I could meet a girl named Destiny

Peoria.

A year or so ago I bought some roof racks and bicycle racks for the car and collected the package but did not open it. When I opened it a month or so ago I found not two roof racks and two bike racks - but only one bike rack. Boy did I feel silly!

I contacted the man at Wiesenthal who said that I would need the invoice so that they could trace it. I am not sure why. They had the parts there. Did the invoice have a map on it - or a code showing where the parts were hidden? Wouldn’t the missing boxes be where the first one was?

Well, I don’t have a copy of the invoice - just a credit card statement showing that I paid the money. All I got was one box - no invoice.

Why don’t they have a copy of the invoice? They issued it.

We got nowhere and I had given up - but Rozalin was not going to be beaten and began a program to stalk the Spare Parts Manager into submission.

This she did and he eventually cracked under the pressure when she sat outside his apartment at night knitting and watching the Nightmare on Elm Street movies on her iPod Touch - while her baby cat Balu played with the wool.

He checked his inventory - and discovered the additional bike bits nestled in the back of the cupboard. What a Champion! And this without the magical invoice. And yes I have now opened all the boxes. I still don’t have an invoice but I have all the parts. Of course putting them together is another matter entirely.

But when I do we will be ready to go cycling in the countryside. Except that on Friday Cate goes to the USA for two weeks - then we go on home leave to Australia for two weeks.

Cate said I should go the the USA with her which is just fine except that the place I would be is Peoria - which I have visited before - and I know is the Paris of the mid-west - but to my way of thinking lacks something.

Don’t get me wrong it is a lovely clean town with big wide streets full of god-fearing Republicans. They have bible conventions there - how cool is that!

I think what it lacks is Pizzaz.

And they don’t much fancy pharmacies. In Vienna there are pharmacies on every corner. In Peoria you have to walk 6 blocks to find one. What is this about? Surely Americans must need pharmacies as much as anyone else - probably more in a town that has more than one a Cinnabon store.

And she will be working all day and every evening and a boy like me could get into a lot of trouble in a city like that. I could - for example - eat steak every night in Shula’s or St Elmos Steak Houses (where one just has to start with the world famous Shrimp Cocktail).

Or I could end up in Patty’s Showclub where I might meet a man named Joey and a girl named Destiny who would slip me a Mickey Finn and I would finish up in the slammer with my picture on the front page of the Peoria Star - wearing my underpants on my head - and my credit card has been used to buy a Mint Green Cadillac Escalade SUVS with Pirelli Gravel Ts - I know how these things work. The possibilities are endless in a roaring frontier a town like that.

The Wiesenthal stock control system must be a bit like the one at Spar. At Spar when they run out of something - it often never returns to the shelves.

The things that have vanished over the last year include Muffin’s favorite cat sticks, my favorite ice blocks, Cate’s favorite Muesli and my favorite breakfast cereal. There are others but I don’t remember what they were as sadness makes me lose my memory.

Who did Australia play in the first game? Did we win?

We find these things - and develop a passion for them and they just vanish. This is the Spar with the Wall of Pasta. Phil Spector would be proud of it. An entire wall filled with Pasta - it’s a breathtaking vista - and they scrimp on space for Cate’s chocolate. Heartless Bastards!

I had a half-hearted conversation with the Spar person to see if there was any particular reason they did not restock some items - but it was a desultory conversation which was never going anywhere and we both parted company feeling unfulfilled.

I now have to scour the city for Cate’s Muesli - (Muffin and I have moved on from our previous desires) and it is simply not good enough.

I have promised viennesewaltz a good Wiener rant in the not too distant future. This is on the way - but I can’t say exactly when.