Biscuit Consumption Analysis v. The Life Remix

I have been thinking about Lent a lot recently – and I’m getting fed up with some of the stuff I’m reading about it. A few of the sites I read regularly have touched on this, but I thought I’d put some of my own thoughts on this down somewhere.

Lent is thought about as a time to give something up, be it chocolate, sweets, beer, whatever. But that’s not what Lent is for. If you read the Bible, there’s no mention of any of that – why should we make it fit with our over-complicated existences?

Lent is supposed to be a time when we review our spiritual life, think again about what it means to be a follower of Christ, reset the compass of our discipleship and prepare ourselves to celebrate the Easter festival. But often we just give up biscuits. [Stephen Cottrell, I Thirst]

I don’t want to use Lent to not drink tea for 40 days, or make sure I am in bed by 11, or anything like that. I have a bed. I can drink tea freely whenever I want. I can look at my happy little son and know that we can feed and clothe him.

I’m staggeringly lucky!

Many of the problems I face are through my own mistakes or lack of thought, not through the simple impossibility of what I want to do. I take for granted the fact that I can turn on a tap and fill a sink with water without the several-mile-round-trip to fetch the water first.

So this is where the word remix comes in. I’m re-focusing my life in places. Retuning my spiritual aerial, if you like, and trying to improve the reception. It’s not a terrible arduous task – just a case of having a think about what I want to improve, and then doing it.

I can’t claim to be giving up all my comforts to live in a desert wilderness for Lent, but I can be happy that I am doing something positive, instead of something rather inane and pointless like not eating any digestives until Easter…
A few places for you to have a look at if you’re interested:

Desert (flash animation)
Grace’s Lent Blog
Maggi Dawn’s Blog
Jonny Baker’s Blog

A day to be sad

I heard on the news this morning that Linda Smith has died.

She'd been suffering with Ovarian Cancer for the last three years, although continued performing and broadcasting through her illness. I'm glad she did, as she was one of the funniest and warmest people to listen to. She was one of the best reasons to listen to the News Quiz on Radio 4, and her own series (A Brief History Of Timewasting) was a joy to listen to.

One of the best things about her work was that she was always funny, always cutting, and always managed this without being particularly offensive - witty and extremely erudite, with the skill to embark on wild flights of fancy and surrealism without losing the listener, she was one of the country's foremost satirists. And one of the most surprising things of all - she came from near me - she was born in Erith, Kent, and went to school in Bexleyheath...

I, for one (and I am sure I am not alone), will sorely miss hearing her voice. Early Friday evenings will not be the same.

There's a nice article on the Independant website today (here), and there are fond obituaries in both the Guardian and the Independant by Jeremy Hardy and Mark Steel respectively - two other comedy heroes of mine, and worth a read.

These are quoted in the article linked above, and sums up her brilliant wit:

On Jesus: "We know he wasn't English, because he wore sandals - but never with socks."

On her hometown, Erith: "They had a competition to find a new name for the Erith Leisure Centre. The winning name was 'The Erith Leisure Centre'."