Sorry for the radio silence but...where do I begin?
Loella can't blog. The woman can't move.
Because: hungover.
She's in a heap under a baby blue angora throw watching Monty Don re-runs and mumbling in a language that is something like esperanto. It is midday.
For ten days and ten exhausting nights my disturbed best friend has been on a rampage of style vengeance. We are wearing black. She is seeing red. It's a grey area.
Her children are at the strange Steiner camp. Her husband is beginning to leave sad messages on my private phone line and Loella standing in my dressing room bleating the following "Where are we going tonight? Not Claridges again! I want cold white at Colbert! Or an art opening I love shagging artists. Mmmmm artists... Can I wear this? Do you mind...?" She never waits for an answer.
We are in the back of a big black taxi leaving Colbert at midnight. Loella is begging me to sneak her into No.5 Hartford Street. My rebuke is swift:
"Just because you are wearing my new Yves Saint Laurent mini dress does NOT mean you can sleep with my uncles, or sing Clash songs in the toilets at The Ritz or get free martinis at Little House. Loella if you must have a pre-midlife crisis in London can you call Kate and arrange it with her?"
I am running out of the following: vintage Butler and Wilson chokers, Wolford sheer stockings in smoke, Eau Sauvage (Loella tips it in her bath!!), original Sonia Rykiel suede heels, Lulu Guinness LIPS clutches, La Perla boy cut knickers, silk cut cigarettes.
I am so cross I lose a mink eyelash in the back of the cab, nodding my head sternly and trying not to slap her about.
On top of it all the Russian sent me a small bunch of Gardenias and a large red box from Cartier. He was too busy to physically come and propose to me in his personage but this is it. The ten-carat moment I was dreading. Jerry knows how that feels, but surely I have choices. I am only thirty one and half.
Then there was a photo in Tatler with me on the lap of a man who resembles Nigel Havers but is in fact a denim heir form Belgium.
"NONE OF THEM ARE SUITABLE!" MY father is bellowing down the phone from Oxfordshire.
"Where's the bloody Krug?" Loella is calling from the bath tub.
A quick trip to Paris to shop for obscure kitchen equipment seems vital at this point.