Walking round London you get used to being approached by all sorts of individuals. There’s the charity dudes, clip-board in hand, ready to sign you up to pay a tenner a month to Oxfam, at least 9 quid of which will pay the charity dude and the company who hired him out, leaving just a pound a month to save all the children in Darfur. Then there’s beggars of various types and colours and of course there’s the police. Not many, granted, and they only approach me if my nob is hanging out. Fortunately, they can’t get me for ‘historical crimes’ when I’m walking down the Strand.

Yesterday I was walking past Temple Station when a young guy with a big smile approached me. My first thought was ‘rent boy’. And he was pretty. But he was very clean and smart and he just said: “excuse me, Sir, would you like to come to church this Sunday?” Because I was in a big hurry to get home so we could attend a 60th birthday dinner, I just said ‘FUCK OFF!!’ Actually I just thanked him, and politely refused, without breaking my stride.

Which is unusual. Not the approach. But me letting him go. Because I love a Christian. They are such wonderfully ‘good people’. I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to say: “oyyyyy, have you got the wrong atheist!”, but who had the time.

We get Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking on the door. I always spend ten minutes trying to convert THEM away from Jesus. I apply logic. Really annoying logic because that is something you don’t find in religion. So when a JW asked me “how do you think we could achieve peace on Earth?” (They love a ‘big question’), I replied that we need to ban all forms of organised religion, as they’re the cause of about 95% of the world’s problems. He then tried to quote me from Corinthians 19, or the book of Luke, saying that “when Jesus passed to Mark at the far post, thus dids’t Habeus Corpus…”. He showed me the passage in his bible. So I showed him a line in a Stephen King book I had nearby. Well why not? Thus I then insisted that we could continue the conversation but without the bible. Because I question its factual provenance. And we battle to convert each other. Apparently Jesus died to save me. Who knew? And from what???

I love a Christian. But in a very ‘Book of Mormon’ kind’a way.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx