Please consider donating a few pounds to a campaign organised by the British Humanist Association to provide London's buses with a positive message of reality, aimed at encouraging London's religious to think for a change.

And who knows? This might be just the catalyst that atheists need to combine forces on a grand scale to fight against the superstitious worldview. It's clear from the comments on the donation page that many of those who donated are relieved to see the sensible point of view being promoted, and delighted to see so many other atheists out there; perhaps many will be encouraged to organise, and to help destroy Christianity and the other fairy-tale-based cults (and yes, I do realise that Christianity is dying on its miserable, deluded arse already - it can't be helped into its grave a moment too soon).

You can pay by credit card at:

Thanks! Please publish the link on any discussion fora you frequent where it may be a relevant topic, and email it to your friends and colleagues. And please do give a few quid if you can; you'll be helping to fight fear, superstition and ignorance.

I was dismayed, though not too surprised, to hear on a BBC News report last night that a Roman Catholic school has banned its pupils from receiving a vaccine against the cancer-causing HPV virus on its premises. A governor for the school has gone on record as saying that the vaccine would "encourage sexual promiscuity".

In other words: cervical cancer is very much a friend of the Catholic Church. It prefers that young women face the risk of fatal illness in engaging in sexual activity, as a useful deterrent against breaking its backward rules.

Christianity. Has a more loathsome, twisted, downright immoral superstition ever defaced human society?

Thinking people understand that Christianity is backward, ignorant and intrinsically false. We must never forget that it is no less pernicious.

Ten years ago exactly, I had just emerged from the Piccadilly Line at Heathrow Airport, having travelled there from my flat in South London. It was a Saturday morning. I was about to embark upon my first business trip to Tokyo.

I was excited, but apprehensive, because this trip meant that I'd be seeing my brief romance from the summer of 1996, Minako. She worked in our Tokyo office, and I'd met her when she came to London for training. I'd mostly spent my time since then pining for her quite honestly, and I'd longed see her again, though I thought I probably never would. Now I was about to, but I knew that it would be awkward. And it was.

The following is an email sent on 24th August, the Monday I arrived at the office, to my friend, a young woman from Tokyo living in London, with whom I was in a 'sort of' relationship. By 'sort of' I mean that weren't actually in a relationship, but we hung around with each other and slept together a lot.

Well.. so much to tell you about..

Had a great flight here, all the usual BA business class comforts - the only irritation being that the person I was sitting next to (an elderly Japanese gentleman) appeared to be the rudest individual on Earth and never uttered a word of thanks to the attendants when they brought food drink newspapers etc.

Yet to my surprise just after we landed he perked up and wanted to chat.. turned out he's a golf-course designer and had come to Britain to examine our courses at close hand.

During the flight, just as it started to grow dark, I got up to stretch my legs and wandered back to the galley to take a look at the view from the window. I exchanged smalltalk with the flight attendant there, a cutie from Yokohama called Naoko, and she asked me if I would like to visit the flight deck! So I said yes, I'd love to (of course) & she phoned the captain and we went up there. So I sat in the cockpit talking to the pilot & copilot for 15 minutes or so.

I think they were bored and appreciated the chance to have a chat.. they showed me all the instrumentation and I asked intelligent questions about the auto-pilot - to my amazement and discomfort, the co-pilot claimed that it runs on an Intel 80286 (a 10 year old processor used in PCs in the late eighties).

Anyway the best thing was the view from the 'windscreen' - the front windows of the 747 - Siberia, in the darkness, with lights twinkling from distant oilfields in the distance.

I took the Limousine Bus from the airport, and was so impressed by Tokyo on the way in. I know you know this already, but miles and miles of futuristic industrial landscape.. kind of unreal.

Got to the apartment about midday (I had a long wait for the bus) then I made the mistake of speaking one tiny Japanese phrase to the girl on the front desk as she was having difficulty speaking English. After that, she refused to speak English and it was hard work I can tell you.. but we managed to communicate somehow. I was surprised though because they must get a lot of Westerners staying there. Well, so far the Firm has failed to send me anywhere where I haven't managed to get by in the local language, including Manchester (I'm a native Northern English speaker as you know).

The apartment is great - very modern, very new, everything (including the air-conditioning) remote-controlled.

Yurie dropped by about an hour after I got there - not actually to the apartment but to the front desk, where I talked to her over the phone. She asked me if I'd like to go to a party & the Town Festival with her that evening, so after taking a couple of hours sleep, I did.

The party was kind of low-key - at an apartment at Azabujuban (where the town festival was). Yurie said that it wasn't a typical Japanese party, as most of the people there didn't know each other and it was sort of 'open-ended' with people turning up and leaving at random times - maybe because half of the people who lived in the flat were Swedish. They had a balcony with a great view of the city, and I was struck by the constant chirping of the insects.. reminded me of Spain. The festival was very crowded, but fun.. jazz bands playing and people selling food from stalls by the roadside.

It's so amazingly warm and humid here, isn't it?

Minako is here.. it's really odd to see her again after all this time.. I'd mostly forgotten what she looked like. Actually we are at desks diagonally next to each other, though she has been away from her desk most of this morning.

She gave a quick wave when we made eye-contact, a kind of 'oh hi' wave, very low-key (she knew I was coming so there was no big surprise) which considering the emotion when we last parted is kind of sad I guess.. but it's too late to care now. I don't know.. I thought it would be very difficult to see her again, but instead it's just been sort of 'matter-of-fact'. I'm so glad to have seen her again though because I've been haunted by the idea that our farewell at Heathrow two years ago would be the last time we ever saw each other, and I feel as if an evil spirit has been exorcised. I think I've been feeling sorry for myself for two years, as if I was the victim in a tragic play of my own making, and I can feel the weight slipping off my shoulders now. To tell you the truth I don't even find her that attractive this morning, although she is wearing a truly dreadful yellow dress with a brown flower pattern, which probably helps. The memories are still powerful though, but I think this visit will help to put them in their proper place (the past).

What else?

I showed Yurie the photos I took of her in NY, and she has confiscated them.

The phone number of my apartment is 34246885 - I guess you know the area codes etc, and I can't remember them just now. The office number is diverted from 0171-823-3972 as I'm sure I told you.

Well, as the robot waiters in Yo! Sushi say, gotta go.. gotta job to do..

Hope to talk to you soon,

James x

I took quite a few photos while I was there. I'll try to scan some of the negatives this weekend, and publish them here.

It's a crying shame that the heart breaks
And you've only yourself to blame
And you'll never go to Heaven
You'll never do it again

^{Francis Dunnery, 1986}

Not many people, I suppose, would go to the trouble of coating their bicycle handlebars with anti-climbing paint. Yet that's what I did this morning, albeit not willingly, or particularly deliberately.

As usual, I pushed my bike aboard the 0808 train to Nottingham at Spondon railway station this morning. Unfortunately a few moments after I did so, my sunglasses slipped from my head and dived into the narrow gap between the open train doors and the platform. I stared down at them for a moment, briefly contemplating the probability that they would still be there on my return visit to Spondon station this evening. It didn't seem very high.

So, not really wanting to part with my oldest pair of Ray Bans^TM, a cynical gift offered as an enticement to purchase computer equipment from a particular supplier during my early days as a system administrator at Rolls-Royce fifteen years ago, I hurriedly left the train with my bike so that I could retrieve them.

Once the train had left, I determined that it was safe to descend onto the track. The level crossing 50 metres further up the track was allowing traffic across, and there's no live rail. I jumped down, and picked up my sunglasses. By the way - jamesgibbon.com doesn't condone or recommend this sort of thing, which is illegal, and potentially highly dangerous.

The platform is slightly lower than waist height. Or at least it is when you're standing down on the track; normally it's slightly lower than shoe-sole height. I pushed down firmly on the edge of the platform to propel myself upward to safety, and that's when I found out that those attractive white lines which decorate its edge are composed of anti-climbing paint, some of which now adorned the palms of my hands.

The next train due to condescend to pick up passengers at Spondon wouldn't arrive for another hour and ten minutes, so I set off to cycle to Derby railway station, about three miles away.

And that's why my handlebars are presently equipped to deter unwanted climbers.

I have to say that anti-climbing paint seems a perverse choice for a railway platform. I can well understand a need to deter people from jumping down onto the tracks, but it doesn't do that. It only deters people from climbing back onto the platform again. Not really what you want.

I realised today while browsing through the BBC News website that it's exactly a year now since NuLabour's tail-end Charlie took over the reins at Number Ten. If I remember correctly, he was keen to get the top job so that Labour could be "renewed", and promised to do his utmost to bring about "change".

Well - he's delivered, big time. He's renewed Labour in a rather unedifying image of governmental incompetence and electoral hopelessness, and an absolute collapse of public support for his wretched party over the last year is just about the most welcome change I could have asked of him.

A by-election was held yesterday at Henley, Boris Johnson's old constituency.

Now I grant you, the Labour Party was never going to win that one; your average resident of Henley doesn't need to sell electoral support for state handouts.  But Labour didn't merely lose, they were beaten into fifth place - behind the Greens and the BNP! The Conservatives attracted more than 18 times as many votes as Labour.

NuLabour is currently 18 points behind in the polls. Thanks, Gordon!

I've just purchased a film scanner to scan my old negatives, and while looking for something colourful to test it with, I came across this old photo, taken with my Lomo, a cheap & cheerful Russian 35mm compact that has since become something of a cult item.

This is the Austin Princess that my Dad acquired for me when I was a student in the '80s, I think for about £40. It's pictured here in Hartlepool, in early 1987.

I used it for commuting between Hartlepool and Teesside University, and for travelling to York University to spend weekends with my girlfriend at the time, Sara.

It's fair to say that I hated this car. It managed about 14 miles for every gallon of petrol and had to be topped up with oil every week. It was grotesquely disfigured by rust and unpainted body filler. And most aggravating of all - if it had been left idle for more than a day or so, the battery would usually be dead, and I'd have to use jump leads or a clutch start to get it going.

Fortunately, the car park where it spent weekends at York was at the top of a hill. Quite often on a Monday morning, I'd have to push it down the hill, steering with my left hand until it was rolling downward under its own gravity, jump into the driving seat, put it in first gear and carefully lift the clutch to start the engine.

It finally died while crossing a hump-back bridge near York, when its suspension completely collapsed. I did manage to drive it back to Hartlepool somehow, though.

A couple I know are having their child "baptised" this weekend.

This demeaning ritual is taking place because at least one of them believes that, if later in life, the boy communicates telepathically with a cosmic Jewish zombie called Jesus to accept it as his master, the zombie can make him live forever. It won't do this without the head having been dipped in water.

I understand that the child may have to symbolically eat the zombie's flesh as well, and have an evil force removed from his soul that is present because the first female human was persuaded by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.

They are educated people. It's 2008.

Some time in the summer of 1973, or possibly 1974, I was surprised to be awoken from my slumbers late one night by my mother, who, in a surprising and highly unprecedented gesture, invited my little brother and me to get up and watch a TV programme of which I'd never heard, called M*A*S*H. I loved it, and watched it whenever it was shown after that.

Some twelve years later, after the series had finally come to an end, the BBC started a long run of M*A*S*H repeats from the very first episode. I recorded as many of them as I could, onto VHS tapes.

Eventually I had a large collection of VHS recordings of M*A*S*H. I kept them for many years; until the series was released on DVD in fact, two or three years ago. But I never watched them. Somehow, even after I had every single episode on DVD, the mood to watch M*A*S*H just never took me.

It vaguely bothered me for years that I could never get round to watching this programme I loved so much as a young person. And it irritated me especially that for about 20 years a large stash of video recordings had taken up space in my various homes, never to be watched.

Well, in February this year, I finally mustered the resolve to watch them. I decided that I would watch every single episode, in sequential order, in 2008. I started my M*A*S*H marathon at the end of February with the pilot episode, originally broadcast in 1972, with the intention of sitting down some time on or before December 31st to watch the final episode, Goodbye, Farewell and Amen, first shown in 1983.

In fact, my journey came to an end tonight. I have watched every one of the two-hundred and fifty-one episodes of M*A*S*H in the last eighty-two days; an average of three per day. There hasn't been a single day in that time when I haven't seen at least one episode. On most days I have watched two or three, and on some days I have watched four or five. I have watched M*A*S*H on the train to and from work on my Nokia handheld, I have watched M*A*S*H on my computer at work at lunchtime, I have watched M*A*S*H on the TV in my bedroom and in my living room. The Korean War lasted eleven years for TV viewers in the 1970s and early 1980s. It lasted three years in reality, but for me it lasted twelve intense weeks. I honestly had tears in my eyes when the joyous news came tonight that the war was at an end.

Incidentally I discovered a few days after starting my epic journey through M*A*S*H that I had commenced it twenty-five years to the day after the series came to an end. Goodbye, Farewell and Amen was broadcast originally on February 28th 1983, to a record US television audience.

Phew! Another blog entry and no-one's pegged it.