Easter Fasting...

...no, that is not a typo for 'feasting', and indeed one shall be mounting serious and traditional charge upon the household larder as a proper aspect of Paschal celebrations. (As dear Dom. Bertie would say: "The only reason I can stand forty days of Lenten fasting is the promise of fifty days of Easter feasting.")

Lenten self-denial is a worthy cause, a small thing for a much greater purpose of course. But then what can and does happen? Dear Fr. Pat quits the sauce for Lent, good fellow, but is then paralytic by Low Sunday in essence - and in his own words - making up for lost time.

I opt for minding my tongue and not being so wretchedly snappy with all and sundry. A humane endeavour, possibly also a holy one of a sorts. But what am I to do now that Lent is done, begin once more the biting-off of heads? Hardly seems the point and indeed isn't the point at all.

So if I now ask of self 'What is it I am foregoing for Easter?', caught up in the very joy of the thing, should I begin with the beer and the baccy? A new beginning, a resurgent Rector in tribute to a risen Lord? One is not so proud, or rather one is only too keenly aware of the lessons of personal history to be so bold.

There is though the dusty and long-neglected exercise bicycle in need of a polish through usage. Should one, perhaps, also not necessarily be driving the three-hundred yards to Ma Martha's newspaper emporium of a morning, as has been one's wont? And might one even astonish the Palladian tribe at supper by opining "No wine for me at this juncture thank you H., I'll just be taking a glass of that refreshing looking cranberry juice"?

No nonsense of course that physical fitness is a precursor to moral virtue. Can't quite recall which heresy that one is, but it is one of the more beastly be assured. I have never, indeed, taken dear St. Bernard at this word that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, for is not also the road to Heaven so paved with much sign of human frailty? Cleanliness closest to godliness? My arse, as Yorkshire Dom Tom would say. "Where's there's muck there's Jesus." He had a point.

That notwithstanding, a little list of 'Things one is giving up for Easter' seems to point the right direction. I shall begin to inscribe just as soon as this rather good pipe of Shervington's finest black is done!