Christopher Hitchens is dead

Christopher Hitchens is dead He was 62 and died perhaps a little sooner than expected after a public and seemingly stout defiance of oesophegal cancer.

He will be missed, though his ideas and his trenchant prose will live on in his writings, many of the best of which have been collected in "Arguably", a book I dip into often. 

Twin Towers 10 years on

Lest we forget.

Local ritual

Annual hard rubbish collection tomorrow in my neighbourhood, which means today (1) putting unwanted items on street outside house (2) waiting for the roaming recyclers/ scavengers/ gleaners/ totters to remove whatever they think they might be able to use. Stage (3) is tomorrow, or the day after, when the council (or their contractors) will remove what is left (IMO about half of what was originally put out).