A visit to the Photo Booth

I'm due to depart on my 'Around the World in 180 Days' tour soon, and it dawned on me with growing panic that my passport had expired.   A bundle of nerves with butterflies dancing in my stomach, I gulped down a triple-strength gin 'n' tonic, followed by an Alkaseltzer, followed by a vodka martini, and got Juan to drive me to a department store in Milton Keynes where there was a photo booth, hidden away at the back of the store next to Women's Lingerie; it was aptly called the Glamour Puss Photo Booth.  Not the most salubrious department store - the sort of place frequented by blue-rinsed old spinsters milling around excitedly like hyenas - but it was a dire emergency.  If I didn't get my passport application back today, I'd be done for!

I found the photo booth and inserted a couple of coins, went inside, pulled the privacy curtain across and waited.  I pouted at the camera the way I was taught to on the cat-walk.

Here's the first photos... impressive, aren't they?  You can really tell it was me.  Half a head.  That will really get me a passport renewal.   The photo booth contraption went off too soon, before I'd adjusted the height of the seat.  In a black mood, I kicked the machine hard with my stiletto, uttered a string of profanities at the top of my voice, and reached inside my gold lamé purse to retrieve some more coins.

The photo machine made a noise like a blocked drain, there was a whirring of cogs, a tremendous flash and a smell of acrid smoke... and then nothing.  Alarmed, I stood up at the exact moment the camera bulb flickered weakly, followed by a noise like fingernails down a chalkboard and these beautiful and highly-appropriate passport photographs popped out of the slot:-

By now, I was boiling over with rage at this wretched contraption which kept swallowing my money and surprising me by taking the photos at exactly the wrong moment, such as when I was scratching my vagina or looking poe-faced.  

I stepped outside the photo booth and inserted the end of my umbrella into the coin slot and rammed it home with such force that it broke the thing in two.  The lights flickered and the machine whirred back into life and four £1 coins fell sullenly out of the slot.  I jumped back inside the photo booth.  Third time lucky.  The photo machine seemed to be over-heating and it was getting very hot in there.

Here are the next lot of pictures:

It was very difficult stripping down to lingerie in such a tiny space, but I somehow managed it.  Not sure the above photos will be suitable for my passport though.  Will just have to wait and see.    By now, I do believe the triple-strength gin 'n' tonics were starting to take their toll, combined with the over-heating photo booth.  Here's the next set of inglorious photos, the culmination of badly-timed, involuntary actions, and a slightly dicky stomach:

Just as I was about to lurch out of the photo booth, my head swimming, I heard a strange noise outside, like someone shaking a box of raw liver up and down; I flung back the curtain only to be met by an alarming sight.   A cleaner standing looking in at me.  She was the size of a small house and as strong as a Russian Olympic shot-putter.  Her name badge clearly said 'Helga'.  I didn't like the way she was looking at me.

Helga licked her lips in a very menacing fashion (this was the source of the noise that sounded like someone shaking a box of raw liver), her hand reaching up to tweak her own enormous, trembling breast, roughly the size of a pumpkin, which itself was straining perilously through the tiny, jet-black PVC cleaner's outfit she had on.  Helga seemed very excited to see me, dressed as I was only in designer French silk lingerie, inside the photo booth, with a half-full glass of gin in my hand, the interior of the photo booth looking like a bomb had hit it.   "Shall I come in and join you?" she whispered seductively, a pearl of saliva glistening on her scarlet whore's lips.   

As she took one gigantic step towards the photo booth, she belched like a bullfrog. 

"I'm not sure there's room for you in here" I whimpered in a puny voice.  If she'd attempted to enter the photo booth with myself still inside, I would have been pulverised and the photo booth would have exploded into hundreds of shards of metal and fibre glass.

 I let out a terrible scream and made a run for it, across the department store, barefoot and in the scantiest set of lingerie, down three escalators and out into the street, into the muscular arms of Juan.  I don't know what happened after that, as I must have blacked out due to the sheer shock from the lesbian advances of Helga the cleaner and my terrible photo booth experience.  I've been popping Valium like Smarties and have been knocked up in bed ever since, reading Mills & Boon love stories whilst Juan brings me platters of shellfish, washed down with a Puligny Montrachet.  On the fourth day, I just about felt well enough to get up.

It was that same morning when an official-looking manilla packet arrived here at Raffles, addressed to me. I tore it open only to find it was my new passport, freshly issued by the US embassy in London.

I've never liked passport photos or the process of getting them taken in tiny, working-class photo booths in grubby department stores in sub-normal places like Milton Keynes.   It's the type of activity that leaves you vulnerable to attacks by sex-crazed lesbian store cleaners.   Oh well, at least I have a passport now.   I do think it's a rather good likeness, isn't it? x

Yeti Snow Beast spotted in North Bucks

TV News crews from all over the world have descended in a frenzy on the tiny village of Brill and this most rural part of North Bucks has become a hive of activity.

The reason?  These mysterious, gigantic footprints were found in the heavy snow, followed by numerous reports of villagers being molested by a 7ft, hairy, black, inconsolable monster.

The North Bucks Chronicle have also done a front-page story on it.  Have a read, it's the most astonishing bit of journalism I've ever read, quite simply the bees' knees. 

You may recall the incident that occurred on Sunday chez moi with Gladys Grove.  Accidentally on purpose, Gladys was sent blindly - and as drunk as a skunk - into my 2nd floor airing cupboard where I'm currently keeping several bee-hives, mistaking the room for the lavatory.  You might think it a very odd occurrence to be keeping bees in a 2nd floor airing cupboard, but my only defence is that it's very cold outside and the bees like it in there.

Gladys, a confirmed apiphobic, was last seen making a bee-line across fields in the general direction of the town of Haddenham, some 7 miles distant, covered from head to toe in bees.  She must have lost her sling-backs in a ditch somewhere, which explains her footprints in the snow (first picture, above).

I've got to commend the work of the artist who drew the impression of this Yeti Snow Beast, envisaged from the many sightings around the county.   It does seem like Gladys Grove has once again made the headlines, for all the wrong reasons.  Maybe it's time to come out of retirement, Gladys?  The world clearly craves you.

I must dash now, as I've got to go and get my photo done as it's time to re-new my passport, in readiness for my embarkation on my 180-days Around the World tour.  

Toodle-pip!

A bee in one's bonnet

Can you imagine my revulsion when the door-bell rings incessantly on this sleet-lashed Sunday afternoon, sounding like some naughty schoolboy is trying to pull my bell-ring off, and I meekly open the door in my pink French lace dressing-gown only to find Gladys Grove standing there, her blue eye-shadow running down her cheeks.  A grotesque spectre on such a Satanic afternoon.

Gladys Grove was a famous transvestite back in her hey-day - the 1980s - but has since faded into glorious obscurity owing to her unintentional drunken act of impaling herself onto a giant-sized aubergine on live children's television.  Never a friend of mine, more of a gossip-monger and hanger-on.  

Only Gladys Grove could turn an ordinary, inanimate
object -- such as this oversized aubergine -- into a sexual object.

As soon as I saw Gladys there, I had the temptation to violently slam the door in her face.  However, she'd placed the heel of her indestructible red leather boot over my threshold and I couldn't get the door closed quick enough.  I thought about setting the dogs on her, but Mr P, my poodle, was downstairs having an ear-massage, and Brenda, my Doberman Pinscher, was at the pooch grooming parlour in London's Mayfair.  As most of my compliment of staff were either serving time in Borstal or receiving psychiatric treatment, I was, on this rare occasion, home alone.

"You owe me, Fanny" she said, "can I stay over for the night, please?  My car broke down in the lane and my credit card stopped working".

So I felt obliged to allow her in, despite the litany of paper-thin excuses spoken by her forked tongue.  

She's been making demands all afternoon, ringing the servants' bell, first asking for lemon-scented bath-bombs, then a cup of tea, then a glass of my finest whiskey, followed by an endless list of wants, the most insulting of which was a request for some "posh grub, some of those funny fish balls you eat" (I believe she means caviar). 

I don't suffer fools or faded drag queens gladly, so I cooked up a fried egg for her.   I also found an old packet of Safeway Faggots that had inadvertently slipped down the back of the fridge-freezer.  Not sure how long they'd actually been lying there, in the dust and grime.  Couldn't make out the 'Eat By' date on the packet in the dim light.  I washed all the fluff, mould and rat droppings of the faggots and cooked some up for her personally.   Fried egg and faggots... surely food she'd understand.   I thought she'd be grateful.  

Haute cuisine for the glam-trash: I wouldn't feed this cheap, nasty shit even to my pet snails.  Therefore, it made an ideal hearty meal for unexpected visitor, motor-mouth Gladys Grove, who dropped by today.

Instead, the disgusting bint - all pale and pudgy after her hot bath and wearing an unsightly shade of lipstick that could only be described as pig-pink - stubbed out a half-smoked Menthol vapour ciggie in the fried egg I served her.  She gobbled down the faggots, though, in a split second, the strange-smelling, greenish-brown gravy oozing down her chin.


As you may well know, Fanny is well versed in dispatching hoi polloi in the harshest possible way.  Whilst it may not be de rigueur to ask such an uncouth guest to leave immediately by the tradesmen's entrance, Fanny often employs subtle techniques to reach the desired effect without a single word being spoken.

The weather has been cold recently, hasn't it, and I've been worried about my bees to the extent that I moved them indoors.  You didn't know I was a bee-keeper?  Oh, I love my bees!  I've had hives for years and I often take a gramophone player out into the garden and play all sorts of calming music to them to keep them happy - Shostakovich, Brahms, Debussy, Marilyn Manson, Cradle of Filth, etc.  I don't like to personally handle the bees though, so as the weather has been so bitter, I went out and inserted the vacuum cleaner pipe into the bee-hive, switched the machine on and sucked them all safely inside the dust-bag.

I then moved the empty bee-hive inside the house up to the second-floor airing cupboard, a nice warm place for them.  I only had to switch the vacuum cleaner on reverse to spit all the bees at high speed out of the dust-bag into their hive and slam the airing-cupboard door.

Meanwhile, much to my annoyance, Gladys traipsed about the sitting room in her cheap, scratchy, polyester ballgown, with a huge tri-star brooch, looking like a proverbial scrap of mutton-dressed-as-lamb, putting her enormous feet on the antique Louis Quatorze table, and breaking into bouts of pestilential belching equal in resonance to an orchestra of Amazonian bullfrogs.  She demanded a plate of chips, saying "ta, mate" and then asked if I had any White Lightning Cider, a beverage I've never heard of.

 Disturbing: a photo taken from Gladys's website

"Where's the bogs?" she spluttered, "I need a piss".

Coughing back bile, I managed to utter "Oh you need the toilet, dear? Up the stairs, second door on the right, just walk straight in, do lift the lid before you tinkle".

Off she tottered, her elephantine bulk groaning up the stairs, right into the airing cupboard where the bees are currently being kept.

I think the following picture sums up what happened next.

  

Gladys Grove... last seen covered from head to toe in bees, screaming at the top of her lungs, running at high speed across the pitch-black Buckinghamshire countryside, making a bee-line for Long Crendon village.   Good night, Gladys!  

Fanny Love and the Crack of Doom

I'm giving my singing career a rest (my 12 and a half octave voice has recently been strained because of performing too much oral sex) so in the interim, I've turned my hand to writing.  As many of you know, I published my first book, Fanny Love and the Crack of Doom, back in the 1990s.  

It was an immediate best-seller.

Well, it's been re-released by Penguin Poo Books and has just been voted "Number One Bodice-Ripper" by readers of the Daily Mail.   The Daily Mail is a type of comic which is used at fish n chip shops up and down this island to wrap fried fish in.


Nonetheless, I was literally titillated to get such a literary accolade from the University degree-educated readers of Britain's best newspaper/comic.  

What's my novel about?   Fanny Love and the Crack of Doom is a classic soft porn novel about a very famous and very beautiful transvestite who gets eaten by a transvestite-eating venus fly trap plant that escapes from London zoo and goes on the rampage.    It sold over 200 million billion trillion copies when it was first printed in the early 1990s.  Rumour has it that much of the vast de-forestation in the Amazonian rainforest was directly caused by the book publisher's incessant needs to source enough paper to print my book.   Demand for my book led to a severe global paper shortage, you see.

 Sadly, the entire Amazon Rainforest was almost completely stripped of trees, in order to provide enough paper to print all the required copies of my book, such was the huge demand.  Bah humbug.

Maybe this year I'll be knighted and accept the title of poet laureate?  I'm waiting with baited breasts for that one!  I've already bought a yellow ostrich feather hat in nervous anticipation for the occasion.

Here is an excerpt from the book, a particularly romantic section.  I hope you enjoy:

Sister Honey screamed out loud in pure ecstacy as the fat Bishop, his gargantuan butterball frame almost filling the alcove below the church's stained glass window, forced his humungous, engorged purple love-pole into her tiny, vermillion peep-hole and bellowed at the top of his voice 'take it like a bitch'.  Meanwhile, the assembled congregation in front of them broke out in verse, singing All Things Bright and Beautiful, whilst Sister Honey's moans of "please frig my twat harder" were only heard by the Bishop.

Rare and elusive Wombles can often be spotted late at night on London's Hampstead Heath.

Meanwhile, in another part of London, celebrated authoress Fanny Love - wearing a seal-skin dress, purple stilettos made from quartz that made a seductive clacking sound when she walked over marble - was waltzing across the marshy tract of Hampstead Heath looking for Uncle Vulgaria, one of her favourite Wombles of all time.  "Stop right there" shouted Fanny, her scarlet whore's mouth spitting out the words with venom, as she caught sight of a large, furry, brown object up ahead, bent over a log.  "Oh hello George Michael, I didn't realise it was you.  Have you seen Uncle Vulgaria?".

 
Move over Ernest Hemingball, Charles Dicket and Jeffrey Archer, celebrated author and poet Fanny Love is back with a writing vengeance! x

Look at these ugly bastards!

They're just so ugly, aren't they?  Italy, the home of ugly men.

Now, you know that Fanny sometimes doesn't keep her appointments at the Funny Farm.   

So you also know I'm joking don't you?  Yes, like Worzel Gummidge, I've got my Joking Head on this morning as my world slowly materialises around me through a thick gin-haze from last night's overindulgence (Juan and I drank the gin cabinet dry). 

Aren't they gorgeous, I mean really?  I love Italian men.  Look at the above examples of Italian manhood, modern day examples hand-sculpted by Michelangelo.  

And I have a fetish about football changing rooms.  They're full of that frisson of sexual tension: the pungent waft of musky testosterone, sweat-soaked white cotton underwear, carbolic soap and muscle-rub creams.