Without checking back issues of the newspapers, who knows what bits and pieces I was referring to here. You can tell that Christmas was coming by the date, but obviously there were snowstorms, and it would seem that a fire in Kowloon had hit the news. Then I would guess that there was an 'alien' movie on recent release, though IMDb tells me it wasn't one of the 'Alien's - but it could have been 'Alien Nation' on the TV. When you're trawling the news for inspiration, you never know what you are going to drag in.

Well, if the middle of November's anything to go by, we could all be in for a White Christmas, what with blizzards sweeping through the Central Region, and friends phoning to say that they're snowed in. Hopefully, they've got enough Yule Logs stocked up to keep them warm until the snowploughs arrive. A cosy fire is just what you need when the snow's piled up against the door.

We need heat, just as we need food, and even in warmer seasons, we turn most of our food into heat, tapping into the fabric of the universe that surrounds us to sustain ourselves, turning matter into energy, and it's been clear since Einstein just how vast are the energy reserves that Creation holds in store. How typical of humans, that the first thing we do with such a discovery is manufacture bombs.

Of course, the Greeks knew that fire was a two edged sword, but it seems that like Prometheus, every day, mankind has to be taught the lesson. Fire doesn't just heat, it burns, like an inferno in a Kowloon tower block. The energy we use to drive our trucks and power our trains, and thus sustain our lifestyles, can quickly reduce a piece of state of the art, high-technology to worthless mangled wreckage. Ask any fireman, firepower is dangerous stuff, and should be treated with great respect. And you're more likely to come across it than some alien monster, so be afraid, in fact, be very afraid.

Qur'an often reminds us of how we should use our fear to control our behaviour, explaining how certain kinds of action ultimately hurt the perpetrator, a pain compared to burning in an eternal fire we call Hell, "the fuel for which is men and stones". But in saying "We send the lightning for fear and hope", it reminds us of both sides of Creation. Whoever "fears the All-merciful in the Unseen", and stands before God "with a penitent heart" enters Paradise in peace. "Therein they will have whatever they will, and with God there is yet more". For God is the Creator, the Maker, the Shaper, the Ever-Living and All-sustaining.