In which Springheel Mortifies the Flesh

What Ho, Springheelistas!

Come now, my dears, did you really think I would leave you abandoned and uncared for in Lent, the cruellest time of the year? My favourite time, for reasons I set out last year? The very idea...

Of course the problem with giving things up for Lent is that if one succeeds, one feels compelled to up the ante the year after. So in the competitive spirit that drives more people than one might imagine at Lent, I shall vaunt my asceticism and slam down the gauntlet. This year Springheel has given up:

Milk Chocolate (ridiculously easy in the early stages...)
Sweets (again, not a challenge at first...)
Cake (now we’re getting serious. This is not easy)
Biscuits (which is hellish: biscuits are the crack cocaine of the bakery world)
Red Wine (Mother of God...what have I done?)

You will note, I hope, the weaselling caveats built into this lists. I have given up not chocolate but milk chocolate...enabling me if I wish to gorge myself on my preferred 78% plain chocolate. I have given up red wine, enabling me to drink white with impunity and, of course, giving me a clear run at the fizz. This is no accident. I am not, after all, a complete idiot. I must make allowances for the fact that I have my “little weaknesses” (as the judge so memorably called them). It is bad enough waking up next to a urine-soaked tramp in the cells after a heavy night, without having to acknowledge that one has managed not only to disgrace oneself corporeally but, has in doing so failed in one’s obligations to the Lord of Hosts...

But does this exercise in cunning make me a hypocrite? No, I think not.

Of course I am a hypocrite, but not because I ensure that my Lenten fast is not too onerous. I would ask you to consider the deep physical pain inherent in giving up red wine. A chap thinks long and hard before setting aside, even temporarily, the measured delights of Bordeaux and the racier, more flamboyant pleasures of a fine Burgundy. But one had no choice. The inflationary process was at work: last year’s mortification is this year’s normality. In order to demonstrate that one is serious about this business, one finds oneself trapped in an awful “ascetic circle” of steadily increasing abstention.

I daresay the inevitable result of this is that by the time I’m about 80, I’ll be spending Lent sitting on top of a pole in the middle of the Syrian desert, clad in a Harris Tweed cilice and existing on scorpion flesh and vinegar.

Which I have to say I find a strangely alluring prospect.