Yesterday, I had lunch with the Sambanista. He arrived on his bike, flush with success and a BBC recommission of his sitcom. He looked a little like a young Bruce Willis. I arrived on foot and sallowed by an eBay morning. I looked like Bruce Forsyth after a week without sunbeds. 

We discussed the meaning of life in honour of an adolescence spent doing little else. Frankly, we both seem to have lost an ounce or two of certainty. I vividly remember the day, aged 15, when I warned Sam that his newfound atheism could logically lead nowhere but moral relativism, selfishness and ultimately misery. I believe I proved it scientifically to both our satisfactions and I remember being very pleased with myself. However, I can't remember what I said. This is probably no bad thing since I don't imagine that my 15 year-old self was entirely unridiculous.

Since then, of course, Sam has become a Buddhist, while I suffer from a prolapsed Catholicism that may yet require surgery. Yesterday, therefore, it was him warning me. I have become, he said, an insane nihilist. Or, at least, I thought that's what he said but, later, when I e-mailed him to say how nice it was to catch up, he corrected me. Apparently, he actually said that I was either insane or a nihilist. So that's all right then.

This morning, I found myself listening to John Gray on the Start The Week podcast and I was somewhat relieved to hear him express much the same as I'd been attempting (albeit with a lot more elegance and clarity). He described a misplaced belief in progress as symptomatic of the delusion of ‘secular optimism'. I rather agree and it bothers me; never more so than when such thinking is used to assert a moral value for contemporary materialism and the so-called ‘good life'. Nonetheless, despite my basic agreement with his position, I found Gray a depressing listen. Is this how I sound? If so, I think I'll change tack. I would much prefer to be pretty than right.

It is St George's day today. The only sign I've seen of English patriotism was this small paper flag (above) stuck up in a window in Arnos Grove. It seems a shame that the cross of St George should have such immediate associations with racism and the BNP. Then again, the diffidence George provokes in most English people exposes a significant element of the national character, while his Palestinian heritage exposes the pleasing thread of absurdity at the heart of racist thinking.