Here are some thoughts.

1. I don't believe there was a body in the casket otherwise they would have had the lid open. The casket was brought from a cemetery to the theatre so I think he's already been buried.

2. His kids looked thoroughly bored by everything. No tears, no emotion, just boredom.

3. His daughter was put on stage to say a few, well rehearsed words. If you noticed, whilst one of the brothers was speaking, she was happily playing with the chain on her bag until aunt Janet told her to stop. Then she was put in front of the microphone. She squeezed her eyes shut in the hopes that a few fake tears would leak out. Where were his sons?

Now perhaps they can let the man rest in peace. 

It's been one drama after another at work since I got back to Germany and I'm caught in the middle of all of them. On the one hand is a boss who can be extremely nasty to the staff and on the other, said staff who are left wondering what the heck they did to deserve her scorn. Then there's me, who's started to refer to herself as Switzerland. I'll say one thing for this experience, it's taught me to be a diplomat and I didn't think that was possible. While in my free time I still say whatever thing comes into my head, at work I need to be delicacy itself and walk a fine line between keeping both employer and staff happy. Never a dull moment here although I wish there was.

The weather is appalling here. It's hard to believe it's almost summer when it's only about 15 degrees, windy, wet and miserable. It's not just Germany though, it's all over northern Europe. I miss sunny, warm Perth and Paris. Never thought I'd put those two cities in the same sentence. I'm obsessively checking the weather forecast everyday in the hopes it won't say 'rain'. How I've changed. I used to love this kind of weather but 11 months of it have turned me right off. I need some warmth in my bones!!!!! At least I can look forward to Friday which is 'warm water day' at the pool. I'm hoping the pool is open on Thursday too as we have a public holiday. We've had a lot of those recently all due to some religious day or other. I think that's the only positive thing I can say about religion, you get public holidays. This is the last one for awhile though. Business as usual next week.

I have a question for US readers. Why is it people refer to themselves as African American, Italian American etc? Why not just American? Surely if you´re born in America then you are American. We don´t use such terms in Australia, to my knowledge, at best people will say ´my family came from/comes from...´ I think the Brits are now getting into the British Asian / Black / two headed green thing from outer space stuff. Shame really. Either you´re from the country you´re born in or you´re not.

I´m still trying to get the Germans to relax their attitude to the pool. In the region where I live, the locals are ´famous´for their unthinking obedience to every rule imaginable. And then they seem to have added a few of their own. Here´s an example. There seems to be an unwritten rule amongst the swimmers that they must sit and chat until it´s quarter to the hour. Then they all get up, walk to the stairs which go up to the cash desk, line up at the foot of the stairs and stay there until it´s 2 minutes to the hour when they climb up. Not a second before do they do this. I, of course, ignore this. I simply walk in, say ´good moaning´ (fans of Állo Allo will understand this), then go up the stairs to a chorus of ´nein´. Today a new person came to the pool, someone who didn´t know the `rule`. She walked straight up to the cash desk and waited. I allowed the 2 people who were at the pool before me to go ahead of me in the queue (I can be polite if I want to be). The cashier opened her little window and there was a tense discussion between the newcomer and the old hand about who should put their money in first. The oldie insisted she had precedence because she was at the pool first, the newbie insisted it didn´t really matter but because she had waited at the cash desk while the older one sat downstairs, she should pay first. The oldie really complained about this to anyone who would listen. I just bit my lip trying not to laugh. What the newbie didn´t know was, before her arrival, the two oldies had been complaining about the youth of today. The usual gripes, no respect, no aptitute for learning, never amount to anything. Aristotle said the same things about the youth of his day.

Another interesting new character arrived today. Hands up who´s seen the Pam Anderson Tommy Lee tape? I´ve only seen the part where he uses his manhood to blow the horn on the boat. There was a guy today who was hung like Tommy Lee. And he was wearing Speedos. AND he emerged from the cold water pool - definitely no shrinkage factor, or if that was shrinkage, god knows what it would look like normally. Everyone, men and women, had their mouths hanging open. He was impressive, so say the least. Hope he comes again next week.