This is Monika Rupert Jerilderie (mother of Sissi).

When Monika arrived in June she was a skinny, nervous wreck (she had been abandoned when pregnant with 5 kittens). It took me months to settle her down – and even get her to come near me. I could only do this by lying on the floor near her and coaxing her to come over.


She is now very fat, and remarkably happy. She often comes and snuggles up to me when I am watching TV or reading, or indeed using my PC - and she just loves to sit on the keyboard and make words with her bottom.

She is a truly gorgeous, gentle cat and I love her to bits.

I bought my new camera (Replacement for Thieving Russian Bastard (TRB) camera). It is a Canon 500D.

I bought another Canon because I still have some lenses that the TRB did not get. It comes with 4 manuals – in German, French, Dutch and Italian. Hmmm……something missing. I could download one from the Internet but it will be too cumbersome to carry around so I have ordered one online.

I bought an 18-200 mm lens which will probably do most of what I want to do. I have a 300 mm for Duck close ups but don’t usually carry that about with me. However, as instructed by a number of people (Merisi, Cate et al) I will no longer carry my camera in a backpack - so as not to be pillaged by T (name your country) Bs.

Today Gwenyth and I went to the KHM to look at art. I am a member there so go quite often as I just love some of the paintings – and indeed the artifacts the Austrians stole from the Egyptians – who must really be unhappy about being stolen from by almost every country in the world before they realised that all those bits and pieces lying around in the sand were really quite valuable.

I saw a documentary about how the Egyptians built the pyramids. It was not so hard – well not if you have 100,000 slaves and a fair bit of time on your hands. They built gigantic ramps around the pyramids as they rose into the sky and trundled the stones up these to put them into place. They had very sophisticated methods of moving large lumps of stone around.

Some people believe that the pyramids were built by aliens. I suppose it’s possible. I mean – I can’t actually prove that aliens don’t exist or that they did not build the pyramids. I must say however that if this is the best aliens could do I would not want to travel too far on one of their space ships unless I had a significant amount of travel insurance.

I have been thinking of sending a copy of the documentary to the NSW Government so they can see that it would indeed be possible to build a decent road from Sydney to Brisbane in less time than it took to build the pyramids.

Gwenyth does not linger in museums so I did not see my favourite picture "The feast of the bean king." by Jacob Jordaens. It is a beautiful picture with fabulous characters and – an essential ingredient to any top ranked painting – a cat.

After that we went to the Albertina which currently has an exhibition of Impressionist Art. I don’t understand Impressionism – but I like it. There is also a fabulous collection of art given to the Albertina as a permanent loan by Rita and Herbert Batliner. It includes major works by Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, Chagall, Picasso, Modigliani, Matisse, Kandinsky, Sam Francis, Mark Rothko, Roy Lichtenstein and Francis Bacon.

Albertina

And finally on to the American Bar for a coffee.

American Bar

Tomorrow I am going to show Gwenyth the ‘Friedhof der Namenlosen’ which will look fabulous with the snow still lying around - and I will take some photos with the new camera. I expect no improvements with my photography notwithstanding the acquisition of new technology.

I have accepted that I am a ‘point and shoot’ user and that no amount of farnarkling will ever make me a better photographer than I am. Having accepted that – I must say that some of my Duck photos are not too shabby and in the unlikely event that is ever an exhibition of Duck photography in Wien – I will be up for it.