What Lenten fasting has in common with Tough Mudder

Ash Wednesday is upon us, and it is once again time to meditate on the unusually self-aware admission of Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night: ‘I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit.’

It has until now been an exceptionally good season for beef. Grass-fed steak cut from organic Belgian Blues has featured – perhaps the best steak this writer has experienced, except for once in a restaurant with a yellow-painted cinderblock exterior somewhere off the shoulder of a Burgundian route départementale. Paper-thin sheets of Wagyu rolled into ridiculously expensive appetisers have not been lacking. Beef wellington encased in exquisitely gilded pastry and homemade liver pâté has been as glorious as a new Waterloo. Both prime rib and shepherd’s pie have graced the board, and more than once have the delightful aromas of steak and kidney pie wafted through the kitchen. But now, no more beef, or at least significantly less beef. Forward, fellow-fasters: ours is not to reason why, ours is but to fast and die. Into the valley of Lent ride the six hundred.

Lenten abstinence from beef (and other flesh meat) makes you holier for much the same reason as it might make you wittier. It’s all about detachment from the things that tie you down to the purely material. The idea is to gain perspective through small inconveniences, such as giving up meat on Fridays. This serves as a concrete acknowledgement that the individual aims to adapt to God’s preferences, even in seemingly unimportant matters like what to have for lunch.

Does God even care what we have for lunch? Well, of course – why else did He bother to create 20 kinds of edible mushroom, not to mention rocket, walnuts and gorgonzola with which to stuff them? The world, admits the faster, isn’t my oyster – it’s God’s oyster, though even in Lent He doesn’t object to us wading into a plate of the delicious little molluscs and a glass of Pouilly-Fumé with glee, as long as the spirit of moderation is observed.