Sissi has a forehand like Rafael

Cate went to Israel the next morning so missed the excitement but during the next few days it got up to the mid 30s in Vienna – and up to 35° in the apartment and without the two portable air conditioning units we have in the studies – which we had to buy ourselves - it would have been 45° up there.

These studies are places where Red Adair would not venture without a full crew and a Bulldozer with corrugated iron on the front of it.

I did not think too much of it because the air con has always been totally cactus so just did my usual thing of wandering about the apartment in swimming costumes – or totally naked - but on a shopping trip I saw Frau Katzenjammer outside her front door – which is also outside my front door - and she looked very unhappy.  

She is usually a pale, elegant young creature but on this occasion looked decidedly hot, sweaty and frazzled and had the aura of a plague victim in the final stages.

She asked if I had air con and I said no and that it was worse than usual. She said her apartment was like a furnace and that she had called the air con people and they had checked the thermo-thing in the basement and it had apparently been set to heat instead of cool but they were not quite sure because the man they sent did not actually know anything about air con.

Well he would certainly be the perfect one to send – and WTF is this air con thermo in the basement thing?  This is the first time anyone has mentioned this - or is this just another bullshit line to throw us off the scent of the general fucked up never will work in a million years air con crap cardboard ruse thing.  

Frau Katzenjammer was nearly hysterical because her baby son Maximilian was not sleeping and neither was she. Max was very quiet when I saw him – and a bit red in the face - but he had probably screamed all night. I was going to mention that I slept in the nude to combat the heat and had she tried this but sensed that it was probably not the right moment.

Frau Katzenjammer certainly looked like Max had screamed all night. Indeed Frau Katzenjammer looked like she had been hung upside down and pummeled with a carpet beater for eight hours – and then sprayed with strawberry juice.

Frau Katzenjammer probably had a bad night but at least she does not have the problem of Max leaping onto the bed in the middle of the night from the ledge behind the bed and scaring the shit out her – or deciding at the crack of dawn to knock everything on the edge of the bath into the bath –or even worse – deciding that an exposed toe needs to be shredded.

It is for this reason that – no matter how hot it is – one cannot lie completely naked on our bed. Sissi has a naked foot fetish and has a forehand like Rafael Nadal that can bring tears to your eyes and cover the bedclothes with blood spatters that would fill Dexter with awe.

So – regardless of the weather – I have to keep my feet covered. But I still feel a great deal of sympathy for Frau Katzenjammer because Max looks like he could bring the house down. When I see him I am glad that he lives next door.

But the failure of the air con was a harbinger of further failures of an electronic nature.......