When the financial system finally crashes I’m quite looking forward to going back to a bartering society. I feel with my considerable talents and assets, I’d fair quite well! 😂

If you are considering travel or are a planner – I have no plans at all for June. B x

Akoko

A really exceptional Chefs Table experience at Akoko, one of very few West African fine dining restaurants in London. This restaurant had been on my list for some time – despite the excellent reviews it still managed to really exceed my expectations and I found it to be far superior to Ikoyi (another West African fine dining restaurant in London, which currently has 2 Michelin Stars). I loved the N25 caviar course – N25 is an aged caviar which is arguably the best in the world. Also the jollof rice with beef and the beef tongue were excellent (the Chef sent me out an extra serving because I loved it so much!) The head chef trained under several big names (Heston Blumenthal, Jason Atherton, etc) so the standard of the food was superb. One of my favourite meals of the year.

In Love

With this big baby 😍

mid 70’s-80’s: Such a great era for Range Rover. For an early 70’s model you have to go for an original colour (green, brown, mustard), but the 80’s convertible is a certified panty-dropper in black

Kiss the Cook

Prepared dinner for a favourite person. Scallops baked with nduja (a soft spicy sausage from Calabria, similar to Chorizo), green salsa, and pork crackling. Spatchcock roast garlic and thyme chicken with bitter leaf and radish vinaigrette salad (I use white balsamic and parmesan in my vinaigrette), calcots and romesco. To finish: rum and raisin ice cream with biscotti and edible gold 👩🏾‍🍳Putting together a menu is a labour of love for me. I am passionate about ingredients and only get the best from the top sources – including these massive Scottish scallops from my favourite fishmonger, and managed to find Calçots, a Catalan delicacy (a cross between a spring onion and a leek – they have a short season and are hard to get hold of) usually served with romesco – a sauce of blended peppers, almonds, and olive oil. I cooked the calcots in the traditional Catalan method by blackening them, then wrapping them in newspaper so they steam inside. You then pull out the interior which is silky soft and pile onto the bright orange romesco sauce (which I made myself of course – I’m no amateur!)I don’t really bake – I have this theory that if a woman can cook she should never have to clean or bake (a very personal theory based on the fact that I don’t enjoy cleaning or baking 🤣). Anyway I had the simple idea of rum and raisin ice cream, so had raisins soaking in 3 rums (Zacapa XO – my favourite rum which is made in Guatemala and aged between 10 and 25 years in cognac barrels, the Kraken – a Caribbean spiced rum, and Boukman – a dry Haitan rum) with vanilla and candied ginger for 10 days, and spooned this mixture over some Haagen Dazs (or however you spell it) vanilla ice cream.

There were after dinner chocolates but I ate them all whilst I was cooking because I was stressed 😂I never cook from recipes – I prefer doing everything by eye and create my own menus. I somehow managed to have everything come out perfectly timed and cooked (if I do say so myself! 😇)

 

B xx❤️

Marrakech

I’ve had the most gorgeous experience in Morocco, especially a hike with a Berber through the Atlas mountains (who later invited me to have tea in his home with his family), exploring the dessert on quad bikes (I drive like a maniac!), breakfast in a hot air balloon, and discovering the lesser-seen side of this beautiful country. I am half Moroccan so this was a special experience for me. I particularly loved the mountains, where there are some very gorgeous boutique hotels that I would love to return to.

Two Tickets to Paradise

I was hoping that by now we would have moved on from sex by the fireplace season and now be comfortably in sex by the infinity pool season, but unfortunately the weather is conspiring against me. I’ll say this: sunny holidays can’t come soon enough, and I’d love you to get in touch with your ideas.A romantic holiday is an unbeatable experience. Last year I spent a week in St Tropez with a girl friend and honestly as strange as it sounds, I began harbouring fantasies about how nice it would be to do this type of holiday in a romantic context (not with her, she’s lovely and I apologise for shattering any illusions but I am very straight 😂 and love male company). Whilst we were there I made friends with a very cool couple from Australia, and I thought… these people know a thing or two about life. Whilst you’d imagine St Tropez would be best suited to single people, I actually thought how fun it must be to experience this kind of place with someone you fancy. Whilst I stood on a table, my Louboutins splashed with someone’s rum and coke, surrounded by people who appear to live their whole lives through the lens of an Instagram filter, and I look around and I see the couple at their table, drunk together, enjoying an extremely passionate kiss and I thought – I’d much rather be doing that. I think you know you have good chemistry with someone when you want to share experiences with them. Rather than trying to escape them!I can’t remember exactly how many countries I’ve travelled to. I think it’s around 40. As a companion, 95% of my travel is with the same people as typically once you have this experience you want to do it again. It’s not (just) because you enjoy the benefit of waking up to my naked backside in the morning – shortly before discovering I’m a morning person – but also because simply sharing a romantic travel experience with someone you fancy is one of the sexiest, fun, memorable experiences you can have. Even when I travel alone (which I do every so often) unexpected things always happen. I don’t really believe in fate, but I do think that you create an environment for special memories when you travel, and so travelling with a special person increases your odds yet again.I’ve lived alone for quite a few years and I love my own space. I like my own time to think, I need my time in the bathroom to… well… even I’m not quite sure what exactly I’m doing in there for so long 😂 but anyway, I think a lot of people are like me and seek balance when travelling. Yes: Breakfast in bed. Yes: Me forcing you to do a hike with me. Yes: Lunch on a terrace (seafood and champagne for me then pistachio gelato) but also Yes to not needing to be joined at the hip the whole time. I’m a very relaxed person, I like the beach holidays where the most pressing question of the day is am I wearing the gold or the pink bikini, but I also love a city break and I’m a master planner for this type of trip too (if you don’t want to do it). For me the restaurants are important- I always put a bit of time into researching nice places. I love Greece (I’ve been going pretty much my whole life) and there are so many nice little Tavernas and rustic family run places which serve beautiful simple food (and that horrible drink they give you “Ouzo”. Ouzo is like Limoncello – nobody likes the stuff. I’m convinced both are only manufactured purely to create jobs in the factories 😂 Hence they’re always giving it to you for free. You never finish a meal and get offered a free glass of Macallan, do you? 😂 I don’t believe anyone alive has ever (ever!) gone into a bar and asked for a Limoncello). Anyway, how much I love these romantic holidays in the sun. There’s a psychological impact to being away from home – you feel more free to be yourself, to be spontaneous. Where at home you can walk down the same road every day without noticing a thing – on holiday you may stroll down some small alley in Rome, or Barcelona, and notice a tiny church and think to yourself: That’s an interesting building. You may walk inside and find it beautiful. And the same goes for people. You may sit for 15 minutes talking to your waiter about something or another. I don’t want to sound overly profound but there’s no way to say this that isn’t profound: New experiences are the antidote to death.And the sex! Try balcony sex in London and prepare to make awkward eye contact with the entire HR department of the office opposite 😂 Try sex in what you think is a remote location in the UK and prepare to end up going viral on “TikTok” (difficult to recover from this one). A holiday creates new opportunities for excitement and intimacy. What may start as the innocent application of sun lotion (after all, I can’t do my back myself 😇) can end up leading to a not so innocent rush back to the room. I have a lot of fantasies about this type of thing. Most of my fantasies are so outrageous they’re almost surreal, or they’re about very normal situation but with someone I have a very strong physical connection with. You don’t have to do crazy things all the time, if you’re with someone you really like. This is how I felt when I met that couple in St Tropez. I was a bit jealous to be honest 😂 I don’t know if jealousy is the right word. I just thought… my feet hurt, I’ve been partying until 5am for the last 4 days… it would be nice to have a man around to rub my feet and bring me a fruit plate from the breakfast buffet (amongst other things!) Obviously I’m a romantic person and I have romantic values and outlook. I am the Disney generation after all (real Disney, not this lazy CGI stuff). Late nights, uncomfortable shoes, princess complex… Don’t blame me blame Cinderella 😂 Billie x

New & Lingwood

I’ve been nursing an obsession for New and Lingwood (on Jermyn Street) for years. Big fan of their outrageous menswear and famously extravagant dressing gowns!

Cinema etc

So I’ve been working my way through the massive list of films I’m trying to watch and you’ll be pleased to know I don’t hate them all! More recently I watched the Hannibal trilogy and despite them being very scary I loved these films. I’m just throwing this out there to gauge where I am on the crazy scale – did anyone else develop a sort of soft spot for Hannibal Lecter? I’m not saying it’s okay to go round eating people’s faces but in a weird way I was sort of rooting for him 😂 he had a bad childhood after all 😂 I also watched The Blues Brothers (hard not to love unless you’re the type of person that’s fundamentally opposed to happiness), and The Bodyguard with Whitney Houston. I don’t think I appreciated before this film how vivacious and beautiful she was. Parts of her personality in the film reminded my of myself. 
 
I watched a few British films too: Withnal and I, which I simply didn’t enjoy at all – sorry to say but this is a man’s film. One I REALLY enjoyed was Sexy Beast. I love gangster films and also that particular type of British gangster film. There are small moments of artyness and surrealism in this film which I found to be very beautiful – as well as the basic for any good film or plot: I felt invested in the outcome of the characters. Another British gangster film I enjoyed was The Gentlemen. That was a good one! I really like his films although they’re pretty much all the same. It’s become my life’s ambition to be get casted as a cold-but-slutty gangster wife in a Guy Ritchie film who’s main duties are walking around in expensive outfits, telling the police my husband was at home with me all night watching TV, and getting blood stains out of the carpet. One thing I like about British films is that they tend to be plausible and unglamorous, unlike a Hollywood film where the good guy wins and the hot woman marries him and they all retire to Miami or whatever. 
 
Another one I ticked off was Inglorious Basterds. Nearly turned off half way through the opening scene because it was so terrifying it was making me anxious! I don’t know how people can bear to watch such terrifying scenes my heart was jumping out of my chest it was so intense. I hid behind a cushion the whole time. Crazy to think what is depicted in film is actually a fraction of the horror of what actually happens in war in real life. This was another great film although I did feel it was a simple plot stretched out further than it needed to be. I also respected the end. They killed the girl – I thought that would never happen. It’s a well known fact that Tarantino has a foot fetish and once you know this – drinking wine from Salma Hayeks foot in “From Dusk Til Dawn”, the foot massage scene in “Pulp Fiction”, and even the lost shoe being the giveaway in “Inglorious Basterds”… it’s interesting how he always weaves this kink into his films.
 
On Sunday I decided to treat myself to the sort of film I prefer to watch (and watched a lot of before I started working on this list), and saw Saint Omer, a French independent film by Alice Diop, coincidentally just a few hours before it won a César award. I saw this film at the Curzon cinema in Bloomsbury, one of my favourites as it’s situated in the Brunswick Center which is a massive brutalist development in Bloomsbury. I love brutalist architecture (somebody’s got to) so I always have a walk around when I’m there. Anyway I enjoyed the film along with an Aperol Spritz (it’s that kind of cinema) and immediately after felt annoyed that I went alone as I really want to talk about this film but you have to watch it to get it and I don’t think anyone I know is likely to watch it. It’s very French so not for everyone (I don’t mean the language, I mean the style of film, how it’s shot, how it ends etc), but I enjoyed it.
 
French cinema is in a creative league of it’s own and like a lot of French arts for whatever reason is left alone to go in whatever direction it wants without the scrutiny of “offended” people. A few years ago I watched an excellent film called “Elle” which explores some dark sexual themes that I simply can’t imagine would be allowed in any other cinema. French cinema explores what I would call ultra-mature themes, and I really enjoy this type of cinema. Hollywood is all about animation and Superheros now. It’s not for me, I don’t get this constant pushing of childishness onto us – I’m into adult things, you know 😇 At one point I was very into collecting graphic erotic novels and virtually all of these are French – no other country produces or has the market for such things. I’m becoming a bit of a Francophile as you can see. I realised last year that you can buy a water mill in the French countryside with a lot of land and a farmhouse for like €300K and I started to think…
 
But I digress, back to the film list. I think I must have about 80 to go still! I don’t have any rules I watch the ones that appeal to me depending on my mood. I only have 4 limits:
 
– No chick flicks. I forgot to mention I watched Devil Wears Prada last night – what a waste of 2 hours that was!
– No American comedies. Everyone knows Americans are only good at three things: starting wars, grilling steaks, and… er, well actually two things I guess😂 (yes, this is a joke 😋 many of my favourite people are Americans – I find because Americans have on average a significantly lower IQ than other humans, we get along really well because they think I’m much smarter than I really am – they’re like “Wow, you know how to correctly pronounce the word ‘croissant’ you’re so sophisticated”, whereas English guys think you’re an uneducated peasant unless you can correctly recite the complete works of Shakespeare, ideally on horseback. This is also a joke. Wish my sense of humour worked better in writing. I’ll stop now 😂)
– No Marvel/Superhero films 
– No graphic horror/ constant violence/ gore
 
Anything else goes.
 
I thought I’d post below my Film List (the ones I’ve watched are marked “X”).

Kitchen Chronicles

Put together this quick and delicious meal at short notice for a guest. Annoyingly by the time I went out to get the steaks my local butcher was shut and the butcher at Selfridges said the delivery van had broken down on the motorway so due to “health and safety” all the meat was condemned and will be turned into dog food.Somebody’s dog is going to eat wagyu it’s so unfair.

 

I asked if I could have the exact GPS coordinates of the abandoned van full of expensive meat but for some reason he wouldn’t give them to me.Anyway… M&S it is. I felt very patronised by their strategy of making the steaks extra thin and tiny and thinking you won’t realise. The sirloin was extremely small barely a centimeter deep and just 200 grams. Can be really hard to cook a steak that thin but anyway I put the pan super hot, seared it, finished in the pan with a little butter then cut and salted at the table. I had a fillet steak because I’m allegedly watching what I eat (although the 9 course tasting menu at The Connaught the night before suggests otherwise. That was so good!). To have with the steaks I made a sort of gratin thingy, very losely based on the the French classic “Boulangere” potatoes, where I cooked potatoes, fennel (I’m obsessed with fennel), red onion and broccoli stalks in the oven in a little stock and butter, then finished with St Helena, which is a British cheese similar to a Brie. Although I prefer French cheeses to British, I’ve decided I might as well slowly start weaning myself onto British cheeses as soon that might be the only stuff available 🤣! Although I made this recipe up as I went along I knew it would work and it went down a treat with steaks. Served with nothing but a blob of kernel mustard from Quality Chop House in Clerkenwell, which is one of my favourite simple restaurants that has a lovely shop selling mostly meat and deli items (all British, like I said… I’m trying my best, plus we do actually have some fantastic producers here.)Of course not a bite of food was left, always a nice feeling to have my food appreciated!B xxx

Am I intimidating

Last week someone came up to me in the street and said I have a very confident walk. It was somewhat ironic because at the moment I saw them approaching me I felt a pang of internal anxiety as nobody ever approaches me so I’m not used to it and went into full fight or flight mode – athough, I can’t fight (my hair and nails are too expensive – we dont take those sort of risks these days 🤣), or fly, so I settled for smiling and saying thank you. The truth about the confident walk is, it’s simply the best way to walk in a very high heel. Walking in heels is like trying to take the bra off a beautiful woman using only one hand. If you hesitate, even for a second you run the risk of being clumsy. You must commit fully to your movement. So I channel my inner Naomi Campbell and walk with confidence not because I’m being boosted by my unstoppable ego – but because it’s simply the best way to get from A to B in a pair of 6-inch Jimmy Choos.I was unsure about writing this as I feel I’m having to explain that you can look nice and BE nice at the same time, and probably anyone I would get along with already knows this.I’m told I’m intimidating… I’m not sure what to do about that. I’m a 5ft4 hopeless romantic (part-time shopaholic,) who’s ticklish all over and terrified of the dentist, spiders, and fireworks. One summer when I was studying I decided to work as a stripper to pay off my student debt and was too shy to take my clothes off (got over that particular phobia, clearly 🤣). Being a shy stripper was as you might imagine, a unique experience riddled with comedy. One time I decided the answer was to have under my thong, an even smaller, brown thong, in the hopes that in the dark light nobody would notice and think I was naked 🤣 I don’t know what my hang up was – I look great naked! Anyway I don’t regret working in that club (#1 Gentlemens club) wearing 2 thongs and sipping on an ice water pretending it’s a Gin and Tonic. Character building, you know.I know you can’t take to heart what other people think of you and all those other (easy to say, hard to do) mantras, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel self-conscious knowing people can make such a big judgement about someone they don’t know. My friends have given me theories which mostly amount to “it’s because you present yourself immaculately.” Well, that’s not even true 🤣 I go to the gym with a messy bun and leggings on like everyone else. For me taking care of my appearance is because I’ve always found it important to be feminine and I love fashion and dressing up, it’s a cloak of protection in a way. I do have high standards for myself and I always will. Why wouldn’t I want the best for myself? I believe in life you should seek the best possible experience available to you. The pleasures of life are an area where I don’t believe in any form of conservatism at all. Indulge yourself and those around you with the best life experience you can. Maybe that’s why some people find me intimidating. But I’m just trying to have a good time 😇 I add a lot of value to the life of the right kind of person – I’m not sorry about that.The most attractive things about me in reality are that I’m smart, funny and kind.And also, my blowjobs are good 🤪😘Billie x

Norway

Such an amazing experience. Thanks for letting me relax and be myself ❤️

Cuddle Olympics

I don’t mean to brag but I am an expert level cuddler. Some observations: 

Not sure what this move is called. Pros: I can't escape. Cons: I can't escape.
Basic spooning. Seriously underrated. Pros: Very warm and snuggly. Cons: You get a face full of hair
Pros: Best for kissing, eye contact, and watching films in bed. Cons: Awkward dead arm.
An inevitable (and welcome) consequence to good cuddles. Hope you don't mind 😇😍