Russians, Indagare Magazine and Trout with Morrocan beans

One of the more enjoyable aspects of my job is the introduction of people to London and also the introduction of london to people. Its kind of hollistic...its one thing to sample the best restaurants and more interesting exhibitions and culture, but how do you achieve the look?

1st October 2009
My delightful Russian clients, who have made their home in an arts and crafts mansion in St Gerard's Cross, were collected by me and my driver Gary. A day in London included the sights as well as buying suits in Savile Row - from Richard James to Huntsman - wine from Berry Bros in St James's and finally tea at Holme House, conveniently round the corner from The Wallace Collection, which was getting ready for the absurdly extravagant Damien Hirst Exhibition. I suppose its quite difficult to not be vainglorious if you have been elected to the role of Louis XIV of modern art, travel by private jet, have a net worth of over £100 million and yet can't paint.

That evening I joined Elisa Segrave and Desmond MacCarthy at a book reading which was being held at Waterstones on Nottinghill. I stood at the back amoungst the tables of best sellers. I received a silent txt: 'Pretty pedestrian this lot' read the message. It was from Elisa, sitting 4 seats away. Elisa can be very funny and she wrote a wonderful book called 'The Diary of a Brest' about her experience of confronting and dealing with brest cancer. Elisa smiled as she saw me reading it. 'I know, I'm flicking through one of those how to get rich books...' I responded. We three went to the Uxbridge Pub in Uxbridge Road which is stuck in the seventies -in the best sense....twee bracket lights with covers that look like parchment with caligraphy, orange and yellow lights and prints of country pursuits on the walls. Its more gin and jag in Petworth than urban. Desmond went on to meet Jane Pickering (who my brother Jules chased 30 years ago and she is still beautiful)to see James Studholme perform in his band at the Metropolitan Pub, but I was too tired.

2nd October 2009
I met the writer Elena Bose Marano from the publication INDAGARE in NYC. This is a very Upper Eastside magazine and we did an amusing and interesting interview for an hour or so. Upper East Side are an important demography for my business so it was good to be appealing to my audience.

In the afternoon I went with Sally Prideaux on a fact finding mission for Whitefriars Glass at the Goldsmiths Fair at the Goldsmith Guildhall. It was about jewelry and that is going to be increasingly relevant to Whitefriars Glass when it is launched. After that we went to the Museum of London to look at the Whitefriars Archive...unfortunately unavailable whist they rennovate the museum. We walked on past St Pauls and down to Fleet Street and into Whitefriars Street to the junction of Tudor Street. This was where Whitefriars Glass used to be manufactured...easy access to the Thames allowing the raw materials...sand for the glass and wood + coal for the furnaces to the works. It was fun to see the buildings that are now a block of flats. The style is Victorian but the company had been founded in 1680.

Couldn't resist taking Sally to El Vino's to drink in the atmosphere of Fleet Street of old - the days of Keith Waterhouse and Bill Deedes sitting there before Maxwell and Murdoch restructured the whole culture of the area. it was odd to get a call from a client in Florida whilst I was there, planning a cultural trip for a couple and their 45yr old daughter.

That evening the band promoter Tim Britton, over from NYC, took me with Jeremy Brettingham and his artist wife Mary MacCarthy, to see Howard Baker's play at the Riverside Studios. 'Found in the Ground' is one of those harrowing plays that is visually remarkable and extraordinary in the matter of stage craft. I didn't understand a single word of it and was extremely uncomfortable. I would have been happier having a therapy session involving the dynamics of my relatonship with my mother and my 9 siblings hosted by Oprah Winfrey in front of a live audience of thousands. It was difficult to enjoy dinner at little Asia on the Brompton Road afterwards as my stomach was unsettled by the ordeal.

At 1am I bumpted into my nephew on Brompton Road and we wasted 20 minutes trying to find a bar to sit down and chat. What is it with the problems of 24hr drinking when you cannot find place to do it?

Saturday 3rd October
I managed to complete two oil paintings before joining Liz Hoggard from the Standard, Tim Britton, Sarah Wodehouse the designer and Mark Gardiner the Finance Director of Random House. Somehow I managed to come up with freah corn on the cob followed by fresh wild trout with Moroccan beans and lentils. Somehow too it was delicious.