Merry Christmas 2015 to all my wonderful readers!

Basil's transformation

My heartfelt apologies to all my readers for my protracted absence from the blogosphere: the reason, in all its shocking detail, is as follows.

Firstly, my LA agent phoned me, offering me the lead role in a new blockbuster.  She was very mysterious about the details, but being the fame-whore that I am, I accepted without knowing any more.  More fool me!

Imagine my horror when I arrived on set, in downtown L.A., to discover the name of the film was "Lesbians who Lunch".  I was straight back on the flight to London with a swish of my skirts!

I've been knocked up in bed, diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and I have been popping prescription pills like Smarties.

Whilst recovering in my Buckinghamshire mansion, in an attempt to improve the appearance and deportment of my serving staff, I sent my maid, Basil, to a beauty clinic.  I'm tired of her belching like a Brazilian bullfrog in front of Lords and Ladies.  Basil was sent to He2She Transformations, of Watford.  Here are some Before and After photographs of her delicate transformation.

         BEFORE                                                                                   AFTER


It seems the Blueberry Face Mask caused an allergic reaction!
 

Back from her girls' holiday in Benidorm

My current maid, Basil, went on a little 5-day break with some of her Essex girlfriends on Monday.  They went to Benidorm on a 'cultural' tour.

The following video footage shows Basil visiting Aqualandia, a water park. 

Below left is a pic of Basil before she went on holiday, taken on Monday.  And the pic on the right is her, this morning, as her Sleazyjet flight touched down at Luton airport.  Seems like Basil forgot to pack her depilatory creams.    

 
Most alarmingly of all, she is wearing a Wonder Woman outfit, much beloved of my ex-maid, Belladonna Bitchhole, who is currently incarcerated in a Perspex tube in the alligator pit at Sydney zoo.  Not sure if that's a Halloween joke on Basil's part to wear such an outfit, but it is in very poor taste.

Basil's books beggar belief

Mitzi's wonderful blog entry about the literature she took on holiday inspired me to write about the reading material of my maid, Basil.   At a recent posh soirée, one of my esteemed guests found the following novel stuffed down the side of my antique 1920s cobalt-blue Chesterfield armchair.  Up to that point, the evening had been a rip-roaring success; even the surprise dish had gone down well, my 'experimental' vols-au-vents stuffed with eel and fricasseed frog. 

The guest pulled the book out in front of everyone, holding it by one of its yellowed and very sticky pages.   My throat shrunk and a tiny whimper came out of my voicebox: "It isn't mine!!!!"

Really, for bringing disrepute to me at one of my famous evening parties, Basil deserves to be flogged at dawn with a cat o'nine tails.  I also found this 'book' in her living quarters.  She has often spoken of giving up meat and fish and becoming a lesbo-vegetarian:

And this...

I mean.. I'm puzzled that Basil should want to consider robbing a bank with a sawn-off shotgun in her spare time... it's not that she isn't remunerated well.  I pay her an exceptionally good hourly rate.... £1.20 an hour [US$1.85 an hour] for a 168-hour week.  And she gets to lick all the crockery clean after grand banquets (no, not the House of Fraser crockery or the Jasper Conran rubbish, but the 18th century Delft dinner service), and to live in the old abandoned pig-sty with fresh hay and running water.  It's quite large and very dry!  There's plenty of Eastern European maids who would give their false teeth for such a position! 

And I found this book.   The problem being that the book cover claims one can use 90% of your mind to increase the size of your breasts.   The truth is that, at the age of 14, Basil asked that her brain be donated to medical science to further research into the causes of hypo-manic schizophrenia.  As her lobotomization didn't cure her, she doesn't even have 90% of a brain.  More like 4%.  And most of that is located in her more-than-generous ass. 

And this!  Words fail me!
 

The Jehovahs Witnesses call

There are four absolute certainties in life: Death; taxes; the occasional dose of pubic crabs; and a visit from the Jehovahs Witnesses at the most inconvenient moment.  At 8am, as I lay in bed dreaming of my recent love-making with the entire Under-25s Portuguese Rugby Team, the doorbell rang and rudely interrupted my reverie.   "Baaaassssssssiiiiiiilllllllll!"  I shouted.  

When one appoints and remunerates a maid, one at least expects hand-service.

"I'm doing lady-stuff" my maid, Basil Wiggleswade, bawled back, sounding like a Cockney fishwife.  The finality of her tone meant she had no intention of answering the door.

"Lady-stuff?" I bawled back, sounding like a Texan millionairess beauty queen.

"Yes, I'm out on the town tonight, so I'm waxing my lady-purse.  Have you seen the third tube of Nair?  I could be some time" my maid called back, gaily. 

Lady-purse?  THREE tubes of Nair?  

Fuck me... Basil must be as hairy as a baboon down below if she needs not one, not two, but three tubes of Nair!

As I was pondering this addition to my vocabulary - Lady-Purse - I was forced to get up and don my Chinese silk and duck feather dressing-gown, jam my pudgy feet into my Antarctic penguin feather slippers, and tiptoe down five flights of stairs, telling myself to "keep calm" and open up the front door, only to come face-to-face with two elderly male Jehovahs Witnesses in charity-shop black suits, waving a pamphlet entitled the Resurrection of God and slavering at the gills.

Their presence, on my doorstep, put the wind up me, I can tell you.

Fortunately, my father was a keen game-hunter in the African bush, and I still keep a collection of antique loaded rifles in my downstairs lobby, in expectation of such visits from strange, unsolicited men preaching religion.  A bullet in the bum, my father used to say.... and now it's my turn to deal with Basil...

 

Share the Portuguese Love!

I'm currently away on a very long trip to Portugal.   It's particularly lovely being here.   The climate is warm and sunny, and the beaches are to die for.   This is Praia Ribeiro do Cavalo, a lovely wild beach I visited yesterday.  No, it's nowhere near the Algarve, but close to Sesimbra, a fascinating city 40km south of the capital, Lisboa.   This area of Portugal does not seem to attract the droves of British tourists in the same way the Algarve does. 

Having spent so much time at the beach, I've also had a chance to check out the local talent.   

Portuguese men are adorable; they just don't look like English men.  Here is Pedro, a fisherman (apparently) from the village of Fonte da Telha.  He showed me his fishing boat yesterday evening and I spent a good deal of time on my back inspecting his tackle.

 

So I thought for this blog entry that it would be nice to share the love, so I am sending each one of my favourite friends a Portuguese man, especially handpicked and tested by moi.

To Mitzi, ClutterfromtheGutter, I am sending Bruno.  I hope you have lots of fun with him.

 ***

To Miss Scarlet, Wonky-Words, I am sending João.   He wants to teach you gymnastics.

 ***

To Mistress Maddie, A Day with Mistress Borghese, I am sending Filipe.   He is very good with his hands.

***

To Jane Hattatt, the Hattatt blog, I am sending Victor... you lucky girl!

*** 

 To 63mago I send you this hunk of a man

   
***

To Miss MJ, of the Infomaniac blog, I am sending Rodrigo

***

And for Princess of Palais de Steff  I send you Martim, the pool boy.

 

***

And for IvyBlack I send Nuno.  

***

And, last, but by no means least, to my lawyer, Kathleen in London, I send you Freddie.

***

Please note there is no Returns Policy and the package will arrive in 7-10 days (subject to customs clearance) in a plain brown box with no indication of what lies inside.   With regard to the Exchange Policy, there isn't one.   My advice for keeping your Portuguese houseboy would be: do with him what you wish!  My suggestion would be to dress him in a tiny pink posing-pouch and make him dust the top shelf while you lie on the chaise-longue peeling grapes and watching Corrie.

Never take your Maid on holiday!

This little chapter provides a stark warning why you should never take your maid on holiday with you.   No matter how much money you've spent lobotomizing the Maid, trying to tame her wild mood-swings by lacing her tea with Xanax or Valium, or teaching her deportment lessons, it's just an entirely fruitless exercise.

You see, I've been in sunny Portugal for the past three weeks and foolishly I brought Basil, the Maid, along for the trip. 

Basil dyed her hair blonde for the trip.  Basil likes the sun, she is one of those lucky British citizens who is as pale as a sheet of paper and because of this, she does not bother with suntan lotion, finds it insulting to her sensibilities to protect herself from the mega-watt sun and a painful death due to malignant melanoma.  Her lily-white skin instead turns an unearthly shade of lobster in just a few hours and she stares at herself in the mirror like some delusional Helen of Troy.  At the same moment, Basil enjoys drinking Red Bull.  Her fingers are so pudgy she cannot operate the mechanism for opening the drinks can, instead she just bites the metal off and spits it on the sand.  The other day I witnessed her opening an oyster by placing it between her legs and squeezing.   Clearly, she is a girl of multifarious talents.

 Basil, in her quick-dry St Tropez micro-bikini

To get to the point of this story, I was wallowing in the water off the beach near Troia and I realised something had inexplicably changed about the sea view.  I had never noticed islands off this coastline, yet there they were.   Two of them, about thirty metres away.

As I returned to the beach, I see Basil laughing, her whole bulk quivering like a mountain of lard in her gigantic red bathing suit.   

"I pooped in the sea" she bawled.

"You disgusting bitch!" I called back.

Tomorrow, I am planning revenge on her.    It will be short, painful and sweet.  Bringing her along on this trip has been like a re-enactment of The Taming of The Shrew.

I dropped it

Fanny loves churches.  Especially old, idyllic country churches.  There's nothing more delightful than a landscape punctuated by a spire rising from the somnolent water-meadows of the English Shires.  When feeling all churchy, I love nothing more than a rousing chorus (perhaps Cum All Ye Faithful), and passing the collection pot and dropping in a few drachmas or pesetas, whispering the Lord's prayer in reverence, and then when the service is over, going to the Rectory for tea and scones and, later on, having a play on the Vicar's organ.  English churches are a bit like English cottages and cottaging.  They become habit-forming.  In fact, in all the world there's not a more religious country than England where anyone who is of high social standing goes to church on Sunday morning, and then cottaging on Sunday afternoon. 

Here I am, on Sunday morning, at my local St Helen's Church, just about to go in for the service.  The Sung Eucharist had just begun with All Creatures Great and Small and just as I gaily skipped up the steps, my right contact lens fell out.  Rather than suffer the humiliation of not being to see the words in the choirbook, I spent a good ten minutes looking for it.   The Rector glared at me as I hobbled into the dimly lit church, with only one seeing eye.  His paper-thin lips paused mid-song, giving the look of someone sucking on a very large, very over-ripe plum.  I've come over a bit church-y lately, hence my rare appearance in the pews.

Terrifying hallucination

After a night of whiskey chasers, fishbowls of rum punch and vodka slammers, I woke this morning, took a 2-hour bath in asses' milk and was just about to powder my nose in the ornate, gem-encrusted Louis Quatorze hand-mirror when I saw this terrifying vision.  Not my face reflected in the mirror, but the ugly face of my uncouth maid, Basil.  This was so disturbing I had to take an ice-bath and lay down in a darkened room for 3 hours.  The sound of my vomiting was like a lorryload of coal being delivered.  I've never had an hallucination in my life, before now, and I frequently pop Valium like they're a tube of Smarties, and follow it up by marijuana marmite on toast for breakfast.

Something different

Do you like my new bikini?  Yes, it's very different.  An Italian designer created it for me.  Two plastic bags full of goldfish.  They've got names too: Jasper, John, and Judas in the left breast-pouch.  And Rachel, Melissa and Yvonne in the right breast-pouch.  Admittedly, it's a little bit different to the usual 'boob-tube' I'm seen wearing by the paparazzi.  

Time to hit the beach.

Basil's new apron

Hello, good evening and welcome back.

My maid-of-no-work, Basil, has incensed me even further by appearing at a charity function wearing her new white apron.

Here she is.  Doesn't she look the clown?   I have already written to my local MP to ask that they reinstate the 1845 Lunacy Act and County Asylums Act, permitting electroconvulsive therapy and lobotomy.  They can use my maid as a guinea pig!   Once you realise your maid's role is court jester, you accept it... with a caveat... and that caveat is to use a cat o'nine tails to discipline the wench.

Steamy love in Brazil

The effects of a long Satanic English winter were starting to take their toll, so four weeks ago, looking tired and pale, I jetted off with my muscled Brazilian butler, Juan, to his homeland, Brazil.   No, I did not forget my tiny pink 1920s bathing suit with two pom-poms sewn on the front.  We first visited Salvador.

We met a street food vendor called Dada.  Dada is reputed to be the best chef in the historic Brazilian city of Salvador; so much so, this larger-than-life character owns three restaurants in the favelas.  Dada also runs a popular food stand in the centre of Salvador and is known to locals and tourists alike.  Dada’s speciality, Moqueca de Camarão - King Prawn and Coconut Stew - is a typical dish to eat.  This Bahian dish is a mixture of indigenous Indian, African and Portuguese and this wonderfully spicey dish is evocative of this corner of Brazil.  Originally, moqueca would have been cooked in banana leaves over hot coals.  Nowadays, Dada prepares the dish with dende oil, a vibrant orange paste made from palm.  The street food is reason enough to go to Salvador, never mind the18th-century candy-coloured Igreja Nosso Senhor do Bonfim (famous for its powers to effect miraculous cures) where I was told to tie a ribbon, known as a fita, in Juan's hair and make a wish!

In the seedy, bustling backstreets of Salvador, we visited The Pelourinho, the central plaza, which is lined with richly decorated baroque churches, tiny squares, and fine old colonial mansions. By day, one could wander its cobblestone streets for hours.

After a few relaxing days here, we chose to fly to Fernando de Noronha, an archipelago of 21 islands and islets in the Atlantic Ocean, 220 miles offshore from the Brazilian coast.   The islands are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  The number one place to stay on the islands is the Pousada Maravilha.  Our bungalow had no lack of indulgences, including a tropical garden, wooden outdoor tub and the softest billowing cotton imaginable.

We swam from this beach - Baía dos Porcos, the Bay of Pigs - and watched glorious sunsets.  Time here slowed to a few frames per second. Snorkeling in the shallows revealed multi-coloured fish who were not afraid of us.  The place is the epitome of a tropical paradise. The perfect Robinson Crusoe escape with luxury accommodation to hand!

When God created the airplane, he made it possible for weary Northern souls to escape the greyness of winter and enjoy such beautiful corners of this planet.  I arrived home to Buckinghamshire with a renewed passion for life after our four weeks in the tropics.

A taste of the green fairy

Is it the green hour yet?   I have a deep and ardent affection for a soothing glass of absinthe.  What is absinthe, I hear you softly murmur?

Absinthe is a wonderful little 'pick-me-up' containing sweet fennel, green anise, and the curiously-named wormwood, itself a plant grown in the Caucasus hills, better known to botanists as Artemisia absinthium.   It is the fennel and anise which gives absinthe its characteristic licorice flavour.   The crushed flowers and leaves of wormwood impart a bitter flavour, quite unique; these small, innocent-looking fronds are the source of absinthe’s famed jade-green hue.  Generally, one pours the absinthe into a glass over a white sugar-cube held by a special perforated or slotted spoon, but here I am using brown sugar-cubes and slices of lime, and of course, an ordinary teaspoon.   Sugar is dissolved to counteract the bitterness.

A timeless, vintage poster for absinthe

 

Here at Raffles, I've been known to down a bottle or two of absinthe in one sitting - usually before a public appearance, or a speech on World Peace at the local grammar school, or cutting the ribbon to officially open a shopping mall - to help loosen my tongue and lubricate my larynx, only for medicinal purposes, you understand, and on the advice of my doctor and fitness instructor. 

Absinthe is also good for exercising.  I drink it the same way athletes drink Lucozade (and in the same unstinting quantity).  Here I am, working up a sweat on the treadmill at the gym, after having quaffed a heavy shot of absinthe.

 

Fanny loves to go jogging on the treadmill after a shot of absinthe.  It's part of the my daily exercise regimen.

 Absinthe rose to great popularity as an alcoholic drink in late 19th- and early 20th-century France, particularly among Parisian artists and writers. Owing in part to its association with bohemian culture, the consumption of absinthe was opposed by social conservatives and prohibitionists.   Consequently, Ernest Hemingway, Charles Baudelaire, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh and Oscar Wilde were all known absinthe drinkers.

 

One of my favourite paintings: The Absinthe Drinker by Viktor Oliva (April 24, 1861 – April 5, 1928).  Viktor Oliva was a Czech painter who was drawn to the Montmarte area of Paris in 1888.  He socialised in Bohemian circles and, in some sources, it is claimed his love of drinking absinthe greatly improved his artistic ability.   Fanny attempted to buy this painting from the Czechs, but they snubbed her offer of £250,000, describing her in a leaked memorandum as "an avid art-collector who also happens to be as mad as a hatter".  Yes, well, the same could be said of Brian Sewell.

 



 Absinthe is commonly referred to in historical literature as la fée verte or the green fairy.  In France in the 1860s, the drink became so popular in bars and bistros that the hour of 5pm became known as l'heure verte or the green hour.

Absinthe has always had its critics, though: namely bookish, teetotaler lesbians who have never touched a drop, yet stolidly claim that "absinthe makes you crazy and criminal, provokes epilepsy and tuberculosis, and has killed thousands of French people. It makes a ferocious beast of man, a martyr of woman, and a degenerate of the infant".  

Warnings that too much of the stuff can cause hallucinations are rife, but likely to be exaggerated poppycock, methinks; conversely, many notable artists and poets claim to have found artistic enlightenment, poetic inspiration and a freer state of mind through the practice of frequently imbibing the green fairy. 

Darlings... it's 7.26am on a cold Sunday morning in February, I'm still in my eiderdown goose-feather dressing gown, the dogs are slumbering, Juan is fast asleep no doubt dreaming of our torrid lovemaking last night, so now must be the celebrated green hour.  Go on, pour me a glass of the green stuff.  That's a pint glass, if you please. 

And why not?

I was just on my way to my local Post Office at Brill to send a telegram to Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of the United States of England, when I spotted this sign on a residential door in the village.

It made bile rise in the back of my gullet.  How inappropriate to display this sign in a village!  This is a conservation zone, and an Area of Upstanding Natural Beauteousness (the Chiltern Hills, and my own abode, Raffles, the Home of Fanny Love, of course).

I'd like to know why there are no prostitutes at that address?!  They should be everywhere, especially in a little village like this.  The National Economy depends upon them!  And so does little ole me.  Don't knock them... they keep old trannies (I'm 40 this year, y'er know!) very happy during the winter months.

I went straight back home after sending the telegram (I'm running for local MP for my area, and hoped to rustle up support from the top man himself) and sat down to do some embroidery and crochet-work whilst gently sipping absinthe and sucking a lollipop.

Two bottles of absinthe later, here are my finished works.

 

 



Tomorrow, a beauty therapist is visiting chez moi to perform a new treatment involving snails.  I cannot wait.

A new pink car

Do you like my new car?   Now that Spring has sprung and the mercury is edging 8°c, I felt it was high time for a new vehicle befitting of sunnier weather.  

It's a Pink Panther.   It's very luxurious inside, done out in finest, pink, clipped, ostrich feathers.

 
As I'm quite short (5ft 6") I usually wear these when driving it, just so I can reach the pedals.  No, they're not Barbours or Wellington Boots, usually seen worn by the 'country set' in these parts, but they do keep the mud off my pedicure.

 

I do sometimes walk the two dogs whilst wearing these

 

Dress your man in gold

Men.. they're nothing but ornaments as far as I'm concerned... luxury items who are there to look pretty but say very little.  The less said the better.  I dress my man - Juan, the Brazilian chauffeur who speaks not a single word of English - up in this little gold outfit, purchased from E-bay.  It may be winter here, but Ba Humbug! to those souls who say this reveal-all outfit is inappropriate for my conservative village.  You won't find my staff here at Fanny Towers dressed in Primark denimwear or hand-me-downs.

I'm lovingly adding a bit of glamour to northwest Buckinghamshire.  

What am I wearing, right now, you ask?

Well, this....  I made it myself.  It's called "Fanny Love's Approach of Spring" Dress made from lambs' wool with real moss plucked from the banks of the River Cherwell.  The hat is a bit uncomfortable, I must confess, made as it is from a long, narrow plant pot once full of geraniums.  I'm never seen out of doors without one of my famous hats!


However, not all of my staff get to wear the finest couture.  No.. my current, insubordinate maid, Basil, has just been handed this bespoke uniform to wear.  Her employment contract has just been re-issued stating she must wear this 24 hours a day.  Isn't it divine?