When did Easter turn into a mini Christmas? More than one of my "mummy friends" asked me last week if I was ready for Easter? Easter Eggs - check. Wine - check. Scales hidden - check. Was I missing something?
Some snippets of my Easter weekend…
The scene: I'm on the lap top (doing work, actually), children are on the decking, posting jigsaw puzzle pieces down the cracks, the doorbell rings - Oh Me Darling - I answer, it's the neighbour, he doesn't acknowledge the ridiculous doorbell, which says a lot about his perception of us. I return from the door, the eldest appears at the doorway with a Cars Easter Egg "Is this for me?"
A long-winded lie comes about, I can't repeat it because it was tedious and nonsensical, but it involved me going into the bedroom, closing the door, pretending to make a phone call, shouting at the Easter Bunny (The Future Husband having a nap) for bringing the Easter Eggs a day early (not hiding them very well).
Saturday Night and The Future Husband’s book is stamped - so I'm home alone, minus the two fledglings, curled and snoozing in my bed. Sky TV has nothing for me, the Laptop is too demanding, I retreat to bed. I watch MOTD (because it seems strange not to) whilst I twitter on my phone. I had left various lights on around the house, to wind up The FH, but one by one they drain to darkness, the TV fizzes out and the i pod dock blinks off. I use my mobile as a torch, as Harry Potter would use his wand, and look out the window – the street lights are off, most of the houses are dark, except one or two that are using their lights as beacons to advertise their power. A house alarm is making the street shudder. I feel very vulnerable. I ring The FH - it takes 4 calls before he answers.
Fighting back tears, I say "The electricity's gone off and I don't like it"
"I'll be right home" he says.
I am rational enough to know that this is clearly a fault with the street's supply and someone, who is practical and logical (or the woman whose alarm is going hell for leather), will be on the phone to the electricity company right now. So I may as well go to bed - because who needs electricity when you're asleep?
However, in the dark corners of my mind a conspiracy theory is brewing...
There is a psychotic stalker out there, who has cut the street’s electricity, it's his master plan to come and murder me. He has the spare set of keys that I lost months ago. The phone's dead (digital phone), he knows I can't use my mobile touch screen in a panic. No one will hear me scream because of the blaring house alarm. It's all too perfect. I was right to call The FH. A thirty-one year old, rational woman should not be home alone, with two children, at a time like this.
The Future Husband's drunken bellow can be heard as he saunters down the street, stopping to theorise with every furious neighbour about the inconsistent power cut "So... Why... Are… Only some houses effected?" Eventually, he gets to me, with Pleased as Punch Neighbour in tow "Yep. Everything working in my house! Everything! We got Sky. Lights. Phones. Internet! Everything!"
"Yeah. Nice one mate!" he says closing the door in his face. “Half the street's gone off Fran, and there's a mad alarm going off."
I was pleased to have called Sherlock Holmes back from the pub.
He then suggested, having shared his wisdom with me, maybe he should go back to the pub to retrieve the bottle of wine he won in the Quiz. Obviously, if we have no electricity, more alcohol needed. Forty-Five minutes later he hadn't returned, the pub is about 100 metres away. Now my rational mind knew he had obviously got another drink and was happily bantering about his neurotic Mrs. However, the dark corners of my mind were not settled and there was also the notion that the psychotic stalker had slit my beloved’s throat, hid the body and was ready to make his move! Another phone call and another walk home by The FH.
This is what the following hours entailed: listening to The FH’s drunken stumbling around in the dark; getting out of bed and searching for his damn i pod; worrying about The Future Husband’s capability to extinguish the candles before falling asleep; both of us knocking over various objects and using inventive expletives. The power eventually came back on in the early hours of Easter Sunday.
The Day : Easter Sunday.
The Location: The Parents' house
The Cast: The Future Husband hung-over. The long suffering fiancé (moi) tired. The children full to the brim with chocolate and animation. My Mother chaotic. My father lying low in his den upstairs. The pregnant sister hormonal and emotional and her boyfriend, arriving from the pub, a little overwhelmed.
As always, it was a race to the finish line, but we all pitched in and were eating a rather delicious roast, in a rather relaxed manner, by 5.30 pm. This idyllic image was only interrupted, by, what I can only describe as a Tom and Jerry style fight in the kitchen, between all three family pets; the cat was chased by the spaniel, the spaniel chased and bitten by the older, protective, maternal rescue dog and a lot of barking, gnarling, screeching and scratching came from the circle of fur.
My Father continued to tuck into his roast pork, so The Future Husband decided he was next in line, as animal referee, and dived into the whirlwind, the cat sprang out and landed in the middle of the table straddling the jersey royals! Now I need to blow my own trumpet here, because my reactions were as fast as lightening (there was no way this dinner was being kicked to the corners of the kitchen by a cat) I picked up the cat and hurled her to safety (out of the kitchen) and the black spaniel took pursuit like a whippet after a mechanical hare.
I turned to the table; The FH had returned with a few scratches, everyone else was frozen in a tableau form of shock, apart from children, who were whimpering into their gravy. "Jersey Royal anyone?"
Elsewhere, the Easter bunny, apologising for his earlier errors, got overexcited and bought too many Easter Eggs to our house, I became obsessive and neurotic about a possible writing project and, after over indulging, The FH and I pledged a period of sobriety.
Sod it! Let's crack open another one - egg, not bottle.
haha Sherlock! Nicely animated, good ole fashioned family mayhem! Let Royal weekend commence!
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