Raise A Glass

I’m sorry to have been away for a while. My computer’s been playing up and, because it’s Easter, Justin, the local computer guru, has been strangely unobtainable. However, I love Easter.  The weather’s improved out of all recognition so – and this is probably bad for my figure – we can have the back door open and Barney and Lucky (canines) and Snooker, Minou and Arthur (felines) can come and go without all the carry-on of barking, scratching and meowing to get out followed by barking, scratching and meowing to get in.  Yours Truly seems to act as an animals’ janitor from October onwards to April or thereabouts. Not that means the animals in question are particularly pleased with life; when they’re in they want to be out and when they’re out they want to be in and when the door’s left open they fuss about the draught.

The other thing is that, now Lent’s over, I can drink red wine with a clear conscience once more.  I usually try and give it up for Lent, spurred on by the incredulity of my family that I can do any such thing (not that I’ve got a problem or anything, it’s just that I love the stuff).  This year my Lenten abstinence was pretty spotty, even by my elastic standards.  It wasn’t I gave it up particularly, but I did whinge about it.

However, what with books to write and decorating to do, to say nothing of the Other Half being away for large lumps of March, I thought I had enough to be going on with without giving the elbow to the true, the blushful hippocrene, with beaded bubbles winking at the rim, as Keats, who obviously liked a couple as well, called it.  Keats was spotted as toper, I recall, by the Monty Python bunch in their immortal words:  Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle and Keats was fond of a dram…

And then there’s eggs; lots and lots of choccy eggs.  I’m not that bothered about chocolate but I’d feel aggrieved if the celebration wasn’t marked with a certain amount of solidified cocoa-butter and the junior members of the family would feel as if the sky had fallen in.

Our Easter-egg giving had to be postponed – it’s usually first thing in the morning – as the Children’s Group at church was doing the Easter Garden and I was a prime mover.

A couple of years ago, moved by some obscure impulse or other, I decided that an Easter Garden would be nice.  Like any average guardian of the young, I spent years being covered in a mixture of PVA glue and water and clouds of flour as I made play-dough.  Once the taste for PVA glue gets into your system, it never really leaves.  I like making things and painting, and it’s always nice to have an excuse to do a bit. Anyway, a six-foot junk model of a more or less desert landscape backed up with a six-foot painting of a Jerusalem-ish place was the result, complete with miniature things, such as a spear (clay modelled on a skewer) and a Holy Grail (that’s a chalice, not Mary Magdalene!) and a little donkey nicked from the crib set.  The kids from the Children’s Group take it in turn to put the objects into the garden whilst other kids describe what’s going on to the congregation.  It always seems to work well, but it’s actually fairly loosely organized chaos.  Just like life, really.

Here’s what the completed garden looked like.  There’s another picture at the top of the blog.  It should be down here, but I got it in the wrong place – ah well! Now where’s my chocolate….