Tag: whitstable

Categories
Malibu Travel

Whitstable Life

Whitstable life.

Actress Fay Ripley has moved into the house opposite my old place.   Saw her today in the most elegant shearling coat and big glasses.   Celebrities stalk my home town…jabbering away loudly on mobile phones.

Even the little houses beyond the High Street that I never thought would be interesting to London people are now 300k and never on the market for longer than a few weeks.

Recession?  Where is it?

I am still really pleased I sold both my houses.

I never really liked the Peter Cushing house (number 3 Seaway Cottages) it was large and draughty and I think I must have been to the beach maybe twice in 13 years.  The beach was the front garden..but I am not a beach man.

I really loved the other house (number 2 Seaway Cottages), the house next door that I renovated from scratch.  It looked superb by the time I finished with it.

I poked my nose through the door yesterday and the Anthony Gormley coat pegs are still in place.  The rather beautiful kitchen lamps have been replaced by ugly, modern, cheap looking, brushed aluminum sconces.   Everything else is just as I left it.  The fig tree in the garden has been severely pruned as it should be.

I had an unfortunate incident on Sunday night.  Went to see my friend Cathy for dinner but she was so drunk I turned on my heels and left the house.

Last night, through a genuine blizzard, walked to an NA meeting.  I looked like a snow man when I got there.  Expecting the worst (crack addicts) but instead met with a group of sober people with surprisingly good, modern recovery.

It was great.

Sometimes I think that NA has more to do with SAA than AA.  The Step work and traditions of NA as written in the Green and Gold Book have really appropriate text for addicts of any kind sex/drugs/drink.

I had lots to write about the past couple of days but…the memories escape me right now.

Long walks with the little dog around the golf course.   Tea with Georgina and family.   Sunday lunch time went to the Monument Pub and ate roast pork with crackling.  Entertained myself with the Monument Football Team who are all, every single one..to a man…GORGEOUS.

Ate home-made pate today for lunch with Carol before she crawled into her workshop…you know she’s a potter?  A ceramicist?

Back in LA Ashley tells me that the waterfall that thunders under the Malibu house drive is thundering nicely.    By the time I get back the garden will be a jungle.  I was worried that the new road would be washed away.  I bloody hope not.

The sun’s gone dim,

The moon’s turned black,

For I loved him,

He didn’t love back.

21/12/09 – 21/12/10  Adieu my darling.

Categories
Christmas

Fuck You John McCain

Fuck You John McCain for telling the world that the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was a ‘sad day’. This is a small step toward equality for gay people in the USA. One Small Step.

The Senate vote is a vindication of Obama‘s decision to push for congressional repeal as opposed to unilateral executive action, though activists note he could have done both.

I am in Whitstable at my friend Carol’s house. She is having a huge party. It is thumping loudly in the cellar as I write. I know everyone in the house..everyone. This is small town living and I love it. Carol’s handsome son is a chef and has made delicious food.

They are downstairs drinking vodka and gin. They are listening to Senegalese music. They are eating the food and clapping and we are all wearing false moustaches.

I fell asleep.

At 5am I woke up and wandered downstairs to see what was going on and ended up with some good-looking 33-year-old. Really sexy man..blue eyes, hairy tummy.

I have been thinking a great deal about the life I left behind in LA. I wrote to a man I see around town called Dan Halstead..a manager. At his behest I wrote a little note explaining what has been going on with my health…sooner or later I will write in-depth here about the tumor..anyway, I wrote explaining everything and I received a two-word reply. I wondered why I even bother?

Before, before the show, before Jake, before returning to my home town..I would have been disappointed. Now, I just think it’s funny. His constipated reply made me laugh.

LA, NYC, LONDON…Sydney. The list goes on. I wish I could start again. Just like I did when I got sober. I started again and everything was new. Born Again.

The truth is: I am so disconbobulated that I don’t know where I should be.

Earning so much money these past months from selling art that I presently have no financial worries…but you know as well as I do…the drama, the interminable drama continues.

I could really do without what has been happening this past year.

Left a message for Phil to call me. When she returned my call I couldn’t bring myself to speak with her. It’s fucked up. Yet, I have held onto her for many years (for all the wrong reasons) so that she too becomes just part of the narrative.  The unfolding drama of my life.

On a good note I have been speaking to writers informally about our project. I think the majority understand what the film is about. Most of them get it but can any of them write it?

I am really enjoying watching British TV. Good political debate, fresh ideas and very little tabloid sensationalism. The news, when not competing for ratings, does as it is meant to: inform impartially.

Thinking a great deal about AA and my other 12 Step programmes and how much time I have wasted adhering to a programme that looks to all the world like some kind of white country club. There’s more to mine there, these thoughts about my cultish AA.

Really want to get back to a time where I was free of resentment. It is a gruelling, miserable state of affairs. Every fucking day my loathing is renewed.

Have a great deal to sort out and the only way I think I can sort any of it, overcome the profound sense of loss is to create..make something useful.

Categories
Travel

Deptford

I am sitting at my architect friend Keith’s house in the most unlikely location – Deptford.  An unruly, charmless, largely destroyed by Nazi bombs area of South East London.   His tiny terraced house a laboratory for the work that has defined his career.

After 10 years of messing about with the house…it is finally finished.

Keith’s Site

We drove to Shoreditch for another wander around the back streets and do a little Christmas shopping.  The shops are heaving with customers.  There is NO evidence of a recession here.  I bought a huge Christmas pudding from St John’s and some great socks.  Everything else that we wanted to buy, like a sweater in All Saints, was irritatingly sold out.

We had lunch at Shoreditch House where I bumped into Robert.  I knew I would.  Very handsome.

Ate gorgeous traditional Sunday roast beef.   Dog in a bag under the table.

Last night Carol and I walked to our local labour politician’s Christmas party.  It is amazing how they, like so many local Whitstable people, read this blog.  I am delighted!  Our host and his wife are good, old-fashioned socialists..the sort McCarthy and now Sarah Palin HATES.

Surely I couldn’t possibly be surrounded by so many devilishly intelligent left wingers who were, like me, excited by the wholly unexpected political reinvigoration of the young we saw last week in London?  This, after so many years of inertia from our traditionally vocal students.

We salute you British students and urge you to continue to daub, poke, shout..etc.  I give you permission to make this government as uncomfortable as you possibly can.

Apparently the mad, bad Duchess of Cornwall was ‘poked with a stick’ by a demonstrator.  It was positively revolutionary!   Tim’s great friend David Gilmour‘s son was photographed hanging off the cenotaph (our national war memorial) great!     Polly and David are very embarrassed, the son, apparently…isn’t.

The Duchess of Cornwall poked with a stick..like something dead in the road.

What else have I been up to?  Good God…the most beautiful man in Wheelers last night.  A cabby from Essex.  29 years old, navy blue eyes and the reddest lips.  I resisted taking his number but I know for sure that once a path is crossed it will cross again.   He was beautiful.  We chatted on Whitstable High Street and you know when a man looks directly into your eyes…you know that feeling.

What else?  Went to local farmer’s market and bought a shoulder of goat for dinner this week.

Keith, when we got home this evening, gave me a pot of Medlar jelly that he made with fruit he found at a friends country house..it had a wonderful taste.  Another strange coincidence ?  Only this week I learned what a medlar was.  Now I have a pot of it.

We ate stilton and delicious Christmas cake made by his boy friend of six years.

Driving to Paris tomorrow to get rid of car as the hospital treatment kicks in on Tuesday.  Can’t say that I am looking forward to it but hey ho.

Categories
art

I Love Whitstable

I love Shoreditch too.  I love Soho.  I love rioting students.

I love (particularly) the paint splattered Rolls that the parasite Prince Charles and the hag Camilla were caught in the other day by the ‘off with their heads’ militant protestors.  hahaah.

I am really loving being home. It has settled something in me.

After my fuck session (which will do me for some time I might add) I wandered happily all over Shoreditch.

I stopped in at a number of cool looking shops:  like the funky Japanese run clothes shop that sold padded linen overwear, the odd man’s pop up shop that sold Swedish soldiers head-gear and ‘vintage’ socks.

A shop that sells second-hand mens socks.  Eww.

I dropped into White Cube and resisted calling Jay.  The show was spectacularly lame.   The entire space devoted to a 37 year old artist called Rachel Kneebone.  Lamentations 2010 is the name of the downstairs show.  Huge white porcelain tangled/mangled/reconstituted genitals on huge marble plinths set against slate grey walls..beautifully lit.  The usual soulless, inchoate nonsense you might expect to find in White Cube.  They reminded one..obviously of the Chapman brothers and their obsession with the dark, chaotic imagery of the unconscious.

White Cube

Jay is already showing new artists who cannibalize existing White Cube artists.  Apparently Kneebone is expressing the ‘trauma of death, loss and grief’ and shown differently these works might very well have achieved her aim but so elegantly displayed they had the guts knocked right out of them.  I went upstairs to see the rest of the show but was told to leave as I had the dog with me.  I wasn’t leaving the Little Dog outside so I left.

I wandered around.  I met a man in the street who offered to blow me but I hadn’t showered that morning after a night of sex… I declined more for his benefit.

I found a wonderful shop called Labour and Wait which can be found at:

Labour and Wait

This charming store is really worth a visit.  I thought, when I found the 1940’s lilac, enameled milk-boiling pot pictured below:  Oooh, I thought, my friend Marilyn Phipps would like this.

As if by magic..who did I bump into today?

Marilyn Phipps!

Marilyn has the most wonderful home in Seasalter called The Battery.

The Battery, a nineteenth-century naval building, is a huge, bright blue, wooden house that sits right on the Whitstable beach and faces onto a 120ft secluded sea-front.  The Battery is a shrine to Forties ‘utility’. The kitchen was put in during the Forties when the house was used as a holiday retreat for disadvantaged children.

Marilyn has carried on the Forties theme throughout the house. The two huge wooden doors between the dining room and kitchen were made in the Forties for Ramsgate post office. The kitchen walls are lined with teapots, sugar shakers, vinegar jars, and salt cellars.

A huge kitchen clock was bought locally and the chunky table was already there.

The Battery can be incredibly hard to keep warm. Marilyn solved her problem by installing an enormous wood-burner for the dining room. She painted it midnight blue, making it more abstract sculpture than functional heater…she calls it The Beast.

The Battery has a fascinating history and features in the book Wooden Houses. It was built as two big wooden sheds at the end of the nineteenth century.  The first housed two cannons, the second was a drill hall for sailors, and during WW1 it was a convalescent home for wounded soldiers.

Marilyn still get’s people visiting who remember it from their childhood holidays in the Forties, saying they had the happiest time of their life here.

Wait!  Did I tell you that they found a strangled woman in the room I was staying in at Soho House NYC?  I can’t wait to stay there again.

Categories
Health

Ear Bar

Joe and I would go get dinner (usually steak) and very drunk in the Ear Bar on Spring Street.

Originally called the Bear bar..renamed when the B fell off.  One of the oldest existing taverns in the United States and one of the few existing examples of Federal architecture in New York.

I have wanted to get very drunk these past few nights.  I have wanted to blot out everything in my fucking pea brain with a huge amount of wine and beer.

Marc bought a bottle of Montepulciano to drink with the pheasant.  It smelt divine.

Woke up feeling so sad.

I am in Whitstable until Thursday then I have to get up and make a move.  Must go stately home hopping.   Must see the insides of huge and beautiful homes smelling of nutmeg and fir.  Must sit by roaring fires.  Must flay myself socially once again.

I am so disappointed.  So sad.  even though I know he isn’t sometimes I think I can hear him calling out to me in the night and I wake up and I think I can’t ignore him..he might need me.

Everything is just fine in Los Angeles CA.  Ashley called yesterday after her jaunt with Christina Aguilera’s husband in Miami.   I can’t wait to see her, speak with her properly about everything.

Up and down on this fucking roller coaster.  Up and down.

Categories
Dogs

Tea and Times

Tim and Duncan Tea and Times December 2010

Well and truly stranded in Whitstable with the temperature plummeting below minus 5 degrees celsius.

The snow has frozen into crisp, wind-swept  gullies, the car iced into its space in the car park, the dog makes its way cautiously into the biting air, pisses then runs back inside.

Bleak mid winter, frosty winds made moan…

Bought a shoulder of lamb yesterday.  Cooked it slowly in the oven on a bed of rosemary and garlic.  Slow roasting it to perfection.  We sat around the table heartily carving the great piece of meat, eating it with cabbage and roast potatoes.

After the lamb we scoffed great hunks of Stollen and mugs of tea.  This is Whitstable living and I love it.

I spent the day, as I mentioned yesterday, walking the dog..meeting old friends and keeping warm.

I had a slight HIM relapse.  Entitled prick made his way back into my mind.

This is addiction at it’s very worst.

Categories
Christmas

Snowed In


Totally trapped in Whitstable!  So many old friends to be trapped in the town with.  Lovely seeing everyone.  Had tea in Wheelers with Anita and Michael.  Adam and I drank more tea and ate mince pies by the fire at Carol’s house.  Saw Tim at Tea and Times where Ronnie came a’visiting and I caught up on all the local gossip.

Ronnie showed us pictures on his phone of a dead polar bear.

Meant to be in London today dealing with Jake’s iPod fiasco but God dumped a trillion tons of snow on Kent so we are all stranded.  Hurrah!

The Little Dog just LOVES the snow as you can see from these pictures.

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I am rather hoping that I get stranded here for Christmas!

By the way, did I ever mention to you that whilst I was in the police cell that miserable day in July Jake met a man from Manhunt and sex with him.    That was supportive wasn’t it?

Categories
Health Whitstable

Bucolic

It certainly is.

Balls not withstanding.   The heavy snow and cold conditions don’t stop me from getting in my little car and driving to Canterbury.

We are only seven miles from one of the most beautiful Cathedrals cities in the world.

Meandering through the snowy Kent countryside listening to BBC Radio 4 I arrived, parked inside the Roman city walls and walked down Palace Street looking for a man to unlock my iPhone.  The ancient and the modern.

I love Canterbury, I love the tiny medieval streets, the busy shops.  I ended up buying a cell phone…as it looks as if I maybe here for longer than I anticipated and I have to keep in contact with the hospital.  I bought the correct adaptors and leads etc for my lap top so I no longer need to pop into Georgina’s and use hers.

The economy seems really good.  Really good.  The shops are packed with paying customers.  We are well out of recession.  It’s like the British are embarrassed to let the American’s know that our economy is just fine.

The average British person really doesn’t have a clue just how bad things are in the USA.  No idea at all.  They don’t know about the unemployment, the foreclosures, the corruption or the burgeoning right-wing tea party movement.  They are oblivious to Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck.

One day very soon they will wake up to a very different America and a very different world run by ignorant, xenophobic thugs.

Even on a wet, cold, miserable Tuesday in Canterbury people look quite unlike those you see not shopping in sunny Santa Monica.

All of the little restaurants and gift shops are packed with customers in Whitstable too.  The Whitstable shopping equivalent: Venice CA the shops on the main drag Abbot Kinney are still boarded up.

If things are fine why is the government hell-bent of dealing so aggressively with what is evidently a self solving problem like the deficit?  THE DEFICIT!

This British government is forcing austerity upon the nation because?  Because the people have had things so good for so long?

This country is not falling apart, seems very stable and prosperous from what I can see..but under the guise of the DEFICIT reduction plan this new government stealthily returns to Thatcher type fiscal/social conservatism.  The class havoc deliberately caused with unnecessary job reduction ends up merely furthering their class war aims.

Governments like drama.

British Governments, like Hollywood studio execs, cause problems so that they can be seen to fix them.  The people, our British people, unlike the sleepy time/weed brained/prozaced citizens of my adopted home the USA…we will get off our angry asses and break some windows.  Make our voices heard.  No, you bloody can’t start charging our children for a university education…something you had for free.  NO.

Thanks to the bankers to whom we are already indebted in so many, many ways we can give extra thanks that we can now officially add the innocuous word deficit to the list of things we are encouraged to fear.  Along with Asylum Seeker, ASBO, global warming, that millennium bug thing (remember that?) and, of course…terrorist.

DEFICIT=TERRORIST.  Something abstract and confusing to be frightened of.

In the UK everybody complains about their gas bill and it’s true that utility bills here are out of control…a recent price hike of 40%.  Where the people have no option the corporation steps in and gouges whatever it can.  Same as the Insurance industry.  The law states that you must buy car insurance so the insurance industry just demands what ever it likes from whom ever it likes.

You want to know about the hospital?   The German oncologist was very nice.   Do you need to know more?  We wait for further test results.  Who could have foreseen that a jolly German oncologist would make his way center stage into my life.

I actually feel a great deal better already.  I just trust European doctors more than American doctors and they agreed that me coming here was the best possible thing to do.  Not having to worry about paying a huge amount of money to anyone anytime soon for what should be a human right sure takes the pressure off.

After it was all over at the surgery I came home and lay down under a pile of blankets and fell asleep.  What with the Jake stuff this has not been a great year.  Not one of my best.  Not a great vintage.

The little dog just hates the snow and who can blame him?  His little paws are soaked in cold water up to the ankles.  He tags along after me very bravely.

last night Carol cooked a delicious dinner here at the house and we greedily scoffed baked potatoes, ham and a delicious salad made of crunchy endive and baby tomatoes and watercress.

Seeing Charlie tomorrow and others in London.  Going to risk the roads in my little car.

Oh yes…I read yesterday that somebody somewhere in the US press demanded that Obama get some ‘backbone’.  How dare anyone ask President Obama to have ‘backbone’ when his constituents lack any kind of skeleton what so ever.

In Obama the liberals chose a limp shield made of skin (albeit black) and gristle behind which to gripe about their own inertia.

Categories
Health

NYC/Paris/Whitstable

I am in Whitstable.  It is really cold.  The water-butt is frozen.  I slept under two comforters.

Carol woke me this morning with a fresh lemon and ginger infusion and a big plate of steaming porridge.  Ate another breakfast at Copeland House with Georgina.

It’s later on Saturday morning and I am laying under a blanket at George’s house.  Feel very beaten up.  I managed to wear myself down so badly that I now have bronchitis.

Terrible cough, phlegm, headache.  Best thing is: I am at home so everything seems very dealable with.  I am so glad that I don’t own anywhere here.  It’s so much nicer crashing at Carol’s or laying here on George’s sofa.

My head is too painful with real pain to concentrate on anything else.

Whitstable.  Last night.  Sitting with Georgina and her grand-daughter Poppy eating shepherd’s pie.  Do you remember Poppy?  Poppy!

Carol and Marc dragged me out to a small town on the other side of Canterbury to watch a ska band.  Even though I felt pretty bad it was nice to be included.

Feels safe here.  I arrived from Paris on Friday morning.  I rented a car, drove to Calais on the A1 toll road (20 euro).  Ferry to Dover (120 euros) then drove to Whitstable.  Dropped in at Wheeler’s, Dave’s and Carol’s place.

There is a cute gay boy running the new coffee shop.

Dumb man that I am…I decided to watch Brokeback Mountain again on the flight to Paris.  I could scarcely get through the first few moments without having to change channels and watch Friends reruns.

Went back to it and still cried buckets.

I left New York the night of the 25th.  I’m good at that…finding half empty flights to Paris when everyone else is settling into American public holidays.

Remember when we left for Paris on July 4th?  That seems like it happened decades ago.

Why did it take me so long to leave NYC and why didn’t I write about it?  Well, we didn’t go because the Little Dog wasn’t well and vomited all over the place so it wasn’t prudent to go anywhere.  Anyway, the vet advised me not to.

I was offered a very kind room in a very beautiful hotel to rest my weary body…for free.  They really looked after me.

I stayed on 10th St for a few nights.  During the day I would practice what it would be like to live in NYC again.

I sat with friends outside Mud, I hung out at the Derby and Joe’s Pub with Amelia.  I made many, many new ‘friends’ on line and met with them at obscure locations.

After a few days of being in the city I totally forgot about Jake unless, of course, I found myself on 1st Street or outside the Judd Foundation or on the roof at Soho House which is cleared away…just like the memories I have to clear away.

I no longer thought that any man who resembled him was him and instead marveled at how many men there were who might be him.  Cute, short, hairy men with winning smiles.  On occasions, as the days passed, I realized that I told too many people about him…that it was obvious to them that I was having difficulty letting him go.

When they asked if I was still in love with him it was difficult to say no without crossing my fingers.

The emotions are far more complex and seem to exist on a far deeper level than I ever planned which is why I took time away from my blog because it just riles me and I find myself posting things that I regret.

I had a number of dates with really extraordinary men but one in particular made my heart sing.  I ate dinner at Mary’s Fish Camp in the West Village and met some good gays.  A producer, a stockbroker, a TV anchor and a journalist..I found myself thinking: Jake would like these men.

He would get a kick out of these intelligent, ambitious men.

The anchor  (Don Lemon) was a cool black dude who said that in his opinion Obama was frightened of white people.  Which explains, he said, why Obama is such a loser.   The anchor’s bf of 3 years was 20 years younger.

I don’t know how I felt about that.

Aleksa P and I had supper in Chelsea.  She talked candidly about how much fun it is for her making Boardwalk Empire.  I told her that I get hundreds of people a week looking for references in my blog to her hairy armpits.  She showed me how shaved they were with a wry smile but lamented how she must start growing them again soon.

We talked about our absent dads and how this shapes our view of ourselves.  We talked about her gorgeously happy marriage.  We laughed a great deal.  She showed me the pictures of her in Vanity Fair and I felt as proud as any dad could ever be.

We talked about Jake.  She was sad for me.

Brokeback: I had forgotten that Ennis and Jack had that fight.  That their fight had more to do with their love and their frustration and how much they would miss each other.

Dressed as cowboys their fight seemed more romantic than ours on the King’s Road.

The last night in NYC I met a man who I could imagine being with.  Just like that.  I have no idea if it will turn out like I want it…but we connected.  I am excited to see him again.  One thing is for sure:  I ain’t writing about him. Not any time soon.

TSA pat-downs are really thorough.   At JFK the rather good-looking man who inadvertently (or maybe not) held my balls whilst looking for what ever they are looking for looked up at me and I said seductively, “My balls have been held by a lot worse.”

Categories
art

The House

The house looks so beautiful.  Totally rearranged, crammed with stuff…another load of art off to auction this week.  The gilded hall table, the 18th century credenza…my Gio Ponti lamps…should make no sense but does.

New art by Dustin Yellin and Danika Phelps.   I covered the 18th century Napoleonic chair with latte coloured silk..a sort of duchess satin.

I can’t believe that I have sold only a third of the art formerly hanging on the walls.  It is astounding that there is so much still here.

A gorgeous breeze from the sea today after several days of blistering Santa Anas.

After my meeting this morning (saw an old friend from Whitstable) Mel and I had breakfast by the Palisades Sunday farmer’s market then walked the dogs.  I dropped in on my young neighbour who was having a party.  His friends wondered if I was his uncle.

Last night on my way home from Brentwood (middle eastern dinner with Dom who now works for new Oprah channel) I stopped at a red light, smiled at a very cute boy standing on the sidewalk.  He promptly got into the car, kissed me fully on the lips, took my number and has been texting ever since.  Now, if I never see that boy ever again he managed in that one moment to trump every pathetic attempt Jake ever made at a romantic gesture.

We are going to the beach this afternoon.  Point Dume, we can take the dogs.  Going to take a picnic.  My last days before I leave on Wednesday.  A daunting trip home.  Taking the same route he and I took which, frankly, I am not looking forward to for that very reason.

Such a beautiful day here.

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