I am sitting next to a wonderful bouquet of roses which was delivered to me yesterday evening. They are from the Editor and were accompanied by an old-fashioned envelope with a wonderful card. I have leaned the envelope with the card against the roses. When I read it again before, I noticed that it is scented - a very definite male fragrance. How wonderfully traditional and romantic - have you ever received a scented SMS or E-mail? This is what makes all the difference.

Some of you might have noticed that I borrowed the term "So it goes" from my favourite anti-war novel: Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhause 5". It's so heartrenderingly funny that you have to cry, and so outrageously sad that you have to scream with laughter. It's a book you either think you understand and then you adore it, or you don't understand it and then you hate it. I have found no people so far who it leaves completely indifferent - but good books never do so. So it goes.

When I sounded bitter yesterday, it was not about the Russian soldiers who crucified my uncle. I am sure they needed to have some fun, they were presumably no Christians and came from very far in the east. They were no bad people, as little as the American torturers in Abu Graib, Iraq, or the guy who pissed on an inmate's Koran in Guantanamo. It's a war, after all, which is usually not much fun otherwise. But I think it's very sad that such things happen, and they happen because these people had and have superiors who let such things happen. Austria was not very lucky at picking their superiors during World War II, and whether your country is lucky in doing this now is not for me to decide.

Some days ago I asked what people wanted to read about me, and I gave a choice of things which had gone on lately and I had not mentioned in one of my blogs. It seems that most of my readers just like witnessing how my life develops and what happens to me from day to day. But what was mentioned most was that some of you would like to know something about my past.

So I have started to think about it, and I must say that compared to most people I don't seem to have much of a past. I was born here, and 38 years later I still live in the same house. First I was a child, and suddenly I was an adult - and now I am soon approaching an age people euphemistically call mature. First I had the best parents in the world, and then I lost them in a car accident one sunny evening, now I live alone. I went to school and to university, and now I am in this profession myself.

On the other hand, one could say that my past started way before I was born, because what happened globally influenced my destiny. I once wrote about this in the NN-forum, when World War II and its reasons and ourcome were discussed. Most participants were Americans and so full of heroic pride. Reading this text again, I think it sounds bitter. Still, it is part of my past - and so of me. Here it is:

"In the war, the males in my family, my grandfathers and their two brothers - all four being Austrians - were on the side of the bad guys, so history goes.

One was a doctor, one a civil servant, two were teachers. They were ordinary people, did everything to be good citizens, they believed in their government, listened to what their politicians said, were patriotic and fairly uncritical. So they made a living, looked after their young families and everything was fine - had fate not picked the wrong side for them.

One must still be lying somewhere in North Africa and one under the snows of Russia. They both never had graves. The third was crucified by the Russians some days before the War ended. On a barn door behind which he had hidden. So it goes.

The fourth survived and was a doctor, and he tried to heal the physical and mental cripples the war had left. He was my father's father. Fortunately, he was not a bad guy anymore, he was a democrat now. He was a good citizen, he believed in his new government, listened to what his politicians said, and was patriotic and fairly uncritical ... So it goes."

"Dear Alpina,
What happened yesterday was a wonderful gift to a kind gentle man, a man of declining faculties, possibly lonely for female company. What you gave to him he will never forget and will always appreciate. If you so desire, let it happen again but let it be something very private between you and him for it is nobody else's business. Feel proud and satisfied for the giving."

What a wonderful feedback; I got it as a message from a friend today. Thank you so much for your understanding, also to Seshat and newly-wed Gio. You help me accept yesterday as less awkward than I felt first.

And yes - if he wishes, I will accept him as my fatherly friend, and I will give him pleasure when he feels like it, and it will be only between him and me.

I think many people have moments in their lives about which they will never talk to anybody - maybe because they might be hard to understand, maybe it's even hard for them to understand themselves. Yesterday was such a day noone will ever hear of - besides my blog on NN, my secret diary and sometimes confession box.

I sometimes wonder how men can know that a woman is ready. The Editor did know, it was in his smile, as he excused his chauffeur who would not come along. We were going to be alone, but he could handle the vessel well enough, he smiled. We moved towards the middle of the lake, and when I came out of the cabin in my black swimming thongs, he was sitting next to the wheel and smiling. He was stretching his hands in my direction and I walked until his hands could reach me, holding his eyes and smiling back.

Let's not talk about my motives. On Friday in the club I would have let strangers touch my body for the purpose of pure lust. We were here now, and we were alone, and his hands were on my hips to draw me close to him and kiss my tummy wet and warm. Then he pulled off my thongs so that I was standing before him in nothing but my gold chain, and he started stroking and fondling me, probing here and there, and tasting my wetness from his fingers.

After a long time standing before him and feeling his hands all over me, I kneeled down and started to undress him. He held my hands and said I didn't have to, and it was enough when I allowed him to see and touch me. But I went on, and he was not hard when he was naked. He said he would not be able to enter me, he had lost this faculty, but he would still feel me when I touched him. So he was leaning back and I gently started to rub and massage his cock, and he looked serene and happy. When I felt some life I changed my position and kneeled before him and I took his cock into my mouth until with a gentle moan and deep breath he showed me that he had cum. There were only a few drops in my mouth, and I licked him a little longer until he took my shoulders and lifted me up.

While I was sitting in his chair now leaning back and he kneeling, be started licking me, long and slow, and I gave myself totally over to his aged but knowing tongue. And my moans and eventual shouts of pleasure and lust must have been heard over the perfect mirror of the lake for a mile.

Then he got dressed while he asked me to stay naked, and we ate, and I went swimming once or twice because the weather was so warm and beautiful. Later I was leaning against him as his hand gently fondled my breast, and we talked about whatever came to our minds. He wanted to know a lot about me and Phillip, too, and proved to be a wonderful, fatherly listener. All afternoon he touched me now and then, my breasts, or my backside, or he slid a sly finger into my pussy, and he smiled his fatherly and at the same time definitely boyish smile.

When the afternoon was over I was confused and pleased, he had not once tried to kiss me and not mentioned any feelings for me - instead he had talked about beauty and youth, he had kind of celebrated my body and I felt at home with him - yes, definitely at home and cared for and happy.

It is going to be a sunny day, and soon the chauffeur will come to take me to the lake. I am ready.

Last night on the phone Phillip had little time; I heard that he was not calling from his home. We were discussing my visit, he said he was looking forward very much. Then I mentioned being invited to the yacht again for today, like last Sunday, and that we were going to be there alone besides the skipper. Yes, the Editor really loved the lake, Phillip said, it was his place of inspiration, and he would certainly love to be with me - who would not. Such a great old man, and he owed him so much. "Imagine he had not taken to me and done so much for me. Just imagine where I would be now, Alpina."

You would certainly be with me now and not 1000 kilometers away - but I didn't say that. "I'll be nice to him then", I said instead. "Oh, he deserves it", Phillip said. Then we rang off.

There is a book I read a long time ago, its title was "Medicus". In the middle ages a doctor lived in the realm of a powerful sovereign. He enjoyed his friendship and could work and do his research in peace. But the sovereign was an absolute ruler, and the doctor had a beautiful wife. When the doctor's work suddenly met with certain unexpected constraints, his wife one day went to the sovereign and offered herself to him, and he was pleased and took her. And the doctor soon became the sovereign's personal physician, a big hospital was built and he made some important medical discoveries which were a blessing for all the people in the realm. And when the doctor got some kind of a knighthood at a big celebration, his wife and his children were standing there humbly and proud. And only someone with a good eye could see that their second son's features had some striking resemblance to those of the now very old and mellow sovereign.

But those were the middle ages, and it was before condoms were invented. My bag is ready, too.

I have mentioned here that my friend Ruth had a very close mental and spiritual relationship with her late husband Friedrich. Their sexual bond, however, had tired out and withered over the years. That's why Ruth has had her lover Rudi to please her senses and her body, Rudi who is 20 years younger and in my eyes a little strange, although perfectly nice.

But now Ruth has run into some problems, so she told me today during lunchtime. She had reserved Rudi strictly to her body, but now after her husband's death she obviously allowed herself to get into some closer contact with him, hoping to have someone at her side in order not to be alone. And she got disappointed; Rudi wasn't much interested in her thoughts and feelings and was not into talking with her and listening to her memories of a long life. So she ditched him. She told me all this with a laugh, but I could notice that it was not easy for her: she was feeling alone and a little worried if she would stay like this for the rest of her days.

She made perfectly clear to me that she was now a girl who was looking, in spite of the short time since her husband's death - hoping for someone who could fulfil both her requirements - not just a Rudi-esque fuckbuddy. He could also be a little older, she thought, maybe in his early sixties so that his systems were still functioning. All in all we laughed a lot, dicussing how to proceed to find someone before the colder season is coming on us. I hope very much she is lucky.

I admit that my blog the other day about Natascha was not really fair to the men, our a little touchy and very sensitive sex. I exaggerated a lot of course, under the impression of a TV programme that had asked people what they had thought about the interview and a number of men had expressed their disappointment that what interested them most had not been talked about. What is quite interesting, too, is that what seems to be just a horrible crime from further away appears in a somewhat different light when you actually hear all the people involved talk about it and there seem to be many awkward and unexpected facets to the whole case which seem to confuse and intrigue the public.

Some lovely weather has come back for this weekend, and with this it has become almost clear that I will go to the lake tomorrow. Phillip will phone tonight: I will ask him who to do and how to behave - of course not directly, I'll just drop some hints and see how he reacts to them. In some minutes I'll go to town shopping, I'll meet Ruth for lunch and in the afternoon I have planned to enjoy the sun a little - it might be one of the last warm days and I'll soon have to close down my pool for the winter. But today the sun and I are having a rendez-vous.

Last night I was sitting in the bubbly jacuzzi in my bikini pants - not that I was afraid to be leaking blood - I have never been a gusher. But I am not so fond of that tell-tale little white thread dangling between my thighs. I feel so much more naked with it that I love to cover up the whole region in question until I am back to normal which is by Saturday or Sunday.

As expected the topic was inviting some people in to one of our next jacuzzi sessions. I was surprised that Joerg and Elsie had already come to some kind of agreement - that's why they were looking at me so expectantly, as they wanted me to agree, too. However I got more than a little irritated and at the same time I had to laugh when I heard what their bargain was.

Joerg had insisted that he could go with me as far as she went with any guy that would be with us. This sounds fair at first sight, but it completely disregards the fact that I am the one who decides how far anyone goes with we. So it's more than a little naive as far as Joerg is concerned, and why Elsie agreed to this deal I can only guess. She wanted to go for the guy she had found on an erotic site and invite him for next Thursday already. The one who was particularly well endowed, she hastened to point out with a wry smile. I did not particularly mind, but I wonder how they are going to deal with the complications which will certainly arise. Let's wait and see.

Being tired from my long day I left pretty soon - while Joerg and Elsie were obviously going to have great sex, half fucking their partners and half what had sprung up in their minds concerning next Thursday - a mind set which, at least on Joerg's part, also might have included me.

Last night I was watching TV, like the rest of the Austrian nation - it was the biggest media event ever in this country, bigger than 9/11 or the landing on the moon: Natascha Kampusch, the girl who was kidnapped and held prisoner for 8 years gave a TV interview on Austrian state televison. She did well and appeared intelligent, pleasant and vulnerable. She had given the reporters a list of questions beforehand and trained her answers with a media counselor. She remembered her answers well. In the two weeks since her release she has already earned 1'500'000$ and has not even sold any book and film rights. She employs quite a crowd of people who advise, coach and market her. She is certainly the hottest brand in Austria at the moment - the television rights were sold into 120 countries.

Now there is something interesting and quite tragic, namely that when the police had thought it was merely another crime, they had initially said Natascha had obviously been sexually abused. But this is of course a topic she refuses to talk about. But what half of the spectators - which is the male half presumably - interests most is getting to hear something about the where, when and how of the abuse. Particularly the how, and maybe the how often. Because Natascha's case is one for sexual male fantasies: to kidnap a girl of ten and hide her for many years and have her at your total disposal as your sex slave while she gradually becomes a woman and you are the one to show and teach her all - that is powerful stuff for male dreams.

Of course it is also a taboo, and so nobody speaks about it - or they stop the conversation about it when a woman comes in, though their eyes are still thoughtful and dreamy.

Nature can be benevolent sometimes and take decisions or dilemmas from us. I know why I was so restless and a little tearful last night - my period has set in. A little early, but still better than a little late, although there is nothing to fear, thanks to the trustworthiness of the Austrian rubber industry and my partial abstinence.

I have already phoned Aldo before lunch and told him that we had to put off our visit to the swingers club from Friday to another date after my holidays. Promised is promised, he knows that, and he was full of understanding. Aldo always is - he is never in a hurry. He known that eventually his cum will be exactly where he wants it to be, sooner or later.

To be honest I am quite glad it is off. Call me silly, or even ridiculous, but I have felt uneasy since Phillip's call and invitation to London during the autumn holidays. I will feel him again - in me, and on me - only to think of this sensual delight makes my knees go soft. That is what my whole being craves for, not having my pussy frantically stuffed by anonymous guys in the club. Although, and this seems to be one of the ironies in my life I have to put up with: it would make Phillip ever so horny and excited if I did and told him of it to the smallest detail.

Without wanting to offend any of my readers, who I have never seen in person and of who I just know their beautiful minds: the sad truth of the club we're going to and maybe of many clubs is that there are not many really attractive, good-looking people. Many are fairly old and sagging, many border on obesity. Aldo does not mind: he thinks it sexy how those wavy woman want to get their revenge on their husbands and thoroughly enjoy him and his cock of domestically unusal size. The husbands, though, try to do whatever they can with me, and make sure they get what they have dreamed of previously. But none of them only distantly resembles in any way my good-looking Phillip - Phillip with the love spot, as some of you might remember.