Okay, I've ordered the bug vacuum wand thing. Now I'll panic about not being able to get the bugs outside quick enough before they crawl or fly up the tube to get me.

It's been too hot today. Far too hot. The temperature in my yard hit 100F today. That's just wrong. I get like a little dog shut in a car in this weather, and I've hardly set foot outside since Wednesday evening. We're due a thunderstorm. I hope it comes soon.

It's been really hot in Essex these last few days, and I've been going to bed late, the nights have been insufferably hot. So last night, or to be more precise, early this morning, around 1.30am, I'm lying on the bed, reading, and I looked up to see this thing on my ceiling. I swear to God, it looked about a foot long!

I didn't want to splatter it on the ceiling (even if I could've reached it), so I abandoned the bedroom for a while. A long while. At about 4.30am I heard my upstairs neighbour go out, and that was my cue to get the Dyson and suck the thing off the ceiling. The Dyson cylinder was empty, so I got a good look at the bug before I chucked it out (alive, just a bit dizzy). It was an oak bush cricket, apparently. General concensus amongst my online friends I'd been chatting to through the night was that the bug was a cricket, but it looked too damn big. In the Dyson, it was a tiny, wee little thing.

If only I'd had one of these. That has so got to be worth a tenner. I need to get one. (Yes I will do it now!)

My friend Bob died recently of a brain tumour - a long, painful horrible struggle that you wouldn't put an animal through.

His funeral was this afternoon, a gloriously sunny day that Bob would've loved. It was a simple service - the eulogy was given by Bob's ex-lover Edouard (that's how Edouard described them, so I won't use the word 'partner') and was, as these things always are, very moving. Lovely music - Barbra Streisand (a big show tune I didn't know from 'Yentl') and "He Was A Friend Of Mine" by Willie Nelson.

At one point, the minister said that he liked to think that heaven will be full of the things Bob loved best. An old friend, Steve, sitting next to me caught my eye and I whispered to him "are you thinking what I'm thinking?" "Cock and vodka?" "Yep". *smile*

I'll miss ya, mate. R.I.P. Bob.

I am trying so hard for this not to be a bad day.

Most people in London will remember 7 July for the bombings. But last 7 July I was in Ohio, with George, for what neither of us knew would be our last day together.

I am still so sad, so lonely and I'm really, really trying to move on, as I know I must, but it's hard for me.

On Saturday I met a man whose wife died around the same time as George (November), and he and his new girlfriend are buying a house together after knowing each other for just a few months. But his wife had had a long illness, so there was time for him to adjust, he knew she was going to die and had made some emotional preparation for it. George was just gone.

I will always, always, always be so glad and grateful that the last words I ever spoke to him, face to face, were "I love you".

I have things to do today that'll take me out of the house, practical stuff like get my car to the mechanic and then a long journey home on the bus, so I'll be around people and busy. That's the key, keep busy, busy, busy, busy, try not to go anywhere near the edges of this huge void in my soul in case I fall in.

I still can't get back with God over this, can't pray, can't see this as 'God's will'. Maybe someday I'll get to that point, but not now, not yet.