Man shall not live, etc.
Last night I had a very delicious dinner in a French restaurant, complete with stinky garlicky snails and lovely pink rack of lamb and dense brambly Southern Regional wine. Yummy. I think there may have been two bottles of the vin, actually, but that only occured to me afterwards, since my powers of perception had already had the dampeners put on them by a couple of pre-prandial pints and a good sniff of gin and tonic. Once we had had our snails and lamb and pudding (delectable white chocolate mousse cake, I grieve to confess; the boys were classier and had the meltiest tarte au citron) we decided not to let the pre-dinner pints get lonely, and sent a couple more down after them. It was quite a night.
None of this, you will all be rushing to remind me, is very Lenten. Alas, you would be right. Now I realise that the tale I have just told is not exactly good evidence of this, but it is really not when I am out with the crowd that I find it difficult to stick to my Lenten disciplines. Nor is it when I am really hungry, nor when perusing the supermarket shelves, nor when it's cold outside (25 below yesterday and you could feel it too: thank goodness for the thock of the cork and a glass or two of Nature's Insulation). No, the time when it is hardest is when I have had an uneventful day and work has been a bit dull and I have no plans for the evening and I am missing people in Blighty (comme toujours) and I think "Oh, I'll just stop off and buy a sweetie (bottle of beer/doughnut/bag of crisps), then I'll have something nice to look forward to." Oh no you don't! Home to lentils and an apple, and be grateful, my girl!
Of course the whole reason for making eating a focus for Lenten privation, apart from tradition, is that since I for one am almost permanently either eating or thinking about eating, every time I do either of those things I shall be made to think of God. All very sensible, and indeed, it works. It must be owned, however, that after a long day in the library, contemplating the majesty of the divine Creator of the universe, while highly satisfying on one level, is not quite as immediate a comfort as, say, sitting in your jimjams guzzling a big bar of hazlenut chocolate. Festive occasions such as last night don't get a look in: if I get through an evening like this one without a trip to Dominion for a packet of biscuits I shall consider that a far greater temptation has been far more impressively withstood.
None of this, you will all be rushing to remind me, is very Lenten. Alas, you would be right. Now I realise that the tale I have just told is not exactly good evidence of this, but it is really not when I am out with the crowd that I find it difficult to stick to my Lenten disciplines. Nor is it when I am really hungry, nor when perusing the supermarket shelves, nor when it's cold outside (25 below yesterday and you could feel it too: thank goodness for the thock of the cork and a glass or two of Nature's Insulation). No, the time when it is hardest is when I have had an uneventful day and work has been a bit dull and I have no plans for the evening and I am missing people in Blighty (comme toujours) and I think "Oh, I'll just stop off and buy a sweetie (bottle of beer/doughnut/bag of crisps), then I'll have something nice to look forward to." Oh no you don't! Home to lentils and an apple, and be grateful, my girl!
Of course the whole reason for making eating a focus for Lenten privation, apart from tradition, is that since I for one am almost permanently either eating or thinking about eating, every time I do either of those things I shall be made to think of God. All very sensible, and indeed, it works. It must be owned, however, that after a long day in the library, contemplating the majesty of the divine Creator of the universe, while highly satisfying on one level, is not quite as immediate a comfort as, say, sitting in your jimjams guzzling a big bar of hazlenut chocolate. Festive occasions such as last night don't get a look in: if I get through an evening like this one without a trip to Dominion for a packet of biscuits I shall consider that a far greater temptation has been far more impressively withstood.
posted by Scarlet at 11:34 pm
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