Smiling in Slow Motion

JULY

JULY Monday 1 Once more into his breeches, dear friend. Actors can never make good politicians, as they will betray you for the applause. The Labour MPs should be Outed first because they are the ones who should be helping us. I'd turn the key on the Tories and leave them in the closet. As for myself, I always believedin High Art, made my films in that Establishment - my critics were too stupid to understand this; and my audience just wanted to dance to Gloria Gaynor, not yawn through The Garden-, if I hadn't had to fight for my sexuality and respect I'd have been very middle of the road. It's the day of the library: the morning started with the BFI taking on Queer Edward-, I received the first copy of Modern Nature-, saw Takashi Asai, who commissioned another book; Century Hutchinson rang for another. After Berlin, London seems frantic with its beggars, workout rent boys and expensive Soho bars. At Dungeness by sunset. Walked along the beach and found an old tin box for planting. On the way home a car stopped along the road with four young men, one of whom asked for my autograph. I invited them back to Prospect for tea. We talked by candlelight, I gave them a book - they came from Nottingham, unspoilt by London, very shy. One of them had my photo on his wall. Tuesday 2 The rain pours down, great puddles form on the drive, cars pass by in trails of mist, syncopated roar on the roof, the garden drips with rain that has turned my view to green. The post is full of Christian exhortation and more lost boys from Liverpool signing their letters with hearts. 28 JULY Lynn Barber came to make an interview. Lunch in the Light Railway Cafe, where a model boy strips off for a jeans advert. The poppies hang their heads lower and lower, they sink into the afternoon, washed up on a July day. The rain still falls and the dark closes in. Wednesday 3 Under the dark rain clouds that have shut out blue skies and clamped the horizon, the field of scarlet poppies sway in the breeze, the sleepy heads of the thunder flowers bowed around the little black house have charmed all my visitors. It was once thought that staring at them for too long would blind you - but they open my eyes. I should count them for you but the hundreds of last year whose seed I scattered have returned as thousands, a great war of poppies flout the transient day. I wish you were here with me this morning, the sun we had quite given up for lost is playing fast and loose; weeks late, summer is coming in. The draft of a new will arrives through the door; I sign it. Delius's Sea Drift returns like the tide, washes the morning bright. I worked in the garden, split a clump of thrift and the purple iris, planted out mullein, sweethearts and soldier's tears. A red admiral circled as I took gorse cuttings. Silvery hare's foot clover shimmers on the bank. Returned to London reading Peers, Queers and Commons on the train. Late pizza at the British Museum Pizza House. Thursday 4 Spent the morning at St Mary's. My doctor had returned from an AIDS conference in Florence; Africa is facing huge problems - a health budget of twenty-seven pence per person per annum. Here things are very different, St Mary's one of the finest hospitals, patients live longer. We dwell on a little futurology, three to six years are the best forecast, the worst next week. On the way home I decided to try to make the millennium. Peers, Queers and Commons, finished in the waiting room, comes out rather too strongly for the Campaign for Homosexual Equality and Stonewall , and against the abseiling lesbians. The author has no involvement with the arts - Hockney, Somerville, myself completely absent. Surely we helped as much as Cashman and McKellen? The reason we were not at their Downing Street bash was quite simple: because we were not asked - except for paintings to auction later, and when I offered one of mine for their fundraising auction this spring it was not accepted. 29 SMILING IN SLOW MOTION There's an art battle going on - who holds the keys of history...