Chicken-Licken

Poppy in Orkney may have Bonny and two new hens with escapology tendencies, but I can only muster up chicken-licken who sits unproductively near the till in Söderberg. I feel I should furnish her with some mini chocolate Easter eggs to give her a sense of purpose.

Easter has become yet another commercial enterprise with all manner of decorations and cards to turn Holy Week into another spending extravaganza.
It was not always so.

One Easter in my childhood stands out in particular. I am probably 6 or7 and have been in bed or at least housebound with some childhood disease, probably chicken pox but after a week or so, am well enough to go to Church on Easter Sunday.
I see myself standing on the garden path in the sun and the crocuses in bloom, wearing my new Clark’s sandals, my new Sunday coat made by my Grandma who had been a seamstress before marriage, and best of all, my new straw Easter bonnet.
I remember the world feeling quite bright and strange as though I had been absent from it for a long time.

Easter then was a time for Church, for sunshine, for rolling painted hard boiled eggs down Blackford Hill, and new sandals, but not for the Godless commercialisation we see today.