THE POWER OF THE IDEA

What a glorious twenty-four hours it's been. And not just because the weather has finally seemed to break from the relentlessly bleak grey spell endured here in recent weeks.

Firstly, last night. While I'm loath to give the BBC credit for absolutely anything, a despicable organisation if ever there was, I have been lapping up its 6-part documentary The Story Of India like a dehydrated canine; why the hell we didn't get this kind of stuff in school history lessons is beyond me because you can't help but be enthralled, inspired, and have your imagination captured.

Then there was a nice Sunday lunch.

Finally, the afternoon culminated in a couple of hours spent in the sunshine reading and listening to Imagination (therein lies another tale) by Bruntsfield Links, a beautiful bit of city parkland for such sedentary activities. And it was just as I was about to leave that an impeccably besuited elderly gentleman, with a rather dashing younger guy in tow carrying a large bag, approached proffering a flyer. He was inviting all the sunbathers in turn to visit his nearby Evangelical church, and his companion offered me a bottle of mineral water which was a neat and potent metaphor for the flyer's message of thirst for spiritual guidance. As a psycholinguistics connoisseur, I was most impressed with the minister's persuasive design of his language (and believe me, I'm not at all easily impressed).

Anyway, in more shameless times gone by, like a Venus fly trap, I might have attempted to lure these Christian would-be prosletysers into questioning their own belief systems, however since I am no longer an atheist, considered that option churlish and so graciously accepted their gift.