h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Oh how awful. It's freezing cold, and my nose is dripping - indoors. I cannot bear to go out in this freezing weather, and it's really unpleasant. I've got the gas fire on in here. Nonetheless I am freezing and feeling miserable, because I haven't eaten properly for a while. For quite a while, actually. I've got a tin of meatballs. I was in the shop shopping the other day and I noticed a knackered old woman shopping, and she took also a tin of meatballs off the shelf. Homa mia, I'm eating like an old person! Of my Lord, that's dreadful. And he's got real heavy on my ass about giving up drugs AND FAGS! And there's me, all alone, having no life, and eating like an old person, and at 46, I haven't had a **** for - well, that depends on whom you ask, or believe; but I'm basically done with life, at 46, eating like an old person, and my nose is dripping.

Dreadful.

Were things different, Dr M. and her daughter would make me a fantastic menage a trois, old school.

Here is the third movement of a 3-movement piece for flute and piano. I've been wanting to write it for ages, and here it is. This is "Hymn", and it's marked Lento religioso.

http://rjhillier.net/leiwater/honeybadger.mp3

This is "Macabre Dance" and is marked Allegretto malinconico. It's based on a piano piece I wrote very many years ago.

http://rjhillier.net/leiwater/Macabre_Dance.mp3

Now for the first movement. Has to be beautiful, sinuous, sensual, seductive, and dangerous - like its dedicatee.

The piece is called Tenebrae. Shadows. Flute and piano, three movements. It happened just yesterday. Well I made a sketch the day before yesterday and last night I wrote the 3rd movement, today the 2nd, now the 1st.

1.

2. Macabre Dance. Allegretto malinconico

3. Hymn. Lento religioso.

Oh, the finale is here (link above don't work):

http://rjhillier.net/leiwater/Hymn.mp3

Oh dear, winter in Jerusalem sound much the same as cape Town, 6-12 degrees, although the killer about Cape Town is the damp, it's so terribly, terribly damp here, which makes the cold weather just unbearable. The winter in Cape Town goes on and on, and it's like we've just started ours, although this year, I'm going to Israel and it's going to be sunny, and hot, like Cape Town summer, like 19-29 degrees or something, just like Cape Town. But the winter must be dry.

Madrid - but that's like freezing with snow in winter.

I need to avoid all forms of temperature below about 12 degrees centrigrade, or even more.

That's the basic nub of the situation.

I need to avoid all cold weather. It depresses me terribly.

I am just about managing to remain without sadness and cheerlessness in the cream of the cold winter night. I think Lutoslawski's 4th Symphony is my favourite piece of music. I also think the Poles can be worse than the N Germans for pedantic pretension. But when they are genuine and their individuation successful, they are the finest and most refined of men. As to the women, I dare not even think thereon.

Just as the third movement of Tenebrae was kind of experimental, so the first movement will be also. I hit upon the right notes this evening in my sketchbook. It's about texture, the picturing of Honeybadger is in the textures not any conventional melodic line.