I started to write “when I was a teenager” before I realised that I never was one. I was what was referred to on the signage in department stores as a Junior Miss.

It must have been about then that granny instilled upon me a list of certain subjects about which “nice ladies” do not talk – money, politics, death and religion. She might have added sex but no one talked about that publicly anyway.

We do now, especially as we have at last been told the definition of a woman.

There were ways of skirting around subjects; pregnancy was confinement. Depression was melancholia. I was interested that my Friday chatty ladies were set against passing on.

They all dislike the phrase that someone has “passed over” when they have obviously died.

This may seem strange when considering the ladies are all the wrong side of 70, are Christian and therefore believing in an afterlife. But they were happy to talk about death – and their arrangements for that time.

I checked my Bible to see how Jesus died – He did not pass over; Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all state that He “yielded, or gave up, the ghost.” Not a phrase I have noticed in any recent obituary. A friend who deals with wills tells me “no one passes over – they die”.

Everyone talks about money these days – the rising cost of living, becoming a coin-less society. Gone, well almost, are the days when you could slip a cheque into a greetings card for a nephew or whatever.

As for sex – that is everywhere and sometimes for the good, for it raises awareness of various illnesses, many of which we had never come across before.

This has the danger of turning us all into hypochondriacs as we check out these problems – imagined or otherwise.

There is still a coyness about rude words – usually associated with sex. The words are printed with the vowels removed and replace by asterisks, which cause one to pause to search for a rude word which would fit in, thus enlarging one's vocabulary of taboo words.

That leaves religion. I was once in Belfast on business and was quizzed as to my religion. Evidently to declare myself a Christian was insufficient, I had to go into more detail and it gave me an insight as to how shades of religion could become very dark.

Mention religion to some and they will tell you how many thousands have died in the name of various religions – and many in very nasty ways.

Sometimes a Jehovah's Witness, or some like-minded person, will come to my door and ask if I have found Jesus. This I find embarrassing. Should I? Should I not give an honest reply? But I fear they will be armed with biblical quotations and I can hardly ask them to wait on the doorstep whilst I check my concordance of the Bible which lists words and passages that would confound the God Botherer.

For that is how we think of them: people trying to force religion on us, which just leads us to shuffle our feet and say we are in the middle of cooking or whatever.

But why? Why should religion embarrass us? We all cling to it – I am reminded of the man, probably trying to edge away from a God Botherer, with the words “Thank God I am an atheist!”

I do not watch The Traitors but I have read the winner is an avowed Christian with the tattoos to prove it to all the world.

According to the Bible Society, Catholics have overtaken Anglicans in this country. And many of the converts are young. Are they looking for the discipline which no longer seems to exist in schools or, indeed, in many homes?

Easter is, of course, the most holy day in the Christian calendar – without the resurrection there would be no Christianity. One of our Easter cards wished us a happy resurrection day.

That was at least a change from bunnies and chicks which, though fitting the season, do not tell the Easter story but are well fitted to Eostre, which was an ancient pagan festival to honour the goddess of spring and fertility.

I could not get to church on Easter Sunday, I had an appointment at the Royal Surrey Hospital. Yes, on a Sunday, and Easter Sunday at that.

We painted eggs with the children and I recalled that when I was last painting eggs with my Netherlands family it was at their home last Easter and it was on my arrival back in Woking that I got the cancer diagnosis. What a lot has happened since then.

Elsewhere on this page I mentioned nowadays people organise their funerals well in advance – difficult to do it after death! But Pope Francis surely cannot be outdone for his dying on Easter Monday and underlining the whole real Easter story.

Will you still shuffle your feet if someone comes up to you and declares Jesus is Risen? Or will you, correctly, reply “He is risen indeed!” and join in in the alleluias?

It's not just the Ten Commandments, the Bible has some rather good ideas for life in general – check out the Book of Proverbs.

There are more household hints in the Good Book than you may think.

Last week I commented on spring cleaning and what may be found during this chore. Moth infestations being one of the nasties but the book tells us to lay our treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt.

During an all-too-brief Easter visit from the Netherlands side of the family fresh linen was called for but on opening the airing cupboard we saw the moth had got there first.

Everything was taken out and shaken in the garden. Most of it was washed but there's the rub: the insects prefer wool and a hot wash was required, but that would end up with a pile of stuff fit for Barbie.

Could we put moth-eaten blankets into the “textile” bag? Would the recyclers be happy to have a bag of moth-infested material?

There was a pair of blankets which were perfectly good – as homes for moth. Textiles or black bin?

I told the family the blankets had been a wedding present, which called a brief halt on how to get rid of them. Until I pointed out they were wedding presents for my parents, who married in 1933 and therefore the blankets had done more than their duty.

Surely the usual place for linen and towels is in the airing cupboard? Ours has the hot water pipes running through it so would seem ideal. Wrong again. Moths like warmth and thus breeding gets going in spring and summer.

It only takes a week for the eggs to hatch and larvae start feeding until they turn into moths and then the cycle starts all over again.

They like the unwashed, so wash everything , and then store in vacuum-sealed plastic bags in a cool dry place. Rentokil suggest that if items are small enough they should be frozen for at least 72 hours to destroy eggs and adults.

As we moved furniture more moths crept out – one of the dangers of fitted carpets – so granny's idea of separate rugs, moved regularly, was a good one. As are many of the old ones!

Should I rename my airing cupboard Tineola bisselliella Maternity Unit?

A lecture entitled Photography Comes of Age, by Roger Mendham, will be given on Thursday 8 May at 10.30 am at The Welcome Church, 1-5 Church Street West, Woking, GU21 6DJ. Free to members of The Arts Society Mayford (TASM), £10 for visitors.

Roger Mendham is a keen and accomplished photographer. He has gained Distinctions from the Royal Photographic Society and is currently the President of the Surrey Photographic Association.

His artistic taste is predominantly 20th century and he is particularly interested in the visual aspects of art.

He has studied the evolution of photography from its earliest days in the early 1800s to becoming a major art form in the late 20th and now 21st centuries.

For more information see https://theartssocietymayford.org.uk/Lectures/FutureLectures.aspx