Pat Val

Yesterday offered me a much-needed day off to do a bit of admin, laze about, watch some telly, prep some music and generally try to relax. I’m pretty sure my body will punish me with some sort of cold. I have been fighting off low-level symptoms for weeks now and feel I can expect a short, sharp snap of something awful before it properly goes away. Healthy eating. Gym. All of that is required through August.

The hot weather continues and London is a nightmare, particularly on the tubes. Rush hour must be a living hell. Mind you, the terrible fires in Greece surely serve as a reminder of how much worse this stuff can get. The idea of fleeing in terror and your car suddenly going up in flames is just awful. I’m told people were trying to swim to safety. Some drowned. 26 people were found dead on a cliff top, “instinctively embracing” to protect themselves from the flames. A survivor has described it as being like Pompeii. I actually had to stop reading about it, I found it so distressing.

And yet Trump continues to dismiss the idea of climate change...?

This afternoon, we went into Central London to meet our dear friends, Ian and Jem, who are here from New York. As ever, seeing them was a hugely rewarding experience. We had lunch in the Mediterranean cafe on Berwick Street. It’s a really charming spot. The food isn’t expensive - you can get a two-course meal for £9 - but they really care about what they cook. Berwick Street is in the part of Northern Soho where all the fabric shops hang out. It’s where I went with Philippa to buy the material for the waistcoat I had made for my wedding. There’s a street market there, which used to be a salt-of-the-earth affair, full of typical barrow boys selling fruit and vegetables, but these days, to mark the gentrification of Soho, it’s full of chi-chi brownie stalls, pop-up sushi stands, super-food juice bars and vegetables I’ve never seen before.

After eating our two courses - which for me involved borek and moussaka - we headed for Old Compton Street for tea and a fancy cake in Pat Val. Ian and I had scones. Nathan had a lemon cheese cake. Jem had ice cream. We were served by a charming Portuguese woman called Isabel. I think she was a little confused when I congratulated her on her country’s win at Eurovision last year.

I’ve always been amused by Pat Val’s existence on Old Compton Street. It’s been there for years; certainly as long as I’ve known the street, and probably a good few decades before that. A fancy patisserie with waitress service was always a bit of an anomaly on a grubby old sex street like Old Compton. It’s bizarrely much better suited to the street it’s become of late. I always assumed it worked as a place where gay men could parade their beloved mothers. Certainly in the olden days, mothers had a very high value on the gay scene. You weren’t a proper homosexual if you couldn’t show your mother off to the world! During the time when HIV was a death sentence, you’d periodically see these emaciated, prematurely old men, covered in strange blotches, sitting bravely in the windows of the cafes with their mothers. I often wonder what was going through those poor women’s minds...