Saturday 3 April

Easter Saturday and in many ways a day of preparation. I was awake early and decided to do the Aldi shop sooner rather than later and so was down there at 7.45. It was a good move, and I beat the rush, though foolishly omitted to buy one item I needed for a recipe and had to return for a rapid raid on Waitrose which did not have the same queues. I have been trying to do Easter things which are not chocolate based, remarkably difficult. Bunny shaped crumpets are the best bet.

Adam and family have returned for Easter weekend and we spent a lot of time in the garden. I was delighted to see the first bluebells.

Walking in the countryside is going to be great fun over the next few weeks. Adam has a child’s gardening set, with a trolley, so I employed child labour to trundle weeds up to the bonfire, which we subsequently lit. The sound of crackling wood and leaves pleased Adam no end.

I decorated my Osterbaum with the mini eggs and bunnies accumulated over the years in Germany and Austria. Picture to follow on Easter Day. I also made a Black Forest cherry trifle for tomorrow:

well something at Easter has to be chocolate based.

I see that 85 people read the blog yesterday, totally amazing. Thank you so much, loyal readers. I have also discovered that it easy to get back to the beginning of the blog, which someone asked me about, or any other day come to that. On the opening page where you can see comments, there is a title Posts. If you click on that, you have options, which is all posts, newest, oldest. So today I read the very first post. Interesting to see how far we have come in the time. Less fear, less panic, more procrastination.

There was apparently a very good if shortened version of Handel’s Messiah on BBC2 tonight, which I have yet to catch on iplayer. I really do miss choral music at Christmas and Easter. I am an erratic church attender but singing the hymns at these times was always a great draw. Please can we be permitted to sing again? One of the greatest here, which I have taken part in, in the Royal Albert Hall, a “Messiah from Scratch” with the late great Sir David Willcocks conducting. It was a blow your head off experience, to stand near the organ, and sing with 10,000 others.