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.

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

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

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

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 To 63mago I send you this hunk of a man

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

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

 

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And for IvyBlack I send Nuno.  

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

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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.