The Easter Weekend

Alleluia! Excitement in the church calendar with a celebration on Sunday, to commemorate the day that Jesus rose from the dead. So I went to church. My friend, Moira, had suggested that the service would be streamed into the church hall and not many people would be in there, so it would all be socially distanced.

In the end, I went into the church because it was socially-distanced there, too, and many people were still wearing masks. It was a good service with a good sermon, brilliant singing and friends to acknowledge. Naturally, my mind wandered back to the heady days of many years ago, when the whole family bundled into church and chased Easter Eggs down the aisles and hugged fellow congregants to wish them a Happy Easter. Nothing like that on Sunday, but uplifting nonetheless.

I was in such a flap beforehand because most of the family were coming for lunch, and perhaps sleeping over. However, I was motivated by Martin Luther’s comment when he said, “I have so much to do today that I’m going to need to spend three hours in prayer in order to be able to get it all done.” By the time I came back from church my flap was over.

We had a wonderful day with the original Kenilworth Sleaths and Andrew. The Kenilworth Newbies stayed home to convalesce but joined in our celebrations remotely via WhatsApp video.

John and I did the lunch prep and then Andrew arrived home to cook everything and deliver the most delicious turkey dinner – that would be the frozen turkey I had bought for Christmas just in case we couldn’t get a fresh one….

The weather was wonderful and we sat out on the patio to eat our meal and generally enjoy both the sunshine and moonshine until it was bed-time. The wine rack was raided and glasses of wine enjoyed by everyone except Lily, who doesn’t like it, and Freddie, who is too young.

This is us, except for Lily who took the picture, trying to get a sensible family photo…….

We didn’t get chance to do our traditional egg-rolling yesterday, so we scheduled a little run out to Abbey Fields in Kenilworth today after we’d eaten our brunch. Once again, we were blessed with the weather and we were able to sit out on the patio to eat, before sorting the hard-boiled eggs out to take with us.

Well, I say that, but we were a couple of eggs short as two of them had cracked in the pan. Harriet put two more on to boil to replace them and later on, I took them from the pan and popped them onto the table with the others. Harriet was merrily decorating her egg when it slipped from her grasp…….. it splatted on the floor and over her brand-new trainers…….oh, dear. Well, that one wasn’t cooked, was it? It transpired that Harriet hadn’t actually lit the flame under the pan and I’d mistakenly thought they’d been boiled….. Ah, well, it made for an ‘eggs-citing’ moment……

Grandpa won the egg-rolling, with Ellie coming in a close second. The rest of us were nowhere as our eggs smashed up at varying intervals down the hill with Mac busy trying to eat every single one as it whizzed past him on the way down.

We continued onwards towards the park and the café for coffee once we’d finished the competition and had congratulated Grandpa on his victory. There we sat, for a very long time, chatting, drinking coffee and soaking up the sun, while Freddie played in the park supervised by the egg-rolling victor. It was lush.

Alas, all good things come to an end and I thought we ought to get going because we had yet to drive to Cambridge and back to drop Andrew off. So we said our goodbyes and came home for a refreshing cuppa before we set off up the A14. We had an excellent journey there and back; hugged Andrew hard before we left him and had a quick turn around home again after we’d inspected his new accommodation.

All in all, an Easter as it should be – en famille and plenty of chocolate…….

Take care everyone. God bless.