For a long time mine was atheist, and proudly, vocally so. I adopted this position, I hasten to add, long before atheism became the fad it is now, in our post-God Delusion world. Indeed, via a convoluted path I’ve touched upon before, my assertions led rather ironically to me marrying in a church, into a family called Christian, to the daughter of a man who once trained to take up the cloth. So much for my lofty beliefs.

But atheism seems to me to have one unavoidable quality in common with traditional, organisation religion. Just as foxhunters and anti-hunt campaigners alike want to preserve the fox, so religion and atheism both demand faith. After all, a total lack of evidence for God’s existence doesn’t mean the alternative has to be a vacuum. There are other options.

So if that’s the case why do so many people reject religion? A simple cost benefit analysis suggests by far the most sensible position to adopt is one of believer. This is because if the tales of heaven and hell and a Christian God turn out to be true, and you adopt an atheist position, you’re off down to the firey place. But if you pledge your faith and the whole thing turns out to be a big, fat lie, well, what have you lost? Of course, if you believe and you turn out to be right, then you’ve struck gold – you can look forward to a life in eternal bliss. Viewed in this simplistic manor, atheism suddenly seems a futile, almost vindictive position adopted by those who dislike the people who peddle the traditional stuff, rather than a legitimate system of belief.

It’s for this reason I’m convinced most who claim to be atheists really aren’t – they are just victims of a fad that could well pass as quickly as it has taken hold.

Maybe I say this because I’m annoyed that everyone jumped on my bandwagon. Maybe with more people claiming atheism as their default position, it has lost its edge. Which ever way you look at it, however, being an atheist takes too much blind faith. Possibilianism is beginning to look like a more grown-up, open minded position.

This is all of course entirely academic anyway because even if God does exists, the notion that human beings have a soul, as distinct from the physical self, is clearly nonsense. Once you’re dead, there’s nothing left to go up or down; we came from the earth and to the earth we will return.

But I guess that’s a topic for another day.

But even if he was it’s to be hoped the meticulous eccentric has long since shuffled off this mortal coil – or at least gone mad due to generations of inter-breeding – as otherwise he must think we live in a post-apocalyptic hell on earth. If to him crumpled shoelaces marked the beginning of the end, what would he make of the state we’ve gone and got ourselves into now?

I refer, of course, too the sad yet indisputable fact is that we no longer live in a country fit for leather soled, English shoes.

If you doubt this assertion try walking through any supermarket in a pair of Church’s, Loakes and Trickers or other quality maker without looking like you’re attempting ice skating for the first time. It’s hard. Once you’ve managed that, and believe me getting from one side of the shop to the other will take ages, amble outside on to the pavements and your progress will remain just as hampered. Chances are you will be overtaken by people with serious physical disabilities as traction is so poor.

Attempt the same feat in a pair of ‘sneakers’ – those vulgar creations that aren’t even useful for sporting endeavours – and you can negotiate the environment with ease.

It seems to me a crime against all that is decent.

Yet it wasn’t always so. Hark back to times before the manmade fibre and you will find a population at ease with the leather sole. It was fit for purpose, hard wearing. Even the sound a great pair of shoes make is as English as leather on willow, particularly late at night down a deserted street in November.

The thing that annoys me most is that people constantly complain Britain doesn’t make anything anymore. This is untrue. We have an entire town dedicated to making the best shoes the world has even seen. It is the same with suits; we have streets dedicated to crafting the finest suits and shirts in the world, regardless of what the Italians might say. But instead of recognising and embracing this fact, we build cities unfit for right-thinking, well dressed Englishmen everywhere.

It is enough to convince me architects and town planners are in the employment of rubber-soled shoe manufacturers.

So perhaps in the end our minor aristocrat wasn’t so far from the truth – first was his shoe laces, now it’s difficult to shop while remaining standing. It is a slow decline I grant you, in western civilisation, but a decline nonetheless.

Clearly therefore, it’s time Government legislated against crumpled shoelaces and slippery surfaces rather than wasted its time with all this Europe malarkey. After all, it is only when a nation can stand on its own two feet without slipping, stumbling and falling, that it can begin to move forward and be great once more.

Indeed this is likely to be the status quo from now on as I have started a love affair with the short story and have been working on a couple of late. Not, I hasten to add, of sufficient quality for other people’s eyes just yet, but in time I hope to inflict the inner workings of my mind upon you, as and when I find any inner workings.

This however, I reckon, is likely to be one of the most challenging aspects of creative writing – allowing other people to read your work. Even with the little experience I have had of it, and that’s no more than a few hours of my life, I’ve come to realise that serving up my literary efforts for the scrutiny of others could be an excruciating exercise that might inspire some soul-searching. First of all, the prose is likely to be bad, but I can cope with that, these things get better. What is more worrying is the fact that more than anything else, letting your mind wander on the page lays open your imagination, your thoughts and feelings for all to see and in its most candid moments is akin to publishing in full the transcription of an intimate counselling session. Displaying that degree on honesty openly takes guts but also the acceptance that those who read it might not like what they learn about you.

The other worrying aspect of all this creativity is simply this – I suspect it’s impossible to create characters that are not influenced in some way by the people around you, and in many cases by those you know and love the most. This isn’t a great situation if you’re going make bad things happen to them as is the case in all good literature. When your friends and family start recognising themselves or their own traits in a character who comes to a grizzly end, some difficult questions might start flying around.

Essentially then, by embarking on a literary journey, there is a danger of those around you finding out just how peculiar your mind is and disapproving of its contents, and also reading into your tales things that they think you think about them. No wonder so many great writers have been loners.

In the end I guess if the yearning to write really takes you, then the best you can do is be honest, write about the things you know and be prepared to put at ease those around you for whom you care. That way, to plagiarise that classic phrase from journalism, you can publish and be damned knowing that although you’ll never be beyond reproach, you at least start from a defendable position and are doing all you can to limit the damage your words have the potential to inflict.

Today however, more pressing matters occupy the old grey matter; things that could have a serious bearing on all we hold dear. It has recently come to my attention that some brainy science chaps think that the globe is warming up at an alarming rate, an idea they’ve christened “Global Warming”, which although very complicated, has something to do with the fact that burning fossils is bad. Why anyone should want to burn a fossil I can’t imagine – perhaps it’s religious thing, trying to hide the evidence for evolution and the like, I’m not sure. Either way, it sounds very spurious.

But whatever lies behind this Global Warming wheeze is of grave concern to me. I spend a good deal of my adult life in the pursuit of fine and exotic tweeds – some new, some vintage – all created to fend off the British climate at its tempestuous worst. Has my time been wasted due to the actions of a few people – well the populous at large actually – who want to spoil it for everyone? Am I to be condemned to a life of perspiration as my garments of choice become too stifling for our new climate? Will well dressed gents the length and breadth of Britain be forced to wear linen in the winter months? Will duelling become impossible as gloves face redundancy?

This is all too much contemplate.

What we need is a plan to sort this mess out, something to restore the balance in favour of chilly autumns, bitter winters and dank, showery summers. I’m not the best person for the job because my chemistry A-level didn’t cover the subject, but I implore the Government to put their top man on it immediately.

If not the consequences will be dire for us all. All England will become a vulgar Spanish-style resort where well dressed men are mocked by obese, sunburnt Neanderthals. Foreigners will come here for a holiday, in droves, and mock well dressed Englishmen as they struggle to retain sartorial standards under a brutal and relentless sun.

Well dressed Englishmen will mock each other until new codes of dress have been agreed that suit the climate in which we find ourselves operating.

Mocking will grow to epidemic levels that could overspill into violence.

But worse than all of these, tweed will fade from British life altogether.

It is an apocalyptic vision.

And this is why I’ve decided to act now, before it is too late. I will shortly be organising the inaugural meeting of my new pressure group Tweed Wearers Against Temperature Swells, or TWATS for short.

Our first objective will be to raise awareness of this global warming among politicians and similar persons, who don’t seem to have picked up on it, and then lobby sheep farmers and weavers for the funding we need to save their industry.

If you would like to get involved in this most crucial of organisations, meet up with other TWATS, and conserve one of Britain’s greatest creations, then watch this space, for it is only by acting together that we can prevent Britain’s decline into a super-sized Playa Paraiso where Messer’s Harris and Donegal have no place at all.

It is against this backdrop that I long suspected a charming quirk of English life had gone the way of the dinosaur. As we scramble to change the world with our supreme talents, work ethic and delusions of grandeur, I thought the enthusiastic English amateur – men and women who do eccentric things, not very well, without a hint of competition and purely for the pleasure of it – had been slowly fading into obscurity.

But I’m gleeful to report I am wrong. A recent trip to Howden Show, East Yorkshire, proved beyond doubt that England is still a nation of enthusiastic amateurs who turn out on weekends to entertain, delight and amuse with their gloriously peculiar antics.

This first became apparent while watching the Tailwaggers Dog Display team. If there are two qualities that characterise the enthusiastic amateur it’s a genuine love of their chosen activity combined with, how do I put this sensitively, a good-humoured lack of ability. The Tailwaggers had these in spades. Their display consisted largely of an aged team of dog handlers attempting to persuade respective charges to lie down close to a life-sized stuffed sheep. Why? God only knows. But perhaps persuade is the wrong word. The dogs, rendered half delirious by the midday sun, wandered off in every direction but the right one, prompting highly-animated responses from the handlers that bring to mind verbs such as beg, bribe and plead. It was a masterful display of amateurism that set the scene for the day.

Spirits soaring after the Tailwaggers, we next caught the curiously-titled Jive Pony. The buzz surrounding this act was such that and the old bread knife and I sat in eager anticipation of being truly wowed. What we were treated to, however, was a young woman doing some shaky acrobatics on the back of a plod-along horse around a small enclosure.

Now, anyone who has seen Jive Pony might take exception to this description. But let me assure you it’s not my intention to rubbish the act at all, or to suggest that I could better it, because I couldn’t. Indeed I enjoyed it. This post is about celebrating the odd things people do for their own pleasure or that of other people, and Jive Pony falls well into that category. The underlying hint of amateurism as the music started and stopped in the wrong places, the microphone failures and the announcer’s prompts to the audience to clap in the right places served only to make it more compelling, if not always for the right reasons.

Add to this robust, farm-bred youngsters tugging reluctant bulls round a ring and baskets of lovingly arranged root vegetables and you realise England is still as amateurish and eccentric as ever it’s been. It’s brilliant. And although these people are rarely feature in newspaper columns or reality TV shows, they are a truer reflection of our great nation than Cheryl Cole, Jordan or Lord Sugar will ever be.

So let’s celebrate the eccentric, English amateur in all his or her glory and be glad it continues to be a living tradition. England is still a country unafraid of being a bit naff just as long we’re all enjoying ourselves and although that’s not a lesson I would take to the office, Howden Show was a great reminder that sometimes a happy amateur can get the better of the over-competitive, self-obsessed and grumpy professional.

A more curious statement you might not read today so I shall elaborate. Ever watched one of those Youtube videos of the bull getting the better of the Matador? Goring him, stomping on him, tossing him around like a gaily dressed rag doll. Brilliant aren’t they?

I don’t mean because the man is somehow getting his comeuppance – I’m no bull fighting fan but I reckon you have to be pretty brave to face one. I was once charged by a big old boy while trying to retrieve a ball from a field and I can assure you, I didn’t stand there taunting him with my jacket. I ran and cleared a fence I’d previously had difficulty even climbing in a single bound.

No, it’s more the novelty of the situation that attracts me. I mean, we hear of people dying in car accidents or of disease everyday – I’m not making light of these by the way, they are awfully sad – but how many people in this day an age are killed by dangerous game? Relatively few I would’ve thought.

Think of your friends, also. Imagine the anecdotes they could tell in the pub or at dinner parties if you’d been served your last rites by some furious predator. “Remember Glaves,” they would say, over a stiff G&T.

“Got knobbled by that angry lion in Kenya. All rather bloody if I recall – bit clean through his skull you know, poor old bugger. Dead in seconds. Still, if you’ve been on the sauce and wander into the bush for a pee what can you expect?

“Shame they never recovered his legs, always did like those boots he wore. Suppose they’d have been ruined in the scuffle though, so no great loss.”

The fact is tales of men being scuttled by dangerous game are funny – not to the person it happened to of course, nor to their friends or family – but to the reader, certainly.

Maybe it’s the astonishing feats of bravery that make them so, or maybe they’re just funny because tackling any sort of dangerous game on its own territory, even with a gun, is so ludicrously stupid the only feasible response is to laugh.

Either way, although I have no intention of shuffling off this mortal coil anytime soon, when my time does come a thorough besting by a brutal man-eater seems a fitting demise. It might be painful but it would be a refreshing change to the “passed away peacefully” epitaphs in the church yard where I intend to be buried.

I can see it now …

Nick Glaves (1976 – 20XX)

Slain in the prime of life by a vexed lion

He died as he had lived: sardonically, with an understated sense of style and not fond of cats

RIP

The romantic dreams of escape – of who we could become if we altered things, of whom we will become when we alter things.

But the pragmatist sighs, eyes the gas bill, the mortgage statement, the empty cupboard, and realises change ain’t coming anytime soon.

It is eternal and it’s played out in every language – there are few of us who wouldn’t rather be somewhere/someone else quite a lot of the time.

Like many a flawed character though, the romantic is vulnerable. Removed from the auspices of the steely pragmatist she can be gotten to and is, frequently. She is the blind pilot of global economies, the reason people make insidious TV programmes about ghastly middle class couples moving to the country*, the reason sweat shops will never go out of fashion.

The romantic’s philosophy is a simple one – dream and so it will be realised.

The pragmatist, by contrast, takes the long view – small steps; achievable goals. Seduced occasionally by his nemesis it is true, but only after much soul searching and arguing, and when not tempering the romantic’s desires he fills his time with the day-to-day chores, all the while looking forward to that modest but reliable bonus which is just beyond the horizon.

Not boring the pragmatist, but cautious. Not apathetic but quietly ambitious.

It would seem therefore that the key to these two competing voices is balance – too much romanticism and you’re away with the fairies; and too much pragmatism makes Jack a dull boy indeed.

But this is not the case at all; balance has little to do with it. The real key is alliance. Only when the pragmatist and the romantic stop arguing and start agreeing can people achieve great things, by bringing together the visionary and the labourer, the artist and the craftsman, the dreamer and the doer, as one entity.

So if you dream big act big, or don’t bother to dream at all. And if you act big without dreaming, well, who knows where that will all end?

Simple really.

Except it’s not. Humans have an amazing gift of finding conflict in the strangest of places - within them, outside them, around them.

In the end the hardest thing is learning to live with yourself.

*Words have not yet been invented that allow me to express my seething contempt for shows like Escape to the Country. Who the hell decided watching nausiating, vile, cretinous, middle-class Guardian readers try to choose a rural retreat is entertainment? It. Makes. Me. Want. To. Kill.

Ah, that’s better …

11.38pm: Do you reckon that press release will get coverage then?

I hope so, I really do. Client’s gonna be annoyed if it doesn’t. Good story though, it will, it has to. Besides there’s nothing you can do about it lying here so stop thinking about it. Relax, go to sleep.

12.15am: Great, need a pee. Sigh.

Well you’d better go as you definitely won’t drop off otherwise.

True. I don’t want this listlessness to last all night. Should relax after that.

1.07am: How can I be so awake when I was so, so tired at 11pm? Doesn’t make sense at all.

Perhaps you should read?

Well maybe, but I could be asleep in 10 minutes if I just lie here and I definitely won’t be if I set about reading now. Best not to, I’ve got to drop off soon.

1.22am: So, how would you defend yourself if you were attacked? Come on, four men, intent on violence – would you hold your nerve or would you run? What if you couldn’t run away, what would you do? Attack first?

I don’t know. Don’t start thinking like that again; it will only prolong this bastard sleeplessness.

Christ I’m uncomfortable. That muscle in my neck won’t let up. How’s that come about anyway? Cycling maybe? I don’t know. Probably ought to get it looked at. Not worth taking a morning off work though. It will clear up, stop being a wuss.

And stop dodging the question. Four men, huge. What would you do?

Shut up, shut up. It’s no wonder you can’t sleep when these are the types of things you think about. You’ll end up scaring yourself stupid. You really are an idiot. Just try to relax.

2.29pm: OK so what about Lucy, what would you do if someone threatened her?

Shut up, shut up, shut up, SHUT UP. Stop thinking like this. You can still get four hours if you drop off now, just calm down and think nice thoughts. Breath slowly, relax. Be calm.

3.37am: I can’t believe it. I need another pee. How old am I? I thought this was only a problem for pensioners.

3.44am: So, millionaire by 40, how you going to achieve that?

Well business is good but you’re going to have to do better; develop your skills more – still a lot to learn. And you need to be a better businessman. Put the work in, that’s the only way. And make sure it is the right kind of work, otherwise it will be for nothing and then you’ll be a flop, which can’t happen.

It will happen but you have to make it happen. Like everything else, it’s down to you.

4.02am: Hold on. I’ve spent the last five hours in dialogue with myself, actually speaking to myself in the second person. Is that normal? Have I got a split personality? Oh God, 20 years of insomnia has finally driven me mad.

Stop being so mellow dramatic – you’re not mad but you are. Haha, just my little joke.

Not funny though is it, you’re an idiot and neither of us can sleep.

Whoa, hold it a minute there. Neither of us? We are both the same person Nick – there’s the third person, we’re all here now - don’t go all schizo on me. If I can’t sleep it’s because I can’t sleep and if you can’t sleep it’s because I can’t sleep. If I can’t sleep it’s because you can’t sleep too. If I’m asleep though, so are you. Get it?

Sort of. Well obviously I do.

4.23am: Drowsy, at long last, drowsy.

4.27am: Zzzzzzzz.

6am: [Alarm]

You awake?

Of course.

Balls.

5) … with a twist, as in: “I like to cook Indian food, but with a twist.”

This defeatist phrase is usually employed by bad amateur cooks. There is only one reasonable response: “Do you indeed? And what is this twist precisely? Something inventive? Something creative? Or is the fact that you can’t actually do the thing you’re going to attempt properly and somehow believe adding ‘with a twist’ will convince us all of your brilliance? Ah yes, I thought so. Moron.”

Indeed if ever you get invited a frightfully bourgeois dinner party where it is likely your host has produced something “with a twist” then there are two courses of action. The first is to refuse to go and never speak to them again. The second will ensure they never speak to you again. Go in extremely eccentric costume. Get horribly drunk. Laugh at everything, whether funny or not, in an outlandish and bumptious way. Make fun of the food. Make inappropriate comments about your host’s wife/daughter/au pair. Smoke a massive cigar without asking permission, and, if you spot a copy of the Guardian lying around, as you very well might, recount a tale about the last time you rode out with the Beaufort. If you don’t have one, make one up. It works, trust me.

4) In at number four is the excessive and incorrect use of is, as in “cos I is” “cos they is”, “cos we is”. Actually, I’ve just annoyed myself with the excessive use of the word cos, but that will have to wait for the next list.

Is is favoured by Generation R, as in Retarded. When I hear it I feel like I’m being stabbing with razor sharp needles over the entire surface of my skin. Die cretin, die. That’s all I can think. If you haven’t mastered the use of the word are then just leave speaking alone, it’s clearly not for you.

3) There’s nothing to fear but fear itself.

Ooh this one annoys me. Loved by adrenaline junkies everywhere who think they’re cool because they launch themselves from high objects with nothing but an elastic band tied to their feet. Fine if all you’re doing is taking part in extreme sports where safety is the first concern. Doesn’t ring quite so true for a pensioner being mugged does it now you smug git? Or a frontline soldier. Or fire fighter, or policeman tackling dangerous criminals. They’re probably scared about dying, which is worst than just having fear to worry about, if that makes sense. Anyway, you know what I mean …

2) Chill out.

This nearly made the coveted number one spot, but for reasons that will become obvious in a minute, it just missed out.

The trouble with being told to chill out is that it usually comes from the person who is causing you to get annoyed in the first place, so has exactly the opposite effect. The fact the other person doesn’t realise this means they are stupid, or worse, deliberately trying to wind you up. Don’t accept it; if anyone ever tells you to chill out again immediately punch them in the nose. Then tell them to chill out as tears stream down their face. I guarantee they won’t say it again.

1) And finally number one, the phrase that has been winding me up most of all recently …

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough to drink now dear?”

Doh.

Now to that there’s no real answer. Damn.

Until next time …

The only redeeming feature they exhibit is that they give you plenty of warning of their approach by shaking the earth with the regimented, monotonous boom-boom-boom of drum and bass.

This is of course the mating call of the wild boy racer – one of nature’s dumbest creatures.

My latest encounter occurred on the road between Shiptonthorpe and Middleton-on-the-Wolds several weeks ago. I’d scaled a steep hill in good time and was basking the glow of my athletic prowess when I heard the tiresome din from afar and prepared myself for the worst.

His Corsa screamed like a banshee as he approached me with startling promptitude, adding tormented wail above the dull thud of the bass, and typical of the behaviour of the subspecies he passed me at a terrific pace and within inches, despite the opposite side of the road being entirely devoid of traffic.

My bike wobbled beneath me and I fought to avoid a fall. After regaining my composure my first thought is unprintable – my mother reads this – but as he sped off into the distance, unaware of the near accident he had caused, another realisation gripped me.

It dawned on me in that moment that I was lucky to be alive. I don’t mean because our friend in the Corsa had nearly killed me – he hadn’t – or that the panoramic beauty of the wolds stretching out before me prompted divine inspiration, because it was a cold, murky day in February and I’d nearly been forced into a hedge bottom.

No, the thought dawned on me because there was a time, like many young men, when I wasn’t so different from him.

OK drum and bass wasn’t invented when I was his age (I don’t think so anyway) and I’ve never owned a baseball cap, but I have owned fast(ish) cars and I have tear-arsed around the Yorkshire countryside at three-figure speeds terrorising road users in all forms and cursing those foolish enough to slow me down.

I would be lying too if I said I had never got behind the wheel having had one too many, although I hasten to add, not for a very long time.

And it was this that prompted my third thought, which was the most frightening of all. Looking back, I’m lucky I’ve never killed anyone and I guess some of my friends are too. To die means nothing to you – it only hurts those who love you. To live in the knowledge that your reckless stupidity killed someone else is the cruellest kind of injustice, both for the relatives of the victim and the perpetrator of the crime, and surely must be unbearable for any feeling person. I don’t think I could live with it.

But it is luck, not good management, which means at the moment at least I don’t have to.

So I resolved not to be too harsh on our speedy young friend. He is naïve and stupid but no different from a million young men out there, most of whom will grow out of it having done no more damage than denting the odd bumper or two.

And despite nearly depositing me in a hedge bottom on a gloomy day in February, I sincerely hope he is one of them and lives to one day reflect on how stupid his younger self was without the burden of anyone’s death on his conscience.