Well I did it!  Today is the beginning of Lent – Ash Wednesday – and even though I don’t follow any particular religion or philosophy (I’m not clever enough to understand most of that stuff), I grew up in England and still like to mark the passing of the seasons with quirky rituals like Lent. Fasting is good for you anyway, it purges the system and also allows you to take a good look at your personal indulgences. It also stiffens up that flabby muscle in all of us known as will power. Well, as I said, I did it! Yesterday I decided to give up cream in my coffee and, look, here’s my cup of black coffee Well done to me.

I’m not being entirely honest of course because cream is lovely in coffee, no question, but I don’t usually have it in mine except on special occasions or, OK, just when I fancy it. So it’s no big deal taking my coffee black – I like it that way. phew, Lent is easier than you’d think.

I may not go back to it of course, cream, I may just break the habit by not having any for forty days and forty nights. No harm done either way, I suspect, except it shows us that you can break bad habits if you really want to.

I’ve done my bit (ssh) so what about the others? If I can give up cream then please North Korea, give up those nuclear tests. I know you want to defend yourself against the super powers who all keep nuclear missiles stuffed into their jeans but, honestly, you just can’t afford them when your people are starving. OK, the rest of the nuclear powers (including Iran), why don’t you all give them up?

Please Roman Catholic church, you talk about Lent quite a lot, why not show us a good example and give up some of your silliest ideas? You know what I’m talking about. When you’re choosing your new Pope look for someone who might take a more human view about women, sexual orientation, celibacy, condoms and marriage. Go on, you know you want to but you still can’t quite find the words.

There are so many people who should be giving up things. Now I’ve started I don’t know where to stop but, a few more:

Please USA give up Guantanamo Bay, you did rather promise you were going to and now look what you’ve done.

Please President Assad of Syria, stop killing your people. Who knows, you might even be able to stop your country disappearing into terminal chaos.

Please all the countries in the European Union (including the UK), stop bickering and, like any other dysfunctional family, realize that you’ve more in common with each other than you like to admit.

Please, Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, just give up, put up and shut up. You’re a tiny minority with a big mouth and some really stupid ideas. Just go away and don’t come back.

Please, President Robert Magabe of Zimbabwe, give up your job and give your people a break. No body likes you, OK. Just go.

Give these things up now and, who knows, they might not come back with the Easter eggs and then Lent would have been truly worthwhile.

There’s a little bit of cream left in my ‘fridge – would anyone notice if I  finished it off?

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First is was Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands and now it’s Pope Benedict XVI, I don’t know, which elderly leader is going to pack up next? Hopefully President Robert Magabe of Zimbabwe. Still reeling with the news that Benedict is giving up the papacy for Lent and that he’s not even coming back after Easter, sent my mind racing because I’d forgotten that today is Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras  – unfortunate but no nonsense translation Fat Tuesday – and tomorrow is Ash Wednesday when we have to raid the fireplace for some soot to put on our foreheads and decide what we are going to give up for Lent. Well I have no crown to give up like Beatrix and Benedict – has anyone else noticed that they have the same names the lead characters in Shakespeare’s  Much Ado About Nothing (1598/9) and is that significant? I thought not. I’ve no crown to give up maybe, except the gold one in my mouth, but today, Shrove Tuesday, is a day not just to shrive (confess our sins) but to eat up all those rich foods in the larder. I must be too much a product of our times but the traditional use of pancakes to use up all those luxury goods sounds a bit lame these days. Don’t get me wrong, I like eggs, milk, butter and lemon juice too but even in austerity Britain, those ingredients do sound kind of everyday.

I wondered if I should be making more of an effort to turn today into something much more worthy of the title Fat Tuesday so I looked round the house for some luxuries to use up before tomorrow dawns and I have to go looking for some sackcloth to wear along with my sooty face.

Chocolates perhaps……

…some Turkish Delight……

….I still see fruit as a luxury too…..

…and there’s my friend Dawn’s  jar of Seville Orange marmalade – delicious…..

…not many walnuts left after Christmas….but three will do….

…some smelly cheese, of course….

..all of that should go well with a bottle of wine…..

…and some Greek olives…but it might be wise to leave the decanters alone.

I don’t know though, I don’t see me giving many of those ingredients up for Lent.

I won’t be giving up these Bolivian coffee beans either….but, hang on….there’s some double cream in the ‘fridge.

Perfect. I’ll indulge with double cream in my coffee for a truly Fat Tuesday and then give up the cream for Lent. You do the same Beatrix and Benedict if you can’t be bothered to toss a pancake.

The perfect music to listen to while drinking my coffee and cream has to be French and what could be more appropriate than the overture that Hector Berlioz (1803 – 1869) wrote for his final opera, based on Shakespeare’s play, Beatrice et Benedict (1858) – played with just the right bounce by Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields. Happy Fat Tuesday everyone but especially to Pope Benedict and Queen Beatrix. Happy retirement, you two – maybe you should get together.

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What should I give up for Lent?

It is a difficult choice here in austerity Britain and austerity Europe and elsewhere too.

I have already given up on our government with its collapsing health and economic policies – does that count? Maybe not. The Conservative-Liberal Coalition government have put Britain into a permanent Lenten fast. People have been giving up jobs, savings, disability benefits and hope, so Lent won’t seem that unusual anymore. We even got a few bankers to give up their bonuses – so what now for Lent?

Maybe, just to show willing, David Cameron could give up Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary.

Not just Mr Cameron but most of Europe’s leaders have given up diplomacy too of late – never have so many powerful prime ministers and presidents failed so consistently in finding solutions to solvable problems. History will give up on them one day – I hope their electorates will give up on them sooner. Europe should definitely give up Merkel and Sarkozy.

It hasn’t quite happened yet, not even with those billions of euros thrown in its direction, but soon, we will all give up Greece whether we want to or not – and maybe for much longer than 40 days and 40 nights. It’s a shame really because this could have been solved a long time ago if only Europe had pulled together sooner. Thanks for nothing, Merkel, Sarkozy and Cameron.

It would be helpful if Iran could give up nuclear weapon-building – and not just for Lent – maybe some other countries could follow suit like, for instance, Pakistan, North Korea, China, Russia, India, France, the UK and the USA.

We should all give up on President Assad of Syria and President Mugabe of Zimbabwe – they disgrace the human race.

The United States would be wise too to give up on those weird evangelical fundamentalists running for the Republican Presidential candidacy – there are enough wacky fundamentalists as presidents elsewhere in the World, you and we don’t need another one,  thanks all the same.

I think we have all given up too much already, some of us less than others across the globe who have given up their lives, their human rights and their freedom in dozens of ugly regimes that still darken the landscape.

So don’t look to me for some saintly piece of fasting. I’m not going to go down some puritanical path of abstinence looking for enjoyable habits to abandon this year. No, instead, I have decided to give up:

1) Ill health – I’m bored with it now and anyway the government is going to make it a dangerous habit.

2) Moderation – all this austerity stuff really gets on my tits and anyway, why should I economise when the people who caused this austerity are still wallowing in excess?

3)  Scotland – they don’t want us any more, I’m bored by the whinging and anyway, their weather is crap and they keep stopping the rest of us having British Summer Time all year round. They are very welcome to visit of course, they are good fun after a few drinks but they can keep that loser, Andy Murray – as far as tennis is concerned I’ve turned Serbian.

4)  Bad weather – this is England’s final warning: if you don’t give us a decent Spring and Summer this year, then I’m off out of it. I’m looking for somewhere deep south that’s as hot as Hell. I’m giving up rain, drizzle, sleet and snow – especially between March and November.

5)  British TV costume drama series – Jeez, what with that unutterably unoriginal string of patronising cliches that is Downton Abbey and now the equally talentless drivel that is the new series of Upstairs Downstairs or the long silences and meaningful big-lip shots that was the interminable Birdsong. What are they doing to us, these people – these drama producers who think we are all stupid out here on the other side of the TV screen? Maybe they’ve given up on us too and who could blame them – look who we voted for at the last election. So no more dull British TV drama for this wolf – I’m a Serbian tennis fan, an Equatorial weather enthusiast and for real television drama, I look across the Atlantic for the likes of  Treme, The Shield, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, NYPC Blues, The Wire, Dexter,  NCIS and, of course, Buffy and to Australia for The Slap and to Denmark for the unbeatably brilliant The Killing.

Phew – with that of my chest, I feel better already. Have a riotous Lent everyone and, by the way,  don’t listen to them,  you only live once.

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