How Long Is Lent ?

This year has been the first time I have given up something for Lent. 2 things in fact, meat altogether (but not fish) and a serious cut back on chocolate. I consider my 2 squares of dark chocolate that I eat each night to be 'medicinal' but recently there has been a lot of extra chocolate. So for the first half of Lent I cut out everything except the 2 squares. Then for the next quarter I went down to 1 square each day and for the final quarter proper cold turkey and no chocolate at all. Being the kind of person who likes charts I made myself a chart so that I could cross off each day. However as I near the end of my chart I realise that we haven't even got to Palm Sunday. How could that be? Had I miscounted? I checked with my diary and was surprised to find that there are 46 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday. A little research revealed that when Lent was first formalised and people were expected to do pennance and fast for 40 days Sundays were excluded as the Sabbath was a day of celebration. Now I have to decide what to do with those 6 extra days. It won't do me any harm to carry on I suppose.

Today has been another wonderful 'summer's' day. I spent the afternoon in school making yet more Easter hats with a different class. Even though we had a staff meeting after school it was still sunny enough when I got home to run and change into shorts before relaxing with a cup of tea out in the garden. So peaceful listening to the sounds of birds, munching ponies, buzzing bees and a children's riding lesson. Not to mention the rebelious owl that insisits on hooting during the daytime. Once the sun had gone behind the trees I thought I would move down to find the sun at the back of the house. First I decided to walk up to say hello to the ponies, but then then I felt energetic and carried on walking right up the hill and on to the top of the drive where I was rewarded by the sound of a skylark singing above the fields.
Let's hope this weather continues for a while.