My Lent sacrifice: I’ll give up de cups of coffee for 40 days

It always had a map of Ireland on the bottle, that was the Irel coffee I .

I think it was a mixture of coffee and chicory - a kind of a black sticky liquid. You’d pour out a spoonful into a cup, add boiling water, and that was the coffee we knew in the last century.

Strange coincidence, isn’t it then, that nowadays we sow chicory in grassland for grazing animals.

Apparently, the chicory plant has very long roots which bring up different minerals from deep down in the soil.

Chicory is what’s known as an anthelmintic plant, which produces health-giving properties beneficial for livestock. They say ‘what’s good for the goose is good for the gander’, so if chicory improves the wellbeing of animals, it can’t be bad for us humans either!

There was always a bottle of Irel at the back of the lower kitchen cupboard at home - alongside the Andrews Liver salts, the black treacle, the Cod liver oil, and the Glaubers salts. The proximity of these products to each other indicated that they were sometimes needed and all had beneficial characteristics.

Now, the Irel coffee had a strong taste - to mix my metaphors, ‘it wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea’ - but I liked it.

In fairness, tea was the favourite beverage in our house and apparently all over the country - we are still, to this day, one of the highest consumers of it per capita in the world.

‘Come in for a cup of tea’, or ‘the kettle’s boiling so let ye wait for a cup out of yere hand’, were regular salutations in Irish homes where tea was the drink of welcome and of conversation.

Making Irel coffee had so many variants: a spoonful of the viscous liquid in a cup, add boiled water, and then, according to personal taste - sugar and milk. The Irel was also used in cakes and for icing buns.

Then we saw the arrival of Maxwell House - a slim jar with the famous Red and White label. Instant coffee had arrived.

They say a hotel called The Maxwell House somewhere in Tennessee in America was the first major purchaser of this new product back before 1900 and gave its name to the brew.

In the1960s, when we got a television for the first time, Get Smart was a great kind of a spy/comedy series starring Don Adams as Maxwell Smart. The coffee was smooth and sophisticated - unlike the bumbling but funny Maxwell Smart - but I liked both!

Just as Waterford hurler John Mullane declared ‘I loves me county’, well ’tis the same with me, truly, ‘I loves me coffee’.

Some people regard themselves as connoisseurs of wine, and others have a similar opinion of themselves when it comes to the roasted and toasted coffee bean. I have no such pretensions, however.

They say travel broadens the mind and lightens the pocket at the same time. Over the years, I was never one for hopping around the world, though in the last decade my port has been well used. I’m not sure if my mind has been broadened or not, but my palate certainly has learned culinary diversity.

If anyone told me 10 or 15 years ago that I’d get to love mochas, cappuccinos or double espressos, I’d have sent for the men in the white coats. As a tea-drinking conservative, I never imagined I’d develop a taste - never mind a ion - for coffee... but I did!

In Lourdes, I developed a real taste for the many and varied types of coffee on offer at the many roadside cafes, and by night, if we gathered at The Little Flower for a sing-song, Michel, the head waiter, had the uncanny knack of knowing that a café au lait - or two or three - was mighty for lubricating my vocal chords!

My grandmother, Nora Twomey, used say at this time of the year: “Fasting and prayer are good for the sinner - but the working man must have his dinner.” She grew up in the early decades of the last century. Back then, religious practise was truly sacrosanct and observing the ‘laws’ laid down by the Catholic church was very much the norm.

The Lenten period of 40 days was truly a time of fasting, and on occasions, abstinence also. In comparison to today when just two days, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, are the only official occasions of deprivation - things were very different when Nora McCarthy (her maiden name) was a young girl. Lent was then a real time of fasting ‘black fasting’ as ’twas called.

No eggs for the 40 days, no meat on Fridays - just one meal and two collations every Friday.

Her little rhyme reflected the widely held belief that Lent was a time for reflection, and fasting and prayer were needed in order for sinners to be truly repentant - and nearly everyone was a sinner back then, it seemed!

Last Sunday at Mass, the reading from the book of Ecclesiasticus was all about judging a person in the manner of his speech. “In a shaken sieve the rubbish is left behind, so too the defects of a man appear in his talk,” and again: “The kiln tests the work of the potter, the test of a man is in his conversation.”

Yes, the Bible had a lot to say about talking and prayer also. Both were seen as vital so prayer, along with abstinence from food, drink, pleasure or a myriad of other things, were seen as part and parcel of the preparation for Easter.

I never gave up coffee for lent as a youngster for the simple reason that I never drank it back then!

‘Giving up sweets’ for Lent was a big-ticket item in my youth. No, we didn’t go around wearing ‘sackcloth and ashes’ - the ashes were on the forehead for one day only and after that we grinned and bore it - but, in fairness, most children of my age suffered the same deprivations - but we saved up the sweets and they could be consumed in moderation on St Patrick’s Day and on Sundays!

The idea of ‘giving up something’ might be an old and ancient concept, but it has many modern variations, from the ‘dry January’ to quitting the fags.

They say everything in moderation and a little of what you like does no harm, but abstaining completely from something does take some will-power.

I had a cappuccino on Tuesday night - late, but at the right side of midnight. Easter Sunday, April 20, seems a long way off at this stage, but if I can do it with the last ten years, 2025 should be no different!

I always thought that perhaps Ecclesiasticus was a brother or cousin of Ecclesiastes, but no, they were from different eras, but both were great writers.

It was Ecclesiastes that penned A Time For Everything - made famous initially in the song Turn, Turn, Turn by The Byrds and later by The New Seekers. I have often quoted it many a time by the riverbank in Lourdes: “A time to gather stones together and a time to throw stones away” - said as we throw stones from graves in Ireland into the Gave River.

With apologies, then, to Ecclesiastes: “There is a time to drink coffee and a time to refrain from drinking it”

Yes, that time is now, and only 38 days to go!