Ungrateful little sods

An Oxford Duck

Well the buds are budding, the blossoms are blossoming and the air conditioning is kaputting. This is normal for this time of the year. Our air conditioning does not like to change from hot to cold and requires quite some coaxing.

Well it’s as hot as Billy-oh here now and change time has come.

In theory you can switch from heating to cooling cycles using the buttons and dials on the air conditioning units. However these do not work - and I suspect they are not actually connected to anything and are provided simply for the amusement of the manufacturers.

What actually happens is that two men with screwdrivers have to come and fiddle about in the innards of each unit until they starting running cold – or hot – as required.

This is a delicate task and we have asked them to come as soon as possible as only when they perform their magic rituals can we make our apartment liveable. 

The arrival of really warm weather has prompted my new plants to die. Well they are not actually dead yet but they are going crispy at the edges and this is never a good sign.

I don’t know what I did wrong – I never do – but the result is always the same. 

I remind you that I planted these new ones on 27 March – as detailed in this blog – so they have barely made it through a month. I gave them a good home with a view of Stephansdom and they died after a month.

Ungrateful little sods.

We loved the bookshops

Oxford Botanic Gardens

What we did love being in England was the opportunity to go into Waterstones and spend some time browsing through shelves and tables of  English language books. This was bliss.

Sure we buy lots of books from Amazon but it is just not the same and using only Amazon you lose touch completely with what’s new and available. There is nothing like being able to pick up a book and leaf through it.

I should mention that some stores in Vienna do have English language book sections – but what we miss are big stores with a zillion books.

In Oxford Cate was at a conference so I mooched around – sat in no SB chairs – and took almost no photos because the weather was not too good and I didn’t want to get my camera wet. I even went on one of those tourist bus things – a first for me.

We did have another lovely hotel – Cate gave me another high mark – even though I did not choose it.

They were not at all worried about my Campers so we were able to have drinks in the bar and could even have gone to dinner if we had wanted to.

Oxford is interesting and one can usefully spend a day there. I suspect it is much more fun if you are actually going to the University.  It is rather more ancient and salubrious than my old Alma Mater.

I make them wish they had one

Of course in London we shopped. Or to be more accurate – one of us shopped while the other spent a considerable amount of time sitting in the Sad Bastard’s chair whiling away the hours.

Unfortunately not all shops have SB chairs. This is calamitous for the SBs who have nowhere to go – especially when it is raining outside.

There is only so long you can look at racks of women’s clothing  - in my case it is less than 60 seconds – and then I prowl the shop like a caged Lion making the sales assistants wish they DID have an SB chair.

Or – as happened in Cos in London – there is already a SB in the chair – and you just know he could be there for some time. In fact he was and I could not think of a suitable ruse to make him move other than standing near him and sneezing and he was not going to fall for that one.

One thing I do not understand about shopping is that you get the same shops in every city in every country.

Oxford Street in London could be Pitt Street in Sydney or Fifth Avenue in New York. The shops are all the same. This is not a worry to an intrepid shopper like Cate as these shops are as a candle to a moth.

But after that she bought almost nothing – which is good because we packed - as we usually do – as if for a trip across the Alps by pack horse - and left no potentially wearable article at home. Oh except for warm clothing – we did not have much of that so froze during the trip.

For some reason we did not really believe the weather forecasts.