Prince Albert and the Gherkin

I am feeling a little Prince Albert this morning - dead but gilded. Last night's orgy of forgotten names was held in the tip of The Gherkin. I spent my time pretending to be Dr Eldon Tyrell in Blade Runner - a chess board in mid-game, the sinister, illuminated city at my feet and a dying replicant in the lift, about to kill me by sticking his thumbs in my eyes. Cinema can be such a consolation. I don't know what to feel about the building. Brilliantly, ingeniously done, it thrills but coldly. Everything was hard and shone and there was no colour. It felt too good for humans. Everybody talked about it, but not in recognition. The glass of the tip provided an eerie reflection of the party crowds below. I imagined the place empty and just the memory of a party preserved as an image in the glass. We seem to be building as yet incomprehensible monuments to our transhuman future. Albert would have done something uglier but more amiable.