The deaths that
shock are those that come
out of the blue. Someone who's always been with you, who's
contributed so much to your life, even if you hadn't realised quite how much. I've loved his books for as long as I can remember, and everything else I'd seen spun off from them, but I would not have said he's my favourite author, because they were in the background, part of our common stock of reference... just
there.
And now he's not. I knew there was a man behind Marvin and Zaphod and "I think you should know I'm terribly depressed" and thank you the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, so many things we say from day to day, knowing that everyone else understands all of them, but they're so familiar and established were not being geeky or cliquey. I knew someone very clever had to work them out, and before him there were none. But they were part of the language. Eternal.
It's a sunny, hot, cloudless day outside and I was supposed to be spending it on the grass enjoying myself and not worrying about anything till Monday. I briefly checked in here. Now as more people join in, and everyone (it's not a minority taste), everyone hears and gets upset...
And of course I cry again when someone else does.
In one of the Dirk Gently books they go back in time and change history. One of the things that gets changed is that the music of the spheres is transmitted to a previously obscure composer called J.S. Bach, and in the new history, the one we know, it becomes the Suites for Unaccompanied Cello.
That's the requiem I've got on now as I type and weep and wish I could go out into the sunshine.