Easter Weekend

As a child Easter meant a trip to Yorkshire, to see Grandparents, packed into the back of our Volvo with my two sisters, Dad driving through the night and carrying us into the house in the early hours of the morning. It meant a service on Good Friday, usually outside in the Cattle Market/Auction Mart. On other days the yard would be full of farm trucks and land rovers, animals being loaded and unloaded by farmers in green wellies and tweed jackets, the air thick with the sound (and smell) of dozens and dozens of sheep and cows, the auctioneer's voice raised above the general melee. Yet on Good Friday the only sounds were the voices of 30 or so villagers singing hymns and the preacher's voice against the quiet air, punctuated only by the occasional wheeling cry of a curlew, the yard quiet in contemplation and prayer, faces lifted to the warmth of the spring sun. Saturday morning was always spent at the church, helping Granny construct the miniature Easter garden, complete with a large stone rolled away and real flowers hidden in tiny glass vases behind stones and moss, which would then be blessed by the vicar at the Sunday morning service, prior to the Easter Egg hunt in the church garden.

This year was supposed to follow suit only illness put a stop to it and so we found ourselves at my parent's house instead. It didn't really feel like Easter at all, with it being so early in the year and being in Berkshire and neither of my sisters being present. While we used the opportunity to catch up with other friends and see, for the first time ever at Easter, my other grandparents, I felt rather nostalgic for the security of the familiarity of childhood.