People will probably have started wondering what's going on with me. I mean, I've written all these blog entries in such a short time and stuff. How is this possible? Rich is notoriously slow & crap at updating his website! Well, the fact is, I've been off work with a nasty bout of 'flu for the last few days.

It came to a head - annoyingly - just as I was about to set off down the motorway to Austria with Michaela & the boys. Why is it I always get ill at the most inappropriate moments? But it had been incubating since Mardi Gras to be honest.

Oh Michael! I'm telling you the plot! Instead, I'm going to write this blog in the best PAHSSIBLE taste:

Let's start with a chunk of sad news: after a year and a half here in Munich, Phil is finally heading back to Coventry. Chances are he'll be back in Germany by the autumn, what with E.On bringing all their European energy trading operations together in Düsseldorf over the summer, but his time in Bavaria is most definitely at an end.

To celebrate/commiserate this milestone, Lorna & I joined Phil in the French crêpe & fondue restaurant opposite his flat in Schwabing for a slap-up meal one evening. And we had the added pleasure of divvying up the stuff he couldn't be bothered bringing back to England with him (for example, Lorna got his leather beanbag, and I got a wireless pair of headphones - yay).

But it's not all sad: I'm going to see Phil again soon enough, when I head over to England for Selena's wedding party next week. Hooray! And I'll be catching up with some other Powergen chums while I'm over too. But I'm getting ahead of myself again...

Right, let's take it back to the start of February. Michaela & I went to the cinema right after work on Friday. I don't remember ever having been to the cinema just the two of us. It was really nice! The film was aMAZing - The Darjeeling Express - I can't recommend it highly enough. An intelligent, witty, interesting, clever, funny film, excellently played by a quality cast. And then, after the film, we went for a drink. Again just the two of us. It made a lovely change to be out with Michaela and without the boys. I love them, but of course it's all about them when you're out with kids.

The following day I did something I tend not to do: I went shopping, even though I didn't actually need to buy anything. Christian drove us out to the Riem Arcaden, which is the huge shopping mall that stands on the site of the old Munich airport, alongside the new conference centre where the EPO ball was before Christmas. I actually managed not to buy anything either, which was good. Instead, I had a slap-up lunch in the Akakiko running sushi bar. It was yum!

And then, before I knew it, it was Mardi Gras, or Faschingsdienstag as it's known in these parts. We had the afternoon off from work and I walked into town at lunchtime with Bénédicte. We were hoping to sample the carnival atmosphere on the Viktualienmarkt, but were horrified to discover the whole area off-limits, with a police cordon right around the centre of town!

Miffed, we went for a slap-up lunch at Prinz Myshkin, the veggie place that I'm sure I've raved about before. And then we ended up running into a bunch of my mates on one of the roads leading from the Viktualienmarkt back towards Gärtnerplatz. And we ended up hanging out there, drinking beer and chatting, for the rest of the afternoon. Luckily the weather was fine and not too cold: perfect beer-supping, outdoor-chatting weather. Around nine o'clock a bunch of us went for a bite to eat at the Fraunhofer, and then we went our various ways home, decidedly tipsy.

It was a full-on week of eating actually. The next evening Christian cooked up an Allgäuer storm: a veritable mountain of käsespätzle was demolished by a hungry hoard of his friends, including the regular Kloster girls, Toby & Peter, and Bénédicte. It was DELICIOUS!! And so were the many, many drinks afterwards - well, the meal was pretty greasy with all that cheese, so we were obliged to drink all those schnapses!

And then on Thursday I went for another monster munch at Mongo's, the Mongolian wok bar, with my (ex-)work mates Christine, Christina and Susi. It was actually hard work chomping my way through all those bowls of meat, but I manfully did my best. And the after-dinner drinkies with Susi at Café Cord aided my digestion no end.

And thence to Austria, where I succumbed to the combination of good living and evil germs and succeeded in spending most of the time that I should have been chatting with relatives instead couped up in bed with the 'flu. I managed to drive down there on Friday night and back on Sunday afternoon, but I have to admit all I wanted was to be in bed at home feeling sorry for myself. I just couldn't do Aunty Martha's huge country cuisine justice in the state I was in.

I wasn't feeling any better on Monday - indeed, I was feeling worse becausee my lump on my arse had gone all hot & swollen. I headed to the surgeon to find out whether I would need to be hospitalised again. Thankfully, it wasn't quite as serious as that. But I learned that there is a mucous membrane surrounding the swelling in my buttock, and that - like the mucous membrane in your nose - when you have a 'flu, it produces a lot of excess fluid. Only unlike my nose, my arse doesn't have nostrils to expel the snot. So instead I got a huge, swollen butt cheek. Hooray.

The doctor sent me away and said I should come back to have the fluid removed when my 'flu was gone. My GP packed me off home and said I should stay there all week, but foolishly I said "no, no, I must go back to work on Thursday". I needed those three days off though! I really felt like shite. And this 'flu sapped my energy like no other. But I used the unexpected weekday daytime free time to pop over to the Indian Consulate on the third, least ill day, to apply for (in the morning) and pick up (in the afternoon) a visa in preparation for my trip to visit Gareth in Bombay over Easter.

And that's where I'll leave this thrilling instalment in my life's story. To be honest, my fingers are tired from all this high-speed (no, really!) typing. Tarah for now, my lovelies!