Thanks for your replies everyone.
Okay, got it, one thread is enough, hopefully this is the most appropriate one area.
Well, who knows, perhaps I didn't delete it but whatever happened it's now totally nowhere to be found. Believe me I've checked and checked and it just ain't anywhere. Can't see it in iTunes either though all other apps are there.
So - if it's impossible to delete it's going to be somewhere but it's totally not visible.
Here's what happened. It all happened so fast and I had my mind on other things at the time. I think I had picked up the iPod and must have accidentally activated the jiggling cos I noticed all the apps were doing their little song and dance, I went to click the home key to stop them and on the way my finger must have accidentally hit the Settings and deleted it. I was in a hurry to get out the door and didn't notice it at the time but later when looking for an app on my first page I noticed it was in a different position and that there was a now a blank space at the bottom the page, whereas that page is usually 100% full of apps.
I have been able to back up a lot of things using Phone View, and am likely to wind up getting Pod to Mac (on sale right now) to save the major hassle of redoing all my music and playlists (since that app will be useful to me for future iPod upgrades as well).
I googled decrypting but it looks a little complicated and I'm not sure I can even do it with an unjailbroken ipod, so something like Pod to Mac seems simpler and I might lose a few files from some apps but looks like I can regain the iRealbook files (the new version no longer has them but they can still be found online), and whatever things I've done myself that I couldn't back up can be redone or aren't crucial, though a bit of a PIATA!
