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

Whoops! It's the 30th already and the last day of NaJoPoMo.

The weather is beautiful today - mild and sunny. No November fog, although we did have a little rain last night. About time too, the Rhine is so low now!

So what were my 30 journals about?

The first 14 I summarised on the 15th (cheating a bit that day!)

1: On turning 23 - son's birthday
2: My father - would have been his birthday
3: My father part II - with promise of more, which I haven't done yet.
4: Trip round Speyer on foot - Part I.
5: Review of a concert which I went to that day.
6: Mumbles about using my new laptop and what my husband was doing that morning.
7: Trip round Speyer - Part II. A bit of explanation over a
8: On modern values
9: Opening of the new Synagogue in Speyer
10: reading "Snuff" - no time for a long journal!
11: What the 11th November means across Europe
12: Whoops - missed this. No excuses.
13: Remembrance Sunday on both sides of the Channel
14: Organisation and me.


Since then it's been:

15: Journals to date - a summary
16: Boring stuff because I was frustrated I had lost the wireless connection on my new laptop.
17: Son on the TV
18: Saw "When the rain stops falling" - comments on the play.
19: Busy day, short journal, house full of people.
20: Lovely weather, family partly gone.
21: My birthday. How much food occupies our time and thoughts. Why do we have to eat?
22: Brought Gulaschsuppe to work for a birthday treat for my colleagues.
23: Poem about the things my mobile phone gets up to. It has since changed its own display picture without my doing.
24: My mother's birthday. Cheated on this one and wrote it a couple of hours too late.
25: How the project is going.
26: Trip round Speyer - Part III. I'll have to write an entry to show you the rest, I think.
27: Son No 2's birthday. Concert Saint-Saens Christmas Oratorio.
28: Keeping in touch with people. Sometimes you have to drop everything and just do it.
29: Theatre tonight "Die Räuber". German literature is something I somehow have avoided over the years, not having ever learnt it at school or anywhere else.

30: Today's journal ... I think I'll tell you about the play.

It was very long. The story is not at all relevant to today, although they tried very hard. It was revolutionary in its time as it was written in prose, and broke with all the Aristotelean rules of drama (according to wikipedia) . The premiere was held in Mannheim and lots of people walked out on the first night. It is about honour and love and is best suited to opera (In fact, operas have been written based on this story). In the town's function hall where these plays are shown, the acoustics are very bad, and even the German native speakers could not understand it all. But they're probably more familiar with it. Anyway, it was educative, even though it's hard to concentrate for 3 hours on the heavy prose on a week night.

I would recount the story but it's so improbable and unidentifiable with, I really can't be bothered. Nevertheless, well done to the town's cultural committee for bringing it to us.

Do you think it will be interesting in a year or so to re read your journals? I think it will. Maybe next year, if we do this again, I shall take part. I was just too busy with things this year to commit myself.

I've really enjoyed the whole thing, and congratulate everyone!

Congratulations from me too.

I'm proud not to have unsubscribed from anyone's journal, and to have read most journals (and skim-read the others).

What is it about opera? It made sense in the late 1500s when it was mostly about Orpheus, but decreasingly ever since. In particular I don't get Wagner; having read a few of his librettos while listening, I wonder how people can take it seriously at all. Flying Dutchman is OK but Parsifal . . . yet people are captivated by the dramatisation of what can only be called blatantly rubbish psychology.

I think it's *because* it's opera. Ideas that are blatant claptrap when you read them in print can be frighteningly credible if you put them to the right tune.

I guess that is what tunes are for. So many songs consist of 'come to bed with me now, I won't betray you, honest!'. Most loving mere folly, as the Bard said