We are not buying the gold plated tow bar!

The number of readers has crept up again – I think Merisi must be in visiting hourly.

This is certainly not due to the quality of the Blog and indeed Cate berated me yesterday for the turgid drivel that I have been sloshing about.

When I said I would write a Blog I did not say I would make it interesting. I am sure she thinks my life is much more interesting than it really is. She could ask Muffin what happens here during the day and confirm that the answer is ‘bugger all’.

The only chance I have of a conversation is with a delivery person and as this person has usually just walked up six flights of stairs they are not in the mood to listen to me mangling the German language.

But where in the name of the Gaspar the Patron Saint of Beagles have my Blog commenters gone. Where is everybody out there?

I have been talking for some time to Herr Schmutzigewäsche at Mercedes about a bicycle rack for Billy Benz.

He initially offered me a roof rack plus bike racks - which would cost about €600 but we are not sure about this as the thought of hammering along the A2 with two bikes on the roof makes me a bit uneasy.

Can you imagine a bike flying off the car at 150 kilometers and hour? I can.

Hang on – I will be in our car – not the car behind us – so that’s probably OK.

So I asked him to let me know how much a tow bar and rack would cost.

€3,050 is the answer. Excuse me?

This was expensive even by Wien/Mercedes standards (I mean you can get a perfectly nice meal in Meinl Am Graben for that – well – not really nice – well barely edible actually – and there won’t be much of it - AND a bottle of Wachau Valley Gruner Veltliner).

So I went back and said – Excuse me – did you say €3,050?

‘I know it is expensive’ he said ‘ but they have to make some alterations to the car’. What does this mean? Don’t you just bolt a tow bar onto the bottom of the car – perhaps the alterations are done in Ouagadougou by the dry cleaners?

Even without the gold plating it is too expensive so we are back to roof racks and will have to take our chances. Without this we cannot go flambling around the countryside so it has to be done.

I am due to have my second FSME injection which is to protect me against the ferocious ticks which infest the countryside hereabouts. They are apparently the size of kittens and Rozalin has warned me that they can do immense damage and possibly take a leg off if they get you unawares at the right angle.

I am not confident that that FSME will be strong enough so am taking a 5 Iron to deal with the more aggressive ticks many of whom were apparently enraged by the AC/DC concert on Sunday and are out for revenge.

You can tell these ones – they have cotton wool stuffed in their ears.

Rozalin went to this concert and as she can no longer hear anything at all except a faint buzzing in her ears she carries a slate and chalk so that Cate can write her messages.

Incidentally – I saw Angus Young being ‘interviewed’ on TV and I can tell you that 40 years of prancing around in a school uniform playing deafening music and consuming many strange substances – many of them probably illegal – has not done his powers of speech or comprehension any good at all.

But he seems happy because he smiles a lot. I imagine he also has buzzing ears.

But – say what you like about Acca Dacca – it is the greatest Rock and Roll band in the world – and always has been.