A remarkably happy Easter
I normally find Easter a rather sombre time as year. As a small child I would spend the latter part of Lent sobbing from genuine distress at the fact that Jesus was about to be crucified. In our primary school assemblies we used to sing a hymn called “They hung him on a cross” and when it got to the penultimate verse which starts “He hung his head and died”, most of us would have tears rolling down our cheeks, despite the fact that we knew the final verse would start “He’s coming back again!”. I would also dread Good Friday weeks in advance – partly because my mother would take out the Bible (the only time in the year when she would do so, I hasten to add) and read the Passion aloud, and party because we had to eat fishfingers. I hate fishfingers and as a child I wanted to be a Protestant so that I wouldn’t have to eat them.
Easter 1998 is one which will forever be imprinted on my mind. On Coronation Street Deidre Rachid had just been put in prison following her involvement with that evil airline pilot… in the real world, many parts of the country (including nearby Stratford-upon-Avon) were seriously flooding… and on the morning of Easter Sunday, my grandad had the heart attack which would result in his death a few weeks later. Whilst the date of Easter changes from one year to the next, for very many years afterwards my entire family were habitually depressed on Easter Sunday, unable to disassociate the feast day from my grandfather’s death. This year, by pure coincidence, Easter Sunday happened to fall on the same calendar date as in 1998, so this could have been a mournful Easter indeed, but instead I think it has probably been the happiest I can remember 
For once I wasn’t actually terribly depressed on Good Friday. I was more on a euphoric sort of high, having survived my first week in London and knowing I had four days to catch up on my sleep and recover. I went to the hairdresser in the morning and had some much needed inches off my hair. No one – neither my family nor Babel – subsequently said anything terribly complimentary about the end result, but I was pleased with it and that’s all I’m bothered about
Easter Saturday I got up earlier than I would usually choose to at the weekend, because my sister had suggested that we bake an Easter cake. We used to bake a chocolate cake at Easter every year, but being honest I think this is another tradition which faded away after the death of my grandfather. We hadn’t done it for very many years anyway but because my mother had invited the entire family around for tea on Easter Sunday, it felt like it would be a nice idea. It was indeed very good fun, although there were a couple of sticky moments, and the sponge didn’t rise as much as we’d anticipated, perhaps because we’d used so much cocoa powder. Even when we’d made the filling and iced it, we felt like it wasn’t going to be big enough for 10 people, so we decided to bake some little Easter fairy cakes as well.
We’d literally just finished icing these when Babel arrived to pick me up. We’d decided to go to Nuneaton for the day, in order to get a feel for the place and decide whether we liked the idea of it being our future home. Apart from the fact that we struggled to find somewhere to eat and I managed to make Babel quite angry by my general slowness at reading maps, it was a thoroughly positive experience I can’t lie and say that Nuneaton has the ‘wow’ factor, but it’s a pleasant, unextraordinary sort of place, and based on what I saw on Saturday afternoon there’s nothing negative I can think of to say. The shopping centre was adequate, the suburbs seem prosperous enough, and it’s an awful lot more appealing than you’d think when you go past the massive gravel pits on the train
Our exploring finished, Babel and I headed to the cinema to watch ‘Knowing’, a film which I had wanted to see for a couple of weeks, after I saw it get a very positive review on BBC News 24. I don’t have a talent for choosing very good films sometimes, but for once I appear to have succeeded It tells the story of a Dad, played by Nicholas Cage, who’s little boy brings home a piece of paper covered in seemingly random numbers from school. The paper was put in a time capsule 50 years earlier by a little girl, then pupil at the school. One night after a few glasses of whiskey, the father realises that the numbers represent the dates of all major world disasters which have happened in the last 50 years, including the location coordinates and the number of people who were killed. An exciting adventure story follows, as he tries to stop the remaining three disasters which have as yet not occurred… If you like end-of-the-world action movies with a few opportunities to cry, I definitely recommend it
Easter Sunday morning I went to Mass and was cheered to see how busy the church was, particularly how many young people were there. There seemed a better atmosphere than Christmas, even On Sunday afternoon my entire family plus Babel were invited to tea, so there was a bit of prior preparation and rearranging of furniture to be done. I was a little worried that Babel was going to be terminally bored, but if he was he hid it well and spent the afternoon being utterly charming to all my relatives, who now appear to like him more than I do 
My little cousin seems particularly fond of him, if the number of times he insulted him can be taken as a measure of fondness!
I’m very grateful to Babel for coming and making such an effort, and I’m also very grateful for all the lovely presents I received. Not only did I receive *two* Easter eggs (yippee!!), I also received a copy of ‘The Winter Queen’ by Boris Akunin, a book which I have been hoping to own for years. That was a very thoughtful present indeed 
And as if that weren’t enough, I later received a further present in the form of a massive framed photo of a mallard, with the date of our engagement written underneath I feel a little guilty about this because I had been with Babel when he bought the frame and had made a comment to the effect that I wouldn’t want a picture of anything *that* big hanging in my house. It *is* a very big picture, and we may struggle to fit it into our house when we eventually purchase one, but it is nevertheless a beautiful duck, and even if it were an ugly duck (is it possibly to have an ugly duck?!), it was a very sweet thought of Babel’s to create such a personalised present, and I do appreciate it
Today was the last day I’ll be spending with my family for quite some time, and we went out to the countryside to get some fresh air. We visited two different National Trust properties and between them managed to see two bunny rabbits, five baby ducklings and more lambs than you could shake a stick at, as well as hundreds and thousands of beautiful daffodils. It was all very refreshing, and Babel has had a lovely day with his little nephew too (although if I weren’t so tired, perhaps I should be jealous that he invited another woman ) so all in all I think that everybody has had a thoroughly enjoyable Easter
Back to London and the daily grind at the crack of dawn tomorrow, of course, but I do have a little something to look forward to as I’m having a catch-up dinner with someone I’ve pretty much lost touch with of late, so that should be fun
Tags: Easter