I go downstairs to talk to God.

It's a spontaneous visit, but He has tea on, and a plate of cakes set out.

"It's a good day, Mark," He greets me, opening the door before I have a chance to knock.

"Good day to you too, sir."

"Sit down, I know you prefer coffee, but tea is better for you." He says. "It'll be done in a second."

I sit on His couch. It's like falling into a warm cloud. Though all the apartments in the building are small bachelor apartments, and His is no different from outside, inside, it is mysteriously spacious.

"That's nice." I say, gesturing to a painting He has on easel by his window. It's a proficient but uninspired landscape. "Where is it?"

"It's the view from the window." He says, then adds, to clarify, "with the buildings removed, of course." Then he continues, "What's up?"

"What do you know about Parkour?" I ask. "Is it safe?"

"Oh." He says, pouring me some tea, "Your Mom's started doing it." Half a question, half a realisation.

"Yeah." I confirm, "Exactly."

"Don't worry." He says, "She's taking it slowly, very responsibly. And she has good bone density. Drinks lots of milk."

"Do you mind?" He asks, pulling out his pipe as he sits at the table. I gesture for him to go ahead, but He puts the pipe down anyways. "I invented that, you know- Parkour."

"Sure," I say, "you created everything."

"No." He clarifies. "I mean when I was living in Paris in the sixties. I was living on the South Bank of the Seine, hanging out in cafes and such." He takes a sip of tea. "The guys I hung out were a rag-bag of students and musicians and artists. A couple mathematicians too." He says pointedly, and smiles at me.

"They were great fun. But none of them believed in me. They would say 'If you're God, show us a miracle.' Now, I'm not Jesus. What I do, I just do. It's not a miracle, I'm just all powerful. But I knew what they meant.

"Well, you know me. I try not to be too ostentatious. But they wanted to see something. So I took them outside and ran up a wall for them.

"They were impressed, of course, I was an old guy, and I could run up walls.  Ninja movies hadn't been popular yet, so they had never seen anything like it.  But they didn't want to believe that I was me. So they started trying to mimic me. It's funny- you mathematicians always want proof, but when I give it to you, you don't accept it. You wouldn't believe the effort these people went to so that they wouldn't have to believe in me. It was almost religious.

"And eventually, a couple of them managed to run up the wall. I was impressed. 'Ok', I said, 'Do this.' And I went and flipped though a the frame of a bike that was hanging up outside of a bike shop.

"They just kept at it. Whatever I would do, they would work on it until they could do it."

"So that's how it started." I said. "And you never got them to believe in you?"

"Well. Eventually I just transformed into a unicorn in front of them."

"Ah ha."

"So either they believe in me, or in unicorns." God smiles, stands up, and goes into the kitchen. "Have a cake," He says as He goes.

He comes back with a knife to slice up some of the bigger cakes. "By the way," I ask, "do you ever notice anything funny after the maid has been here?"

He looks at me quizzically. "I mean," I explain, "Do you ever find..." Then getting to the point, I say "I think she's trying to poison me."

He seems a bit taken aback, but quickly recovers. "No, that's nonsense."

A gust of wind comes in through the window, rearranging the curtain to hide away a potted plant sitting against the wall. "Besides," he says, "fennel is good for you. Good for your stomach."

I say nothing more of it, and we have a pleasant afternoon, but I know that that was fennel that the wind so conveniently hid.