Can't we have a Hottie from the 21st Century?

The Austrian Times has reported that:

“Supermodel Cindy Crawford (pictured) is the new poster girl for Austrian supermarket chain Spar Österreich.

Spar Österreich boss Gerhard Drexel said: "Spar focuses on stars when it comes to marketing. I am proud we managed to sign Cindy Crawford."

The US star, who was number three on TV station VH1’s "40 Hottest Hotties of the 1990s" list, follows TV presenter Mirjam Weichselbraun and model Heidi Klum as Spar’s poster girl.”

Hang on – “number 3 on the 40 Hottest Hotties of the 1990s?”

Isn’t it 2009? Aren’t we being dudded here? If I am going to line up for hours to get through the Kassa at my Spar I least want my poster girl to be a Hottie from the 21st Century.

But I don’t really care much – unless she is going to be at the Kassa taking my money and getting me out of there – but I think this is unlikely.


Gosh - I bet she was hard to get. “Spar? what’s that – and in Austria? – do they sell Kangaroos? How much did you say?”

Some wine bottles here have glass ‘corks’. They would be called ‘stoppers’. These are some of the weirdest things I have ever seen and take some getting used to.

The first time I encountered one I had a lot of trouble opening the bottle and buggered one corkscrew completely.

Admittedly it was not the first bottle of wine opened that night and neither of us was in peak condition when we had to engage in hand to hand combat with the rogue ‘cork’.

It took me some time to discover that that stopper was glass – and somewhat longer to accept that this was apparently common practice.

I did a search and discovered that glass stoppers are infesting the globe because:“The glass stopper makes perfect sense. It is attractive, functional and eliminates the problems associated with natural cork." So says a wine maker.

I need to get accustomed to them because they are apparently the next big thing and will replace both cork and screw tops.

There is a campaign by the cork growers in Portugal to stop the use of glass and other things but I am sure that I am probably one of only about six people on the planet who cares about them so they may as well move on and grow something more useful.

Perhaps if they start growing Poppies the USA will pay them to stop and they can retire. Better still – make wine and the EC will pay them to stop.

As cat day is approaching we have been thinking about names. If the cats are in fact delivered and we complete the payment and documentation processes to the satisfaction of the cat owner - their names will be:

Moni (Monika) Rupert Jerilderie and Sissi Leopoldina Katoomba

You may think these names are strange but we have chosen them very carefully for specific purposes. They may not mean much to you (or indeed to Moni or Sissi) but they do to us.

We have to sign a document saying that we will not eat or torture that cats, put them in the microwave oven, allow them to jump off the terrace and, if we decide to get rid of them, we have to allow the current owner the first option to take them back.

Other than this, the long wait, the clearance from Interpol, the house inspection, the payment of money, the personal references, and the bank guarantees there has not been much to the whole transaction.

Next time we need a pet I am going to Simmering to get a hedgehog.

For some time Cate has wanted some trees for the terrace so on Saturday we went to Dehner and bought two tall plants called Liguster. They are round shrub lie things on the ends of sticks and will need to be trimmed.

I am not worried by this extra task – they will be dead within a fortnight. I brushed against their leaves on Saturday and they started turning brown – I am like that with plants.

This transaction was done entirely in pig German with many English words and much gesticulation.

The plants are about 1.5 metres tall so would obviously not fit into Billy. I asked for them to be delivered and this elicited an extensive interrogation about the type of car we had and why we could not take them with us.

Having been temporarily stymied, the sales person then brandished a sheet showing the extraordinary charges that they made for deliveries to outposts such as Wien but – after clearing my head by dunking it in the fountain – I persisted with my request.

Eventually she cracked under the sustained barrage of my really bad German (she spoke NO English) and – holding her hands over her ears – ran screaming off to find a trolley and get rid of me.

I then had an entertaining discussion with someone who I think was the man who arranged deliveries. He was very friendly and I think he is either going to deliver the plants on Tuesday or come to lunch.

I was then taken by both of them to the young lady at the Kassa. Of course the numbers that the sales lady had written down were not in the computer so there was some farnarkling while this was sorted out.

She was the only Kassa open so the other customers started to get a bit edgy after 20 minutes or so. I told them to go to Spar to see Cindy Crawford.

This may have been the first home delivery they have done and it certainly caused some interest. People were shouting out at each other - probably ‘Hey we’ve got a live one here!’

As the plants are sort of shaped - and I will need to trim them for a short while until they die - Cate has bought me a dainty pair of secateurs.

On the bright side – we bought something called a "Cat Charm" which is like a little castle for cats with scratching pads on the side of it. It has two levels so can contain two cats (three if one sits on top) but Muffin – having a modicum of taste and good sense - has shown no interest.

She is quite happy with the rug for claw sharpening, as a dinner plate and for a regular vomit. (We keep the Katzengrass next to the rug so she doesn’t have far to go when her tummy is a bit wobbly).

The "Cat Charm" is less attractive than the cat net – which gives you some idea of how ghastly it really is – and Cate says I have to keep it in my dressing room – which is really the third bedroom where I do the ironing.

It can be dismantled easily so you can theoretically pull it apart and clean it. But it is made out of carpet and the designer has clearly never had a cat or seen what they do to things like carpet.

I imagine that after a couple of weeks it will be declared a safety hazard and I will put on my rubber gloves and put it in the rubbish bin. Cate can walk in front of me with a red flag in case there are any neighbours around.

We have a cat delivery date

Photos of Jewish Quarter in Krakow.

The 'chair' sculpture is the site of one part of the Krakow Ghetto which extended a few blocks to the left.

The factory was Oskar Schindler's. (Well - it no doubt previously belonged to a Jewish businessman who was murdered in Auschwitz).


It’s a public holiday here today so I am not going to do much.

We saw Moni and the babies on Saturday and have negotiated to get the black one. Rozalin is instead taking the one we had allocated to us. Rozalin has taken some photos and these will be provided in due course.

I know this is not very exciting for you non-cat people but it’s going to get worse so I suggest you either stop reading the Blog or keep a bucket next to you.

We have negotiated a release date of 13 June. The Cat Owner is delivering Moni and the kitten and will inspect our house at the same time. We will have to be up really early to wash and polish Muffin and get the house shipshape.

I have put the Cat Net on the Terrace and – as you can imagine – it looks fantastic.

Cate is of course overjoyed and has been mumbling about ‘what’s the point of having a view like this if you have to peer at it through a poxy cat net’.

To which my response is ‘if you want to buy Austrian Jumping Cats this is what you have to put up with’.

Although I must admit it does look awful. According to the instructions – birds will not be able to see the net so we should attach strips of cloth or silver paper to it so that they don’t fly into it.

Cate received this news with a low degree of enthusiasm so I am going to think of a workaround.

However - the way I have put the net up you can probably see it from space - so I really don’t think the birds are going to have a problem.

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.