I feel horribly cruel boozing away on my own while the saintly Mrs U has given up for Lent

FOR the remaining 44 days until Easter, Mrs U will let not a drop of alcohol nor a morsel of chocolate pass her lips — except on Sundays, when Christian tradition dating from the 4th century allows her to break her Lenten fast.

Not for her any half-measures during Lent, like those adopted by Laura Waugh, second wife of the novelist Evelyn. Her son, the brilliant late journalist Auberon, once wrote that his mother restricted herself to one glass of Cyprus sherry per day in the weeks of fasting and abstinence before Easter.

But he added: ‘ She used a receptacle which others might have identified as a large flower vase.’

Apparently, she carried it with her from room to room, sipping away all day long.

No, my wife is an observant Catholic (though as a good member of the Church of Rome, she always describes herself as a bad one) who takes Lent very seriously. She also has a will of iron, which enables her to make a resolution and stick to it, no matter how strong the temptation to backslide.

Weaknesses

In both respects, she is the polar opposite of me. Though I was baptised and confirmed an RC (my Anglican father had to sign a declaration that he would bring up all his children as Catholics, before he could marry my RC mother), I have long forfeited the right to describe myself as such.

Decades ago, I gave up going to Mass regularly, and I now attend only once in a blue moon. Enough to say that I have yet to feel the twitch on the invisible thread, cited by G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown, which is supposed eventually to draw every straying cradle-Catholic back into the arms of Mother Church.

To paraphrase Auberon Waugh again, I find that belief in God is a bit like being in love — a state of mind that comes and goes, but is very hard to feel all the time.

I wish passionately that I could, but I can’t. My only remaining hope is that I’ll see the light and repent ‘ betwixt the stirrup and the ground’, in that moment before death when we’re told redemption is still possible.

As for the lure of pleasure, I’m foursquare behind Oscar Wilde’s Lord Darlington, in Lady Windermere’s Fan, when he says: ‘I can resist everything except temptation.’

For that reason, I long ago gave up trying to give up anything for Lent.

Just about the only legacy of my upbringing in my devout mother’s church (why, by the way, are Catholics always described as ‘devout’, and protestants as ‘staunch’?) is an almost constant feeling of Catholic guilt over my shortcomings.

Never do I feel this more strongly than during Lent, when I take another glug of wine before the sorrowful eyes of the abstinent Mrs U. Though she never rebukes me, knowing my weaknesses better than anyone, I feel horribly cruel boozing away on my own, when I know that she’d like nothing more than to join me in a glass or two.

Yet I’m such a pathetic addict that I could no more go without alcohol or cigarettes for six-and-a-half weeks than I could survive without oxygen.

Ah, well, perhaps I’m doing Mrs U’s immortal soul a power of good by increasing her suffering in this way. She, at least, enters into the true Christian spirit of Lent, sacrificing her beloved earthly comforts as a penitential reminder that the ultimate comfort can come only from God.

I doubt that the same can be said for the Environment Secretary, Michael Gove. His resolution for Lent, he told a Commons committee hearing on Ash Wednesday, is … wait for it … to cut down on his consumption of single-use plastics!

Of course, it didn’t inspire confidence that at the time he made his pledge, he happened to be drinking from what looked like a disposable plastic cup. But I’m inclined to be charitable — it’s Lent, after all — and accept his excuse that the cup in question was made of polylactic acid, or PLA, which is described as a renewable alternative to plastic.

My only question is whether single-use plastics are such an earthly comfort to him that resisting their use during Lent will help gain him entry to the kingdom of heaven.

Guilt

It’s not even as if he’s promising to give them up altogether, but merely to cut down — and then only until Easter.

As the Environment Secretary, and a vocal champion of recycling, shouldn’t he be setting an example by rejecting singleuse plastics for the rest of his life?

It sounds to me as if Mr Gove is making even less of a Lenten sacrifice than Auberon Waugh’s mum, restricting herself to that one flower vase of sherry per day.

For if you ask me, the truly remarkable thing about single-use plastics is how extraordinarily easy it is to do without them, if we set even half a mind to it. I found this myself when the Mail launched its triumphant Banish The Bags campaign to slash the astronomical number of disposable carrier bags issued by supermarkets. As the paper’s chief leaderwriter at the time, it fell to me to write a series of unsigned editorial comment pieces promoting the campaign.

I felt I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror (it’s that Catholic guilt again) if I carried on using throwaway bags myself while advising readers to reject them. So though I told myself it would be hugely inconvenient, I began practising what the editor had instructed me to preach and stopped using them.

Like millions of others, I found it was the easiest thing in the world to bring bags-for-life with me when it was my turn to do the supermarket shop. Once I was in the habit, it became second nature — and I began to wonder why so many of us had caused so much pollution for so long, when this minuscule surrender of convenience could make such a great difference to the environment.

Penance

It’s the same with plastic cups, packaging and microbeads in cosmetics and household cleaners. They are all so utterly unnecessary, adding nothing to the quality of life.

On the contrary, they detract from it by scarring the landscape, polluting rivers and beaches and causing untold suffering to wildlife on land and at sea. It would be no hardship to any of us to relinquish them for ever, never mind just for Lent.

But then Mr Gove is hardly alone in making only a questionable sacrifice between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday. A church-going colleague informs me it’s becoming all the rage to stop using social media for Lent. She disapproves strongly, arguing that this isn’t a proper penance. But I’m not so sure.

Certainly, I myself wouldn’t suffer in the least from shunning Facebook or Twitter for 40 days (or even for the full 46, including Sundays — or 365 days a year, come to that). But then that’s because I’ve never been in the least bit tempted to open a social media account, and plunge into that mad world of abuse and fake news.

You should have seen our sons, on the other hand, when for a few blissful days a few years ago our wi-fi went on the blink at home, cutting them off from the joys of the internet. They were totally bereft, fidgeting in a miserable daze, like heroin addicts deprived of a fix — or their dad when he’s run out of cigarettes.

I have strong admiration for anyone who has the will to give up any habitual self-indulgence for Lent, whether it be swapping inane chat on the internet or resisting wine and chocolates, like the saintly Mrs U.

As for Mr Gove, if he’s hoping for a passage through those pearly gates, I fear he must make a bigger sacrifice than merely cutting down on single-use plastics. Nobody on Earth would miss them — and we’d all be a lot better off without them.