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.

My world of gesticolare

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New Year's Resolutions

An anonymous, handwritten note had been pushed under my door this morning.  It read: "Perhaps, as a New Year's Resolution, you could try being a bit politer to your maid". 
 

I think not!  A New Year’s resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other.  Wait a minute.. have I got that right?!!? Isn't it '...in one ear and out the other'? I'm not sure!  Frankly speaking, New Year's Eve is the only night of the year that one can get away with wearing body glitter without being mistaken for a stripper.

To break the monotony of the final hours of 2014, I went in for clay pigeon shooting today, a thoroughly enjoyable country pursuit in the English shires, second only to dogging, and especially rambunctious good fun after imbibing a half-dozen, triple-strength G&Ts.  But to my great dismay, I was completely out of clay pigeons, the little round devices that get fired upwards; instead, I grabbed a basket of stale bread rolls from the kitchen and loaded these into the clay pigeon launcher, as a substitute, and waited impatiently as the bread rolls were propelled into the sky, before triumphantly blasting them to pieces with my rifle, showering Basil the maid (who was busy, on my instructions, trimming the grand lawn with a tiny pair of nail-scissors) with millions of breadcrumbs. 

I chased Basil into the hedge maze with the rifle, and I believe, the gum-chewing bint is still trying to find her way out, armed only with a pink feather duster.  It may take some time. That shall teach her for the insubordination of her anonymous New Year's request.

With Basil hopelessly lost in the hedge maze, I went indoors to wash, powder my nose, and change into my special new dress, a creation by some New York fashionista whose name I forget.  Do you like it?  It's made from rare, pink-dyed, ostrich feathers from Mozambique.  I'm headed for London tonight with Juan, my Brazilian chauffeur and toyboy to paint the town pink at an exclusive club where all the A-list glitterati are on the guest list (no.. not that pretentious dump, The Ivy, from which I have been barred for life for the indiscretion of headbutting a waitress because she had the audacity to serve warm champagne).

As for New Year's Resolutions, here's my list:

1. Travel more

2. Shop more

3. Lose an ounce in weight 

4. Learn to play the harp

5. If the maid misbehaves, pick her up by her ears

6. Pray for world peace

7. Buy more jewellery

8. Launch my own fragrance

9. Be on the front cover of Tatler and Vogue 

10. May the Lord banish Belladonna as far from me as possible, such as the Moon or Jupiter or Mars.

10. Dear God, my prayer for 2015 is a FAT bank account and a THIN body.  Please don't mix it up like you did this year.

What are yours? 

A Happy and Gin-soaked New Year to all my Readers!  May 2015 be the best year ever!   Pass my glass, dear! x

Summer in Portugal

Upon waking from a horrifying, alcohol-induced hallucino-nightmare - in which I had fallen down a rabbit-hole, bumped into a talking rabbit with a pocket-watch, had tea with a table full of hatchet-wielding freaks all with Belladonna's face and escaped from the clutches of the Red Queen - Juan, my handsome Brazilian butler, revived me by sticking his lollipop in my mouth and then explained to me that he had taken me on the private jet to Portugal for a few months' holiday.

Apparently, I had been unconscious for a few days and muttering in my sleep.  Oh well, I did drink the entire drinks cabinet dry!  My liver is now earning a good, long rest under the Portuguese sun.

So we spent gorgeous afternoons on this wonderfully-wild beach on the Troia Peninsula, one hour south of Lisbon, the capital city of Portugal.  It is as gorgeous as it looks: crunchy, white sands; shallow ocean; backed by sand dunes and pine forests, with not a building in sight.

Forget the smelling salts!  My trusty Brazilian butler, Juan, knows too well that
I can be revived from the darkest of depressions by sucking a lollipop.  Must be the sugar.

During our trip to Portugal, we spent time visiting the local area, and one particular site that impressed us was the Romanticist Palácio Nacional da Pena on a hilltop; the palace has a profusion of architectual styles including Neo-Gothic, Neo-Manueline, Neo-Islamic and Neo-Renaissance. 

The eclectic, pastel- red, yellow, orange and ochre of the buildings reminded us of cake decorations, and was stunning in the intense light.  

Lisbon - the second oldest city in Europe, and spread across seven hillsides punctuated by numerous 'miradouros', or viewpoints - is a particularly fascinating city to visit.  The city lives in a Latin fairytale of time-worn manners and traditions, with wooden trams and iron funiculars thundering through its cobbled, almost-Dickensian streets.   Its old neighbourhoods are both gritty and glamorous.  You have the fashionable Baixa, the city's cheerfully decrepit 18th-century downtown, and Alfama, an eighth-century Moorish district and the home of fado, a lifting and haunting opera-style music sung by a lone diva in candle-lit restaurants.  Chiado is a fashion-lover's magnet, with plenty of top-brand clothing shops and great restaurants.

  Portugal’s pastel de nata is a melt-in-the-mouth buttery delight

And here's a shot of Juan, my gorgeous Brazilian butler taking a swim.

So the reason for my three-month absence from the blogosphere is our trip to beautiful Portugal.  I think I've fallen in love with Portugal.  It really is a perfect little country with everything you could want. 

Where have I been for three months?

 
After the Belladonna incident, I felt such inconsolable shame and a crippling social ruin that I turned to the medicine cabinet, also known as the drinks cabinet.  

 

What followed was a ferocious afternoon spent splurging on fishbowls of the most unimaginable and grotesque alcoholic mélanges until pink elephants danced in front of my eyes.   

 

  As much as I love Jasper, my pet goldfish, it was high time he gave up his goldfish bowl and moved to another one so Mummy could make a final fishbowl cocktail of vodka, gin and rum.

Cataplexic after downing a fishbowl of vodka, gin and rum, followed by five Velvet Devil Whiskey Cocktails, three Cherry Brandy Cocktails and fourteen Cuban Mojitos, I hobbled on one leg out into the garden, with a feather boa wrapped around my neck.  The world began to spin and I tripped forward and fell down a rabbit hole... Yes, quite literally, just like Alice!

Glad I hadn't yet soiled my underwear.

The world looked very strange from down there.

Inside the rabbithole it was quite warm and soft.  I edged forward and the earth gave way and I was suddenly falling, very fast, downards.  

When I next opened my eyes, I was lying in a beautiful garden with giant mushrooms for trees and a purple sky.  A white rabbit, the size of a human being, with a pocket watch, hopped by saying "I'm late".  Obviously, not England.

As I turned round, I saw a shocking sight.

 
 Belladonna!

I turned and ran and headed for a castle on the hill.  When I reached the entrance, I ran straight inside to beg for help.  As I collapsed into the banquet hall, an even more bizarre sight presented itself.

It was some bizarre tea party going on, with a green frog, a rabbit with a pocket watch, a talking cat, a mouse with a sword, and, most horrifyingly of all, four Belladonnas, dressed flamboyantly in Elizabethan clothing, sitting at the table.  The Belladonna in the middle, the fattest of them all, was about to pour tea.  The table was laid with the finest china cups and saucers and underfoot were Persian carpets.

And then behind me, there was a creaking noise as a wooden door swung open to reveal a grand hallway of red marble.   At the end, sat what looked like a Queen, with her feet resting on a live pig who was grunting softly.  But the Queen's face was unmistakably Belladonna's.

"Off with her head" shouted Belladonna, gesturing at me.  The walls seemed to close in on me and my last memory is screaming my head off.... 

Some time later, I woke with a stinking hangover.   

The first thing I saw was this.

 I suddenly realised that Juan, my Brazilian butler, was standing over me, completely naked.

"Where am I?  What happened?" I demanded, "Have I fallen through the centre of the Earth and ended up in Narnia?".

"We're on holiday, together" he responded, "in Portugal".

"What? The last I remember was that I was extremely drunk, went out in the garden and fell down a rabbit hole!" I screamed, "Belladonna was there, she was everywhere.  Mad Belladonna's Tea Party!"

Fan-Air flight FL2357 to Reykjavik / Rio

The red carpet was rolled out as I boarded my private jet, arm-in-arm with Juan.  You'll notice I'm flying on Fan Air, my own airline, with its motto "the Real Mile High club".  After take-off, I usually instruct the pilot to do a few low swoops over London, just to ensure the Royal Family and any B-list celebrities who live there are aware of my presence in the skies above them.  On one occasion, I even instructed that the contents of the toilet-tank were jettisoned over Tower Bridge, no doubt adding a new dimension to the phrase "a shower of shit".   We sometimes try and do a double-loop south in order to release the second and third toilet-tanks, as well as the bilges, over Crawley and Croydon.

Fan-Air Flight FL2357 to Reykjavik /Rio empties its toilets over Tower Bridge in silent
salute to the Royal Family and the B-list celebrities of Londinium.

As we jetted north in preparation for our own New Year's celebrations, Juan and I enjoyed rare Latvian quail eggs served in lapis lazuli egg-cups with a platter of Beluga caviar, preserved in little yellow tins from the 1930s, eaten with pickled beetroot, cream cheese and blinis.   As I've said before, I enjoy eating Beluga caviar from the delicate contours of Juan's highly-muscled abdomen, placing the black sturgeons' eggs on his undulating, lower six-pack and gobbling all those lovely salty balls down.  It drives him wild.  Well...what did you expect - after all - my airline's motto is the real Mile High club!

Not for paupers: Latvian quail eggs. 

These Fan-Air private jets are quite amazing; apart from their top speed of 1800mph, they even have their own luxury bathroom with a bath-tub, replete with a French antique crystal chandelier and a surround-sound entertainment system.

 

As we reached 36,000ft, I wallowed in a warm bath of champagne.  Yes, a bath of champagne.   That is to say, Krug 1928 - bottled in 1938, and costing a mere $21,000 per bottle; it takes 22 bottles to fill the bath-tub up, and it leaves my skin feeling baby-soft, a curious ritual similar to Cleopatra who insisted on bathing in asses' milk.  It was a nuisance for the hand-servants who had to heat the champagne in fish-kettles to a reasonable temperature, but well worth the lovely feeling!

First stop for our New Year's celebration was Reykjavik, Iceland, where, upon landing, we were helicoptered to the Blue Lagoon: a natural geothermal spa with steamy waters, black rocks, and wild views of moonscapes, all part of a lava formation.
























Gleðilegt nýtt ár is Icelandic for Happy New Year and we enjoyed the high spirits and revelry.  The waters are heated to 98–102°F so whilst the air is bitterly cold, it's a sensuous experience to bathe here for a few hours.  After our meal of smoked salmon, hakarl and vodka, we were being helicoptered back to the private jet, and no sooner than you can say "Eurozone crisis" we took off again this time on a 6-hour flight to the party capital of Latin America, Rio de Janeiro. 


Does it sound like a flagrant waste of money jetting up to Iceland and then down to Rio?  Yes!  Well good!  You see, Fanny likes decadent extremes: to party in snow-bound Reykjavik and then, 6 hours later, to have the privilege to be in sub-tropical Rio, it's the ultimate way to celebrate the New Year, as well as being the envy of the newspaper-reading world!  Lady Gaga has to do with the Hamptons (so yesterday!).

We touched down at 3pm on New Year's Eve and went straight to Ipanema and Copacabana beaches where I donned a tiny turquoise swimsuit about the size of a shoe-lace, also known as a "micro bikini" - it's a local custom to wear such tiny garments in this neck of the woods.  Juan, being a native carioca, felt at home on the beach.  We partied on the soft sandy beach with some beautiful local couples until the fiery sun sizzled into the sea and we then headed for a string of exclusive nightclubs to celebrate Réveillon, the Brazilian-Portuguese expression for the dawn of the New Year.   

I love the Latin spirit of partying - such fun and absolutely no requirement to wake up in a pool of your own vomit the next morning in a urine-stinking police cell, as is customarily practiced in England every New Years Eve!


After a wonderful further five days spent at the Copacabana Palace (an elegant Art Deco hotel, looking like a 1920s wedding cake), we touched down in England again after a marathon 10,000 air miles!  

 
Owing to bad weather, we could not land the jet at my private landing strip in Buckinghamshire and so were diverted to the blot on the landscape that is Heathrow, known to some as Thieves' Row, to others as Stalag 9 or the Russian Front.  No red carpet on the tarmac here!  Landing at Heathrow Terminal 2 has the same shame-factor as admitting you've caught crabs.


Such was the inconvenience of being forced to land here, I really couldn't be bothered changing and instead walked through Immigration and Arrivals in a 'Barely There Black' micro-bikini which I had bought in Rio:

I do hope the UK Border Control were impressed by my generous show of sun-kissed flesh!  Certainly, the whole terminal-building was full of audible gasps and finger-pointing, presumably at the bare cheek of my arrival.

All this New Years' travelling has made me realise that I need to re-new my passport before I embark on my 180 days Around the World trip - it expires in just 13 days!

Let me tell you about Brill

Set on a high hill looking down its snout at every other village for miles around, Brill, my nearest village, is an über-exclusive enclave: at any given hour of the day, the casual observer will see a steady flow of Bentleys and Jaguars (pronounced 'Jag-waaarrr') swishing along red-brick Church Street or Windmill Street, and then down steep, country lanes past remote houses (pronounced 'hices'), home to the rich and famous.  The countryside around Brill is some of the loveliest in all of England and the author J R R Tolkien is said to have based one of the Hobbit's villages on Brill.

Brill's second most iconic attraction is its windmill (the first being Raffles, my country estate).  The windmill is situated on Brill common and was allegedly built in around 1680.    Liver-spotted old shrew, Gloria Girdle once walked too close to the turning sails of the windmill whilst wearing a voluminous evening gown, and ended up doing a few circuits.  All I could see of her, as she went up and over, was her plump body hidden by her heavily-soiled underskirts, and her bare legs looking like ham bones.

Someone took a Polaroid of the terrifying accident and emailed it to every single newspaper, much to the humiliation of Gloria when the story appeared a day later and her career was irrevocably over from all the negative publicity.   Poor Gloria - who could have done such a wicked act?

On a separate subject, I have recently commissioned a re-branding of the village sign.  It's high time it was brought up to date.

Here is the sign that has been in place since the 1980s, located at all entrances to Brill:

Unimaginative, isn't it? A 5-year old could do better.

The council don't yet know but I've replaced all the village signs with my new creation:

  Fond of exploring my artistic side, this is the design I had specially made and put up to replace the old sign.  Much better!

 

An interesting oddity is that for such a small village Brill has its own radio station, Radio Brill FM, which, to me, is more of a flagrant waste of air-waves since they endlessly play Max Bygraves' records on what sounds like a hand-crank gramophone with a worn-out needle, run at the wrong speed, the harsh, discordant mixture of sounds coming out of my radio sounding not unlike the anguished wails of a cat on a hot tin roof.  I mailed Radio Brill a CD of Fanny Love Sings the Blues but have never heard any of my songs played, nor an acknowledgement; I expect they cannot afford my Royalties.

Naturally, I am by far the wealthiest and most talked-about A-list celebrity transvestite in this bucolic corner of Buckinghamshire and a rare public appearance in the village generally draws hundreds of fans out in force, and plenty of idle tongues wagging.  

Fanny's Canary-yellow Dodge Charger.  

At Raffles, I have a whole stable of luxury cars, 

a collection so valuable you could buy a small country with it.

I usually swish through the village in my pea-green Daimler, or when the mood takes my fancy, my bubble-gum pink Bentley or my Canary-yellow Dodge Charger.    Juan, my Brazilian butler/chauffeur is at the wheel, looking both insatiably fuck-able and resplendent in his pink leather trousers and tiny muscle-top, quite at odds with our conservative, rural surroundings. 

Juan speaks very little English, but he's not there for conversation, rather he's there to look good on my arm.  Luckily I am fluent in Portuguese (my mother always said I was a cunnilingus.  Sorry, I mean she always said I was a cunning linguist).

Juan, my butler/chauffeur/personal toy boy, photographed last year on the
beach in Brazil.  I've spent many an evening eating Russian Beluga caviar off his six pack.

I've been studying the hand-waves of the Queen and trying to perfect the gesture; it is a gentle, anti-clockwise, circular movement of the hand, held rather stiff and claw-like, as if one is suffering from rickets. Definitely not a full, boisterous wave, but a restrained movement.  I'm actually looking forward to April 2013 when I've been invited to a garden party with Her Royal Righteousness herself where I can ask her in person how to wave like an old queen; I believe the reason I was invited was because the Queen is a great fan and one of the most avid followers of my blog!  She apparently studies my blog to keep up to date with trends in fashion and social etiquette!

I usually wave at fans as we drive slowly past, although on some occasions, when I'm not feeling up to it or I've imbibed too many Sidecar or Whiskey Sour cocktails (I adore the 1930s, you know, my dear), I just extend both legs out of the window and wave a toe instead.

 Waving at fans with my legs, whilst twatted on 1930s cocktails

Today, in the run-up to the New Years' celebrations, Juan and I went to dinner in Oxford at one of my favourite French restaurants, L'Auberge des Grenouilles (I usually order mascarpone mousse with white chocolate and black pepper in a tropical fruit soup).  En route to the restaurant, as we were passing through posh Brill, I spotted in horror this handwritten sign, sellotaped to a noticeboard:

A lost dildo?  In posh Brill?  Triple-headed?   What is the world coming to?  I shrunk back in my seat in horror at this disgusting abomination.   Previously, I had envisaged that I was living among dignified, civilised people. Apparently not if they go about losing their triple-headed Black Mamba vibrators and expect them returned! Disgusting, I say again.