Nobby Dee decides, after a long life of accidental calamity and self-harm, that God is in everything – the detail, our thoughts and his diary. Everything we do, he suggests, is down to God rather than up to us. This would be a depressing conclusion were it not for the fact that we detect an ironic tone to his prose upon the matter.

As I edge ever nearer to my headstone that’ll read, ‘A Life Lived Unblemished By Any Achievement’, I often spend time pondering what my purpose in life was. What did our omnipresent God have in mind when he decided that I should experience life?

And it is true. God knows all and does everything for a purpose. Whenever I stub my big toe, a terribly acute and debilitating pain, that normally results in me howling at the heavens, ‘fucking hell’, I know that God did it to…