Smiling in Slow Motion

MARCH

MARCH Sunday 1 Long telephone conversation with Nicky, he's certain my phone is tapped - 'What's that noise?' 'Only the washing machine.' 'That doesn't sound like a washing machine to me.' He felt that Sir Ian, whom he described as 'impossibly grand', should retire to the Isle of Man. Norman Tebbit was on the radio advocating gay law reform, no doubt he's had one of those visits from Sir Ian. Tories and their fag friends conspiring to win the election. I said I'd sell up at Dungeness and move to the Isle of Man - that would be news. I'm lying on the floor of this wasteland. HB has well and truly transformed Phoenix House, he's the Giles Gilbert Scott of domesticity. Nicky arrives for lunch, it's a cold grey day. Workmen, digging a ditch to put down a bright-yellow plastic gas main, wear fluorescent orange overalls - the only colour on the street, everyone else as monochrome as the day. We eat at the little Poon's, then walk round the bookshops. A very long conversation about Wilde, an infuriating icon for queers - the complicity with snobbery, the foolish in him and the writing less interesting than the life. I found a first edition of The Ballad of Reading Gaol, which seemed to be an omen. I'm finding it so hard to concentrate, focus, wonder how I will get by without work, a time has come to a close, how are others in my state? More cheerful? Gloomy? Relieved?Fate dealt this blow, with Graham gone only Alasdair remains, but Alasdair will somehow always remain, pickled in indecision. The end of the book brings its own ending, is not indexed, too many people are knocking at this door. I pick up The Raft of the Medusa - death raft - and drop it. I think I 86 MARCH should make a film of a garden, Monet's garden, flowers, and sail away right out of life. Monday 2 Sparrows singing on the balcony. Toured the shops for books on Oscar Wilde. At midday caught a cab to Richard's studio in Edwardes Square, where Piers had already started putting together a large canvas, which we sized and covered with multiple copies of the People: Sex Boys for Sale at Queen's Grocer, it looked quite impressive. Another cab to go shopping: John Bell and Croydon Medical Suppliers, in Wigmore Street, where years ago we bought plaster bandages for making masks. The place had become a large chemist's, we didn't find anything for our collage. Nearly every second shop in Wigmore Street was empty and boarded up. The sex shop in Berwick Street produced no surprises and at that moment I realised I had lost my spectacles, which destabilised the rest of the afternoon. On to Bird and Davis, the colour-men, which is now much reduced in size in a shop behind Drury Lane. It was here I bought tins ofBrunswick-green in the early fifties to paint my landscapes in the Northwood attic. Piers remarked that I knew all the back alleys. Russell and Chappie, the canvas suppliers, was plunged into gloom by a power cut, lit by a few candles when I got back to Phoenix House the same had happened there. Rushed back to Richard's, where Digby had found my glasses, and then back to the cold, dark flat. Perhaps this is the first tremor of the collapse of the West. Maria in the Presto gave me candles, I lit them, rang the London Electricity Board and took off into the night. The Heath, damp and cold. Met an Australian dancer/stripper with thick, straight black hair. He was carrying one of those workout shoulder bags. He had given up a degree in psychiatry, said the people he worked with now were much more fun. He had a Chippendale smile and heavy workout thighs, said he hated bars and pubs, and came here as he 'got what he wanted' quickly. We talked of HIV - he said he never put himself at risk, was tested negative last week. Thursday 5 Painting with Piers and Peter at South Edwardes Square, working here we 87 SMILING IN SLOW MOTION are carried away. I missed the OutRage! demo, but finished eight paintings: EIIR Sex Boys for Sale at Queen's Grocers - large, black and scarlet; Blood - a scarlet painting, over...