After all that fuss about the Millennium Bug and the likelihood of all the world's computers crashing at once, it came and went without a trace. Of course, being the BBC, I wouldn't have been allowed to take that theme into anything suggesting that any of Microsoft's products might not need a millennium bug to bring my computer crashing down with monotonous regularity, or that the thought of them having anything to do with ICBM's (offensively or defensively) is enough to make the mind boggle. So of course I didn't say these things - if I had ever been allowed to say the things I wanted to, the BBC would have been sued for every penny of the license payers money.

Well, the bug didn’t bite, and England lost the Test Match. Now isn’t the news just like that, sometimes it seems like you’ve heard it all before, and sometimes what was crucial yesterday has just vanished without trace. Whatever happened to – what was it called – oh yes, the Millennium.

And once again the western world returns to work after Christmas and New Year, comparing their actuality to the pre-celebratory hype.

It’s not good for you, you know, that frenzied pre-Christmas shopping, followed by desperately excessive consumption, and all in the pursuit of wildly unrealistic advertisement-fuelled hopes of unattainable levels of joy and satisfaction. In the circumstances, disappointment and depression are no harder to predict than a hangover, as the annual climax in suicide and marital breakup statistics prove.

And no matter what they suggested on TV, the whole world doesn’t follow the Gregorian Calendar? For a start, there’s a billion Chinese, who begin their year sometime in February. And then there’s me and another fifth of the world’s population, with three months of 1420 left to go. But possibly tonight, or certainly by tomorrow, the moon’s first crescent will be seen, and the next day will be the Eid, just about as close as muslims get to having Christmas.

For right through all the recent festivities, the muslim calendar has been in the month of Ramadhan, the fasting month, and we’ve all been going without food and drink between dawn and sunset, as well as trying to keep control of our mouths in other ways. When asked how to gain paradise, Muhammad replied “Restrain this” and held on to his tongue.

People think Ramadhan must be terrible, all that restraint and effort, and are usually surprised when I say that it’s enjoyable. As with mountain climbing and other sports, people often withdraw from the world and put themselves into apparently stressful situations, just for relaxation. It wouldn’t be the same if you had to do it all the time, but it’s the change that puts the rest of your life into perspective.

“Out of hardship comes ease, out of hardship comes ease” says the Qur’an. And it’s also true the other way around.