Easter...

Today is my last day at work until after the Easter weekend - that will make it my longest break since Christmas and I think I am ready.

I love Easter.

It is a great excuse to scoff down obscene amounts of chocolate and sweets.

It is a great family weekend, when we can all get together for a nice meal, to drink, chat and play.

It is a traditional weekend for DIY, where we rush around getting jobs done so that we are ready for the summer. The hospitals are bracing themselves, waiting for the people who fall off ladders, smash fingers with hammers, drill through part of themselves, slip a disk by lifting something that is too heavy, etc. Such fun. I do my best to avoid all of this, of course.

It is a time for theological debate! Wouldn't it have been better if Jesus had not been crucified? What would have happened if he had lived longer? Perhaps the Romans could have been converted 300 years earlier than they were! Perhaps he could have convinced the Jews that he really was the Massiah. How would THAT have affected history? Why is the timing of a Christian festival determined by the moon? Sounds a bit pagan! Just what has chocolate got to do with it all anyway?

It is generally the weekend that sees winter's last attempt to throw something nasty at us. Unbelievably, in the UK we are more likely to have a White Easter than a White Christmas! Bing missed a trick there, I think!

From Easter onwards we are headed for summer, barbeques, hot days with a beer in the garden, cool evenings with a beer while watching the inner city riots on TV and painting toy soldiers, thunder storms which often knock out the electricity supply for half a day, spoiling viewing of riots and threatening to ruin the food in the freezers, syphoning the bath water down to the garden because it is illegal to use hosepipes.

Yes, I love Easter.