That sounds like a line from a cheap novelette

Moogface came for a visit last week and we went about doing things in Vienna, kicking off an action-packed few days with a craaazy two-hour seminar with visiting medievalist Prof. Philippe Buc at the Institute for Medieval Research. I know how to treat a lady!

Then we took the subway to Prater, site of a big funfair which promised craziness without bounds. Unfortunately everything was closed because it was the middle of fucking winter, something which had escaped my notice. We shuffled about in the snow for a bit and Moogface made full use of the only form of entertainment available by sticking her head in this thing, which killed an hour or so. She is easily amused.

It's probably a good thing that Dizzy Mouse was shut.

But the fun didn't stop with medieval seminars and closed funfairs, oh no! We also went to Latin mass in the undercroft of the cathedral, which was like normal mass except more penitential due to the lack of cushion kneelers and comprehensibility. Mel Gibson was actually standing in the corner inviting people to whip him.

And we watched an old black and white film in a musty little cinema. (It was The Third Man of course, so mustiness is part of the experience.) This necessitated a trip on the Riesenrad, although our plan to re-enact the famous scene from the film was thwarted by the old couple sharing our cabin, and the locks on the doors.

"Or do ghosts only fly by night, Dr Winkel? You got an opinion on that?"

Moogdroog also managed to use some kind of secret healing powers to fix me, or at least I made a sudden improvement on the day of her arrival, which meant I was actually able to take her around the city and we didn't have to stay in my flat watching badly dubbed episodes of Friends and repeats of The Weakest Link, which is about the only show broadcast on BBC Entertainment.

I saw my physio for the last time yesterday and she ran out of things to do to me. With luck I'll be fit enough to try a short run in a couple of weeks. Six weeks of crippledom has taught me two things: 1) be careful when sledging; 2) Vienna is a good place to get sick. There are so many doctors here, chances are your next door neighbour will be one. The doctor I went to was actually called Dr Galen. You don't get any more highly qualified than that. I was half expecting my radiologist to be called Dr Xavier Ray.

Tomorrow I have to go to the Institute for a project meeting to discuss an article I've written for their latest edited volume. It's the first time the people here will be giving direct feedback on something I've written, and I'm fairly shitting myself at the prospect of their hardcore Viennese historiographical faces staring at me.

"So, Herr Dr Clay, please justify your academic existence."

That photo is from 1892 I admit, but the only thing to have changed is the intimidating facial hair. My only consolation is that nobody at the Institute is really an Anglo-Saxon expert, so they might not notice all the glaring historical errors I made.

The Way of All Snow

I built a snowman on Tuesday as a metaphor for the transience of mortal existence, tracing man's inexorable fall from youth into dotage and ending with the final dissolution into nothingness, or, in the case of the snowman, a puddle.

Day 1

He's proving to be much tougher than I imagined. He started to lean to his left hand side quite early, which caused his left hand to drop off.

Day 2

He continued to lean as though hoping to retrieve the lost appendage, but then his left eyeball (a new potato) dropped out.

Day 3

Now, crippled and half blind, he continues to lean, whether out of determination or hopelessness I know not. I honestly don't know how his head hasn't fallen off yet.

Day 4

On Wednesday I went sledging with Abi, Gem and Jason, which turned out to be my biggest mistake of the week as it triggered a back injury from 2008. Now I'm hobbling about on a pair of walking sticks and swallowing the strongest painkillers money can buy. I don't mind the discomfort as I find that latent physical pain focuses the mind (probably a Catholic thing), but I hope I'm fixed by Tuesday because I have a flight to catch from Gatwick.

Last night, as if the back thing wasn't torture enough, moogdroog and I watched Ed Wood's masterpiece Glen or Glenda, less well known than Plan 9 from Outer Space, but just as incompetent and much more interesting. As a film it's a complete narrative mess. It's not just a car crash; it's like three or four car crashes crashing into each other continually for an hour.

Happy 2010

I hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year. I've approximately doubled in weight over the past two weeks. Luckily the house is now running out of free chocolate and beer so I'll soon be able to restore vitamin levels. I began today with a breakfast of Shredded Wheat and a glass of apple juice, which left me feeling rather pleased with myself, so I for lunch I had two mince pies, three slices of chocolate log and a bundle of chocolate fingers.

It was supposed to snow in the 'Grove between Christmas and New Year, but it didn't, which was annoying because it seems every other postcode in the country got snow, even too much snow, and poor Kim the Dog was deprived of her yuletide frolic.

For New Year I drove up to see moogdroog, who decided that it would be more fun to spend the last night of 2009 staying in to watch surrealist Czech short films than going into town. She was actually right because town was probably full of people, and people are filthy and annoying.

Personally, I think New Year TV programming should consist of wall-to-wall Jan Svankmajer reinterpretations of It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol.

Over the break I watched three movies at the flicks, but none of them made much of an impression. The Coen Brothers' A Serious Man was good but nowhere near as interesting as The Man Who Wasn't There, as funny as The Big Lebowski or as gripping as No Country For Old Men. Avatar was basically the souped-up body of a Ferrari hiding the engine of an Austin Allegro, but you don't realise until you're half an hour into your journey and by then it's too late to turn back. Sherlock Holmes was most fun of the three, and gets points for being the first Guy Ritchie movie since Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels that doesn't make me want to stab Guy Ritchie.

I also read Ian McEwan's newest book, On Chesil Beach, which Dad got for Christmas and I temporarily stole. It was very very good and made me sad.

Back to Vienna next Tuesday. What larks, eh Pip, what larks!