Apologies for the silence. Events have rather overtaken me this week. After Sunday's horrendous news, I have been left reeling a little. I'm not quite sure whether I have fully absorbed the fact that the Führer has gone. It feels a cold world without her.

I'm not good at grief. Most people mope. I let loose. The reminder of your own mortality and the inability to cope with losing someone you love so much makes me want to make the most of what time I have left.

To that end I went out with my mate Lauren last night, just for a couple of hours. We met up with one of her mates. Can I give it a wow? I think so.

I have a rule. The first ten minutes of meeting someone will literally define my view on them, be that good or bad. It took less than two minutes for me to be utterly, utterly in love with this girl. I must have looked like a moonbat all evening; I literally could not take my eyes off of her. [Gemma, if you read this, it's all a work of fiction aimed at pleasing the friends who love to live vicariously through me, so I exaggerate.] I have pictures which I will duly place on Facebook and, once the Beckernator has surfaced with my laptop, on here. She sat studying the music on my iPhone and whooped with glee at the amount of eighties stuff on there, then proceeded to tell me she was marrying me for my musical taste. [Easy there, tiger -- Ed]. With all the wit of Edwina Curry I hurriedly pointed out that my track record on marriage was not exactly sterling. [Idiot -- Ed].

Let us just leave that one as a massive wow. And she's not Libyan (for once). Wow.

Back to reality. Die Frau Führer's funeral is set for Tuesday. I have the daunting dilemma of whether to go and see her in the Chapel of Rest or not. In my experience people seldom look like they did so you are visiting a shell. The smell of formaldehyde knocks me sick, too. I think I would be too emotional and nauseous if I went. Kat did offer to come with me but I'm afraid I will have to say my goodbyes on Tuesday. We'll see.

I suspect you are going to hear a lot about the Führer over the coming weeks as I try to come to terms with the loss of one of my best mates. 4'10\" of utter attitude has left the building. On a positive note, Gemma has entered the building and she is a bit taller but with the same level of attitude.

Equilibrium is restored.

Die Frau Führer reunited with Richard Whitely...

My grandmother passed away sometime during last night. She died in her sleep, aged 85. She looked very peaceful.

I got a call from my mother's mobile at about 12:45 asking whether I had picked up my grandmother to take her for Sunday lunch. I was quite shocked because I didn't remember saying that I would. Anyway, I said I'd go get her anyway. Mater responded that the reason for asking was that she could get no answer at her door. I only live a mile away and I have keys in case of emergency so I drove up there. The blinds were closed. My heart sank.

Sure enough, we found her in bed, seemingly asleep, but quite obviously dead. From her temperature and the color of her lips, she had been dead for at least a few hours. My mother is now an orphan.

The ambulance team, the policeman and the funeral directors were all marvelous.

Let me list what she has done for me, to give you some idea of what a fantastic woman she was. She could be awkward and obtuse but can't we all (I got that streak from her). I used to mercilessly tease her about her Germanic origins, hence the Über Gruppenführer references. Anyway, this is by no means an extensive list of her kindness:

-- she was the only member of my family to come and visit me during the years I was in the US.

-- when I arrived back from the US with my arse in rags, £30 to my name, she put a roof over my head, bought me a laptop, got an internet connection to her home and paid for everything for me.

-- as I was breaking down during the divorce from Nski, I was living in Leeds alone. When I hit rock bottom, it was she who made the arrangements for my hospitalization. When I came out of hospital, she moved me back into her house and nursed me back to health over months. See missing archives -- that is how long she worked on me.

-- when she got the compensation payout for miners' deaths, she gave me £5000 of it.

-- when I was in hospital last year, she got two buses each way from her house to the hospital to see me and bring me goodies every day, and to make sure they were looking after me to her satisfaction.

-- more recently, she has helped me out of a couple of short term cash problems.

We were more like friends than grandparent/grandson. We laughed together. We were outraged together. She loved the fact that I am the only member of her family in England who liked her cooking (old-school Austrian/German). I loved the fact that she loved making it and would quite happily eat as much as she could throw at me. We'd do daft things like drive to Southport, just because. I built her a pond, which she adored, while she was in Österreich one year (or \"invading Poland\" as I used to refer to it) and you have never seen a happier face. We were really, really close friends.

I have the task of notifying the family in Austria in broken German. I have only managed to get hold of one by phone.

I'm still numb. I cried for a couple of minutes when we first discovered her but then realized I had to take over and start doing things while my mother composed herself. This will hit me like a truck when it sinks in.

I can remember how to do a decent schnitzel. I can't remember how to make *that* cake. I had the recipe written down in America which was meant to be sent over along with other things but none of them ever turned up, so I am going to have to experiment. I'm wondering whether I blogged it at the time of writing.

And then there's a list of all the things you should have done, should have said...that will be one long arsed list.

I can't believe I will never hear that Germanic cackle again, that I have no rock to fall back on, that I will never be able to chastise her for speaking freaky-deaky foreign on the phone.

I hope she's at peace. She survived a lot, suffered a lot. She deserves peace.

I am too tired to go off on one so I will just bullet point what has been on my mind:

-- Greece, you run your finances worse than I do mine, which is a bit special. I told you aligning your fiscal policy with others was a beyond stupid move over 10 years ago -- once again, I am right. Let the meltdown commence.

-- Murdoch(s), wow. That was some breathtaking lying. Feigning being a senile old geriatric will not save your UK interests (and I'm not just talking about Rupert).

-- Brooks, wow. Your mop of red hair completely distracted me from listening to you. As Mater intimated on the phone, I am too soft with women and I should start to suspect that they are always up to something. She thinks that if you give me a pretty face, I cave. Not so. I was just dazzled by the sheer volume of lockage. What I did hear, though, sounded plausible and genuine. I guess Mater is right.

-- NASA, unlucky. It may be phenomenally expensive to run, but the Space Shuttle programme has captivated me for years. Maybe if the EU decided to bail on Greece and contribute, we might actually be able to continue it. Either that or feed the 10 million Cape Horn people who are starving.

-- Microsoft = pants. Citrix = worse_than_pants. Microsoft + Citrix = BSOD && complete_sloblock.

-- Darlington on Monday. Hmmm.

-- Stress levels are at an all time high. I am seriously considering doing a Reggie Perin on Llandudno beach (must remember to pack degree certificate in a waterproof bag or stash it somewhere no-one will look).

'Tis all. As I said, tired.

I just called Die Frau Führer. She said something in freaky-deaky Deutsche. I responded "Gutten nicht." Without wanting to insult you, I meant to say "Goodnight" but it came out as "Good not."

Great for 'Allo Allo but rubbish for real life.

Shoot me now.

Kenny: "Hiya, I'm ringing about the kitchen stuff that you put on freelove.com on behalf of a friend of mine."

Callee: "Who are you?"

Kenny: "You put an ad on freelove for some kitchen equipment and my friend is interested."

Callee: "Who are you?"

Kenny: "I've obviously got the wrong number. Sorry."

Bec: "You're an idiot: It's called prelove."

Spangles and Jen:

I was right, was I not? The hacking scandal has hit biblical proportions. To be honest I haven't spent every second of every day consuming the media frenzy but I have kept an eye/ear on it. It is the proverbial dawning of the age of Aquarius. I predict the sale of the Times and Sunday Times within the month. And if Murdoch is wise, he would be wise to divest his shares in BSkyB.

The interesting part of all this will be whether similar practices have been deployed in the US. If they have woe betide him. US law is a lot more lax in terms of proof of culpability than English law (and News International is based in the US) so there will be merry hell. Never mess with the feds. Wire-tapping? Ouch. Regardless of the civil lawsuits that will be filed in droves (most of them speculative), the feds will have him for breakfast, dinner and tea. I'm not sure what the statutory sentence is for wire-tapping but I'm pretty darned sure that it's not a smack on the back of the head and a milkshake.

--

In other news, Spangles and I hosted a dinner party on Thursday night. I have included me, only because I live here. Spangles did the catering. Lordy, did she do a good job. The wild mushroom tartlettes were amazing. The penne pasta with pesto, mint, pepper, herbs and broccoli were lovely. But there is no superlative to describe this:

That is what you know as a ginger-crisp cherry cheesecake, concocted from scratch, but what I call heaven. I have no idea how she managed to come up with this, but it is a dinner party killer. No-one spoke during desert. We were all Scooby-doo shoveling it down with our arms in a blur. Then there were a few moments of wow as we all got our heads around what an amazing experience we had just had. It was followed by laughter as we all realized no-one had said a word for ten minutes.

--

In other, other news, Spangles and I wasted the whole day yesterday trying to offload some stuff with no success at all. Woe is us. It's going to be a frugal week or so. If I am quiet, it's because I'm either working, at the hospital, deeply depressed or doing a Brian Wilson. Bloody internet fraudsters should be shot.

'Tis all.

I think today may be a wibble day in terms of the press. This is big.

I really feel for Gordon Brown. Whoever it is who is interviewing him is an insensitive scumbag.

Now I need to work.

Here ya go.

When she says Kenny, she is quite obviously not talking about me. It's way too complimentary. Bless you mi'lass and I will be with you on Friday.

I know I have been ranting about food recently. Sorry. Actually, I'm more sorry to have to do it again.

Lunch today was Egg Furlong avec Mushrooms a la Bec. A joy.

Ingredients:

Potato Waffles
Grilled Halloumi cheese
Fried eggs
Chopped mushrooms of choice
An industrial quantity of garlic
Copious amounts of olive oil
Loads of black pepper

You can work it out. Slap the grilled Halloumi on the waffles and top with a fried egg. Dowse with pepper. Garlic mushrooms are easy.

In other news, I've been a bit atypically selfless today. Mater and Pater's car has died. It decided to die yesterday while they were in Wales with a dog that had a dose of the SH1s. They managed to get home care of Green Flag. In a totally uncharacteristic moment of madness, I offered to take them shopping this morning. That seemed like a really good idea until this morning when I had to fulfill the promise. I can cope with going shopping with Spangles because it just happens. Going shopping with Mater is like watching someone choose a wedding dress, only it takes longer than the US Masters and has less attractive surroundings. And that is just selecting which pineapple to buy. If it went on any longer, it would be Wimbledon.

Back to the car though. Pater has a number of things he needs to do each day so I've offered to lend him my car for a couple of days. True to form, he sees this as a kind of charity so has turned me down. I don't get it at all. I'm the first to offer help, if I can, to anyone and if I need help it will make me feel stupidly vulnerable but I will ask for it, albeit reluctantly. Pater's position is not exactly embarrassing so I just don't understand his position. His car broke down. Big deal. Karma Dad! Sheesh. You've helped me out all my life; using my car for a couple of days is feck-all in compensation. I hope he doesn't read this or I'll really be in the SH1 myself.

You get the point though...anyone who knows me well knows that I will do whatever I can for you, so long as you are deemed a decent human-being. When it's my parents, no matter how silly the problem is (cough, car, cough), I'll do whatever it takes.

Dad, the car is here if you need it.

Olde English Proverb sayeth: \"If you are a Conservative before the age of 30, you have no heart. If you are a Socialist after the age of 30, you have no brain.\"

Disclaimer: based on recent events, I cannot subscribe to either being a universal truth. I think it is more apt to think that if you pass 30 you should have realized you are never going to win because dogma becomes the guiding force behind every politician.

What a good segue -- even if I do say so myself.

I don't know what has annoyed/amused/disgusted me most today.

I guess Huffington launching a 'service' (sic) in the UK was the most annoying -- ref: dogma [Although I liked your original typo of fogma more -- Ed]. The business model has been discussed at length on many websites/blogs so I am not going to revisit old ground. To my mind, she would have been better off doing a deal with the Morning Star. At least that way she could have cut her losses faster when it flops like Eddie (the Eagle) Edwards or the English football team^*.

The disgusting part is with reference to News International's absolute flagrant disregard for anything other than their profits. I'm not understanding the terminology but I see the results. To me, hacking someone's phone means calling their answerphone and listening to their message. If you listen to their calls, that is tapping not hacking. Either way, using that to build a portfolio of anyone, unless they were suspected criminals, is abhorrent. I defy anyone to defend deleting text messages from a dead girl's phone so more text messages can be received, just to see what she was up to, while prolonging the poor girl's parents' hopes that she may be alive. I hope that whoever is responsible for those (and other actions) is sentenced to a long, cold prison sentence followed by a long, hot eternity on the banks of the Styx.

The amusing part is the repercussions. A ghastly triumvirate of media, government and police has formed, each pointing their fingers at the other. And within each facet of the triumvirate, there is another division. BBC, Guardian, Telegraph in a JV vs Murdoch. Condem vs Labour. Current Metropolitan Police Force vs old.

It is quite obvious that the media have been in collusion with the Met (for personal cash) who in turn have been in cahoots with the government (for funding) who in turn have been in league with the media (for votes). It is a positive logic bomb. It is no wonder that the \"independent\" Press Complaints Commission has failed so manifestly. The question really should be to whose gain and whose loss? I suspect that depends at what point in time you assess that metric. 20 years ago I'm guessing most people gained and those that were losing didn't even know they were losing. Now the lid has been blown well and truly into space shuttle territory, the winners and losers are more vague. The government, Met and media look like pariahs. The average hackee is the only place where you can see a loser, whether they be a football star, celebrity or someone whose only misfortune in life is to be in the public eye because another misfortune (murdered girl's parents, suicide-bomber's victim's parents, etc.).

That logic bomb is a tough one to solve in terms of legislature. And that is the thing that really infuriates me. Occam's Razor is a sound theory but life is not discrete. It is continuous and you have to cater for the fuzz-factor. I'm tempted to point out the obvious and say that common sense is an oxymoron but I will resist [Yeah, right -- Ed]. If the world were full of it and it was common, it would be quite obvious where the line is drawn. If someone volunteers some personal information for no financial gain, then it is fair game. If someone volunteers some information for any kind of gain (be that financial or personal), then don't print it. If someone taps/hacks/thieves/stalks any kind of information that is not to do with national security or prevention of crime, throw 'em in jail and let them fish in the Styx afterwards.

Hmmm. You can tell this has wound me up no end today can't you?

I think the moral of the story is that we should all remain 30, plus or minus an infinitesimal.

^* -- delete as applicable.

It is Bryony's birthday today. She is currently en-route to the North Pole or some such nonsense, with 14 men. I shudder to think...

It's also Beckernator's birthday.

Best wishes to them both.

I've not heard the full deal but it looks like npower are to be sold to a German company. How many more companies are to be sold off to offshore owners? Is it any wonder our economy is in the crapper? Give it ten years and we'll be broke. Actually we are now. This government has to go. I'm all for open markets but this is ridiculous; unless you have the cash to invest in offshore stocks, you're not going to make a decent wage.

On the second subject, please wish Kat well. She's having a rough time medically and I wish I could do more to help her. As Waaarty will attest, she is someone you cannot help but love.

First up, I have had a totally lazy day. I fully intended getting everything out of the way today on the domestic front but spent last night awake snotting thanks to the pollen count. Normally I only suffer from Hawthorn pollen but this years dosage has been so high that everything has just hammered me. That said, I have managed to nearly catch up on my backlog of Sky\+.

In the 2 hours I did sleep I had the most whacky dreams -- I suspect an ibuprofen/anti-histamine combo. The only thing I could have done to get any higher was to accept one of Mc-colleagues offer of codeine for my toothache -- I am more allergic to that than anything else in the world. It batters me for days. In extreme doses I cannot move my legs. Anyhooo, I dreamed one of my Libyan mates invited me to a party where I pitched up with the usual crowd, only to find her married to a guy I didn't know with two kids who were the most obnoxious brats ever. She sent me out on a booze cruise for everyone and I ended up falling down at some roadworks where the pavement magically vanished from under me. A nice couple tried to stem the bleeding from my head (that awful feeling of hot liquid leaking down your head and into your eyes -- I actually checked the sheets for blood when I awoke) and call an ambulance but I was insistent that I had a mission that I could not fail at. I'm not sure who it is I know that drives a pale blue car (for those of you in the UK, that bloody vomitous Vauxhall Viva blue) but they rescued me.

Anyway, that is not really ranting...

Do you remember when all newsagents used to be called Alan and they smiled at you? Gone are those days. They're are all now Nazis who take great pleasure in explaining how hard it is to run their business. Take mine for example. He has a face like a slapped arse. He whines at me all the time for not going in every week to pay the papers. I used to go in once a month and pay by debit card but he decided that dealing with the debit card machine was too much hassle, so I asked him whether I could set up a direct debit. \"Too much trouble.\" My next suggestion was to let me sign up to the Telegraph quarterly plan so they pay him. No joy. I'm guessing he wants me to go in with cold hard cash (or better still use his cash machine -- which very rarely works -- and pay £3 for the honor of using it pay him) so he can cook his Nazi books and avoid HMRC (tax for you furriners :) ). I am really considering just canceling the papers completely. Then when I go in for a packet of cigs he can quit bitching at me as to how hard things are. I hate to sound like an American teenage girl but, like, we are not all being hammered by our beloved government. I should just go in with a placard that reads \"Every Man For Himself -- screw you, you who are not named Alan.\"

Speaking of Nazis, I became German at 00:01 on Friday morning. I was officially TUPE'd. It was all of a downer, a whatever and a hmm, this might be okay. There are some things that sound silly procedural sloblock (anag), some that just are and some that sound pretty good. I'm not going to get all anal and whinge about the bad things. The good stuff is that my T&Cs are pretty good (some might argue better than my current ones), the pension scheme is fantastic (sorry, public sector workers) and their business plan seems sensible on the face of it albeit that I have not seen any details.

Going back to Nazi newsagents, I bought a pack of tabs there the other day. It was labeled \"Limited Edition\". How can you have a limited edition pack of certain death? Maybe it's a shorter and less painful death. As far as I can establish the only difference between regular Silk Cut Silver and the limited edition version is the pack is different. Rather than having a flat perpendicular opening, these have an angled opening. It's kind of like a go-faster stripe but in its physical design. BAT are masters at marketing to idiots. I should know; I am one who fell for it over half a life-time ago.

Finally, Mater and Pater are in Llandudno for the week. I am insanely jealous. I was going to arrange to go down there next Friday with Kat but my account has been scammed to the tune of a number that makes me want to execute most of the Southeast of England. I have been in touch with the perps (a company) and told them that I know Offwatch's number since they had no right to withdraw anything and no signature. Their response has been lame. \"Five working days\". Funny how they managed to debit my card within seconds. When everyone is feeling a big pinch, companies like that need winding up big time, no matter how many people they employ.

Here endeth the diatribe for a couple of days.