Don't forget to push the button before you sit down

Let’s get one thing straight Merisi. I don’t usually Blog on Fridays. This only happens when the burdens of my busy and exciting life prevent me from Blogging on Thursdays. I am a member of the Am Heumarkt Bloggers Cooperative and our rules prevent us from doing more than four Blogs each week.

As much as I love what you do I don’t hound you with comments about doing more – and – for example - asking for more pictures of cats. I accept that you are an artist and need to be in a creative mood – and just can’t turn this on like a tap.

Merisi's Blog

You could argue of course that I just sit down and write the first thing that comes into my head – and this is largely true – except that sometimes it is the second thing. And – given the quality of the work recently – I just can’t imagine why any readers want more.

I noted with some horror last week that I have written more than 250 Blogs. Leaping Lizards!

Cate and Melissa and I went to the Leopold Museum on Saturday. We saw exhibitions of the work of Edvard Much and Egon Schiele. These were both men who very obviously had very unsatisfactory childhoods and carried this with them for a long time.

Well not so long in the case of Egon Schiele because he died in 1918 of the Spanish Flu at the age of 28 so who knows what he could have achieved had he lived to the same age as Munch (81). Seeing a just small part of what Edvard Munch could do in 81 years was a bit scary.

I quite liked the work of Schiele because I could come to grips with it but Munch was a bit to Unheimliche for me. This word – which translates as ‘uncanny’ is used to describe the work in the exhibition. I think a better word is ‘strange’.

Cate and Melissa loved it. I am in two minds. One mind thinks that Schiele was a genius and the other one thinks that on many occasions he was just having a really bad time and wanted to knock out another painting to pay the rent. But in terms of expressionism I am a Philistine. I just don’t get a lot of it.

For lunch on Saturday we went to Café Diglas in the Wollzeile – which is a 10 minute walk for us across Stadtpark. Cage Diglas has been there since 1875 and they have sensational Gulasche Suppe.

They also have these toilet cubicles with transparent glass doors so that you can see whether or not they are occupied. When you go in and close the door behind you – and push the appropriate button - the door turns opaque.

Of course if you go in and don’t push the button then everyone outside can see what you are doing. Which is what happened to this unfortunate man on Saturday when I was in there – and doubly unfortunately he had dressed in the dark and mistakenly put on his Grandmother’s underpants.

It was a ghastly show and attracted quite a crowd. It is not intended to be seen by other people - and I wish I hadn't. 

Cate has gone to India where it will be absolutely sweltering. She was not looking forward to the trip because it will be a hard slog for week with endless meetings. She is going to try to get to the Taj Mahal before she comes home. I think she will have had enough by Friday and will grab Ben and flee back to Wien.