Miracles. Do they exist?

So depressed was I about work that I fell back on my old desperate dream of becoming an accountant. This got as far as me picking up Teach Yourself Basic Accounting and reading the first sentence: ‘There is nothing magical about bookkeeping and accounting.’ What a downer! I mean, I wasn’t expecting to be able to turn lead into gold but still…

Harry Potter T-shirts have arrived, all in festive black, which makes the word ‘muggle’ printed on the back seem all the more damning. ‘Muggle’ sounds like a variation on ‘mug’ - are we being offered a clue as to J. K. Rowling’s real opinion of her loyal readers? Whatever, I have already volunteered never to wear it. How dare they assume that I have no magical powers? I’m not an accountant. Not yet.

Still, it hasn’t been all gloom at work. Some guy was so impressed by the way I took his money and put his copy of Celsius 7/7 in a bag that he wished me ‘goodness’ in my life. Then he added: ‘Jesus loves you.’ I knew there’d be a catch.

Talking of Jesus, Mat has developed a horrified fascination with the Peniel Academy, the evangelist establishment just down the road. It’s run by Bishop Michael ‘Don’t call me Mike’ Reid. He’s a former insurance salesman who still looks like one; in fact, to all intents and purposes, he still is one. For an evangelist, he is astonishingly uncharismatic, his manner that of a grumpy, embittered old man. Trumpet Call, the free newspaper they distribute, used to be full of fairly nasty Right-wing propaganda (I seem to recall him praising the ‘moral fibre’ of gay bashers) but now - renamed Good News - it concentrates on their stock in trade, miracles. Mat wants to take Dave down there on a Sunday morning to see if they can heal his leg - the missing one. Then he’ll believe.