You have to drink 3 litres of disgusting muck

Looking towards Michaelerplatz and the Hofburg

I have been quiet for the last few days because on Thursday I had to have one of those internal examination thingies where they poke things into your top and bottom. When you are preparing for this you do not feel like doing much at all. 

This meant that for basically 48 hours before the examination I could not eat.  Worse - I had to go through the routine of drinking 3 litres of disgusting muck to clean out my innards – which it did very successfully. I should have washed it down with Jameson but needed to keep a clear head so as to find the bathroom every 15 minutes.

So when you can’t eat you think about very little else but eating  - and when you try to take your mind off it by watching TV you discover that most of the advertising is for food.

This is something I do every three years or so and it never gets any better.

Then the Doctor discovered that I spoke a little German so decided he would use my time with him as a German improvement opportunity for me - and spoke only German – and told his nurses to do the same.

Cate in Abaya

This made the whole experience a bit more difficult but entertained them tremendously which is good because I was happy to do anything that would make the job they were about to do a modicum more pleasant.

But anyway – everything is in order inside me - but the strange thing was when I got home I did not really feel like eating so just had a cup of tea and some biscuits - and the food advertisements on TV did not bother me one little bit.

Cate is back from Algiers – and liked it a bit more than she did last time – but still does not think it is worth a visit for me. I am not so sure. I have been looking at it and it looks quite fascinating – and I have always wanted to go to the Casbah.

Next week she goes to Saudi Arabia so will have to wear her Abaya so that no one can see her ankles. She does not have to wear a Niqāb.

What more incentive could they want?

A new plant

Well so much for sentimentality. I hung on to my crispy plants for as long as possible but finally accepted that they were well and truly dead.

How Sissi treated the old plants

So on Friday I girded my loins and went to Dehner to look for replacements. I settled on two tough looking Buchsbaum (Boxwood) plants that look like they can stay the course.

We have had these before and they were monstered by Sissi when she was tiny but she has lost interest in plants now and is more focussed on destroying the rest of the apartment. 

What I would normally do is empty the pots and start again but this is tedious beyond belief so I just tore the old crispy plants out and put the new ones in there.

I have told them that everything else in these pots so far has died and that – while I will do my best to nurture them – they are basically on their own.

What more incentive could they want?

It just feels too springy

Franz Schubert in Stadtpark

I am thinking that we are not going to have any more cold weather. I have changed the heating settings in the apartment and we can now have the terrace doors open during the day. Monika and Sissi are enjoying lying outside in the spring sunshine.

Because of Monika’s incapacity to master the relatively (I think) simple task of walking through the cat flap – if it is closed – I have to take the flap off for her or open the terrace doors. This year I am going to make another mighty effort to teach her – but when Muffin popped her clogs  she was 19 years old - and she had never learned how to do it.

Fiddling around with the various air conditioning and heating settings at the end of winter sometimes has dire consequences and provokes snow or ice storm -  but this year I am confident. It just feels too springy.

Next week I am getting our bikes serviced - ready for our annual attack on flab and unfitness. This is probably a forlorn gesture as in a month or so it will actually be too hot to ride during the day - and we are just not good at getting up early on weekends.

However – this time every year I am seized with the desire to really make an effort – and sometimes this feeling stays with me until summer actually arrives and I can lapse into a torpor as the sun melts the tiles on our roof.

Next week Cate will be in Algiers which on the surface sounds interesting - as before the French departed it used to be a vibrant cosmopolitan city. Not that I went there but I have read about it and seen films so it must be true.

However she has assured me that it is not now worth a visit – being dull and lifeless and stultifying. Sure she has only seen it from the inside of a taxi but I trust her judgment on these things.

Enough said. I will save myself for another trip to somewhere that I really want to see.