Good Friday and the Easter break

 Good Friday and the Easter break.

This is normally the point in the year when most of us descend on our supermarkets and attempt to load as many Easter eggs and hot cross buns in our trolley as we can feasibly can. Then we search frantically for those frozen legs of lamb that we know will complete the Sunday roast and keep the entire family happy for the whole duration of the holiday weekend. It is the perfect culinary experience and eventually we all spill out ecstatically into the garden and leave the kids to kick their football into the neighbours garden with an almost amusing regularity. 

Essentially, springtime in England has now officially been declared because the tulips and daffodils are out in their smartest attire, petals fluttering nervously in the gentle breezes of April before a chill nips at our fleece coats. We then invariably complain about the cold again because we somehow long for warmer weather and the height of summertime. Then the sunshine breaks through the cotton wool clouds that keep playing chess in the blue skies, one moment drifting languidly across our startled eyes before swapping places with another set of nimbus cumulus and then into another neighbourhood.

But, across Britain, the furniture and do it yourself warehouses will be alive with the sound of ringing cash tills or cashless as is very much the case nowadays. Everywhere dads, uncles and cousins will be opening up their garden shed for yet another display of their haberdashery selection of tools, lawnmowers, pruning secateurs, water hoses, remarkable looking bags of manure and compost, rusting boxes of seeds, old Daily Mail newspapers and a transistor radio that was probably last turned on when Marconi was but a lad. 

Inside the home, the kids are excitedly ripping open their Easter eggs with tons of chocolate boxes of Maltesers, Mars bars and a varied assortment of everything that is supposed to be bad for you, damaging your health almost immediately and leading to all sorts of medical complaints in later life. But you remembered your lovely grandma and grandpa opening up their drinks cabinet and revealing those mouth watering chocolate indulgences. It is a cholesterol paradise and yet you never rejected the opportunity to stuff your face with huge quantities of sweet brown confections that you could never get enough of. 

And yet why is today Good Friday? The mystery seems to deepen with every year and you wonder what's so virtuous and excellent about this Friday in particular. It is life of course undoubtedly so. We are now familiar with Good Friday's religious connotations since most of Christianity is suffused with a warm glow, devout churchgoers huddling together in their orderly rows of pews as the vicar preaches in the holiest of worship. Then the hymns flood out of the stained glass windows of many colours and we all sing harmoniously from the same sheet. 

There is something timelessly reassuring about Easter that never fails to hit the right spot. On the TV, we scratch our heads in obvious bewilderment once again at the lack of Easter Parade with Judy Garland. Besides, it is the most appropriate film you could ever wish to see at this time of the year. But the TV schedulers have missed the moment so perhaps dad can finish fixing the bookshelves again or  some more mahogany cabinets, the hanging of exquisite paintings on the wall and don't forget to use the drill and screwdriver, nails and brackets.

This is very much the time for getting out to nature, exploring woodlands, rambling along country lanes in search of the friendliest country pub in the world. It is a time for renewal and resurrection, waking up to the sound of the amiable robin who perches itself on your nearest fir tree and guards your home with an almost touching affection for human property. 

For some of us this was quality time for meeting up with my wonderful family wife Bev, son Sam and daughter in law Lucy, the loveliest people in the world and most precious. And of course there are our stunning grandchildren Arthur and Rosie. You are most humble and grateful for everything that life has to offer. We tend to take our family for granted and then realise just how important they are to us, our connection to the world we live in.

 But Good Friday will now precede another Easter weekend where football begins to slowly wend its way to its natural conclusion. Soon the crack of the cricket red ball against willow bat will be heard across the parklands, garden centres, quaint tea shops and those whirling wind turbines that now dot the landscape of every motorway, roundabout and hard shoulder of Britain.

This is Britain flinging open its curtains and blinds on this Easter weekend. Soon the caravans and motorhomes will return back home from the seaside since we do know how to be by one. This may not be quite the time for abandoning ourselves to deckchairs and ice creams with knotted handkerchiefs on our head but Good Friday is good enough for all of us. You can almost hear the cricket and tennis season. We can see it from every angle and perspective. It is so life affirmingly sweet.