Thursday, March 08, 2012

Forty Days before Easter...

Yesterday, I managed to get all confused. See, I've given up Irn Bru not-quite-for-Lent (that's a whole other rant). And, with the wedding being five weeks today, I'm much more conscious of the passage of the days than normally at this time of year.

So, yesterday I said that I'd done 15 days, so there were 25 to go (since the one key fact about Lent that everyone knows is that it is the 40 days before Easter). But then, that couldn't be right - Good Friday was 30 days away. I know this well, as I finish work the day before.

So then I considered that perhaps Lent ended on Easter Monday. Actually, that would make sense - it starts on Ash Wednesday, and 40 days is "six weeks minus 2 days", which does indeed take us to a Monday, so...

But I was absolutely sure that I'd not had Irn Bru for two weeks. I was sure I'd done two weekly shops since. Plus, I distinctly remember a discussion about pancakes for breakfast that took place on a Saturday within Lent, and it certainly wasn't last Saturday. Perhaps I was just going mad?

It turns out I'm not mad (or, at least, that that isn't an example of it). Lent does indeed start on Ash Wednesday, but it runs through to Good Friday, six weeks plus two days later.

So, that's a relief. Only now I feel rather aggrieved - I had to get rid of some perfectly good Irn Bru on Ash Wednesday, and now it turns out that I was giving it up under false pretences. Plus the "thought I was mad" thing, of course. But mostly false pretences.

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