Gloria

It's Brain Tumour Awareness Month again, everybody!

But more importantly, in another few days that most fabulous season of Christian masochism, Lent, shall also commence. I have decided that the ideal thing to give up for those 40 days would be my tumour, seeing as I harp on about it so much. If I were to resist it, I'd have nothing else to talk about, really, and we would all be delighted by my blank and silent sense of happiness in my dedication to God. 

Unfortunately for all of us, I am not the Catholic I was raised to be, so there seems little point in sacrificing the object of my obsession and the opportunities it provides for groaning and moaning and emotionally blackmailing anyone who takes the time to listen. Therefore, let it be known that for the season known as Lent, I will not give up my tumour, or any pleasure I take in grumbling about it, but I shall nevertheless out-Catholic the Catholics in self-flagellation. I shall moan, I shall groan, I shall take on the holy sufferings of Christ on his donkey and his tree, and, after a brief wrestling match, the Crown of Thorns will be MINE. I won't be crucified, but I'll get that Crown.

Or in other words, I'm actually not giving anything up for Lent. Why should I? (Patti Smith, let us consult thee). I'm hoping to make the most of the month being Aware, whether that means paying extra attention to myself, or paying attention to other people, or to wider campaigns, or just generally thinking things through. Which things? Any things. Et cetera. I've spent the last few months being scared again. I'd like to shake that off. Or talk about how I can't shake it off.

Very well. Now, Let us pray. Not to any figures directly involved in the Easter processes, but to someone from the strange hagiographic cult, the Christian celebrity world that, I feel, is a particularly interesting bit of ooze in the holy bandages. I'm fascinated by it. Let us pray to she who had a bleeding hole in her head for fifteen years. St Rita, patron saint of lost and impossible causes, sickness, wounds, and a few other things not applicable to me: Dear St Rita, please send those white bees to take my tumour. Amen. And on your feast day in May, I'll be pretty grateful, and I'll make you some rose petal jam from the rose bush in my garden. I've just replanted it (no - no injury from the thorns, Praise the Lord), so I think it's going to do very well this year.

Brain Tumour Awareness Month! Brain Tumour Awareness Month! Brain Tumour Awareness Month!