Ashes

When I was a child growing up in Glasgow, I didn't know about Ash Wednesday, and Shrove Tuesday/Pancake Day was a mystery confined to the pages of comics, where the pancakes in question looked nothing like the small centimetre-thick things we were familiar with. I'd occasionally spot someone on the tram with a dark mark on their foreheads, and I'd know it meant they were Catholic - and that was that. Not heathen, just Presbyterian Scots. 

Today, Ash Wednesday began with sun - you can see in my extra photo of the back garden (and the whirligig) that it didn't last long; this was when I was about to hang out my first washing with an eye to helping it dry outside before the rain came, though right then that didn't look as if it would be long. However, we did get in a brief walk in the Bishop's Glen before there was any rain, and were rewarded, not to say startled, by the sudden rattle right above our heads of a woodpecker doing his seven-beat roll. 

Apart from that, I spent a considerable time - and all my hearts and stars - catching up on the many blips I've been guilty of not visiting during the last, preoccupied week. It's somehow good to feel less alone in the sense of dread that has taken over; there used to be a blipper, Migrant, who lived in Moscow but they haven't posted for just over 3 years. I hope he/she just got fed up blipping. 

And we went to church for the Ash Wednesday liturgy and Imposition of Ashes - just a small congregation, united in the awareness that the hymns and the readings seemed utterly appropriate for the current situation. We prayed, of course, for the people of Ukraine - and I say this in the knowledge that people might well scoff at the apparent uselessness of the exercise, but if you watched Clive Myrie's report at the end of the 10 o'clock News you'll see how important a part their faith and their church play in the lives of those who defend Kyiv tonight.

Blipping the lit church as we left.