In my family, taming electricity for domestic use is handed down through the female line. My grandmother taught my mother to attach a new cord to a toaster. My mother taught me to wire a plug. And now I’ve taught one daughter, and promised to teach another, to install wall sockets and light switches.

True, it was my father-in-law who did all the wiring in our new attic and left the ends securely bundled up and tucked away for me and, as it turned out, the thirteen-year-old to screw the sockets and switches on after each girl had painted the walls of her own room. Next time I’ll find out how to do wiring, too. Electricity, as the thirteen-year-old has already noticed in school, is interesting and easy.

The best part was, of course, to reconnect the mains when everything was in place, and flip the switch, and see the light come on.

And it’s not nearly finished yet, but I’m satisfied (for now) with how it looks: my new web site section, the Purplish Cooking Pages. There’s a grand total of seven recipes there, and I’m slowly adding more links to interesting sites, but it’s ready to face the world. Bon appétit (no, not this one).

A few weeks ago I planned to teach a church-school class about the Tower of Babel with the group that’s doing the Old Testament, in sequence, very slowly (one story a month). As it happened nobody in the right age group turned up, but it did make me read up on Genesis 11:

Now the whole earth had one language and one speech.

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My current earworm is the Easter Stichera. Better than some more inane earworms I’ve had lately, but annoying all the same, exactly because it’s one of my favourite pieces of music for Easter. It does have the advantage that I pay more attention to individual words and phrases than when I’m singing them in the choir.

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
A Pascha of delight, Pascha, the Lord’s Pascha, an all-venerable Pascha has dawned for us, Pascha. Let us embrace one another with joy. O Pascha, ransom from sorrow! Today Christ shone forth from a tomb as from a bridal chamber, and filled the women with joy, saying, ‘Proclaim it to the Apostles’.

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