The reluctant tailor

A tailor in Vienna is an Änderungsschneiderei and mine is called Sali - and his shop is in Ungargasse – just up from the apartment house where Beethoven finished his 9^th Symphony.

Sali comes from Croatia and does not want to be a tailor – even though he is very good at it. I asked Sali what he wanted to be and he was not sure – apparently anything but a tailor – which is apparently what is family does.

I first met Sali a month or so after I came to Vienna when I asked him if he would replace some elastic in something. He was not keen – elastic apparently not being his thing - and sent me to his brother who has shop a few blocks away.

What Sali likes to do is ski - and tailoring takes second place to this. I took a leather jacket to him a few weeks ago for a new pocket and he told me then that it would take a while because he was just about to go skiing.

I said that was fine because I had chosen the middle of summer specifically to allow for Sali’s reluctance to do tailoring type stuff.

In the interim Cate bought a new dress and needed to have the hem let down. I warned her that this could take a while as Sali was skiing – but she was OK with this. Sali was due back last Wednesday so I took the dress in and asked him how skiing was.

Not so good he said. In fact – so not so good that he has to go again - so all jobs are on hold. Sadly my jacket and Cate’s dress are also on hold. 

Now of course there are hundreds of tailors in Vienna but Sali is really very good at what he does. He put a whole new silk lining in my leather jacket last year and did such truly fabulous job that it will last forever. Which is unfortunate because Cate hates the jacket with such with a passion that it makes her fangs drip with venom.

This is probably because it is my favorite piece of clothing and I just love to wear it all the time – and I mean all the time.  The offending jacket is shown in the blog photograph. 

And on a happy note. The printer toner people sent me replacement toners for the ones that were stolen. So the only losers are the people who pay insurance premiums which is – all of us. 

It's good night Vienna for Muffin

Muffin last year

Merisi sent me an email to say – as politely as possible – that there appeared to be something wrong with the white balance in the photo on my blog yesterday. She said that as an academic challenge she had downloaded it and  tried to do something with it - but that it was beyond redemption.

Ah well – I said – this is because it was in fact taken the day after I had fallen off the dog sled onto my camera and smashed it and my ribs to pieces.

So this and all the other photos that were taken on the trip were captured with Gwenyth’s camera which was made in 1992. No – I am not kidding – 1992. And it took really shitty photos. They were mostly out of focus and there was nothing you could do with them in either iPhoto or Aperture.

Now some bad news for cat lovers. Muffin merged with infinity yesterday.

She became really distressed the previous evening and was no better in the morning. I don’t think she was in any pain but was obviously suffering from extreme anxiety – which had been developing for some time.

She had been very restless and roaming around the house – not sleeping – just lying starting into space. And I looked at this scruffy 19 year old cat yesterday morning and knew it was time.

I would have waited until Cate came back but Muffin was obviously very distressed so I took her to the vet straight away and that was that. It was a sad day but I was glad to see her finally at peace because she has not been a really happy cat for some time now.

So we are down to two cats.  Cate got back this morning and has been on the phone since she got back. As soon as she has a moment she will start talking about kittens. Spare me!

You can also drink its blood and it eat parts raw

Cate rang me at 4:30 AM her time in Bangkok  - which was 11:30 PM my time – as I had just sent her a cat photo. I do this every day – with a lie attached that the cats are thinking of her and want her home. Of course the cats don’t give a rat’s ass about her – or me – or anyone else.

I do this in the hope that it might provide her some small comfort because I know how difficult these trips are for her – for one thing she sleeps very badly – hence the 4:30 call. So she has to get up at 7:00 after very little sleep and work all bloody day and on and on it goes.

She is currently planning Christmas. I mean the part of Christmas that happens after Christmas. Of course we will do our usual thing here and Gwenyth and Molly will be here for the Goose and the usual festivities.

This year she has decided that she would like to try to get me eaten by a Polar Bear. She is thinking about Norway and a place called Svalbard. There are apparently 4,000 Polar Bears – and the Northern Lights – which we did not see when we were in Finnish Lapland where I did my rib thing.

I have checked – we will be on Snowmobiles. Polar Bears cannot outrun Snowmobiles – the odds are good.  In any event I can surely outrun Cate and Gwenyth because they run like a girls. I know – you think I should stay and throw myself in front of the Bear to allow them to get away – and maybe I would.

She was also going to take me skiing for the first time in my life but I took her gently through the range of likely scenarios – crashing,  screaming, paramedics, ambulance, hospital, surgery, traction, months of physiotherapy - plus she would have to empty the kitty litter for months (this was the clincher) so she canned that idea. 

She is pretty damn sick of my ribs (but not as sick as I am) so knows what to expect if anything else goes wrong.

I am not going to be cold in Norway. I damn near froze to death on the Reindeer ride in Lapland. I have ordered a Jack Wolfskin catalogue so that I can get some proper gloves.

 

I should also get a Bear Grylls knife. He says that if you really have to you can cut open a Reindeer and climb inside it to get warm and survive. I assume you have to kill it first. I have seen him do this. I don’t think it was a Reindeer he climbed inside but it was large and dead and warm.

You can also drink its blood and it eat parts of it raw. I might skip that bit. Of course I am hoping it does not come to this but I am providing for all eventualities.

I am not sure that I could convince the man who owns  the Reindeer that this would be a good idea. I may also have trouble convincing the Dry Cleaner in Vienna that he should not charge me extra – and that he should not call the Polizei.

But we can have Reinsdyrgryte afterwards – trust me it - is delicious if you can cope with the concept. We had it in Lapland – every night.