The show must go on

While I retired to my boudoir, sick as a dog (feathers and chucking up do not make for a happy combination), the Sparkly Bra Pixie and the Voluptuous Jules went off to wow one of our local WI groups. And, oh my, did they melt for it! The two of them sashayed forth from Burlicious Towers all fresh and saucy and sassy and came back a couple of hours later, limp-feathered, rosy-cheeked and beaded with sweat.

Ah, but it was worth it. The evening progressed in the way that these things so often do: polite and slightly uncertain applause for our first routine; a bit of whooping and catcalling in the second; positive foot-tapping for the third and then a rush for the boas when the crowd was invited to feather up and get involved.

After that, it's the kind of mayhem that we love best - a big crowd of women, all shaking their groove thang and having an absolute hoot, as temperatures soared and inhibitions fell away.

Even now I'm smiling at the juxtaposition of the Sparkly Bra Pixie shouting "bum!" and "tits!" as instructions and then everyone finishing off the evening sedately with Jerusalem and tea and cupcakes. It's this kind of gentle battiness that is England at its very best.

Yours, looking forward to seeing some of you WI converts at class when we re-open in September!

Burlicious x

And a new exercise craze is born

OK, so it was hot and humid last night, very hot and humid. Knowing that none of the troupe needed to warm up, we decided to do some slow stretches instead. The Sparkly Bra Pixie settled each of us down on a chair and started taking us through some yogic leg moves.

Now, picture the scene. It's hot. We're all sitting in a circle, in our drawers, wearing the minimum possible. As we hitch one leg over the opposite knee and generally wave our legs around, one of our lovely troupe says: "ooooh, it's like slutty yoga!".

I regret to tell you, Dear Reader, that it all went a tad downhill from there for the rest of this steamy and slippery class.

Demonstrating to the troupe a leg move borrowed from tango, in which we slide the sole of the left shoe swiftly along the floor and flick the foot up behind us so we're then looking at that sole, I was inspired by the lowered tone of the evening to suggest that the move is like stepping in dog sh*t. First we lift the foot to the right to check the underside of the shoe. Then we put the foot back down, decide it probably isn't clean, then sweep the sole up quickly to the left of us so that we can see it from a different angle. Finally, we wipe the sole of that same shoe on the leg of the chair, then scrape it along the floor for a bit, and then walk off.

It seemed to work.

Henceforth, this rather lovely move will be known by us as the dog sh*t flick kick.

I tell you, we're class, pure class.

Yours, with sparkling clean soles,

Burlicious x

Random number generator

Having been off gallivanting for a couple of weeks, I returned to class on Wednesday night to see what the Sparkly Bra Pixie, the Voluptuous Jules and the troupe had wrought in my absence.

They've clearly been cracking along at a spanking pace and have almost mistressed the second half of our current routine.

Just as well, really, given that I was still in a holiday dream, all ready to teach them the right steps in the wrong place. They're a well-mannered lot and humoured me graciously while I did so. It's nice to see such respect for the bewildered. Take me away for a couple of weeks and I can come back and generate a brand new number by simply re-ordering in a random way the ingredients of the original - I'm a proper little ERNIE.

They'll be snapping me up for the lottery next and
I'll be producing bonus balls with the best of 'em.

Yours, accidentally creative,

Burlicious x