I’ve spent every evening of the past week in the midsummer gloaming, making the most of the longest days of the year. London has been en fête. The National Portrait Gallery’s long-awaited reopening was occasion for an enormous party, but I found it to be a weirdly disorientating experience. As an ex-trustee, for eight years I thought I knew the place pretty well. I could find my favourite portraits on autopilot, using a mental map of the different galleries. I had even worked with the team there on British Vogue’s 100th anniversary exhibition in 2016. But last week it was all change, as the whole place has been reconfigured by architect Jamie Fobert and director Nick Cullinan. They have created more natural light, new spaces and a different perspective on the collection.

As I meandered round the beautifully re-hung galleries, it was like looking at one’s own reflection in a hall of mirrors – recognisable but only just. Instead of the previous, faintly apologetic main entrance, there is now the splendid Ross Place forecourt. As David Ross – donor and chair of the NPG – stood greeting the crowd of guests, I wondered whether having his name etched in stone, forever part of one of London’s most prestigious galleries, would be some compensation for having his nomination rejected on Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list. There are many who would consider the Ross Place plaque a far greater glory.

The next day I visited the London Library (where I am a vice-president) in search of a copy of The Spectator. This was not because I am a cheapskate trying to avoid handing over my own cash but because newspaper vendors are now a rare species in central London. The library, housed in St James’s Square, is part of the ecosystem of gentlemanly clubs, tailors, hedge funds and art galleries in this sector of Mayfair and that afternoon, as ever, the Jermyn Street hunch was on fine display. The hunch is demonstrated by a large number of that area’s population: tall middle-aged men with well-cut suits and neat hair. They stride the pavements, shoulders hunched and slightly bent over, as if they were battling a strong headwind. Which they may be, given the prevailing prejudice against the pale, male and stale.

The annual Victoria and Albert summer party is always a lively, gossipy affair. This year’s coincided with the opening of the Net-a-Porter sponsored exhibition Diva, so there was a higher-than-average fashion quotient among the guests. Unsurprisingly, several people asked me to dish on why my successor Edward Enninful had departed his role as editor-in-chief of British Vogue and whether it was true that he and Anna Wintour were at loggerheads. Sorry to disappoint, but I diplomatically replied that I had no idea. This took some doing as I am not naturally known to hold back, and it was tempting to seed all manner of delicious rumours. But when I announced I was leaving the magazine six years ago, I was given an executive coaching session by two men in suits. What, they asked, would I say when people asked how I felt about leaving the magazine and about my replacement? I imagined, I replied, I would say that I had loved my time there and was excited both to move on and to learn who my successor would be. Anodyne as anything, or so I thought. I was told firmly that I was to say no such thing. I was to say nothing at all, at any time, on the subject. I haven’t always listened to those words of advice. But at the V&A party, I heard those words ringing in my ears just before I opened my mouth.

We’ve had a couple of our own parties recently and it’s always depressing to see all the empty bottles the next morning. Trying to find a place to recycle 100 bottles and cans is no fun. Couldn’t wine merchants such as Majestic offer recycling as part of their service? Accepting the empties would seem a sensible and environmentally helpful solution, just like the village shops of old would do. They could hand us back a penny for our emptied Coronas.

In the recent warm weather, we have had the bedroom windows wide open in our London home and at night the noise is fearsome. Foxes shriek for hours, racing around the street, sparring and rustling in the rubbish bins. Then at about three o’clock, when they retire, the quaintly named birdsong is kicked off by the raucous cawing of crows in the park over the road before they are joined by the pigeons, blackbirds and tits. I’ve just arrived in Oxfordshire for a few days’ retreat from festivities. I’m unused to the countryside and have been surprised by how quiet it is at night, save the odd moo from a cow. At least I think it is a cow.