4th in Lent - Mother's Day.

But not over here, it's not part of the church calendar here.  Americans didn't have lots of servants who wanted one Sunday a year off to visit their mothers, so the notion of Mother's Day has been taken over by the greeting card industry, I think it is in May, but don't know why.   Anyway, loved ones sent me electronic greeting cards and messages and that made my day.

 

I thought of all the children in churches at home this morning presenting their mothers with little posies made up by the women of the church, and usually there were enough to give one to other elderly ladies present as well.

Last evening Bruce and Rosalyn kindly invited me to see the film 'Spotlight', and Donna came as well.   Briefly, its synopsis is that a Boston Globe reporter uncovered a ring of paedophilic monks.  SHOCK, HORROR.  I don't even walk round the grounds of St Gregory's without casting suspicious looks at any I might pass.  A bishop back home - a monk I liked and highly respected for many years - is now cleaning out the loos in Lewes Prison after a conviction for paedophilia. 

In every nation there are monks with paedophilic tendencies.  I was in Ireland when news of their local paedophilic monks broke.  It was actually quite heart wrenching, the entire community was devastated, in total shock.  Elderly farmers who had grown up in,  and loved the Catholic church, were walking round looking dazed and vowing they would never go to Mass again.

Afterwards Bruce and Rosalyn invited us in for tea and blueberry biscuits, then I made my way home.  I'd left some bacon in a frying pan - and I know this probably sounds revolting - but I decided to crisp it up and snack on it, so I turned on the stove and wandered off.   Next thing I knew the pan was on fire, and the smoke alarm was screaming so loudly it could be heard from one end of the street to the other.  I've never heard it before, I had no idea it was so LOUD - I had a smoke alarm in Seaford, but nothing on the scale of this -  I threw the pan out, opened both front and back doors and a neighbour from across the road rushed in and turned them off (it's the law that there has to be one in every bedroom).   Dale across the road is away on a holiday, or she would have come in as well.

So today I have just been recovering from all this excitement.  In the afternoon I went to Walmart for a new frying pan.