No, it's not a diet!

It's been such a busy week and I apologise that my blog entries have been a bit sparse!

Yesterday, my dear friend and colleague, Sheila, had her 90th birthday and held an open house in the afternoon. It was lovely to drop round for half an hour. Sadly, I couldn't stay longer because of a meeting. (By the way, I succeeded in staying within budget for her gift by finding a lovely woven goose planter on special offer at a small garden centre and planting it up with ivy and miniature daffodils! He was well received!)

Someone at the meeting had seen the article in The Shuttle and asked me how the challenge was going. When he heard I'd just been on the receiving end of 'free cake' at Sheila's party, he announced, "but you can't have cake on your diet!" "But I'm not on a diet; I'm on a budget!" I replied and two colleagues interjected gleefully, "and it was FREE cake!"

That's the thing about Lent, I suppose; we've got so used to it being an excuse for losing weight or testing our ability to give up chocolate or wine that it's become about Diet for many people. My cousin who shows willpower on a cast iron scale during Lent; testing her resolve on the 'main players' in her diet, ruefully said to me, I hope you don't lose more weight than me on this challenge or I'll be going on holiday with a skinny cousin and be feeling fat. Well no danger of that when there's free cake to be had!

Actually, it's not just cake. Our fab primary school - Wilden All Saints - achieved an outstanding Ofsted and there was a celebratory meal last week. The Head rushed over and said, "Eva must get first turn at the buffet, she must be starving!" The solidarity is heart warming but I'm not wasting away. I am eating more thoughtfully and snacking between meals has been eradicated almost
completely. You don't buy those sorts of things on this sort of budget. Well except when you're feeling a bit low and have a weak moment. Like at the farm shop on Friday. I decided to forego some spinach and an aubergine and buy a large bag of lentil crisps and some chocolate. Then I pigged out on them at home and cheered myself up.

I remember from my time working for Christian Aid, that some people seemed to think that poor people ought to be more virtuous than rich people. As though by having little money, the poor are duty bound to a level of financial responsibility from which the rich are exempt. If it's a matter of using money justly and responsibly, surely the responsibility increases, the more of the stuff you have!

We have become so bound by our financial institutions, that we have forgotten that money is, in reality, nothing : simply a token, symbol, method of exchange. It has no worth in or of itself. Yet it has become a primary driver in our lives. We define a person's value by how much of the stuff they
have and the things they can get with it. We have forgotten what is really important and that, no matter how much money we have, we can't buy the truly valuable things in life. That's why I'm spending Lent on a budget and not a diet.

Eva