I’m burning all his ‘writings’: diaries, journals, notebooks, letters, short stories, plays, unfinished novels, loose sheets of paper filled with his scrawly handwriting – the lot. A big bonfire in the garden. A conflagration. And I shall dance around the flames, naked.

Or, I will do when it stops raining. It has been the wettest July on record. People flooded out of their homes. Furniture floating down the street. What a mess.
Of course, they’re blaming global warming. Global warming my arse! It’s a design fault. I mean, what can you expect when you create a world in seven days? You’ve got to cut corners. I bet that was the real story behind old Noah and the flood: inadequate drainage provision!

Six bin-bags of his stuff, I’ve got. Here in the kitchen. Waiting for the water level to go down in the garden. I don’t read it. Just shovel it into the bags. Well, I tell a lie – I do read the odd (‘odd’ being the operative word – no wonder he’s locked up) bit that catches my eye.

I found this written in longhand, on a sheet of A4:

Behaviour is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ only in relation to a desired outcome. For example: applying the front brake to my motorcycle, when banked over, cornering at speed, is only ‘wrong’ if my desired outcome is to stay on the bike. If I want to fall off it is the ‘right’ thing to do.

Most people can see this easily enough but when it comes to morals, religion, ethics the issue becomes cloudy. But it is only cloudy to those who refuse to think.

A desired outcome may be the adherence to a set of rules we choose to call ‘morals’ or to a code of practice called ‘religion’. ‘Morality’ usually means the set of rules the majority choose to adhere to (or rather to profess to adhere to). Religions (the many and various – and often conflicting) are just systems of rules with the added benefit (?)of a supernatural dimension: the backing of a higher authority, usually called ‘God’.

So on what basis can we work out a system of rules that will help us to be happier, more fulfilled, more able to live in peace and harmony? The key phrase here is ‘work out’ – not the uncritical acceptance of ‘the word of God’ as interpreted by a Moses or a Mohammed or their priests down the years.

If we accept the theory of evolution then surely we should strive for behaviour that favours the continuance of this process. This means having the courage to cut loose from supernatural saviours. A good motto might be ‘Don’t blame God, he wasn’t there’
Accept that reason is a better bet that faith. That science is a better way of finding out about the world than reading ‘holy books’ - science, as John Diamond says in this book ‘Snake Oil’ being about ‘…trying things out to see what happens, and discovering that those things which happen over and over again are true’.

I happen to think this is a good way to live. And that such a practice is more likely to lead to tolerance, cooperation and harmony in the world than blindly following some faith or dogma merely because it has been handed down over the centuries.

You hear people prating on about the ‘fact’ that the world is in such a state because we have ‘strayed from the path’, discarded religion, rejected the teachings of Go. Well if this religion (pick your own variety) was so good, why would we want to discard it? Religion has had a few thousand years to sort things out – it clearly hasn’t done so. It’s time to try something else.
What a load of pernicious bullshit.

I mean, we all know right from wrong, don’t we? It is something we learn at our mother’s breast. Well, in my case bottle. Mother did not believe in breast- feeding. Said it would ruin her figure. She was in the chorus line: The Bluebell Girls.
I’m not saying I had an unhappy childhood: disturbing is a more accurate description. My adolescence was worse. That was why I married George at such a young age (me, not him) to get away from it all.

Little did I know…