I simply cannot decide whether the threat of terrorism is trivial or apocalyptic

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I simply cannot decide whether the threat of terrorism is trivial or apocalyptic. A death toll of 52 on London public transport, unassuageably sad though it may be for the families of those killed, and frightening though it may be for the rest of us, is not, in the great scheme of things (road deaths, bird flu), a big number. There is only one political question in which normal people are interested this summer, and it is not who will take Robin Cook's place in Gordon Brown's Cabinet It is whether we are going to be blown up or not And on this big question, I am an agnostic. So if I go down to the kitchen to get more biscuits, England will lose a wicket. (Ian Bell is particularly vulnerable at such moments.) Whereas if Ashley Giles is bowling, his only hope of taking a wicket is if I switch the TV off altogether Long may his success continue.

I'd love to be watching it, I really would.Marcus Berkmann is the author of 'Zimmer Men: The Trials and Tribulations of the Ageing Cricketer'. If that isn't happiness, I don't know what is.The only problem is that everything we do and say as individuals affects the result. As the overs pass and Mark Nicholas's metaphors wrap around each other like a M?s strip, and the same ad for piles cream is shown for the 83rd time, you can reasonably be said to have attained a higher state of consciousness, while eating a lot of biscuits. A cricket one-day international lasts but one day, and you can see why Shane Warne grew tired of the form One day, one dimension Whereas you can truly lose yourself in a Test.

After all, a football match lasts just 90 minutes, with a few minutes added on for Mark Lawrenson to talk rubbish. "Oooh!" he groaned, rather too viscerally for BBC Radio Wherever's audience, who tend to be elderly and easily confused. But what else could he have done? Warne had spun one two feet out of the rough, for God's sake.Psychologists talk about "flow", which is the ability to lose yourself utterly in some activity, so that time flies without you noticing it; and people who regularly experience "flow" tend to be the happiest and most well adjusted.This is good news for lovers of Test cricket. This sentence, though, seemed to ramble on more than usual, because out of a corner of his eye, my friend says, the professor was watching Pietersen whipping short balls outside off stump through mid-wicket for four.Eventually he totally lost track of what he was talking about, or where he was.