Lenten Dinner Party, Um.

When I came home from Canada, I was determined to make some radical change to my Scottish way of life. A dog! A cat! Volunteer with children! Get rid of the single bed in the dining room and get the most comfortable small sofa-bed in the market! Emigrate!

So far, though, the only thing I have done that is at all different--besides searching the internet for Tibetan Spaniels--is to invite over a couple we've never had over before on their own to Sunday dinner.

Then Lent hit, and I thought about the spiritual-corporal heroics of the Greeks, and there was a bit of a rumpus at our house about the dinner party menu. Benedict Ambrose read me the Roman Catholic fasting laws for 1962, but I was adamant: no meat.

After Mass I chatted with an Orthodox chap who drops by for the craic, and he told me that the Russians have even stricter fasting laws than the Greeks. Look them up. There are Raw Food Days, Cooked Food Days, Cooked and Fried Food days, and No Food days. On Good Friday and Holy Saturday the 2% of Russians who actually follow this to the letter don't eat at all.

So with do further ado, here was our Sunday Dinner menu

Sherry and almonds.
Guacamole on toast with prawns.
Orange-ginger salmon with maple syrup.
Asparagus and potatoes.
Apple crumble.
Blue cheese.
Curry cookies.

White wine.
Pudding wine.
Whisky.

Well, it was a Sunday. For Latins the most controversial thing about this list is the spelling of whisky, which I want write as "whiskey," but I don't dare.

Speaking of controversy, B.A. said something mildly politically incorrect on the train, and the young woman beside him raised her head like one of the Animal Farm puppies scenting a Two-Legs and stared meaningfully at her friend across the aisle.

Both were typing on their phones, and I realised that all the other young people around us were on their phones, and that all these phones were capable of recording and posting recorded speech on the internet. I was momentarily terrified.

"We no longer have freedom of speech in the UK," I said to the girls, while pretending to say it to B.A.

Later B.A. pointed out that I use this mildly un-p.c. phrase "all the time", which I do occasionally but not in public. No, I'm not going to tell you what it is. It's not the hill to die on.

UPDATE: B.A. has a brain scan tomorrow, so could the prayerfully inclined please pray that the tumour-buds have died? Thanks. We're rather worried about it.