Of postmodernism, Marie, fish fingers, sperm, a royal cow, Bolan and blasphemy

RIP Sir Terry Farrell, architect of two of my fave postmodern buildings on the Thames - the MI6 Building and Charing Cross Station (Embankment House)

More snippets today, dear reader:

• Unbridled luxury news: Hot on the (bejewelled) heels of - and overlapping with - the breathtaking Cartier exhibition we went to see in August, the newest showcase at the magnificent Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) is Marie Antoinette Style, an exploration of the life and luxurious lifestyle of one of the most notorious (and certainly most famous, even if only for her fate) Queens that France ever had. We're making plans for our visit as we speak...
• Favourite food of children everywhere news: Happy 70th birthday to the humble BirdsEye [other brands are available] Fish Finger! I doubt there's a freezer anywhere up and down the country that doesn't have a box of these in it...
• Frankenstein science news: Scientists in the USA have made embryos from human skin DNA and sperm. If that's all it took, I'm surprised my face didn't get pregnant - many times - when I was younger😋!
• Never appear with children or animals news: King Charles III looked on as a prize cow trampled his hedges and peed on the path at a reception at Clarence House.

• Glam icon "returns from the dead" news: On what would have been his 78th birthday, not only has a blue plaque been unveiled at Marc Bolan's former home in Maida Vale in London, but also a new, previously unheard T.Rex track from fifty years ago has been released! - hear I'm Dazed on YouTube.
• And finally: Happy Blasphemy Day! I'll leave the last word on that to the magnificently erudite and much-missed Mr Christopher Hitchens, one of my idols:

  “I am not even an atheist so much as an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches and the effect of religious belief is positively harmful. Reviewing the false claims of religion I do not wish, as some sentimental materialists affect to wish, that they were true. I do not envy believers their faith. I am relieved to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faithful affirmed was actually true... There may be people who wish to live their lives under cradle-to-grave divine supervision, a permanent surveillance and monitoring. But I cannot imagine anything more horrible or grotesque.”

And the weather? Warm and sunny for a change! Love it.

Pick a number, get in line, and kiss my ass

“God did not create man in his own image. Evidently, it was quite the other way about, which is the painless explanation for the profusion of gods and religions, and the fratricide both between and among faiths, that we see all about us and that has so retarded the development of civilization.”

“Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing. The only worthwhile miracle in the New Testament - -the transmutation of water into wine during the wedding at Cana - is a tribute to the persistence of Hellenism in an otherwise austere Judaea. The same applies to the Seder at Passover, which is obviously modelled on the Platonic symposium: questions are asked (especially of the young) while wine is circulated. No better form of sodality has ever been devised: at Oxford one was positively expected to take wine during tutorials. The tongue must be untied. It's not a coincidence that Omar Khayyam, rebuking and ridiculing the stone-faced Iranian mullahs of his time, pointed to the value of the grape as a mockery of their joyless and sterile regime. Visiting today's Iran, I was delighted to find that citizens made a point of defying the clerical ban on booze, keeping it in their homes for visitors even if they didn't particularly take to it themselves, and bootlegging it with great brio and ingenuity. These small revolutions affirm the human.”

“I am not even an atheist so much as an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches and the effect of religious belief is positively harmful. Reviewing the false claims of religion I do not wish, as some sentimental materialists affect to wish, that they were true. I do not envy believers their faith. I am relieved to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faithful affirmed was actually true... There may be people who wish to live their lives under cradle-to-grave divine supervision, a permanent surveillance and monitoring. But I cannot imagine anything more horrible or grotesque.”

“My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line, and kiss my ass.”

The late, great Christopher Hitchens would have been 70 years old yesterday. His wisdom will outlive us all.

Here's an appropriate song:

Cab Calloway - It Ain't Necessarily So

Read my previous tribute to this most influential of men.

Never be a spectator

"I burned the candle at both ends and it often gave a lovely light."



"The one unforgivable sin is to be boring."

RIP the intellectual genius that was Christopher Hitchens, polemicist, atheist and iconoclast. A hero of mine.

Obituary in The Guardian

"Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you."

"Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did...To terrify children with the image of Hell, to consider women an inferior creation - is that good for the world?"

More of the wonderful wit and wisdom of Mr Hitchens