Tuesday 1st March - Looking forward to Lent

I really am looking forward to Lent. Seriously. 

I have bought myself a 'Lent Calendar', like an Advent Calendar, but of course no chocolates, and I will get to open the first window tomorrow;

The booklet to the side has the Bible reading for the day. I think it will have to do with the animal revealed behind each window.

The lack of chocolates won't be a problem; no way am I giving up chocolate for Lent! In fact I have recently stocked up the 'chocolate stash box' with mini Fair Trade chocolate eggs from Divine. No more than one egg per day, though, to make them last.

I shall be following the course that the Rev Andrew Dotchin creates every year. This year the title is 'With a song in my heart', and you will be able to follow it here. It started today and promises to be as excellent a read as ever.

 So am I giving up anything for Lent? Yes, I am not going to buy or download any books. I must admit I hastily ordered my book club choice yesterday, as it would have been very difficult to join in the next meeting if I hadn't. It is 'The Valley at the Centre of the World' by Malachy Tallack. I have also chosen it for my Audible purchase as I had a credit, for hearing the regional accents and language.

 Our previous choice was 'The Mayor of Casterbridge', by Thomas Hardy. I haven't ready any of his books before, and I was surprised how much I enjoyed this. If you have an Audible subscription you can listen to Tony Britton reading it, very well indeed, as one of the free books.  

I'm not going to go short of reading matter... there must be hundreds of books in the house, plus ones that are waiting for me to read or finish on my kindle.

And I am going to give up wasting far too much time playing the various solitaire games on the computer. That will be very hard, much harder than giving up chocolate. 

What am I taking on for Lent? Letter writing; I will be printing off and sending copies of the Lent course to two friends who don't use computers at all. I reckon that's a reasonable commitment. I'm also aiming to try and do some form of exercise every day to improve my fitness levels. I do them while I am listening to the songs in the Lent course.

Let's see how long this lasts...