There is a tradition by which a warrior is sent off from this world to the next via burning longboat - optional accessories include the heads of pawned nemeses, broken blades etc. This is of course impractical today as the major means of conveyance tends to be via flight, and a burning 747, while tending to the dramatic, simply muddles the causative link between death and funeral per se.

Thus it is with great pride that this blog sends off one of its most illustrious denizens - our resident Einstein, Ebert, and Morphling - on his flight to that new world of his. We will of course miss his much vaunted humility - to which we quote, from Viola "This fellow is wise enough to play the fool, And to do that well craves a kind of wit." And though Amigos Para Siempre would justly be used in this instance, what more fitting an elegy than the song of the Fool himself, who rounds off Twelfth Night thus -

When that I was and a little boy,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

A foolish thing was but a toy,

For the rain it raineth every day.


But when I came to man's estate,

With hey, ho, etc.

`Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,

For the rain, etc.


But when I came, alas, to wive,

With he, ho, etc.

By swaggering could I never thrive

For the rain, etc.


But when I came unto my beds,

With hey, ho etc.

With toss-pots still had drunken heads,

For the rain, etc.


A great while ago the world begun,

With hey, ho, etc.

But that's all one, our play is done,

And we'll strive to please you every day.

Godspeed.