Holy Friday. I should probably abstain from blogging as well as everything else but I’m sitting here, waiting on a phone call and, well, you know…

In Ireland it’s called Good Friday of course, and is one of the two days of the year when the pubs don’t open. A strange locution, Good Friday. I presume it’s one of those ancient word-blurs that changed God to Good, the same way God by ye became Goodbye. Some day I’d love to meet someone to whom I could say ‘God by ye’ without them backing nervously from the room.

So anyway, Holy Friday and we’re marking time till Vespers at 2pm and the placing of the shroud in the centre of the church. The Greeks adorn the epitafion with mountains of flowers and cense it with rosewater. In Venice the bishop’s sister and her friends were i/c flowers and woe betide any other female who dared approach with a freesia in hand. They were a kind of Constance Spry Mafia. With the Russians it’s more of a free for all. I like that. It’s an act of veneration, after all, not a Women’s Institute Best Decorated Shroud contest.  

In the kitchen the faffing continues. We have the Irish contingent coming for lunch on Monday, towards which I’ve just hard-boiled two dozen quails’ eggs and made a tray of maple syrup and cayenne spiced pecans. And as the world is holding its breath to know  – I’ll be slow roasting two shoulders of lamb, to be served with sticky garlic potatoes and followed by a passion fruit and ginger trifle. I’m also making a Grasshopper Pie (non-alcoholic) to see if I can fool/gross out the 5 year old. 

Meanwhile Mr F has installed a Junior basketball hoop. I braved the Argos store to buy it yesterday. It wasn’t a pleasant experience but I was willing to do anything to stop them arguing over the Junior croquet mallets.