No more eggs

It's Easter Day and we've been in Thaxted. Brother Edward and Sascha were there, and they'd invited Alex and Wiesiek up for lunch before the four of them disappeared to visit a pair of country queens somewhere in deeper, darker, more rural East Anglia. 

We ate at The Swan in the middle of the town. I think Thaxted is deemed a town rather than a large village, although I've no idea how these classifications are calculated. The pub is under new management, which, I'm told, could mean the locals deign to start drinking there again. They were, apparently, boycotting the place on account of its poor service and bad food. Local politics can be quite brutal in these parts!

There was nothing wrong with today's food. I had an enormous vegetarian roast dinner which was very tasty, thank you all the same.

After dinner, my mother and I took a stroll down to the little spot we call the magic place. It's actually the site of an ancient chapel and the little footpath down there was trodden by monks on a daily basis back in medieval times. The rest of the family are way to sceptical about matters of spirituality and mysticism, but my Mum and I are apt to pick up on the odd unusual atmosphere. It might be the susserating trees down in the dell where we assume the chapel was situated. It might simply be that we whip each other up into a sort of frenzy of belief, but every time we walk down that footpath my mother and I experience a sort of light-headedness which I can only compare to the feeling I get when I eat truffles! It's a warm, positive sensation, so we often go down there to have a quiet word with the universe. Today, is, of course a really important pagan festival (hijacked by Christians) so if there ever were a moment for communing with nature it's today and for some reason I felt very strongly that I wanted to take Llio and her Mum, Silvia down there for a bit of healing energy at some point soon. I paint the place as being the most amazing location and I'm sure everyone reading this blog must be imagining some sort of Constable Painting. Really it's just the edge of a field. But there's something there...

We came home for Easter Eggs. My mother had also created a camp Easter basket, so we were almost drowning in chocolate. My brother, ever the health freak, had bought some little sugar-free carob eggs which smelt like cheesy hay and tasted like rabbit droppings melded with liquorice. The most peculiar aspect to the experience of eating them was the fact that they sucked every last drop of moisture from the mouth. My Dad described them as "utterly boring for the mouth" which pretty much summed things up. Alex, for some reason, quite liked them. He's Latin American. He also likes coriander. By the way, on that note, scientists have apparently now identified the AR062 gene, which, if present in a body, makes coriander taste variously like old pennies, blood, soap, bleach or different combinations of the above. Coriander is, of course, everywhere these days. It even managed to make its way onto something I ate in the canteen when I went to visit the NYMT kids. Many of my friends tell me how wonderful it is. They plainly don't have the gene. My Mum thinks it tastes of sick. I've plainly inherited the gene from her.

The boys left and my parents, Nathan and I lit an open fire, hunkered down in the glorious warmth and promptly all fell asleep, vowing never to eat another Easter Egg. 

We turned the telly on to discover a shed load of dick heads on Songs of Praise singing a hymn whilst waving their programmes in the air as though trying to swipe Jesus away like a swarm of midges in a Scottish field. Twats. It may be Jesus' birthday but there's no excuse for that sort of footle.

Sunday night is, of course, incomplete without the Antiques Roadshow. Whereas I think there's no place for a pathetic and divisive dinosaur like Songs of Praise on British telly, I would happily watch The Antiques Roadshow on a loop.