Simnel cake etc

Thursday 11th March, 2021

It is nearly 18.00 and I have just been reminded that it is the Patronal Feastday of my Old School. St Gregory the Great, Pope, purveyor of the good purposes with regard to St Benedict and his monks and Rule. We used to have a grand meal...and today I have to be reminded...old age and senile decay have set in!! I shall now have some cake. In fact the cake I helped mix and bake yesterday, a simnel cake, was over baked. It was burned and went very hard, left too long in the oven against my advice I might add! But having scrapped off the burn I have had two large pieces...the marzipan has a lovely taste and the over baking has made some of the fruit almost like toffee. Both pieces were delicious and although it should be reserved for Easter it will not last that long! My excuse is that it is St Gregory's Feastday so I am celebrating by eating cake. Marie Antoinette said something about 'let them eat cake' when there were riots in Paris as no bread was available. That remark, to me, was the cause and heart of the French Revolution! Whatever....

In fact I am in a mildly philosophical mood because I have been listening to a podcast on Aristotle's 'Nicomachean ethics'. It is good to be stimulated but much of the talk should have been a reminder. I used to know these things but my brain grows addled and I forget. Anyway the ethics is about how to live life better. Aristotle was not just of the cerebral and academic mind but of real life. He was a genius at practical observations of life as it is or, as the podcaster put it, he believed 'metaphysical truths are beholden to life'. He claimed happiness is attained by a virtuous life and it is habit and practice, not reason and instruction, which leads to virtue. So in this Lenten season I should be thinking of the habits and practices which will lead me to the Love of God, neighbour and self. Self discipline through fasting, a sacrifice for a bigger good, prayer not for its own sake but as a way to be more open to virtue, grace and love and then alms giving to show love for others: this should be my Lenten path!

Well the day included a short morning walk after the excitement of the day which was the arrival of a new sofa. It was promised that we would have a two hour warning of time of arrival but they gave us ten minutes. I was still in my pyjamas even though it was 11am. I had to wear a mask and the house had to be well ventilated. Actually they arrived, were masked, efficient and were in and out within ten minutes. The sofa is in place and I have been warned to treat it as if it were the Crown Jewels: no eating supper on a tray in front of the telly, not drinks while sitting on the sofa, no this, that and the other! Help, discipline imposed!

The first walk was to the Community centre and I collected 6 unwanted loaves of bread and some stale buns for the birds. I put out two loaves and after 20 minutes they were spotted by gulls so there was an invasion and the bread devoured. Part of the bread horde included two excellent Italian bread rolls which I had for lunch with feta cheese and salad cream! With the cake I have recently eaten it has hardly been a fasting Lenten day but then it is the feast of St Gregory!

It rained after midday but seemed dry by 13.00 so I donned my boots, grabbed my litter grabber and headed off on my new route. A fierce wind and quite cold but after trudging up the steep hill I was warm. A gorgeous walk with suddenly the sun emerging. Only two bags of litter. I noted 9 new lambs had been born and one was black. I enjoyed the naked trees and their branches and the huge trunks which together make a mindfully remarkable picture of the raw beauty of nature.

On my return home I listened to the above podcast and then read about the case of a man whose daughter was abducted and murdered and who sought revenge. So many things make me go cold.

Any way an interesting day, one which has made me think, made me ponder human kind in all its virtue and vice, made me look to the purpose for which we exist, which has allowed me the delight of good food even of good burnt cake yet also a day when first I forgot the Feastday of a great saint but also the first anniversary of a friend's wife's death at the age of 56. As an old teacher use to say 'all sorts make up the world'.