This Lent, I cannot forsake wine gums – life is too grim without them

It is hard to know how many pancakes is too many. Instead, congregants queued to have the ashes of last year’s palm crosses sprinkled on their heads. As my turn came, I felt glad to have a full head of hair In normal times, eschewing those goodies has been hard enough – the sweets in particular. I have also been known to buy large quantities of pick’n’mix for the children, only to hand over quite small quantities when I get back home. Different though it may have been in these pandemic times, the “ashing” remained as moving as ever it was; perhaps even more so – a reminder, in the silence of a church which has stood for many centuries, that we all come from dust, and in the end will return to dust.