It’s not even the end of January yet. Hell, I’ve still got a couple of new year’s resolutions that I haven’t got around to breaking. But already the Church of England is looking ahead to Lent. This week the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, Drs Rowan Williams and John Sentamu, apparently launched a campaign whose aim is to inspire Christians to take a fresh look at Lenten duty. I say “apparently” because I have somehow missed the fanfare that accompanied the launch of this admirable initiative. Never mind. The advantage of starting a campaign so madly early is that it gives stragglers plenty of time to catch up — so let’s see what the Archbishops have in mind for us.
Though I have drifted a long way from the fervent attachment that bound me to the C of E throughout my childhood, the old thread still twitches a bit, especially during the church year’s two great periods of selfexamination and repentance, Lent and Advent. As a child of gloomy and gothic inclinations (think of dear little Wednesday Addams and you’ll get the picture), I liked the thea trics of Lent especially: the satisfyingly lugubrious hymns, the altar bare of hangings, the crucifixes tied up in little purple bags, the riotous mess of pancake-making followed by the ash-smeared face, the darkness and mourning, the slightly perverse pleasure of selfdenial involved in not eating sweeties for 40 days. Plenty there to catch the imagination of a child, and of adults, too, especially now that, as a society, we seem to be groping our way towards embracing the attractions of self-denial, thrift and taking personal responsibility for our behaviour, not just towards our fellow man, but our fellow creation.
Exciting times for the Church, you might think, with all this moral questing in the air. So what do the Archbishops propose as their Lenten initiative? Well, from this week, you can text the word “Lent” to 64343 and receive a daily suggestion for a Good Deed, beginning on February 19, until Easter Monday, April 9. Sample suggestions include paying more for charity-shop goods than the marked price, giving a hug to someone who needs one, giving up your place in a shop queue to someone in a hurry, leaving money in your supermarket trolley for someone else to find, buying low-energy light bulbs, wearing a jumper and turning down the central heating and saying nice things about someone behind their back. Plus there is a website, www.livelent.net, offering “downloads, prayers . . . and PowerPoint presentations to help you Love Life Live Lent to the max”.
At first sight, something strikes one about this Lenten push. Not the website design, with its trippy combination of a vast yellow smiley on a vivid puce background (though that is undoubtedly very striking indeed), but the curious tone, at once hortatory and apologetic, in which the suggestions for Lenten discipline are couched. “Who is this for?” reads one of the headings in the “FAQ” section of the website. Answer: “LLLL is a Church of England initiative and we encourage everyone to get involved. Thinking about others and making a difference are something that anyone and everyone should do. Some of the actions may suggest going to church or other activities that you’re not quite sure about. But these are only suggestions.”
Only suggestions, indeed. In fact, I know any number of quite fervent atheists who set considerable store by turning down the heating and using low-energy light bulbs all year round, not just for 40 days in late winter and early spring. Not to mention assorted agnostics, humanists, Sikhs, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Wiccans and Roman Catholics with nice manners who readily give up their place in a queue to someone in a hurry, routinely refuse change for goods they have bought at charity shops, automatically respond to human distress with a hug and habitually speak kindly of their absent acquaintance. The only thing I don’t think any of them would do is leave cash knocking about in a supermarket trolley on the off-chance that someone needy might find it. Is that it, then? The thing that distinguishes an Anglican from a nice person of any other denomination or religion, or none at all, is a tendency to leave loose change in Waitrose trolleys during Lent? Crikey. To think that people were burnt at the stake for this.
Perhaps the Archbishops of Canterbury and York would say that I am arguing from a position of deliberate perversity. Then again, these are the men who wrote this week to the Prime Minister in support of the Roman Catholic Church’s position on the gay adoption issue, saying that “the rights of conscience cannot be made subject to legislation, however well-meaning”, while at the same moment the Education Secretary, Alan Johnson, was asserting on the Today programme that Anglican adoption agencies have made it clear that they are willing to comply with the legislation. Which is it, I wonder, conscience or legislation? Of course, I’ll never know, because the unseemly contortions that the C of E is willing to perform in order to accommodate every point of view have left it hollow at the heart, unable even to surf the wave of desperate good-life-seeking that is the unmistakable mood of the times. Off it drifts towards schism — well-meaning, tentative, and utterly pointless — waved off by people like me with sensations of intense exasperation and (oddly enough) regret.
Vixen upsets foxy London ladies
Nature notes part 1: Blake Morrison has written a novel, South of the River, which evinces a preoccupation with new Labour and foxes. I wondered, when the publisher sent me a proof, what he was on about, but the stories this week of the Town Fox and the Country Fox have changed my opinion. First there was the story of the Sandringham shoot at which the Country Fox was incompetently shot by one of the guns and, after five minutes of torment, bashed to death by a bloke in a tweed jacket. The RSPCA is investigating. Meanwhile, the Town Fox drifted into a shoe shop on fashionable Portobello Road, causing panic among the customers, who fled, shrieking, in their socks. Again the RSPCA attended, removed the fox “and took it away”, according to a newspaper report, “to be released in the country”. Where it will be presumably shot and beaten to death. Though in this case, since photographs of the little vixen in question clearly showed that she was suffering from a horrible case of mange, that might even be a mercy.
Not so secret squirrel
Nature notes part 2: this weekend the RSPB conducts its annual garden bird survey (www.rspb.org.uk/birdwatch). I am proud of the birds in my tiny London garden — wrens, blackbirds, bluetits and this year a newly arrived robin. But my attempts to feed them have been frustrated by a horrible squirrel with whom I conduct a miserable, Tom-and-Jerry relationship in which the birds and I are the losers. The garden is too small for a bird table, and I want to feed fat balls, not just nuts. Has anyone got any good anti-squirrel devices? Not necessarily humane . . .
I recently discovered, quite by accident, a method which has so far remained foolproof. I use several of those wire meshed cylindrical nut-feeders in my garden, together with a nut box specifically for the visiting squirrels. I had hoped they would use this and leave the birds to enjoy their own rations.
However, a couple of the squirrels seem to enjoy the acrobatics of hanging down the length of the wire nut-feeders and biting through the wire to remove their prize.
One day last winter, I was throwing out some bacon rind and fat when I thought that maybe the birds might benefit from it. So, I strung some of it over the hooks from which my nut-feeders hung and left them to it. A short while later, along came a squirrel following his usual route through the tree branches to arrive at the top of his favoured feeder. Within six inches of the feeder he paused, sniffed the air, and tentatively inched forward. When he reached the bacon and touched it with his nose he recoiled as if he'd tasted ammonia and ran up to the top of the tree. He made one more investigation but was obviously repelled by the bacon and instead went straight to his own nut-box.
As long as the bacon rind remains in place, squirrels avoid the bird food. I like to think of it as squirrel Kryptonite.
I'd be interested to hear if it works for you too.
Calum MacPhee, Glasgow,
I am celebrating the first case of defeated squirrels in about ten years. I have a large garden here in a south Manchester suburb and am infested with the pests - I have counted as many as 10 all at the same time. They chew through the bird feeders and effortlessly overcome every obstacle. I've lain awake at night planning awful painful retribution. Then a friend suggested paprika. You put a few spoonsful of oil in a bowl, pour in a good supply of seeds/nuts, then I added about 3 ozs of paprika (I bought a big bag in Budapest last year). The resulting rusty looking mix was put into the hanging feeders and the bird table. Two squirrels immediately located it but after only seconds of nibbling both left quickly. They headed for the pond and the birdbath and were patently trying to cool their mouths. Apparently birds quite enjoy the taste and the capsaicin (?sp) which causes the heat has no effect on them. Hurrah.
Gabrielle Baker, Manchester,