My Religious Experiences:

I don't believe in a god, but I have had religious beliefs and experiences in the past.

These beliefs were nothing to do with the few church visits I ever undertook in my youth. The only one I can actually remember is something to do with sticking a candle in an orange, and as powerful as that image was, it was never going to be able to sell the idea of an all pervasive creator. When I asked them, my parents let me know that they didn't really believe a dusty white Jesus was the son of God, and would have probably been pretty annoyed to know I was smacked round the head by the Halloween-banning harridan Mrs Blunston at first school, for not praying in assembly.

However, instead of being lured into one of the great traditional monotheism's, I somehow subconsciously created my own set of religious observances. Its tricky to quite remember why I started them, but I imagine that the natural stress and change that happens when you go to secondary school was probably the reason. It started out quite small, in the not particularly original (I'm told) manner of flicking the light switch on and off several times before going to bed. Starting with a few switches back and forth, after a certain amount of time this routine had built up to incorporate a rhythm and length that resembled Morse code, and then later, a particularly sparse drum and bass anthem. Sadly, I think I also unwittingly created the first follower of my religion, as I later sometimes heard my sister in the other room banging out a good break beat instrumental.

I think this rigmarole was down to a belief that it could help make the next day a 'good day'. I guess its similar to the observances of some professional footballers, with their lucky boots, or the way some touch the club crest as they run down the tunnel etc. Soon though, I moved away from the light switch and began following other faiths.

One year I bought a NBA basketball season preview magazine, a big compendium of all the teams in the League with masses of stats and facts. I think the day after buying it I must have had an amazing, supremely successful day, because I began a habit of needing to read it every day, in order to guarantee that I would keep having similar 'good days'. Luckily it was big enough that reading a page a day could last me quite a while. I think I gleefully bought the next seasons edition as some kind of 'New Testament', giddy with the life improvement this hallowed tome would bring me. To think of the advantages I would now have if something more useful than the Philadelphia 76'ers 1996-97 starting line-up was seared into my brain is slightly depressing.

A slightly more common set of 'good day' rituals were those that took place within the shower. For while most people have a routine (shampoo, conditioner, soap etc) I had several more possibly strange ones. For a good part of my early teenage life I was under the belief that washing your feet with your hands was a big no-no, reminiscent of Muslims not eating swine because its a dirty animal. This particular foible somehow outlasted my bizarre religious mindset, and it was only relatively recently that I began to question why I was still squirting shower gel onto my feet and doing some kind of strange shuffly dance move.

The point of this whole post is not just a glimpse into my hideously idiotic mind. Its not an attempt to sneeringly equate my previous weird peculiarities with the similarly weird, and often even more mindbendingly stupid practices of religions which go overlooked because 'they've been around for hundreds of years maaan, loads of people do them, and, like, you need to respect that yeah'. No. My reasons are that I have decided that I missed my calling in life. I was really on to something before, but my youthful innocence didn't capitalise on what I had found.

While I wont go into the full details of the 'Good Day' Book, I will say that everyone better start shuffling round their shower, and reading up on the Utah Jazz's rebounds per game count pretty quick, or they're going to be sent very sharply to the big light switch in the sky.