The End of Winter

The bit between Pancake Day and Easter is known by Christians as Lent. Originally a time for new entrants into the church to prepare themselves through fasting and penitence, eventually all Christians came to observe it. The forty days (not including the Sundays) was a reminder of the time Jesus spent hungry in the desert at the beginning of his public life. Today it tends to be very much an individual decision how Lent is observed. Sometimes people cut out something from their habits like chocolate or box-set bingeing.  Others may take on a particular discipline. Lent is still a powerful corrective to the widespread belief that we must deny ourselves nothing in the pursuit of self-fulfilment.

Here at Pilsdon some people have given up meat for Lent, no small feat at a place where nearly every meal contains some delicious home-reared and -butchered beef, pork or lamb. Personally I have kept the meat but just given up the second helpings that are normally offered each meal. 

Priscilla* has chosen a more unusual Lenten discipline - to be nice to me. Ever since I neglected to mention in my blog the fairy wings that she sported on New Year’s Eve she has delighted in having little digs at me (my “hippy hair" being one of the targets), in a jokey way of course. At least I think it was a jokey way. During Lent however I can enter a room and be greeted by her cheeky smile and pink hair and “Hello Matt Swan! I like your socks” or some similar compliment. I’m getting a bit too used to it.

Soon enough though I will sadly no longer be receiving Priscilla's tongue-in-cheek remarks or sharing in any other aspect of Pilsdon's community life. On Tuesday I head back to my plot in Wales! Spring is fast approaching and seeds must be sown. It’s my last week of my fourth winter at Pilsdon and I’m celebrating it with a virulent cold, like many others here. I reckon I’ll have shaken it off by the time I go. I need to be in tip-top condition for the travails of caravan living in a freezing bog in Wales. 

I'll be updating my other blog, Matt Swan Off Grid, from there so I'll see you there!

* name changed, and chosen by herself