...that me and D did this weekend

1. I pulled down a laurel tree branch so he could retreive a leaf that he particularly fancied

2. I played 'Jingle Bells' in a raspberry stylee on his belly

3. He finally managed to make a farting noise with his hand under his arm

4. We relaxed on a tyre swing

5. We made pancakes for breakfast. I had jam on mine, he had sugar and squirty cream

6. We hammered little nails into a block of wood as part of a little do-it-yourself arty thingy.

7. We bought a Christmas prezzy for his mam

8. Gave him boxing practice against my upright hand (he hurts now )

9. Taught him to use Excel (he typed in all the numbers from 1 to 100, I didn't have the heart to show him the drag function just yet)

10. Sat on some doorway steps overlooking Diss marketplace eating chips

I've been putting off reading "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins because I knew what was in it, however I was recently loaned a copy by a friend and I am now dragging my feet through its 400+ pages.

As I thought, it is telling me nothing that I haven't known for many years. In fact I can barely remember a time when I didn't have reservations about the whole God thing. Even when I was 7 or 8 years old; when at school they gave us religous assemblies complete with hymns and prayers; with my mother being a Catholic believer, I can remember asking "who made God".

The "who made God" conundrum is one of the basic tenets of The God Delusion (and let's face it; it's a pretty good first line in an argument for an atheist, and a hefty 6 inch nail in the coffin for a bible basher) but it isn't exactly clever. The clever bit is that a bloke made a lot of money by stating the bleeding obvious.

Other obvious arguments Dawkins makes are:

1. There is no evidence that God is in any way 'good'. In fact, if starving children and suicide bombers weren't evidence enough, then just read some of the bits of the Bible (Old Testemant in particular) where he's a right savage bastard.

2. Darwinian evolution makes so much sense. Not to be confused with Darwinian insurance rip-offs which doesn't seem to make much sense at all.

3. Praying gets you nowhere. Except if you're a bit crafty: ie don't pray to God for a bike, instead pinch a bike first and then pray for forgiveness.

It's not that I disapprove of Richard Dawkins, far from it. His book, The Blind Watchmaker is a superb description of how evolution happens and is well worth reading even if you think you understand the mechanism. It's just that, well I'm not sure if spreading the message of atheism is all that great an idea.

Sure, if a few suicide bombers, or the lunatic creationists in the USA, or the mad Jews who think it's a good idea to set up a country on someone else's land so that we can all have a jolly good hate and perpetual wars against our neighbours, or the Shi'ites and Sunnis or the Catholics and Protestants....etc... IF they were to read this book, then it may suddenly dawn on them what twits they really are and they might stop causing so much suffering. But it aint going to happen. The thick gits are more likely to buy a 100 copies and burn them in the streets than actually read one.

So that leaves us athiest to read what to us has been pretty bloody obvious for many years. And that's my problem.

You see, being an athiest isn't easy. In fact it must be the worst thing in the world. Only us athiest know we're going to die. We have to live each day with the knowledge that our lives are just a flash of light in between two vast darknesses and hence, pointless. If you're an athiest you'll know what I mean. If you're agnostic, you'll have your doubts too. If you're religous then you'll be wanting to spout something like "let God into your life", to which I would say, "no thanks, I've heard enough about your religion to know that there's more sense in the Beano than in your holy book".

What I need from a book about atheism is something along the lines of "This whole God thing is a load of bollocks and we're all going to die, but its okay because......"

Of course I have no idea what comes next because from where I'm standing it all seems so very very depressing. On the plus side, I still have 200 pages left to read, maybe it will turn out to have a happy ending after all Keep yer chin up!

Yesterday, I manged to find a quiet moment with my wife and plucked up the courage to confess.

I admitted to her that I'd been doing it with other women. It was an uncomfortable moment but I was relieved that she acknowledged that we hadn't done it together for years, I'm away from home 5 nights a week and I need somehow to pass the long winter evenings.

No I know what you're thinking. Your thinking 'ah that Xylophone, he's a bugger, trying to make me think he's writing about sex when actually he's going to start going on about Scrabble or karaoke. Well dear reader, you're wrong. My wife and I have certainly had scrabble and karaoke together during 2007 and although we don't do it as often as we used to, both are still a special part of our relationship.

I'm actually talking about dancing. Salsa dancing in fact. I read an article years ago about different ways to cheer up depressed people and the main conclusion was that dancing - whatever type of dancing - usually worked. So, when I found out that someone I worked with was a salsa teacher, I resolved to give it a crack. So off I went on Thursday evening to a hall in Canterbury to join about 60-70 others of varying abilities and various numbers of left feet.

My previous experience of salsa was limited to the excellent album Adventures In Clubland by Modern Romance which was one of my favorites in the 1980s, but I had the vague idea that you listen to some rythmic music, move your booty and get a little jiggy with the ladies. My guess was approximately right, though the promise of a girl/boy ratio of 3 to 1 did turn out to be a bit of an exageration; it was more like 6:5 I'd say.

Still, it was a bit of fun and I'll probably go again next week despite the fact that it will mean me missing Scrabble club (great game Scrabble but the music's non existent and no one ever got jiggy with me doing that). Whether or not it becomes a serious hobby or not remains to be seen. I suppose it depends on whether I'm any good at it or not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Romance_%28band%29