If you’re not old enough, the title won’t mean anything to you.

In the Christian calendar, to day is the day when pancakes are made in the tradition of using up all of your savoury food in preparation for Lent.

The 40 days of Lent start on Ash Wednesday and is a reminder of the time Jesus wandered in the wilderness eating nothing but deserts.

The Devil tried to trick Jesus in to turning stone in to bread, so that he could get some fibre in his diet, but he resisted claiming he was gluten intolerant.

And that’s why Catholic kids give up sweets, but keep the ones they would have eaten in a jar, so they can eat them all later.

My Catholic school education wasn’t wasted.

As it is Lent, I can pretend that my enforced frugality is part of my religious past. And times could get really tough in the next couple of weeks. That’s not even considering the possible pandemic of coronovirus.

It’s never a good time to become ill, but never in my lifetime have I heard the words self isolate. That’s the last thing I need to do. But in fairness, it’s what I’ve been mainly doing for the last few months. If I didn’t need to find a job and self a flat I wouldn’t mind at all.

This may be a great time to wander in the wilderness. And it’s highlighting the problems we have in the world. Most of us are maxed out all of the time. We need to go to work and if you’re unlucky you’re on a zero hours contact where you don’t get paid if you don’t turn up and there’s no sick pay and holidays. In short, the world has become to used to things being okay. But that’s the case for the more affluent parts of the world. Poor people have been struggling for decades as the rest of the world is more wealthy.

In the same way, we used to get used to four seasons in my part of the world. There was a short period when the most recent generations decided that this is how the world is and has always been. We are more informed, intelligent, and science has made us feel invincible. On the other hand, history gives us another story. Things don’t have to be this way, but there’s money to be made. Right now, I have none!