EASTER EGO

I couldn’t think of anything new to write about Easter. Nothing. Nicht. Nada. Much like an Easter Egg, I was a big hollow shell. Naturally, my ego (or possibly my ‘Easter Ego’) wouldn’t let me get away with that. Oh, no. Despite the fact that the frazzled remains of my sleep-deprived synapses were unable to string even the most basic of sentences together, I still have goals. Aims. Things to achieve so that I can at the very least persuade myself that I’m not letting myself down. There must be something worth saying, something worth putting down on the page to mark one of the bigger national holidays of the year, although there’s nothing much that comes to mind. I should plan these things better, after all, it’s not as if I don’t get plenty of warning now, is it? Unfortunately, the best idea that I could come up with was a few lame puns and a very poor story involving a dinosaur.

Actually, I can blame the sleeplessness (at least) on the sticky heat of the unseasonably warm weather, although, when I think about it, perhaps ‘unseasonably’ is the wrong word. ‘Unexpectedly’ is probably more accurate, after all what is a British Bank Holiday weekend without torrential downpours and endless slate grey skies? Although, in recent years, April, far from being the ‘cruellest’ month has rather turned out to be the brightest month of our entire calendar and should be made the most of, what with the completely predictable and wholly expected weather-based misery of those constantly disappointing months of July and August still to come.

If in doubt talk about the weather, eh? Well, that’s a terribly British thing to do. I think that I’m now officially ‘British’ as I’m pretty sure that’s the option I put on my census form, completely disowning any claim to Welsh heritage that others might have expected of me. There’s none of this ‘second generation’ nonsense in my head, I can tell you. However, that form was filled out in such tetchy haste that I could very well have claimed to be a six-foot tall purple banana and I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Mind you, I suspect that if I had claimed to be such a thing, by now I might well have received an ‘official’ phone call questioning that claim. Being a banana, I’d have had to appeal, of course. These forms really are strange things though, because I really, really cannot remember a thing about them the minute after I’ve filled them in, which might be something that any future generations researching the early 21st  century should consider. Not that there’s much danger of any of my descendants wanting to, of course. Still, perhaps I should have made myself a copy just in case? Who was it who said that you should always photocopy your life in case you lose it? Hmmm… I’m beginning to suspect that it was probably me in one of my vain momentary attempts at being dry and witless.

This is not to say that there hasn’t been a lot on my mind lately. Far from it, I seem to be thinking all the time. It’s just that the stringing together of structured rational thought into some kind of argument has become more difficult. For example, I wanted to share with you a revelation that came to me a few days ago about air travel, but when I tried to grab hold of the thought and contain it and explain it, somehow the focus just wouldn’t come and the notion drifted away from me. Instead it just seemed like self-indulgent frippery and probably not at all that original a piece of frippery at that, and so I couldn’t formulate the thoughts. I don’t know, maybe I’ll come back to it.

I also wrote (very briefly) about how much I hated the news on one particular morning last week, but who on Earth was I trying to kid…?  Pretty soon I came to the more vivid conclusion that I actually hate the news pretty much on every morning of every week. Another day dawned telling me of another series of tragic deaths of people who didn’t deserve it, and, even worse, those many thousands that went unnoticed by the news at all in those conflicts that just go on and on, so much so, in fact, that we’ve almost started, in that terribly inhumanly human way we have, to take it for granted and almost accept the horrific truth of it. I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I sit here not caring about all those who suffer and die in this great big scary and dangerous world of ours, and yet, it is basically true that I feel for some of them more acutely, that’s all.

Granted, Tuesday’s news made me feel more than usually pretty wretched because that particular sad announcement was about someone I had a personal investment in. Not in the sense of being a personal friend or anything, but someone who had managed to touch my impenetrable life in some small way over the decades. Still, the truth should be told. I think that I genuinely do hate the news every day. Now, I know it’s not the news itself that is at fault here, after all news is news and is just what is happening, the problem I have is with what is actually happening, the content. Sometimes it just seems unbearable to call yourself human.

So, here we find ourselves, whiling away our time on one of the longer holidays we all get to share together during the year. Some goddists I have known over the years would have you believe that the religious overtones of this particular weekend mean that only they should be eligible to have this break to enjoy and all the non-goddists should stay at work because they don’t deserve to share in it. It’s a point of view, I suppose, but I still believe that anything that is designed to bring people together and spend a bit of quality time in each other’s company, especially in the name of peace, rebirth and hope for the future of humankind can’t be a bad thing, even if the vast majority do all but ignore that aspect and just stuff their faces with chocolate. If it makes them happy and stops them hurting each other for a few days, what’s anyone’s problem with that?