Braziliana

If all goes to plan, I'll be off to Rio de Janeiro in June. Rio is one of those places that has always fascinated me. It has a reputation as one of the most disinhibited cities on Earth, jam-packed with effortlessly sexy party-people living lives of unending hedonistic delight. Ideally I'd have liked to go in February when the Brazilians’ bacchanalia reaches an orgiastic climax in the form of Carnival, but fixed annual leave does not allow for any choice on the timing of my trip.

After a brief inspection of my body in the bathroom mirror, I figured some work might well be needed in order to avoid the possibility of being harpooned on Ipanema beach when accidentally mistaken for a beached whale. Consequently, for the last week now, I have been following my Rio Hard-Body Regime. This consists essentially of the Atkins diet and three 45 minute cardio sessions at the gym. Yes, that’s right – the Atkins diet. I know it’s tragic but a gayboy’s gotta do what a gayboy’s gotta do to get into his Aussiebum swimming trunks. For the benefit of anybody who’s been off the planet for the last few years, the Atkins diet allows you to eat whatever you want so long as it’s protein or fat; no carbohydrate-based foodstuffs at all. That means no bread, no pasta, no rice, few vegetables, and no fruit. Yet, strangely enough it does work, though not, it seems, because of anything to do with ketosis or reduced insulin release – as its designer originally claimed – but because people eating high protein diets just eat less. Whether this is due to protein’s effect on satiety or just the unappetising nature of a pure protein diet is difficult to say. In any case, I plan to stay on it until I go to Rio so I’ll let you know if it actually produces the goods before I succumb to scurvy or rickets.

Last night I joined in the celebrations for The Greatest Dancer’s 27th birthday, which were held, appropriately, at Guanabara, a Brazilian-themed bar just off Drury lane. The tone for the evening was set when four of us went to the bar to buy a cocktail, realised it was happy hour and so bought twenty-eight of them! The highpoint of the evening, however, had to be the concoction colectively purchased by the group with the express intention of completely destroying the birthday boy: some hideous mix of cachaca, Baileys and the puke-inducing liqueur, midori. Having been part of the football team at med school, The Greatest Dancer has had considerable experience in downing disgusting concoctions, but there was a moment when I thought this one might prove to be a step too far. Just when he was insisting he could manage no more, two random physios – one quite pretty who we shall call Porsche and the other less so who we shall call Minivan – intervened to egg him on to the bitter end. I couldn’t help wondering whether Minivan, who had attempted to disguise her ugliness by caking her face in orangey make-up, might not have had an ulterior motive for her sudden concern that he drink up. Perhaps in that Belisha beacon of head of hers the realisation had dawned that only someone on the verge of an ethanolic coma would be likely to find her attractive enough to kiss. With this in mind, we escorted The Greatest Dancer back to the safety of the herd where he could deteriorate into a dribbling, giggling wreck in safety. I should imagine it’ll be a birthday that he’ll not remember for a very long time to come!