The day I met God

God makes very few personal appearances these days. He's getting on a bit and delegates most of the work to saints, popes and other lowly minions. So I guess I should be impressed that he took the time to pay me a personal visitation, or maybe I was drawn out of the hat by chance like all the other oddballs he spooks every now and then.

He looked just like he does in the paintings: an ageing chap, wild white hair and unkempt beard, like an albino Bill Oddie but with the sort of gravitas that comes with being the master of the universe.

He was dressed in the purest white robes, which must be a bugger to keep clean, but then I guess there's not much shit in heaven.

"I don't even believe in you." I said, not wanting to muck about with pleasantries, no point getting my hopes up and then getting kicked out of heaven on a technicality.

"You don't need to believe," He said, "my existence is all there is. You cannot deny me, even though you think you do."

"You mean all the years I've been a paid up atheist, I actually believed in you anyway. Fuck! Just think of all that communion wine I passed up."

"I've come to correct your evil ways." He said, though frankly you'd think the One true God could have come up with a better line than that with 13 billion years to work on his script.

"Oh don't bother," I said, "they pay much better than the good ways and very little tax too." I looked around me at the sparsity of the eternal abode, "I bet the devil's got a TV, DVD and satellite down in his basement joint."

As we were exchanging banter I weighed up the situation. All in all it wasn't good. If I was up before Mr Big it could only mean one thing, Judgement Day, God's not the sort of chap to invite you up to show you his holiday snaps. I frantically searched my memory for something to say in my defence, just one stray good deed along life's pathway. "I signed some autographs once," I suggested, desperately.

God stared silently at me, taking in the world around us in the way that only Gods can, before eventually deciding to speak. "As I recall, you wrote a lovely message for a nun who approached you in Dartford. 'Fuck off, you nun cunt', was the precise wording."

"Yeah," I said, laughing at the memory, "but nuns are cunts aren't they, wasting their lives away worshipping you, and you don't even fucking exist."

Shit, I didn't think that through. Keep talking, just keep talking, he might not notice. "Anyway, I hope you're not holding that incident with the pope against me, only I could have sworn he'd 'alf inched my wallet and was hiding it in that baggy nightshirt he wears. If I'd known who he was I'd have never hit him as hard as I did."

There was an embarrassed silence, which I interpreted accurately, I'm a master at reading the unspoken, a handy trick when meeting a Creator who's shy about the actuality. "My gods, you mean he did steal my wallet. All this time I've been buggered by priests and I'm in the right. Just right til I see father O'Shaunessey."

But God changed the subject, as Gods are prone to do when they've been found out. "Brian" He said to me, all friendly like as if he knew me, "I worry about the state of your soul."

I looked down at my feet in confusion, surely my bunion was on my heel wasn't it.

"No, your immortal soul."

"Oh, has that got a bunion?"

"No, this is much worse than a bunion Brian. It is impure and twisted with sin."

"It doesn't sound too bad, surely an osteopath could twist it back, and it doesn't hurt when I walk like the fucking bunion does."

"If you are ever to join me, there are sins you must address."

"But I don't need to join you old chap, I'm already in a band."

"Bands don't last forever. I am offering you eternal peace and salvation. But first you must cleanse your soul. Follow me."

"I'll follow, but I should warn you I've had a pretty good offer from a Peruvian Crocodile god and it's not demanding that I cleanse my soul or anything tricky like that, just a mention on my next album cover. Do you have a deal for dirty souls who mean well but can't be arsed to do anything about it?"

God led on to a room, an enormous library stuffed with aged volumes.

"I guess you must get through a lot of reading, what with eternal life and all that."

"This is no ordinary library. And no ordinary book, for this is but one book of many volumes. This is the Book of the Dead. It has the names of every one of my children who has passed on. Some are here with me, some…" He said no more, but looked down at His feet, maybe He had a bunion too.

I flicked through the book, curious, but there was nothing but a list of names, like a phone book without the numbers. I picked up the last book on the shelf, interested to see if I was in there yet, or just pencilled in.

"My God", I said, literal to the last exclamation, "this is in no sort of order, it's as chaotic, random and ill-filed as the rest of the universe you scrambled together. You should have spent more time on it, I mean six days to create the universe. And you're talking to a man who knows, I'm a creator too you know, I wrote and recorded an album in a week once, and that was shit too. You should have listened to your agent's advice.

"I don't have an agent."

"You mean you created the universe without even checking if there was a market for it? Maybe there is hope for you, you have a punk streak."

As I was talking I was reading. A book of the dead, billions and billions of names and on the same page: me, Hitler, Enid Sidgecraft, Napoleon and Maggie Thatcher.

"It's in no order at all my dear god. Napoleon and Hitler died years ago, Thatcher died last week and if that's the way you organise your alphabet I wouldn't want to be the one looking for a CD in your collection."

"Oh, it is in order Brian. Not chronological, not the alphabet either. It's in order of redeemability." He let the words hang heavily in the air in the way gods tend to do.

It was at that point I noticed that I had turned to the very last page of the book, the very last volume in a billion volume collection. And there I was, below Napoleon, just above Hitler and Thatcher. I wondered what Enid Sidgecraft had done to merit coming last, but rather than mess around with words I decided upon action.

I ripped out the last page, turned away from God and ran. I had no plan as such and wasn't sure how I'd get round the problem of God's omnipresence, but when you've no chance of escape just blindly legging it makes a lot more sense than standing there thinking about it. And as I ran I felt heaven drifting away, slowly fading to nothing more than cloud. I'd escaped, maybe the page I'd taken had brought me back to life. For I was alive. I tried wriggling my toes and they wriggled, like so many toe-sized fish.

It was morning, bright light shining down on me. At first I thought I was in heaven, and that the light was the light of the lord. Then I realised, it wasn't heaven, it was the light of day. The light of a new day. I had been given this chance to redeem myself.

The first thing I did, dear reader, as I sprang out of my comfydown bed was to run to the kitchen and pour away the last dregs of whisky from the bottle. I phoned Skins and told him how much I loved him, phoned Mona and told her how much I loved her. Then I went through my phone book, apologising to former friend after former friend for all the hurt I'd done to them.

"Why are you suddenly calling" they'd ask confused, as punk rockers rarely apologise unless it'll get them a year off their sentence, "because I've seen the light" I'd explain, "I am a new man. A new man thanks to the mercy of god."

Then I woke up. There was a light shining down on me. "Close those fucking curtains," I shouted to any passing gods that might be hanging around, but alas none came. I staggered out of bed, crawled along the floor to where I remembered the window to be, and shut out the offending opening to the world. "All this fucking daylight when a man's trying to sleep," I complained to the godless world around me "no wonder I've been having fucking nightmares."

Able to open my eyes again I found my way to the kitchen, where I drained the last desperate dregs from the sole surviving whisky bottle, barely enough left to rattle the sides. Then a really depressing thought hit me. "Shit" I couldn't help expressing out loud, "that bloody Thatcher's still alive too."