1.  Hallelujah

2.  Guns And Roses 

3.  A Doll On A Music Box

Take two organically-reared children, add large quantities of chocolate and stand well, well back. For maximum effect begin dose before 7am and continue for 12 hours.  I am knackered. I took Son 1 aged 4y 6m and Son 2 aged 19m to The Church with Nanna.  Son 1 coloured beautifully at the back. Son 2 was just too tired to be there, but he liked the singing.  He ended up colouring too.  In the Prayers for Intercession the name of a widowed neighbour was read out.  My heart stopped.  She’s an Easter Church attender, and she wasn’t there. Neither was the friend she goes with.  My mind span.  When? How? Why didn’t we know she was ill?  She lives with her son, a great friend of ours.  How was he? Where was he? Could it have happened yesterday? Overnight?  At the end of the service, while Son 1 was egg-hunting round the pews,  I asked the vicar.  Same name, different woman.  Lordy Lordy Lordy. Son 1’s haul was three Creme Eggs.

And a comic for being good in Church.  Son 2 passed out in The Big Pram.  The Spar was open.  We checked about four comics. All had guns as the toys.  Son 1 is Not Allowed Guns.  He hummed and hah-ed over the only one he vaguely liked, an ITV arty comic.  Feeling sorry for him, I picked out a sealed bag for a comic covered in cars.  ”The toys probably won’t be very good though,” I said. “Because they don’t want us to see what they are.”  Son 1, exhausted from the walk, dawdled up the hill on the way home.  “Shall we open the bag to see what toys you’ve got?”  A gun. With four bullets.  Son 1’s face shone with a golden glow. His smile lit the street. “At last! My very first one!”  He fired it in the kitchen. It nearly took the vase out. The other toy was a mobile phone which fires discs.  Luckily I can see the funny side. She glowered.

“So Son 1,” I said.  “Easter,  you’ve been eating chocolate all day and you’ve got a gun.” He cackled like a demon. “It’s the Goodest Day I Ever Had.”  The Man had made the Sunday lunch while we were out.   He lost a couple of points for forgetting to put my veggie pastry thingies in, but apart from that he did a pretty good job.  Son 2 woke but was too tired to eat.  Son 1 managed a bit of beef, a roast potato, the top of a Yorkshire pudding and a pile of purple sprouting broccoli.  After, The Man went to work, and we all watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Son 1 hid from the Child Catcher.  He leapt up to copy Dick Van Dyke in the Music Box bit.  So I was Truly Scrumptious.

1.  Like A Duck To Water

2.  Proud As A Peacock

3.  Eggs

4am. Son 2 aged 19m woke screaming.  I went down and got him back to sleep in the double bed. And went back upstairs to read Two Lives.  He woke again. I went down again. It’s His Teeth.  Fast Forward. The Hotel Pool.  Son 1 aged 4y 6m wanted to go the Hotel Pool because he wants to go swimming with Son 2.  The Man won’t go with us, and you need two adults for two children at the Town Pool.  Not at the Hotel.  Son 1 had the noodle, Son 2 was in foam armbands and a swimming costume wetsuit.  We played in the baby pool, we splashed in the fountains. We played Humpty Dumpty.  Son 2: (pointing) Dump! Dump!” We swam. Son 2 can float a bit.  Son 1can push and glide, do dolphin dives and do star, pencil and frog floats.   Only not in the Hotel Pool, which is four foot deep all the way through.  They both worked incredibly hard.

After, we drove over to the Farm Butcher to get a joint for tomorrow’s lunch. Son 2 passed out in the Hotel car park.    He woke up when we stopped the car at the Farm Butcher.   Peacocks wandered around the car park.  As we all watched, a male spread its tail, shaking and shimmering at an unconcerned female idly pecking by.  It was fantastic.  Amazing moving colours, brilliant blues and emerald and lime greens.  In the shop, at the back, there were scores of peacock feathers sticking out of a row of about 10 vases.  “Let’s buy one,” said Son 1. “I don’t think they’re for sale,” I said.  “Ask the gent,” he said.  I did.  It is apparently bad luck to take a peacock tail feather outside.  You can take them in to a building, but not outside again.   Many people have asked for a peacock feather, but the Butcher is superstitious.  The Butcher himself went out to look for new one.  It was left outside by the door for Son 1, who was truly delighted with it.  Back home, the feather has not come into the house. 

We went to Nanna’s for tea.  Nanna always comes to us.  It was easier. But after a particularly difficult teatime, we decided to try every other Saturday at her house.  I dropped off Lightning McQueen buckets for her to use in an egg hunt.  We arrived. The boys took their buckets and went into the garden.  Son 1 found one egg and started eating. Son 2 found one, I peeled it halfway and he started eating.  Son 1, squealing, found marshmallows and more chocolate.  Son 2 found a Creme Egg.  “Ur Ur,” he said, having bitten through the foil to eat it, the other egg still in a hand.  I removed the foil from his mouth.  Nanna has a tiny ancient bird pond full of dark green water.  Son 2 went for it.  So did Son 1.  Nanna gave them tubs.  They scooped and poured.  Within 10  minutes Son 1 had soaked his clothes and was stripped naked. Son 2 was down to his vest. It was freezing, the skies charcoal. Upstairs was a vintage tin bath which Nanna used to bathe us in, 40 years ago.  I put a kettle of boiling water in it, added cold, and put it in the garden.  The boys both went for it, and, spotting it as the only available outside warmth, wouldn’t come out. The Man brought out new clothes, and we had tea.  Nanna had bought oven chips. “They’re not as nice as I thought they would be,” said Son 1 casually.   Our chips start life as potatoes, cut into chips, blasted  in the microwave for five minutes, dried and then roasted off for 20 minutes in olive oil in the oven.   ”Delicious, yum, yum,” says Son 1. Now all we need to do is get his manners as refined as his palate.