After a playful and rude gig at Twisters in Bournemouth for some charity or other (I don’t care what it’s for as long as they give me free drink) we headed out into town looking for a bar. On the way we passed a bank. I noticed the cash machine did not have its usual welcoming screen inviting you to insert your card, but instead had just the four words, “Sorry for the inconvenience”. That’s all it said. Not “This cash machine is not working – Sorry for the inconvenience”. No. Just “Sorry for the inconvenience”.

It made me wonder if the cash machine was actually working fine and this was just a general message of apology to the populace. Maybe God had finally looked down upon the earth that He has neglected for so long, seen what was going on and thought, “Oh dear, I’d better issue some kind of apology.” But how could He assuage his conscience whilst not losing face. A big burning message in the sky would make Him look weak and foolish, but a small mention on the screen of a cash machine in one bank in Bournemouth in the middle of the night would at least register as an acknowledgement that He’d fucked things up, but be unlikely to be seen or even understood by too many people. Even if one visionary happened to comprehend the enormity of the message, who would believe him when he said that God had spoken to him through the medium of a automated cash dispenser? People would think he was a paranoid and weird crank who had merely misinterpreted a message asking forgiveness for the malfunction of the equipment. But if that was the case, surely the machine would say what the problem was, rather than this weirdly blanket apology?

I’m pretty sure I’ve got this right and that this was God’s second crack at communicating with us. His first go, the Bible, had been overlong and turgid and open to misinterpretation. God had been pondering his mistake for centuries and wishing He’d done a better job of it and finally He saw his mistake. All He needed to have said was “Sorry for the inconvenience”. Those four words explained everything. In the beginning, God had just been dicking around, seeing what would happen if he created a Universe full of tiny idiots made in His image, without really thinking through what the consequences would be. Then when it hadn’t really worked out, He’d got bored and gone to work on another project. I know what that’s like. I’m forever taking up new hobbies which I get bored with after six months or so. But He’s come back to the box of the Universe that He’s been keeping in the loft and had a second look and felt a pang of guilt, like He is partly responsible for what this experiment has become. Not that it’s been a total disaster. Just not as convenient as it could have been. For what is life if not a massive inconvenience from start to finish.

At least He has had the good grace to finally apologise and whilst much of His doings annoy me I admire Him for that. Personally I’d have preferred it if he’d printed up a billion leather bound hefty tomes with a thousand pages of the finest hand made paper, with the gold embossed title, “The Bible 2 by Jehovah Harris”, but all that was inside was one sentence, elaborately hand painted by a monk with a big picture of God looking apologetic around the opening “S” and saying “Sorry for the inconvenience.”

It’s oddly comforting don’t you think?

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