WITH no disrespect to my erstwhile colleagues who still work for the BBC, the main thing I was looking forward to about retiring from my career in journalism, was not having to listen to Good Morning Scotland on the radio every morning.

It was, and I believe still is, a fantastic way to be briefed on the day’s Scottish news agenda.

But when I no longer needed to know about goings on in Inverurie or Inverallochy or any other Inver for that matter, I turned my attention to GMS’s big brother instead, the Today programme on Radio Four.

The agenda is wider, the guests weightier, the topics beefier and the presenters, having previously been correspondents covering one portfolio or another, better qualified.

However, even though it is how I choose to start my morning, I still find myself throwing things at my Roberts radio now and then.

When the presenter introduces the segment of the programme called thought for the day, I get up, stick the kettle on and dilly dally in the kitchen only returning to my scratcher brew in hand when I think it has finished.

I find religious people very, very odd and the last thing I need in the morning as I unveil the blank canvas that is a new day, is to listen to someone banging on about how others should live.

The irony that is wholly lost on them is that it's all their fault and the news stories either side of their spot are about the world disintegrating because differing religions are willing to fight to the death over which of their imaginary friends is the true God.

This generally happens in the Middle East but we have our own little microcosm of it here in the west of Scotland, where people belonging to two sects of the same religion and inextricably linked to two football teams, have at each other over the ins and outs of Irish history. In Scotland.

I am an incorrigible user of a certain online auction site and Peter the postie who trogs up the piste to Schloss Edwards every morning, cursing me fulsomely as he does so, brings me parcel after parcel.

The other day, when I excitedly opened my latest delivery, I was distraught to find accompanying it, a pamphlet from the vendor telling me the Christian God was the only real God and I should disregard the others.

There was also a personalised letter informing me that he would engage with me by email so we could further discuss his theories.

Had I not been in the kitchen I would have hacked and spat, but Her Ladyship briefs against that kind of taproom tactic. I cannot adequately verbalise my contempt for evangelists like him.

Instead, for once, I got something dead right - the distance, the elevation, the air currents, the curve and the dip - and sent the pamphlet spinning across the room to where it belonged.

The bin.