Easter Week Treats

At a fraction of their Lenten price! 

I don't have much time to write before work this morning; I'll try to come back at lunchtime. Today I had an early session outdoors with the daisy grubber and planted some runner beans for the windowsill. The apple tree is beginning to show pink buds, but I'm concerned about the slow start for my radishes and lettuce. Stay tuned.

Yesterday I returned to work and spent the day on three articles. The one I worked hardest on, asking for comments, etc., was about a U.S. congressman who introduced a bill to stop American funding of the World Health Organisation. Unfortunately, the importance of this story was trumped by Trump, who cut off American funding of the World Health Organization before my story was published. 

The apple tree looks promising.

After work, Benedict Ambrose and I zipped off to Tesco to buy a few groceries, but more importantly compost. We found 40 litre packages, and B.A. carried one home in a big blue IKEA bag. This evening we will attempt to carry 3 or 4 between us, for we received a message from Amazon saying that our Veg Trug is coming tomorrow, not in May. We still won't have enough compost to fill it, so we will be making more Herculean trips. For some reason unknown to me, our local big-name hardware store doesn't deliver compost. 

When we returned from Tesco, I dug up a lot of dandelions and B.A. made an excellent fry-up for supper. We listened to Bach's entire "Wachet auf" cantata as we ate and slurped red wine and were in no hurry to get up from the table. Then we chatted with my parents over Skype. 

Now for some photos.  Here are two more from our Easter Monday walk: 

Note the interesting countryside graffiti.

And here is what the postie brought me yesterday:

A Day Outdoors

This is what 50 dandelions look like.

This will be a post of photos because not much can be said about yesterday.

We watched Easter Monday Mass at Warrington. I counted the number of dandelions I pulled up--141--and I thinned out our lunchtime żurek with properly Polonized vegetable stock. B.A. made risotto with the leftover sauce from his Easter lamb dish. I ate most of the leftover mazurek and thought about the mazurek I will make for Pentecost.

The most interesting thing we did was go for a country walk from our front door. B.A. found new paths, and we saw new fields and new views. I'm sorry my photograph of the electronic highway sign, seen from a bridge, did not come out very well. It said "Easter Weekend. Stay Home. Do Not Travel" to all the travelling cars. Very amusing.

Although it was not a warm afternoon, it was sunny. By the way, lest the police be summoned, my day was "outdoors" also because of two lengthy sessions of dandelion grubbing. I'm on a particularly bad patch right now.

Without further ado, here are some lovely photos to bring the Scottish countryside into your quarantined life.

Candy-cane tulip.

A new path.

A loud hum from the bees.

More dream houses.

Train to Waverley.

Church on a hill

A leafy new path.

Grassy steps.

Elephant!

Pastoral.

Flowers.

Barred from beauty spot!

If I ever learn to drive, my dream car.

Primrose bank.

I reflected to Benedict Ambrose that being able to travel exercise only as far as we can walk makes me appreciate our local countryside more than ever before. I also thought about how glad I am we live where we live, so close to a body of water but also to the countryside. I'd have to walk a very long time from my parents' home in Toronto to reach countryside nowadays.

At the same time, our walk reminded me of a marvellous bicycle ride I had with my now-cloistered Benedictine friend around her part of an apple-growing region southwest of Warsaw. I've never seen such beautiful countryside. I hope to go there again one day.

Update: Forgot to mention that we tried last summer's cider! I think it turned out very well. It certainly tastes apple-y. 

Therefore Let Us Keep the Feast

An end to Lent---and something to think about upon waking instead of the coronavirus! Hooray for Easter, holiest day of the Christian calendar, and an opportunity to cook, bake and eat once-a-year foods. For a full exposition of the spiritual riches of the day, I direct you elsewhere.   

First of all, I called an Easter Day truce with the dandelions, and so the imperilled worms had a day off from collateral damage. Instead of gardening, I hunkered down before the internet with a cup of coffee, toasted hot cross bun and a plate of streaky bacon. 

Mass in Warrington was at 11, and we dressed up in Easter finery--I even dabbled in cosmetics--while  our computer screen transmitted the altar party setting up. Fr. de Malleray had dispelled part of the mystery of who the men all were by saying that they were all living in the same church complex. I think the lads are very lucky to be so close to the sacraments and that if when you're forced into monastic seclusion, what a lucky thing to be in a monastery--or a church complex, as the case may be.  

Easter Sunday Mass unfolded the way Easter Sunday Mass generally does, and we listened with interest to Fr. de Malleray's homily. During Lent he gave it to us with both barrels about the virus of sin, but on Easter Sunday he lightened up enough to talk about mastering virtue and "training for eternity." To illustrate the need for training, he mentioned a number of skills in which we might be trying to master, like watercolour painting, oil painting, mountain climbing and scuba diving. 

"This is a middle-class parish," I muttered to B.A. with mock horror.

Where was the pigeon-fancying? Or, for that matter, the polo? Or, indeed, the hard graft of Polish studies? But I jest. Back to Easter Sunday.

The sad part of Easter Sunday was, of course, not having any Easter Sunday guests. However, like a good son, Polish Pretend Son sent of a photograph of himself and his pal holding traditional Easter święconka baskets. They looked so smug, they had clearly found a priest to bless these baskets. As thanks, I sent PPS photos of B.A. and me in our Easter finery in front of the computer.  I admit that this was a little flat compared to the glory of fulfilling tradition despite the Vile Germ. Hey, I risked death to get the zakwas.

B. A. and I had the żurek for lunch, and it was a bit gloopy, thanks to me using all the flour at the bottom of the bottle, not just the juice. Error. Today I will attempt to thin it with appropriately Polish-ed vegetable stock. We also had pieces of the mazurek, which is all it should be. Then, after another session in front of our computers, we went for a walk to the beach shore.

At the beach shore we were not accosted by police officers, which was nice. There were people scattered around, mostly couples with small dogs and parents with two or three children. The local beach shore is not a particularly nice place to sit, as it is covered with pebbles and sharp-edged shells.   However, it is a nice place to skim stones, as B.A. proceeded to do, after reminiscing about the Boxing Day long ago when he taught Polish Pretend Son to skim stones. He plans to teach PPS's future sons to skim stones, too. 

In Scotland, skimming stones seems to be a male hobby, which is fine by me. The traditional female role is to watch the activity, so that when the stone bounces 12 times, someone other than the stone-skipper has seen it. This is fine by me, as my life vocation is keeping a man happy and, to the best of my ability, alive and healthy. Men respond very well when women cheer them on from the sidelines--which reminds me of Polish Pretend Daughter-in-Law squeaking encouragement to her husband and brother-in-law when we watched them playing football. 

Men don't like being compared to plants, so I will not go into a lengthy disquisition about how, like plants, they just need to be fed and watered and kept in the metaphorical sun and protected from metaphorical frost.  

I was taking photographs, and B.A. suggested I snap a photo of a tribute-in-progress to the NHS. The NHS has become a folk religion, which ordinary British people feel much more deeply than the elite religion, which is sex-and-gender. One of the interesting things about the pandemic, by the way, is that British children have taken back the rainbow, presumably out of the sheer joy of using all the colours at their disposal, and re-established it as a sign of hope that a scourge will end. Actual bows, not stripes, decorate windows wherever we go, alongside childish handwriting praising the "NHS" and "key workers" and directing us to "Stay home." 

Another aside: I grew up with state-supplied medical care for all, and I do not remember anything like this heartfelt emotion for OHIP, that is, the Ontario Health Insurance Plan/L'Assurance-Santé de Ontario. OHIP was just there, like my father's family-plan dental health coverage from work, but, like the dental coverage, I certainly did miss it when I couldn't have it any more. But let's not go there. Let's just say that one state medical system is not identical to others, and I'd rather be sick in Ontario, Germany or Italy than here--as grateful as I am to a certain Czech brain surgeon and a certain English oncologist. 

We returned home unmolested by police, admiring a handsome house for rent along the way, and I

sent a link to the rental information to my paterfamilias brother, who Skyped me to find out why.  Apparently the rent on the house would be too much even for him, were his family to relocate to Scotland for a year or so. Meanwhile, B.A. set about making dinner, which was lamb shanks in a very delicious tomato-based sauce with peas and mashed potatoes. We drank a New Zealand pinot noir with this, and little bottles of Ontario ice wine with the pieces of mazurek that served as pudding.  B.A. blessed the lamb with holy water before we ate it.  

Dinner was very nice, but I very much wished we had guests, too. I would have been very happy to have the rest of the Men's Schola at the table.

"You wouldn't have got a word in edgewise," B.A. reminded me. 

"No, but I would have enjoyed listening," I said quite truthfully. 

Then it was rather late, and I was too lazy to commit to a show, so we chatted to Mum and Dad on Skype and read the internet instead. Having entered a Twitter discussion about quirky Polish phrasebooks, I attempted to track down the alarming Polish-English phrasebook/interrogation manual I found years ago in the Glasgow University Library.

Afternoon coffee and a day of eating beasts for the first time since Shrove Tuesday conspired to keep me from sleeping once it was bedtime. Thus I washed all the dishes and then read Veg in One Bed by Huw Richards until after 1 AM. My broad beans are doing beautifully on the windowsill, but it does seem a bit cold outside to start the hardening process. 

This morning B.A. got up early to wash the dishes and discovered them already done, so he put them away. I am thinking again about absent friends and everywhere we will go when we can: the New Town, the West End, Wrocław, Łódź, Rome. 

Hail Thee, Festival Day!

Easter Vigil Mass 

Happy Easter, dear readers! This is certainly an Easter we will all remember--as long as the lock-down ends before, er... Happy Easter!

Holy Saturday was a gloriously sunny and warm day in Britain, even Edinburgh, and Benedict Ambrose and I went

Enormous elephant in the distance.

on the most marvellous walk. However, that had to wait until we had tidied the flat for the coming festival. After months of putting it off, I finally addressed the mess that was my desk.

Then we went on our walk, up a rarely-used industrial road and a semi-private path to our potential last earthly home, and then along the patrician streets to a country lane and back. The sun shone so warmly, we took off our outer garments and wrapped them around our waists. We also got slightly sunburnt, which is not something we expected in Scotland in April. It's sunscreen and hats for me from now on.

I know this one.

Here is a flower gallery for Aged P to identify.

Here are our new country lane and fields.

While we were gazing upon the fields, we were addressed by the male half of an elderly couple with two identical dogs who looked half-poodle, half-dachshund. They were walking along the edge of the nearest field, and because of their patrician clothing and demeanour, I suspected they owned it--or the charming house in the distance. We also encountered families of three or four going for walks, kept our distances from boys on bicycles, and noted people sitting in twos or threes in a hitherto unknown to me park.

I was both fascinated and unnerved by the park-sitters because if there is anything I learned last week from the UK scandal sheets, it's that sitting in a park or on a beach can now get you in trouble with the police. The thought of the police kept me from suggesting we walk to our nearest beach. On the first warm, sunny day of the year, the local beaches heave with people from all over Edinburgh.

That said, I would happily risk a fine to be able to go to Mass. Catholics in Britain were once fined (or worse) if they were caught going to Mass. However, I have not yet heard of a heather priest offering Mass in the fields, so no Mass for me---except online. Whereas an online Mass is not as satisfying as watching one out the window, as provided by St. Charles Borromeo during his plague, it is at least comparable. My parents are very fortunate in that their own parish church has a live- streamed Mass, and so they get to see their good Monsignor and their (hideously ugly) spiritual home.

Aged P made the tablecloth.

When we got home, I hung out the laundry, put on a hat, watered the grass and tackled a particularly nasty patch of dandelions. It's a war of attrition.

The terrible thing about dandelions is that you have to get the whole root, for if you don't, it will just grow again. So every dandelion requires at least four thrusts of the daisy-grubber into the ground, and some wiggling around, and then carefully pulling at the whole plant so to get the long, white root. I cannot imagine wanting to dry out the hideous roots and making them into coffee---well, yes, I suppose I can, if globalisation fails so badly that we can't have proper coffee anymore. I wonder if there is anywhere in Britain with anything approaching the climate needed to grow the beans.

While I was working, our neighbour Sandy came outside to tell me about a new book he was reading on Kindle. He had heard about it on the BBC. In short, 15 years ago a professor wrote a novel about a pandemic in London that had led to a lockdown and the death of the Prime Minister, but he had failed to find a publisher. He has now found a publisher.

At about 5:30 PM, I set about making żurek and a lamb cake. I scraped bits of the burnt sausage off the bottom of the frying pan, and it was the first time since Lent began that I had tasted sausage. Delicious.

B.A. was working hard, too.  He ironed our best linen tablecloth, set the table for our Easter feast, and

Note the tidy desk.

proceeded to make us a sea bass supper for quick consumption before the Easter Vigil in Warrington. I put a pillar candle in the window to announce the light of Christ to the neighbourhood.

Unfortunately, the Warrington livestream failed right up until the Gloria, so while poor B.A. kept up a vigil in front of the black screen, I went to the kitchen to ice my Easter lamb with buttercream. Like our Easter Vigil viewing, it was only partly successful: I ran out of icing sugar. Note for future: buttercream icing is only as good as the ingredients, so use only the freshest butter next time.

Bear evangelising the neighbourhood.

Easter Vigil lasted past 10 PM. I watched the Gloria, the Alleluia (and then iced an Alleluja on our mazurek), the Gospel, and the surprisingly accomplished Widor at the end. (Our FSSP priest informs me that that priest is a former professional musician, which solves the mystery.) B.A., of course, watched it all.

Then I had a little chat with my mother and went to bed with the Spectator.

One a penny, two a penny

Tradition.

It's Holy Saturday, and the UK is still under lockdown. I shall continue my self-appointed task of distracting you with my blogging. Good morning.

Virus or no virus, it's a four day holiday for still-employed me. Yesterday I leapt out of bed before seven, did the dishes and got to work on my hot cross buns. They take just over 3.5 hours to make because they prove three times, they're baked, and then they're painted with cinnamon-infused simple syrup. 

We ate buns for our mid-day collation, and then we went to queue up outside Tesco for essentials. Once again, it was a long but relatively fast-moving line. 

My computer speaker has gone fuzzy, so B.A. deemed a remote speaker an essential. We looked at the backs of all the plastic packages of speakers to find one not made in China. Believe it or not, there was one: Made in Vietnam. 

The famous zakwas.

Then we moved on to the vegetables,  tinned tomatoes, fish, eggs, red wine, dark chocolate and other staples of our gastronomic lives. 

I was a bit worried for my subsequent Easter baking when I saw that there was still no flour in the baking aisle. None. I rejected the Betty Crocker instant cake mixes (£2.50 a box) and then went to the Polish section. Ah ha ha ha! Whole wheat bun flour, bread/pierogi flour, AND cake flour. Two 500g bags of Polish cake flour went into the cart--clever, clever me. Incidentally, one thing the supermarket always has in abundance is bread. Not great bread, but bread none the less. Top tip: British flour should be used only for British recipes anyway. 

We went home and I hung up the laundry outside while B.A. set up the living-room chapel. My depredations on the dandelions had to wait until after the Good Friday service, however, as my help was needed in pairing the new Vietnamese speaker to my assembled-in-China computer and printing the Whyte Sheete. 

There was an altar party of ten in Warrington. How is it that there are 10 men in the FSSP residence in Warrington? Or if not, who are those guys? Don't get me wrong: I'm grateful they're there. But since we seen them every Sunday and Holy Day now, I'm wondering who they are. They're ecclesiastical internet stars whether they like it or not, so we might as well see profiles. 

My feet hurt during the Passion, just like at every other Good Friday liturgy I've attended in my life. I have to admit that, although not being physically at Mass is terrible, you can really enter into an online service if you sit, stand and kneel, say the responses, and concentrate. The prayerful atmosphere even survives your nipping into the kitchen to make sure the water's boiling.

A mazurek missing only an Easter message.

The water boiled around a can of condensed milk for three hours because I made our Easter Sunday mazurek two days in advance, as the recipe suggested. On Sunday I will ice the "A-word" as B.A. and his fellow liturgy fans call it onto the pastry, as the word is basically verboten amongst them in Lent.  When I turned the heat off, I went back outside and resumed war on the dandelions again with my daisy grubber. 

I was visited by birds, worms and two black cats. The cats have ceased to fear me, so I hope they still fear the spikes in my vegetable garden. 

B.A. called me in for supper, and we then tried to find some suitable Good Friday fare to watch online. He was hoping for Ben Hur or The Passion of the Christ. I thought there was at least a small chance of Changing Lanes or Raining Stones. But in the end, the best I could find was a Good Friday themed show about gardens on BBC i-Player. It began with Pluscarden Abbey and it ended with my infancy stomping-ground, the Cambridge University Botantical Gardens, so it was more interesting to us than it sounds. 

 The must-have trend for 2020.

Then I covered the mazurek in melted chocolate, finished cleaning the kitchen, chatted to my parents,  read about gardening, and went to bed. Here by the way, are the lovely masks my mother made for us on her sewing machine. The outer fabric is denim, so they look very retro-chic. I don't actually wear jeans anymore, but if I did, these would match. 

How odd, by the way, that denim now seems retro instead of the uniform of almost all. Among women it has been supplanted by skin-tight leggings. Yesterday I contemplated  the shoppers before me: a rail-thin woman of 70 or so in blue jeans, her obese grand-daughter in black leggings, and her fat 3 year old great-grand-daughter sitting in the shopping trolley, eating a snack. The thin old lady in blue jeans seemed to personify the late 20th century, whereas her grand-daughter was most definitely of the 21st.

That said, I basically go about in rags these days, as when I am not at the computer, I am in the garden. This will change when we are allowed to travel further than a half hour's run from our homes. Perhaps when we are all allowed to go downtown again, we will return to the earlier custom of dressing up for downtown. I certainly will. 

Now I shall feed my nostalgia by trying to find accounts or photographs of our last Easter in the Historical House, which was in 2017. I have a horrible suspicion, though, that I was simply to busy to write anything down. But if memory alone serves,  Polish Pretend Sonspent at least part of the long weekend with us, and we had a glorious Easter brunch that included eye-watering Polish horseradish sauces in two colours.

Update: Yes, PPS did, and so did my brother Quadrophonic. We all went to a wedding on Easter Monday. Here is the funniest incident I recorded: "Both my Polish Pretend Children and my Franco-Polish Pretend Son-in-Law were here, so Easter meals have been all very entertaining, with Polish Pretend Daughter insulting Polish Pretend Son at intervals by telling him that he is actually German."

Update 2: Another amusing snippet: It really was a splendid Easter. My brother Quadrophonic arrived, dog-tired, on Holy Wednesday night, and I put him in the best guest room. On Holy Thursday, I brought Quadrophonic along to Tesco to help carry bags of ingredients home, and in the evening we all went to Mass. Afterwards Benedict Ambrose reminisced about the Holy Thursday curries of his youth, and so Quadrophonic treated us to a splendid curry feast at the nearest snazzy sit-down. In deference to B.A.'s recent surgery, we took a taxi home. 

After that, it was cook, cook, wash, wash, clean, clean, bake, bake, rush off to church and welcome another guest or two. Occasionally I would leave B.A. in my brother's or Polish Pretend Son's charge with the instruction that he wasn't allowed to do any work. It cut me to the quick to prevent B.A. from washing the dishes, but my top priority was conserving his energy for church and, ultimately, our friend's Easter Monday wedding banquet. 

With all the baking and cooking to do (self-imposed, I know), my life was a round of going to bed very late and getting up rather early, and by Easter Wednesday I was beginning to lose things and leave them behind.

Update 3: And here is PPS consoling me on my lack of children: At Monday's wedding , Polish Pretend Son argued that he was much better than any real child could ever possibly be, but despite his manifold perfections I was not entirely convinced. 

TRIGGER WARNING: If you're tender-hearted, don't click around The Historical House to read about the rest of our 2017/2018. This pandemic is a waking nightmare for many people, but as for our experience of it, we have been through worse. 2017/2018 was our worse. 

Triduum in the Desert

Live from Warrington, it's Holy Thursday!

Yesterday was Holy Thursday which, in my childhood, meant scrambled eggs, bacon and muffins for supper.  Our traditional Good Friday supper was eventually a salmon ring, and naturally there were always supermarket hot cross buns for breakfast.

Hot cross buns to be.

B.A. and I haven't developed a culinary tradition for Holy Thursday, but like other British people we enliven our Good Friday with hot cross buns. Of late I have baked our own hot cross buns. This year's dough is on its second proving.

Yesterday I had a more exciting time in the garden: I raked up the weeded third of the lawn, and then I cut its grass, and then I raked it again. Then I sowed grass seed in a cross-cross pattern as the box instructed and trod it into the ground. Next I got a large jar and poured water on the lawn through a colander. Needs must--we don't have an outdoor faucet. Then I sprinkled another jar's worth of water on it. 

Newly seeded.

While I was engaged in this very lawn-centred activity, our neighbour Sandy came outside to tell me that he had read in "Psychology Today" that a new coronavirus related condition had been discovered, and it was sending people out into their gardens to do the worst jobs, like digging up dandelions: "Anything to get into the fresh air." He found this vastly amusing, and I found it amusing that industriousness can be considered a mental condition. 

"It's a coping mechanism," B.A. suggested when I told him. 

Really, it's a substitute for the gym, plus seasonal shame at the state of the garden. There's a Scottish joke about an auld wifie having palpitations when her husband takes off his shirt outside. "Och, Hughie, the neighbours will see you!" wails the auld wifie, and that's how I feel about the garden once March rolls around. 

Mint.

I also managed to get the mint planted before work began. My mother warned me that mint spreads like a weed, so I cut out the bottom of a plastic flowerpot, dug a hole in the herb barrel, shoved in the flowerpot, and planted the mint in that.

The thought of my Easter soup preyed on my mind all morning, and suddenly I realised that I belong to an "essential service" because, thank heavens, a free press is still considered essential. So on my lunch break, I put on my press pass and went out to get my kwas, taking notes and photographs for an article for LSN. 

Yesterday morning's dreams of escape did not entirely come true. When B.A. saw me in my smart work clothes, he vehemently vetoed both the Rough Bus and the slum, so I took a nicer bus to the one polski sklep it passes.

My poor little heart fluttered like a clothes moth as I tapped down the street in my best shoes. I told myself that this was ridiculous, as so far this was one of our daily walk routes. There seemed to be many people around, though: families going for their government-mandated exercise, people talking in doorways, shoppers headed for Tesco. I got to my bus stop ten minutes early, so I walked around the corner to the local High Street. A corner shop and a pharmacy were the only businesses open. There was an untidy queue outside the corner shop, but the pharmacy seemed empty until a lone man went in. Car traffic seemed heavy to me, but this may have been because I hadn't been on this street since St. Joseph's Day. 

My bus had a cheerful driver without a mask and half a dozen or so elderly people on the bottom deck. I rushed up the stairs to the comparative emptiness of the top deck: there was just one man in the very front. Later another man came up the stairs, and then another. I held my breath as the third man walked past me. 

Meanwhile, I took photos of familiar places I have not seen in weeks. Unfortunately, I missed a shot of the most apocalyptic sight, which was an earnest long-haired man glue-washing colourful posters to the long hoarding outside a building site. His posters read "PLEASE BELIEVE THESE DAYS WILL PASS."  

The second-most apocalyptic sight was the shopkeeper in the polski sklep because she was wearing a helmet with a thick plastic face-shield. To my surprise and relief, there had been no queue, just a sign directing that only three people could be at the shop at once. There were two young women and then me. I found bottles of zakwas quickly although, to my chagrin, they were stamped 08.04.2020. 

Thank heavens I took a bottle, for when I consulted my friend Ola on Facebook, she told me that this was the start date, not the best before date, and that the zakwas would be good until August. Whew! Meanwhile, I also bought a loaf of rye bread, in case the zealous police didn't think zakwas was an "essential food item", and a packet of instant żurek, in case the zakwas had gone off. I could have bought any number of things as well, but they clean went out of my mind. So instead I placed my three things before the apocalyptic shopkeeper and muttered, "To wszystko."

A minute later I was back out-of-doors, and I had just missed the bus back, but then I spied the Best Bus of All, the Church-and-Hospital Bus, going my way. It was emptier than the first bus, and I breathed more freely.  Sadly, I forgot all about the apocalyptic posters until long after we had passed them, and there wasn't anything as interesting on the way home. 

I rubbed my hands vigorously with the last of our hand-sanitiser when I alighted from the bus, and upon reaching home I scrubbed both my hands and the bottle of zakwas. The entire adventure had taken me no longer than 75 minutes; I was amazed. 

B.A. stipulated that I was not allowed to freak out about anything that happened on the trip, but there really wasn't anything to freak out about. I sincerely hope the Vile Germ did not leap upon me from one of the young ladies in the polski sklep or from one of the men on the bus, but I suppose we will just have to see. Nobody coughed. Nobody sneezed. Nobody spoke--save for bus-driver greetings* and the shopkeeper and I exchanging mutters about card or cash. 

Post from PM, Speccie and Aged Ps.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in journalistic toil, and then dug up a patch of dandelions before B.A. called me in for dinner. I put on my nice clothes again, and then we watched Holy Thursday Mass in Warrington. Afterwards, B.A. wanted to watch Vespers and the Stripping of the Altar, and I sat along with him and read the pre-1955 Vespers, trying not to fall asleep. My feeling was that for the Catholic faithful of Scotland, the Stripping of the Altar happened after St. Joseph's Day Mass, and this is gong to be one painful Easter. 

However, I cheered up after a cup of cocoa and had a nice chat with my Mum. By the way, Mum's homemade face-masks both arrived in this morning's post, so we are set the next time we make a risky public transit journey.  

We also received a personal letter from the Prime Minister, but I suspect everyone did, too. 

*In Scotland we always greet and thank bus-drivers, just like my Scottish-Canadian grandmother used to do, and now it feels very rude not to .