Happy Birthday John!

Badger and John in Tuscany.

I don’t do Birthday Blogs very often but I have a very special friend named John who I rarely see and who I miss a lot. 

I met him many moons ago and was best man at his wedding - to the lovely Christine.

For one reason or another we have never really been in the same place together for the last 20 years or so. 

But when we see each other it’s just like pulling on an old jumper. We are immediately comfortable and relaxed and he tells me the same jokes he has been telling me since 1968 – and I still laugh. 

Last year at about this time we all went to Tuscany together and had a wonderful time in a tiny little village called Bagni di Lucca. 

We ate wonderful Italian food and drank wonderful Italian wine and toured the countryside. John and Cate spoiled things by cheating at Trivial Pursuit but Christine and I let this pass in the spirit of not spoiling a good holiday.

They are not coming to Europe this but John is going on a four month tour of Australia in a campervan with one of his mates. i.e. without Christine.

Well – at no stage did I say he was entirely normal. Christine is apparently happy for him to do this on the basis that it will the first real peace she has had since they were married. 

I don’t have to see John for him to be my best Mate. I know he will always be there for me (unless he is playing Golf) and he knows I will always be there for him. 

I won’t see him when I am in Australia in August because he will be in a Campervan somewhere near Darwin – and there are limits.

Anyway - it's his Birthday - and he is nearly as old as I am. Shriek!

Happy Birthday Cobber!

Why the Hippopotamus cover up?

I have never understood why it is that as soon as I buy something from Amazon they immediately bombard me with advertisements for the same product. 

Since I bought my Dyson vacuum cleaner – which is terrific by the way – I get almost daily emails from Amazon Deutschland telling me about all the other wonderful vacuum cleaners they have.

Why would they think that - having bought a vacuum cleaner - I would immediately want to buy another one. I know – they don’t think that at all – it is just a software program that generates promotional emails.

Which is one of the problems with buy anything on Amazon – or indeed searching for anything anywhere – because then you are marked forever and followed everywhere by specials for whatever you bought or looked for. That is the price you pay for shopping online.

Which reminds me. I haven’t seen my Hamburger for a while. Remember the one the followed me everywhere and haunted my web searches? Maybe they realized that I am never going to buy a Hamburger and gave up.

‘It’s pointless Helmut – he just does not eat Hamburgers – you will have to try something else’

I just looked. They are trying me out with the new BMW 6 Cabrio – now there’s a leap!

I have always been fascinated by the Hippopotamus with the Jackhammer in the Egyptian section at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. 


I think it explains how the Egyptians built the Pyramids. I think it also explains why these days Hippopotami are always so cross - and drown any tourists that come near them.

Google is silent on this issue. I would expect that Archaeologists would have something to say on this very important aspect of civilization. I have never even seen it referred to in any of the shows on the History Channel about the construction of the Pyramids.

Why is there a cover-up about this?

It took a long time to clean up the paw prints

Cate is back for a week before she goes to Algiers and then we go to the Maldives for our dive trip.  

This is when the chickens come home to roost in terms of the truly execrable flights that I had to book so many months ago – the ones with 6 and 8 hour layovers.

While Cate is a ‘Senator’ on Star Alliance – and they throw rose petals in her path in the lounges – this will do her no good on these flights as we are flying with Emirates and she is not a member of their club. And we are flying economy so cannot get into any lounges.

Still – she could use the opportunity to try to get her glasses. Emirates never did reply to our many emails asking about her glasses which she left on our home leave flight last July. And we were in Business Class. 

I now have to work out how to use our new dive computers. The instruction manuals are in English – which helps – but will still be incomprehensible to me.

We will probably do what we usually do and ignore our dive computers but just do what the group does. They will all have dive computers which they will use and are not going to place themselves at risk. I am sure we will be just fine.

It is warming up and is time for the cat door to go back up so it has to be re-painted. The most difficult part of this will be stopping Sissi from getting covered in paint and spreading it all over the apartment. 

I shall do this in the guest bedroom – taking many precautions – but Sissi is both cunning and agile so I will be prepared for any disasters with warm water and masses of paper towels.

Last time I painted I was not nearly careful enough and left the paint tray unattended for a few seconds. The problem is that if you have a cat with paint on her paws she is not going to stay still and let you wipe them - or catch her. It took much longer to clean up the paw prints than it did to do the painting.  

Much care shall be taken.