Easter Bunnies
5 April
Chick H a p p y   E a s t e r Chick

Good Friday was good.

I really like this weekend. With the extra days off work, it becomes a weekend for proper relaxation rather than a couple of snatched days. Last year there was the Good Friday agreement to celebrate and this year we may yet get the commencement of decommissioning of IRA weapons. It also seems that there may be a beginning of an end to Locherbie, with the commencement of the trial of two Libyans who may have been responsible. To set against that, however, there's bombing in Iran and the Balkans are ablaze.

I count my blessings. There was a moment during the afternoon with the sun pouring into the downstairs room, Classic FM on the radio, Ross and I laid out of the sofa hugging with Cyril snuggling in for his share where Life couldn't have gotten much better. In fact, it got so good that we decamped out into the back garden for a while and got some sunshine on our weedy bodies.

Last year, Ross and I had such a good time that I couldn't cope with the separation and took the decision to call a time out in our relationship. The story of how that developed over the Whit weekend and beyond is found in last year's Journal. And yet, despite many upheavals, here we are, still in each others arms, finding the sort of security and peace there that we find nowhere else on this planet.

For light relief, I've started producing the compilation tape of opera singers I like for Bruce. I guess, I'll send it to him sometime after Easter.

Saturday was a less strenuous day. Still plenty of goodness for the appetites but it was a mizzly sort of day so I bit the bullet and started work on the bathroom and (you'll all be dead proud of me) I fixed the sash cord in the bathroom window so now I have a proper working pair in there.

Other than that, the main event was watching Once Upon a Time in America. I think I have convinced Ross that Sergio Leone is a major film maker. Over a three and a half hour span then only quibbles I have are with Elizabeth McGovern's role. Why on earth, when everyone else ages an appropriate 35 years, does she not gain any wrinkles? And when she is addressing De Niro's character Noodles, she quotes Anthony and Cleopatra saying "Age cannot wither me, Noodles" only she sounds as though she omits the comma so that it sounds like "Age cannot wither me noodles". I remember, back in 1984, I laughed like a drain in the cinema at that point. Well, I mean, an actress with withered noodles is not a pleasant prospect. *Raspberry*

Sunday and the weather's clearer. I've just been tending to the geraniums in my window boxes. I first planted them out in the garden in late March last year when I was still at a pretty low ebb. I transferred them into the window boxes in late autumn thinking that I would need to bring them inside at some point. However, the favourable position, sheltered with direct sunlight, meant that they have survived and flourished bringing colour even in the darkest days. Now, they are a riot of that deep geranium red and a flushed pink interspersed with the yellows and purples of the residue of the winter pansies.

It has been nearly a year since I first went to Quaker meeting. It's over a year since I began yoga, took up healing, reclaimed my house and garden, stopped smoking. I've grown and changed a lot in that time. And so I'm aware that this Easter is proving to be a time of reflection about the notion of re-birth through a number of different processes. Starting with Christ's crucifixion and resurrection. Orpheus's descent into the Underworld past the Furies through the Elysian Fields to encounter Eurydice only to lose her and gain her again. Truman's struggle to reject and escape from a world that was manufactured for him. My own confrontation with demons from the past.

At the Meeting House, it was mild enough for the windows to be open for the first time this year and for a cooling breeze to blow through the Meeting room during that hour of patient waiting. And I listened. And I hear an amazing symphony comprising a polyphony of birdsong, human sounds of breathing, coughing, sneezing, tummies rumbling, surreptitious farting, snoring, and the outside sounds of the traffic, the sirens, the aeroplanes, the wind and its susurrations through the newly emerging leaves. Bliss.

So, when I get home I'm happy to coast through the day just pootling. Ross, meanwhile, is having a bad day of tiredness and muscle pain. I'm letting him be, getting the food, gardening, allowing myself to relax, glad that he has the confidence just to be with me rather than pretending and hiding the truth as he would have once done. And for me, I don't hide the fact that I hurt when Ross has bad days like this. But I don't any longer have the need to rescue him. I can't. I am not the answer. But I don't abandon him either. I am simply here, supporting him as necessary, waiting to see what is the best thing to do by him, waiting for him to tell me what he wants.

We finished the day with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels which is loads of fun and quirkily cinematic. I turned to Ross at one point and said "I don't see how they can end this without a bloodbath except that it is not that sort of film." But I was wrong. The film ended in a complete purging bloodbath. Vinnie Jones was very good.

Easter Monday was greyer than ever. Morningtime, I'd have liked to have started work on the bathroom but I could not find Ross's checklist of things I have to and in which order and he was asleep and I needed his support to get going. I knew that once I was going, like with the sash window, I would be fine. I just needed the encouragement to begin. And I don't care if that does sound wimpish, it's how I felt. *Blush*

I went shopping whilst Ross rested. We lunched and then he rested outside whilst I gardened. At some point he read the Journal. I asked if he was up to date and he said that he'd read the last two entries but had not read all the American stuff. I told him he hadn't read all the current stuff and he frowned at me. You can't have I told him because some of it hasn't happened yet.

We both slept for an hour or more in the afternoon. Then Ross helped me start the cleaning and filling and preparation work in the bathroom before I took him home. I rustled up a brinjal and tomato dish from my CAFOD calendar accompanied by Biryani, pitta bread and yoghurt washed down with Tesco's vintage claret.

Classic FM Hall of Fame Top Three ended up exactly the same as last year.

  1. Bruch/Violin Concerto
  2. Rachmaninov/Piano Concerto No 2
  3. Mozart/Clarinet Concerto

Pretty boring really and there was a sense of déja vu about it though there was lots of nice music on the way. For the record, my vote was thus

And I bet I don't win a Renault with that choice.

The radio has been on most of the weekend. The computer has been mostly off. The television has hardly been touched and remained steadfastly off. It has been mild enough for the central heating to be off. In fact, it has been a weekend of having it off. *Roll your eyes*

So, you were right. The Easter bunnies of the title is a reference to Ross and I. Throughout the muscle pain and tiredness, we continue to cement our love.