Sallieri killed him, dontcha know...

Today is Mozzie Mozzie Mozart's 250th Birthday! I do like my Mozzie - my dad had a couple of cassettes of Mozart arias and the Requiem mass that he gave me, and I used to listen to them all the time. My A Level music teacher used to scoff at Mozzie - he always said it was the Classical equivalent of lift music, but I think that's really over simplifying it. His music is kind-of clockwork, but you feel emotionally attached to it anyway - like a grandmother's music box. His Requiem Mass is the best. It's so dark and angry. It's like all his life he's been writing happy, fluffy music and, right at the end of it, as he's dying in poverty at such a tender age, he just lets the bile flow at last. It such a shame he never got to finish it... or maybe that's what makes it even more beautiful.

So, I'm sitting here listening to Classic FM... lots of Mozart, but my God, it's a twee radio station. If it were just the music I'd happily listen all day, but the presenters and even the adverts are like fingernails being scratched down a blackboard to me.

I've also been watching a couple of thrushes have a fight. It's great! They keep facing off, all flattened down like angry cats, then they jump at each other and start pecking one anothers' heads.

Curse you, Weather!

The snow falls fat now.
I watch the red peaks and troughs
Fade to a flat line.

Shit.
It's snowing. It's really, really snowing. It snowed this time last year, and the year before that. My whole memory of dad's death is covered in snow - trying to find the hospital at one in the morning in the snow, they way it smelled, always having freezing, wet feet, the flakes on my glasses that I had to wear because I was crying so much I couldn't wear contacts. The fact that nobody could get anywhere in the hurry that we wanted to be in, looking out of the window just before he died and noticing that it had started snowing heavily again (hence the haiku), the coldness of it all, the way it made everything strange, like the grief had made us strange.

It doesn't look like it's sticking, so I should be OK getting home. But I really want it to stop.