All is green.....

Ah St Patrick's Day. An excuse, worldwide, for people to get blindingly drunk and practice their 'top o' the mornins' until a real Irish person gives them a good hammering. It's strange to be away from Ireland for it, but I am surrounded by Irish people who were brave enough to try and explain what a 'shamrock' was to their students yesterday. I also attempted to tell my smarter classes what sort of holiday it was, and how much meaning it carried, but I lost them at 'well, the actual parade is really only for the underage....'

Our St P's celebrations are going to be in a hotel on Saturday night and there will apparently be in the region of 500 Irish people there, and a free bar. With Guinness. The black stuff is horrendous here, I have been reliably informed, but I'm sure there shall be many pints residing in the shaky hands of plastered Corkmen, and just as many on the floor, giving that familiar just-been-superglued feeling. I wait with great anticipation.

I read recently about an opera that is being produced in Russia, Rosenthal's Children, that follows the half-lives of composers cloned by a Jewish German scientist during the rise of fascism. He dies, Edward Scissorhands-like, and leaves these emotionally stunted creatures - Verdi, Mussorgsky, Wagner, Mozart and Tchaikovsky - to fend for themselves. It made me think - if I was a lonely old scientist with no funding but lots of bile and creativity, who would I resurrect? Would I bring back great minds? Great musicians? People whose lives had been unfairly taken away through genocide, murder, suicide, misery? It also makes you wonder if people would try to recreate the DNA of Jesus Christ himself. It would be wholly unsurprising, if over-ambitious scientists tried to remove samples from the Turin shroud for the benefit of saving mankind from itself, or to prove that he was a phony, a fraudulent prophet.

If anyone wants to come to the Bolshoi with me, I would be a very happy bunny...