Laetare Sunday Thoughts

Mothering Sunday is also Laetare Sunday, the Fourth Sunday in Lent, which is marked with rose vestments and a general lightening of the Lenten load, should you be carrying one. It is a big holiday in the minds of the Men's Schola and its unofficial Ladies' Auziliary, and we all wear pink (or rose) shirts or skirts and eat a lot of pink (or rose) coloured food and drink at Sunday Lunch.

This year the Knights of Malta Edinburgh Ball takes place on the Vigil of Laetare Sunday, so we anticipate a lot of hung-over tweedy types from London appearing in the Schola and in the pews. The oldies will probably go to the New Club for Sunday Lunch, but the youngies will probably come to the Historical House, for it is Our Turn.

This means that we are preparing Sunday Lunch (with much pink drink and foodstuffs) for fourteen-to-sixteen people, which is why this post is going to be so short.

I am reminded of Calvinist Cath's descriptions of Free Presbyterian Communion Sundays, when Free Presbyterians swell the toon and stay at all the other Free Ps' houses, and there is much feasting, especially upon traybakes. (I have a theory that sugar is an important part of cultural Presbyterianism.) I suppose all super-trad (and therefore small) communities (or branches, as naturally our super-trad set is in communion with Rome, unlike, er, Cath's) are like that: sudden squashings of long-missed people into too-small rooms and great ado to feed them all.

And now I must rush off. Food shop. Confession. Pint with Andrew Cusack. Food shop. Home to let in wandering Poles going to the Knights of Malta Ball and sleeping in our dining-room and library.

Update: Home with brown herringbone wool-mix Laura Ashley trousers which cost only one pound sterling. I don't usually wear trousers but I clearly need something for country walks, as my nice brown wool skirt was sadly snagged when I fell down a river bank two weeks ago.