Easter nests

It's Easter Saturday, and I'm in Thaxted watching Doctor Who. We've just been to the local pub for a spot of grub - stuffed mushrooms and a veggie burger - and I feel like a fat banger. 

I spent some of the afternoon creating a little Easter basket for the centre of the dinner table tomorrow. It's very much an ode to my Grandmother, who would have been 100 this year. Grannie was unique, pretty much in every respect. Everyone else gave us shop bought eggs for Easter, but she crafted little nests out of margarine pots and straw, filled them with Cadbury's Cream Eggs and little yellow fluffy toy chicks, and hid them in the garden for us to find. It was magical.

I'm on a bit of a nostalgia-fest at the moment and find myself regularly drifting off into the relative safety of childhood memories. I think, at heart, I'm something of a Luddite and find myself uncomfortable with the speed that the world is turning around me at the moment. In short, I long for simpler times. 

I think a lack of children is possibly complicating the issue, because I don't really have anyone to share these special memories with. Sometimes I think it would be rather lovely to build an advent crown with someone who hasn't been polluted by technology or jaded by complacency or cynicism. 

We take so much for granted these days - good health, relative wealth, knowledge, freedom to express ourselves - that sometimes I think we've lost that sense of magic and awe, in favour of what we know can be downloaded straight into our minds at the flick of a switch. 

I am determined to reboot my brain to allow some of the magic back in. From henceforth, I shall build Easter nests and advent crowns. I shall wander across misty moors, hunt for ghosts and sit by open fires toasting marsh mallows, and any of my friends are welcome to join me.  I need it. I genuinely need to reboot.

There! That's filled a gaping gap.