This year I will be mostly giving up my husband for Lent

As a Catholic I am, as ever, readily prepared for the celebration of Jesus sacrifice on the cross this Easter time.

I have spent years trying to emphasise to Mr Bean the importance of certain religious celebrations and the personal impact these have on me albeit for very small lengths of time in comparison. These impacts are mostly centred around attending mass (especially on the important days themselves), teaching our children the real meanings of Christmas and Easter and not just throwing gifts and chocolate eggs at them in an effort to turn them into spoilt, sugar overdosed, expectant little arseholes.

So far so good yea?

In my efforts, I have encouraged Mr Bean (not catholic, baptised CofE but very non practising) towards decisions of baptising our children into the Catholic faith. The pros have gone along the lines of teaching our children christian morals; which we both believe in, enrolling them into the (quite large) catholic community in our local area, sending them to the school at the bottom of our road (which is a catholic school, is walkable from my home and just so happens to have a very good ofsted report) and in the least part, satisfying my family who are devout.

Now I am not a devout catholic. Far from it. I am a divorcee now remarried to start with.

I have faith, but I do not believe in all the contradictions or the self-flagellation. My belief is not of consequence here. This is not a religious rant and I hope won't open endless religious debate as these can often be messy, argumentative and, to be honest, they start wars!

Anyway, back to the subject in question. Lent. Not my favourite time of year I must admit. Celebrating the brutal murder of anyone is quite harrowing to say the least. I try and focus on the more positive elements of the christian tradition and "the light at the end of the tunnel" so to speak.

• prayer (justice towards God),
• fasting (justice towards self),
• and almsgiving (justice towards neighbour).

Now, I do tend to give up a vice during Lent. Chocolate and wine have been firm favourites of mine over years gone by. This year I will be giving up sugary drinks and sweets. Largly due to the fact that I will have to part with a lot of money at the dentist and feel that this investments is worth more than monetary sacrifice on my part.

Oh and 'll also be giving up my husband, who has Call of Duty Black Ops who this evening told me to "hurry up and watch EastEnders, as (his work colleague) is only online til 9 o'clock and then he can't play cos his GF's coming over"

Not really much of a hardship that one (if he's going to speak to me like that!) but sacrifice I must!

Other things I am giving up include:

• trying to lose weight
• my gym membership
• and shouting from one area of the house to another (the children are encouraged to try this also)