Shrove Tuesday

PANCAKES!!

I ate pancakes for breakfast and I'm having them for supper, too. With chocolate sauce. The traditional thing is to have them with lemon and sugar. But I'm having chocolate sauce.

Lent seems awfully long, at forty days. The only way to tackle it is not even to think about cakes or chocolate. And all that starts tomorrow.

MEANWHILE.....

Met Josephine Robinson of the Association of Catholic Women for coffee and a long talk this morning.We'd arranged to meet at the Grosvenor Hotel at Victoria Station - irritatingly, I was waiting in one coffee-room, while she was waiting in another! Finally, we found one another.....entries are coming in well for the Religious Education Project run by the ACW - open to all children at Catholic primary and infant schools. We talked about arranging the judging and the certificates...two trophies are offerred every year, one for infant-aged children 5-7, and the other for Juniors, 7-11. Prizewinners also get a copy of the new Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Incidentally, we could do with more funds to run all this, so if you want to make a Lenten donation, why not send it to ACW? Address: 22 Surbiton Hill Park, Surbiton Surrey KT5 8ET. If you are worried about poor RE teaching, this is your chance to do something about it. The Project involves having children learn specifics aspects of Catholic doctrine and write about them, studying the New Testament and the Church's teaching.

Spent the afternoon working at home: I've now produced a reading-list of children's books, including some old and some new....many thanks to people who sent in ideas and comments re. this to this Blog. I'm still open to more information, especially about NEW authors, and also about any initiatives to re-publish some of the great children's classics (I think it's sad that The Jungle Book doesn't seem to be available anywhere.....)

I am concentraing on children's fiction, but of course children need good poetry too. Ideas? A Child's Garden of Verses is still available and I have seen some v. attractive new editions of it. And an excellent book of verse Set the Echoes Flying was produced some years ago by Fisher Press.

AND MORE ON CHOCOLATE

Before you finish reading blogs tonight you MUST click on to Father Tim Finigan's blog (see list to the right), and read his story "Contraceptives and Chocolate". It will raise your spirits hugely - cheered me up no end.