This morning my neighbours were up unusually early, hacking at the concrete that is their back garden, (a futile activity they indulge in frequently, purely because the racket it creates makes them feel alive, I suspect), and bellowing at each other about holiday pay and how unfair it is that you can't get it for Christmas if you're unemployed.
One of them - revealing unexpected evidence of something resembling a conscience - pointed out that he didn't believe in anything anyway so maybe he shouldn't be paid for something to do with religion in any case.
This revelation seemed to give his companion pause.
"Don't you believe in anything?" he asked him eventually, after a few more feeble attempts to strike through the cement at his feet with a garden fork.
"Well I don't know it's true," the one with the conscience replied, "so I can't believe."*
"So you're a black and white man", his friend said, "prove it, or it doesn't exist?"
"Yeah, I am. If you can't prove it, I don't believe it."
"You can't know for certain though", the other observed, "but you can still have faith."
* add in expletives every third word, to get the true flavour of this conversation.
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