Something is wrong.

I've just decided to clean the kitchen. I've thrown away can of black eyed peas, best before October 2002, and a whole jar of what my ex-wife labelled “Csepitke”, which looked like sawdust. An essential thickener for soups and sauces. I've just looked it up on Google, and found nothing. I've just looked up Csipetke, the correct word, and it tells me that it's the Hungarian missing link between the noodle and the dumpling. So that's what I was eating all those years.

I've found two boxes of saffron, so all who visit must be prepared for sumptuous dishes featuring the spice of kings. Or perhaps it's a herb. Something to do with crocuses, as most things are.

Does anyone want a bread maker? It had a lot of use about 3 years ago, but my current hectic schedule prohibits me from measuring cups of flour at midnight, to awake to hot crusty bread with a deafening beep at 6.30am. Seriously, if anyone lives close enough to Tooting to come and get it, it's yours. It works, and everything.

There was a programme on (I think) BBC2 last night, about the immense amount of money pumped into sex education in the USA by GW Bush. Except the kind of “education” they're using is telling kids to wait until they're married. They call it “The Silver Ring Thing.” Enormous quantities of cash are available to fund such organisations. Sickening footage of grown ups telling scores of confused children that they have to make a choice between engaging in sexual exploration – which will eventually lead to their premature deaths – or choosing the way that would eventually lead to securing their place in The Kingdom Of God, wherever that may be. And the groups who are involved in giving proper sexual education are banned by certain local authorities from speaking openly to 11 or 12 year olds.

I can't even begin to explore the full range of bile that wells up when I consider this programme. The self-satiisfied smugness of the Christian right was shocking, not least because they truly thought they had the answer to the spread of STDs and the rise in teenage pregnancy. Their kids are surrounded constantly by sexual imagery in film, videos, TV, and they seriously expect them to remain repressed and righteous, in some idealised harking-back to 1950s apple-pie America. It's not a solution even remotely applicable to 2004. Ludicrous.

The laugh-out-loud moment was in a debate between the two camps as to the merits of promoting abstinence. A god-fearing, power-dressing woman in her mid 40s pursed her lips and said (something like) “Can you tell me ONE instance where abstinence had ever led to pregnancy?” The other woman began “Yes, of course, when people feel they can no longer abstain, and…” “Yes, but then they have failed to abstain!” she replied, truimphantly. Excellent argument. Similarly, teetotallers rarely get drunk. Unless they have a drink. Brilliant.

All the talk of “purity”, “sanctity”, oh, man… it was terrible.