7 minutes to midnight

Martin Amis (Independant - Fri Oct 12), thinks there is something wrong with the Islamic clock. Of course, we all know to what he refers: that they have become stuck in a Koranic mindset that is antithetical to such wooly notions as freedom, democracy, equal rights, progress etc etc. Their clock has stopped at 00:00, at eternity, the martyrs fast tracked eternity in paradise, the infidels guaranteed eternity in hell.

He has a point but it needs to be taken further. Sure, there is something wrong with the Islamic clock, but it needs to be said that our clock is equally fucked up. Our clock has been hijacked by the corporate AGM, the FT index and the Dow Jones. By the spring sales and the summer sales and the autumn sales. By the 5.9% APR and the DFS sofa on interest free credit (offer ends monday by the way!) and sit on your arse and pay nothing for two years. By the e-mail that demands an instant response. By the celebrites preening their feathers in Heat magazine and by our bad, sad, fat, gadget obsessed, anxious, depressed and over-stressed children who are being tested to death.

My point? My point is that there is (or was anyway), once a natural clock. By it, we felt it time to sow the seed and water it. To tend the delicate seedlings with patience and love and in due course to give them their place in the sun. By it, we felt the pulse of the earth quicken in spring. We watched the birds return from their over wintering, or we felt the chill in the air as we watched them depart again. By it, we plucked the rosy apples and the humble blackberry and roasted the sweet chestnuts over the fire. By it we watched our children damn the stream and climb the tree and romp in the meadow while they worried about precisely nothing.



So Messrs Brown/Bush and Bin Muppet - plough up all yer Guantanamos and yer jihadi suicide training camps and turn them into allotments and lets get the clock ticking again shall we?

Marcus Brigstock sais it better than me and what's more, he's funny too. (scroll down to the u-tube version - priceless)