easter

When Harry and I were still young enough to dye Easter eggs, we usually went to our grandmother's house for it. She wouldn't buy the commercial kits, so it was onion skins or beets - basically either yellow-brown or pinky-red. They weren't very exciting, and the best part was rolling then down the hill in her back garden afterward, although when I say rolling, I actually mean chucking, often quite hard. I think both of us would've been even happier if they hadn't been hard boiled.

The idea was that you won if your egg was intact at the bottom, and you got to eat it, but both of loathed hard boiled eggs, so it wasn't much incentive.

And then one year we hurled them down as usual, went to collect them, and found that under the smashed bits they were all chocolate inside. She'd poked holes in the shells with a needle, drained the eggy part out, washed them, and filled them up with chocolate before she gave them to us.

She never did it again, and I can't blame her, because it must've been a beastly job. Lovely surprise though. I talked to my mum today and asked if she remembered that Easter. She said yes, because her mother had called her the day before we arrived while she was in the middle of doing it. She said it was the only time she'd ever heard her mum swear. I can believe it.

I am not that patient, and all the boys' eggs were of the solid chocolate or creme eggs. Fortunately, that's the way they seem to like it, especially Sherlock. He claims to have eaten 14, which I'm sure can't be true because we didn't buy that many, but his sugar high was epic. If the crash is equally epic, he may sleep till Christmas.