17 February 2021, Ash Wednesday … ‘there is a continuous stream of people going in and out of our church’, a priest friend rang to tell me. He was delighted. I went to my local church, and there was a scattering of people, lighting candles, praying and collecting a little sachet of ashes, to bless themselves with, to bring home. And not all were old. The building felt ‘alive’. It was an Ash Wednesday like no other, with no communal service. But people remembered, they felt the need to come to a sacred place.