2001-10-09 - 3:05 p.m.

�For all of these simple things and much more a flower was born. It blooms to spread love and joy faith and hope to people forlorn�

�How are you, Jesus?� Now, I�ve got nothing against being accosted by deranged old nuns, but it just seemed a funny way to be addressed in a bank queue, though granted I haven�t shaved in a few days. I decided to avoid any potential living saviour identity confusion by playing it safe and I told her I was well, and just had a small deposit to make, which seemed to be a satisfactorily Nazarene transaction for her. She was one ahead of me, and now at the front of the queue. �Jesus is risen! Christ the all-powerful, all-conquering Lord!�, she began to shout, her pink Nike backpack almost falling off her shoulders as she waved her arms about to emphasise her faith. I was a little embarrassed, though an introduction like that might at least prompt the clerks to treat me with basic courtesy instead of the usual barely-hidden indifference to the state of my finances. My burgeoning Messianic complex was soon quashed, though, as she approached the female teller with a cheery �How are you, Jesus?� And just when I thought I was special. I mean, I know she was clinically insane, but still.

My morning of queuing madness continued in the Post Office as a grumpy old blind guy WHO I HELPED through the maze-like barriers started to be suspiciously accurate with his stick, obviously taking out some pent-up aggression as I picked up his dropped stamps by poking me TWICE in the leg, even though I was doing it noisily to appeal to his supposedly sensitive hearing abilities.

It reminded me of this story, which readers of my old diary may remember:

As I got onto the tube, a man was accusing another man of not being blind. �You�re about as blind as I am,� he was saying. The accusatory gent had quite thick glasses, I noticed, so this maybe wasn�t the wisest of verbal ploys. It was difficult to see how the argument started � I mean, the (alleged) blind man was pretty convincing. He had the white stick and dark glasses, and wasn�t reading a newspaper or working on an intricate tapestry or anything. The only possibility seemed to be that the angry guy had caught him out somehow. Though that would seem a strange thing to do � testing the validity of strangers� disabilities. I can think of more fulfilling hobbies. It all got quite heated, the blind man protesting that he �hadn�t seen anything for 30 years�. I wondered if much worth seeing had happened since 1970. The angry man claimed that he�d �met his kind before�, implying that he had vast experience of people faking visual impairment for fun. Unfortunately I had to get off before any kind of resolution, though I was half tempted to miss my stop just to see how it turned out. It�s hard to see what satisfaction the angry man would have got from being right, but it would have been embarrassing for the blind man. The only way out would be to jump up and shout �God be praised it�s a miracle!�

"Inside every man lives the seed of a flower, If he looks within he finds beauty and power"

Everything�s Fine! A continuing feature showing how your freedom is being defended! Enduringly!

So let�s just get these statistics straight:

Big expensive bombs dropped: hundreds

Confirmed Taliban casualties: None

Confirmed UN peacekeeping bases destroyed: One

Confirmed UN peace workers killed: Four

Confirmed UN PEACE workers killed: Four

Confirmed UN PEACE workers KILLED: Four

�Sir, I�ve got a building here that seems to be filled with minesweeping equipment.� �Is it staffed by towelheads?� �Seems to be.� �Then vaporize the fucker!�

I�ll bet their families are just bursting with pride at how well the west are wiping out terrorism whilst avoiding civilian casualties. I know I am. I realise it�s a eye for an eye, but that doesn�t mean we actually have to systematically wipe out their public service personnel. Logically, George W should now declare war on himself.

�Ring all the bells sing and tell the people that be everywhere that the flower has come, Light up the sky with your prayers of gladness and rejoice for the darkness is gone�

Today�s hippie nonsense