PANCAKES AND GIVING UP STUFF

Pancake Day. Isn't it supposed to be about giving up stuff? It seems to be a celebration of pancakes. Don't get me wrong, pancakes are great - who doesn't love a pancake? - it's just that I thought you were supposed to use up your eggs, flour, sugar and other luxuries so that you didn't have to be tempted by them during Lent, the liturgical season of fasting, which starts tomorrow.

"Yep, Hash Wednesday tomorrow," said my Dad, with a little sparkle. His favourite jokes are the ones he thinks up himself. "Better have corned-beef hash tomorrow then!" he said... hilariously.

I groaned while he laughed out loud. I didn't tell him that the word 'hash' has more than one definition these days. It was embarrassing enough for us when we had to point out that he'd accidentally grown a cannabis plant from budgie-feed.

The idea of this Fat Tuesday, was that you did some proper 'shriving'. Shriving is doing a sort of internal audit and then changing those things that are throwing the books out of balance - things like eating too much of the delicious foods that make you look like a sweaty round pig. Once you had 'shrove', 'shriven'... 'shrived', or whatever, and the larder was stripped of its decadence, you could begin the holy season with a renewed sense of piety and peace.

We had pancakes tonight. I made a mess of mine, trying to turn it over - which struck me as a good metaphor for my life, I suppose. Oh well. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow.