My fingers are bright red. I’ve been doing the Easter eggs.

I still need to painstakingly paint X <cross> B on each of the 150 eggs in gold, for Christos Voskrese, “Christ is risen”. There’s a woman in the parish who keeps offering to help, but this is my job and I’ll do it until I can’t any more.

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I’m not doing this nearly often enough. One of the tree itself, much recovered from its surgery after the storm:

And one of the tree and its surroundings. It’s almost too idyllic-looking a place to be right in front of the station, with the photograph taken from a particularly ugly new bridge.

“I think there’s a wasp in my room,” Menna said as she came down, still in her pyjamas. Well, this is better than two years ago at the same time of year, when the three girls were still sharing the room and there was a wasp on Rebecca’s chest with only a sheet between her and it. Or last year for that matter, when the wasp caused shrieks rather than calm observation.

This wasp was on the floor in front of the chest of drawers, making it impossible for Menna to get at her clothes safely. I think it was the same queen wasp that I put out of the window last year and the year before, but I’m not sure how long they live and whether they can communicate a perfect location to hibernate to their daughters.

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The kid’s been fencing in Almere twice before, but I’d never noticed the extremely weird art on the walkways that connect the sports cafe to the bleachers.

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Finally done a real round of marketing-type stuff. It doesn’t make me not want to be a writer —any job has its no-fun parts— but it’s the least fun part of the job, until now.

Three serious email queries, one of which got rejected in 20 hours (!): probably boilerplate, but friendly and encouraging boilerplate along the lines of “this is not the kind of thing I’m handling right now, it’s no reflection on the quality of your work, you should definitely seek other representation”. Pity, because this was the agent I liked best from his web site; when I have something else that’s finished enough, I’ll see if it’s the kind of thing he’s handling then.

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I survived the four and a half hours. The choirmistress counted prostrations and came out at 271, of which I could manage perhaps a hundred until my knees said “don’t do that to us!”

Next year I’ll follow the example of the choirmistress’ son, who came in at 9:15, just after the reading of the life of St. Mary and in good time to catch most of Matins. He doesn’t like the life of St. Mary any more than I do, and I recall a conversation with him last year in which he said “it makes me want to go out and sin!”

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Of all the services in the Church year, Matins with the life of St. Mary of Egypt, in the fifth week of Great Lent, is the one I like least. Not only the one hundred and fifty prostrations —I know my knees will protest after thirty if not sooner, and give up entirely after seventy or so— or the endless self-deprecation in the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete, but especially the life of St. Mary itself. All it does to me is to make me feel guilty that I like life, including its carnal aspects.

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Foundations for Christian Education by John L. Boojamra. A friendly priest gave it to me years ago, I dimly remember skimming it at the time, I’m now reading it for Lent.

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I habitually use two supermarkets: the fairly expensive but quality (but see below) one that I’ll call ‘A’ because its name starts with A, and the cheap and barely adequate one that I’ll call ‘B’ because there’s a B in its name. And I buy flour from the organic shop, but not all the time because it’s expensive and the stuff they’ve got is not always what I want. Also, I used to go to the windmill in Twello a lot until they changed grain providers and the quality fell like a stone, but I might try them again if I ever have time on a Saturday; they’re only open on Saturdays, and it takes an hour to go there and back, more if the weather’s bad enough to go by bus because I tend to miss the bus back and they only go once an hour.

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