The re-creating idyllic Victorian family life compulsion that I had - now fading - also extended to Easter. When the children were young there was ludicrous egg overkill. This would start with their being sent to the chicken house where - surprise! - the hens had laid coloured hard-boiled eggs with their (the children's) names on. When they returned the table was set out with a fest of chicken and rabbit shaped egg cups, plates, salt shakers etc., green napkins and vases of primroses and violets. (We lived in the country, obviously). Even the toast was in rabbit silhouette form.

After breakfast came the terrifyingly exciting moment. Had the E@ster Bunny 'been'?. Deep in the garden was a cute 18th century, thatched summer house, (tiny), an obvious choice for a passing rabbit. Every year 'he' would make a huge nest of straw and coloured tissue paper and fill it with the large, hideous commercial Easter eggs that they longed for. (When they were older I would search out the most trashy and un-Eastery possible - 'for fun'). It was quite sad that they weren't totally sure that the Bunny had remembered them and always ran through the garden with slightly nervous expressions. I had never used him and his basket as a threat - odd.

Lunch - more Easterama - chicken, (naturally), followed by some kind of chocolate nest-shaped pudding with tiny eggs etc...

THEN ... THE HUNT... which tradition still exists to this day. Little did I realise in those sunny early years what hours of torment I was storing up for myself. When I was a child my father would make a fairly short but complicated hunt for me around our smallish garden. He was a talented writer of doggrel verse and master of literature and his cryptic clues took hours to work out. He and my mother rested quietly in deckchairs with closed eyes while I wandered through the bushes, occasionally sobbing with frustration. However, a gap of twenty years had left me with nostalgic memories only and as soon as the oldest child could walk I was inspired to make them a Hunt of their own. This began as little piles of minute eggs with big paper arrows pointing on to the next one but soon escalated. The better their reading skills, the longer and more complex the Hunt.. and now the clues were in verse.

Fast forward fifteen years. The sophistication and expense of the Hunt has reached a peak. Not only does the Hunt now have at least twenty clues (in verse) but at each clue-point is a small but Easter-related gift for all three of them. This would be a purple pencil with rabbit-shaped eraser on top, say, cheap in itself but when multiplied by twenty ... and then having to FIND these little objects. It took weeks. My middle daughter, the most straightforward, finally spoke out. 'I don't want any more tiny Easter stuff; I have nowhere to put it. And I am not eating chocolate this year as I'm on a diet'. Gulp... 'Okay.. so we will stop having the Hunt then'. 'NOOOO, No, No ..... I didn't mean THAT. We LOVE the Hunt. Perhaps we could do it differently - with less 'things'?'

That is when the horror began. I decided that to give the now 'thingless' Hunt a point, it would instead have a 'theme'. Several years have passed and I am all themed out. Two Easters ago I re-enacted the 'Wiz@rd of zO' with twenty clues, (in verse), and with each clue-point a tableau of dolls, teddy bears etc. staging a vital moment of the story. Last year was a pinnacle from which the only way is down - the story of the journeys of Odysseus, done in an exactly similar way to the W..of..O, but with all names, episodes etc. changed to become sweet-related (Chocysseus and so on). It may sound pathetic but was actually f@cking amusing.

BUT.... the time is now. I have to start again. Where? What shall I do and how? I am ill and slumped but this is the only Easter tradition we have left. The girls have even brought their boyfriends to stay especially for it - not this year Thank God.. What great literary epic have I left unsullied? It has been so long, there have been so many ......
- posted by Iris @ 4/04/2004 12:18:00 PM comment