturday with Joshua Baring, Patrick Lockyer and Jesus.

My Carpet Sample Agony

At Present Sisal ‘Rubens’ (On Far Right) is the Front Runner, for the Stairs Only: Landings to Stay as Seagrass

Arrived this Morning from Belgium: Hopeless and Shattering: Nowhere Near Old Rose Despite On-Line Appearance

 

 

 

 

Posted Wednesday, March 20, 2013 under Adrian Edge day by day.

8 comments

  1. Joshua Baring says:

    Are you set on sisal? V tricky to clean…

  2. Adrian Edge says:

    You can pick vomit out once dry with a delicate spike. But what does Lady Baring say?

  3. Joshua Baring says:

    Lady Baring is very harsh on sisal. Loathes it. Solange can spend all day on her knees cleaning and scrubbing with dry brushes and still she isn’t satisfied. Also, she struggles with the way it wears. At least carpet can have the air of faded grandeur. Sisal, alas, just frays.

  4. Joshua Baring says:

    To avoid confusion I should point out, Solange has only been seen at work in Lady Parvula’s house. It is merely that Lady Baring considers her the finest of cleaners and longs to poach her. Lady Baring and Lady Parvula have had significant discussions about cleanliness.

  5. Adrian Edge says:

    I should imagine those discussions have an edge. So few have obsessive compulsive disorder but it’s perfect for a cleaner

  6. Adrian Edge says:

    Am horrified by this report on Sisal. I feel I will soon be binned if my stair-carpet misery goes on much longer

  7. Laura Malcolm says:

    Why not get orange carpet like you had on the stairs of your last official home? Except you didn’t talk to me for a week when I said it was orange. You said it was flame.

  8. Adrian Edge says:

    I thought it was marmalade. Bought at Arding and Hobbs in a sale and wore v. badly. The pile just dropped out of the upright bits on the stairs. Maybe after 3 weeks and having torched Chelsea Harbour, I’ll have the strength to switch to orange

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