Mother in Law: In praise of the Easter weekend

Ah, Easter. It will probably feel like a long time ago when you read this and the next one will still be a year away. But I want to reflect on the one time of the year when you get four days off with (quite possibly, in my case anyway) little in the way of formal plans at home and (more importantly) very little new in your inbox when you get back. 

Good Friday began like all good Bank Holidays - with no one knowing what day it was.

After years of Peppa Pig, Mr Tumble and In the Night Garden, but before they enter the partying years, Saturday night TV with our children is a delight. In fact, at the moment, some of it is more than reminiscent of Saturday night TV when we were their age which makes it even better.

'Gladiators final tonight,' my husband announced early on in the day.

'Nope, it is Friday,' I corrected him.

Later in the day I spoke to my dad.

'Kids watching Ant and Dec tonight?' he asked.

'Nope, it is Friday,' I corrected him.

I enjoyed the correcting not just because I am annoying, but because each time I did so, part of me relaxed. There were to be three 'Saturday nights' this weekend. The four days stretched out in front of me luxuriously. The 6 minute units that my husband alleges I calculate my 'free time' by seemed to become 12 minute units.

I washed the kids bedsheets.

I plucked the eyebrow hair I’d been meaning to pluck for a week or two.

I washed my face with a cleansing balm rather than giving it a quick wipe.

I had a bath and put body lotion on afterwards.

I tried out a new recipe (crispy sweet chilli beef) and the kids actually liked it.

We made Easter biscuits. Because of my calm frame of mind I had the foresight to make the kids repeat after me 'We will do exactly as Mum says and trust her to give us equally exciting jobs in the biscuit making process' before we started to prevent moans.

I sorted out our herbs and spices drawer which involved various cleaning products and the hoover.

I got petrol, not because I’d been on red for days but because I thought it would be nice to be prepared for the week ahead.

I walked around the garden to ascertain the scale of the winter and the Enormous Puppy’s combined damage so that I would be mentally prepared for the tasks ahead of me when the weather (eventually, presumably) starts improving.

By Sunday, though, it did feel a bit like lockdown. Because pre-Easter 6-minute-unit me had ordered the food shopping and forgot to amend it, our Easter lunch was a rather scrawny looking chicken which barely fed two adults and two children who generally (and specifically this weekend) only eat chocolate. I started scrolling on my phone and found an article about kids activities over Easter. Geocaching was one suggestion.

'I think we should try geocaching,' I said to my husband. Apparently this was 'very annoying' as he is 'always suggesting it'. So, whilst he and Deceptively Angelic Child 1 watched the Conti Cup Final, off DALC2 and I went, with our app and our pen, to find some caches.

If you don’t know, geocaching is like real life treasure hunting. In our own small village there were three caches to find - one was magnetic and attached to the back of a road sign, one was hidden in a tree in a fake acorn and one was hung from a wire which was then fed inside a metal post. You are led to them by clues on the app, and inside each one was a log book for you to sign (yes, including inside the acorn). There are about a hundred within five miles of our house. And if there is a better look on DALC2’s face than when Ant and Dec make a celebrity do something embarrassing, it is the look on her face when we find a cache.

So how about that for a successful weekend: clean sheets, moisturised arms and legs, an ordered mind and a new hobby.

When I got back to work on Tuesday I had a total of one new email - an automated one telling me I had to review a colleague’s file. Bliss.

Some facts and identities have been altered in the above article