Rabbiting on about an egg-citing Easter

Don’t worry; omlette-ing you groan at these puns....Tim Vine (and Uncle Tom-hello!) would be proud. So. It’s Friday. This is new. I usually write my blogs on Thursdays and I feel all out of synch right now...but you know what? It’s okay, because I have a handful of Lindt teddies and a wind-up bunny on my desk. All a girl needs for journalistic success.

            On the subject of chocolate, we may as well start with Easter. First of all, Lent is finally over, which means back to the Nutella and banana crepes at our favourite local café, and no more misleading orders of a coffee ice-cream sundae only to be presented with what can more accurately be described as mocha with extra chocolate chips and sauce (I ate it anyway...accidents happen). It also means I am again allowed excessive amounts of mayonnaise with almost every meal, and can technically continue my previous habit of scoffing a Camembert a week. However, this last realisation is one I’m aiming to avoid as much as possible, especially after the unheard of family remarks that I’d lost weight ‘around my face’ during a recent Skype conversation. My insistence that my face is round and not chubby clearly never washed with Mumma Dove, nor in fact my primary school classmates after an unfortunate incident involving the creation of Roman armour-style face masks. You try living down being the only one out of thirty who’s face mould comes out as more of a podgy orange than pointy lemon-shape....I’ve had a fear of modroc ever since!

                        Weight loss or not, I spent Easter weekend in much the usual fashion as I would in England. A trip to church, a yummy Easter brunch, a lot of private parading in my rabbit onesie pretending to be the Easter bunny (originally I had thought this would be cool to do in front of my students, especially the little ones; but in retrospect...it’s not. And I didn’t). We even had an egg hunt on the Sunday, although lack of space in her apartment meant our hostess had to be extremely imaginative, hiding chocolates behind curtains, inside hung-up coats and inside lampshades. Impressively though, she managed to disguise the whereabouts of around 22 eggs, and it was more of a challenge than expected!

                              However, I must now go back to the morning’s church service. After a couple of previous bad experiences of French churches (including the time when as a ‘new person’ I was forced to stand up and awkwardly announce my name and ‘je suis anglaise’ in front of EVERYONE while the vicar proclaimed ‘welcome sisterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr’), I must admit I was apprehensive. Following said occasion, I was expecting a similar greeting, a similar length service (2 and a half hours...don’t even go there), or at least some form of embarrassment. Luckily for me, it was a collective rather than solo ‘cringe’, as the organist appeared to have never taken a piano lesson in her life, resulting in a lot of confusion at almost every hymn, not to mention an entire congregation’s worth of tuneless warbling. At one point, she even told the vicar ‘I can’t play that one’, forcing an immediate (and literal) change of tune, which definitely kept us all on our toes. As if that wasn’t enough, to take communion everyone formed a huge circle around the room reminiscent of a giant okey-cokey game (I wish), and we had to pass around a plate of brioche and a tray of what can only be described as grape juice-filled shot glasses. Unfortunately, halfway through there was an almighty crash....and yes, you guessed it, an old lady had dropped an entire platter. Grape juice, mops and awkwardly-maintained reverence EVERYWHERE. An Easter to remember.

                            One question I do have though: the French don’t have Good Friday off...why? As a predominantly Catholic country (if you ignore all this secular school business), this really surprised me, particularly as they’re usually all up for any reason for a day off. But why Monday rather than Friday...what happened then?! Of course, there was the crucifixion, and resurrection, but after that? As I recently (and of course as sensibly as usual) suggested to my friends, maybe it was just a day for clearing up the party....but in all seriousness, any light people could shed on this would be really useful! Anyway, due to this bank holiday Monday plus one of my schools organising a trip to Ireland (I wasn’t invited...), I’ve had large proportion of the week off. I’ve definitely ‘profited bien’, with a lovely trip to Giverny to visit Monet’s house and gardens, a slightly less cultural but equally amazing excursion to Disneyland (just as magical as ever in case you were wondering), and the long-awaited Assistants au Havre ‘Soirée Anglaise’ production! Despite having never run-through it before, the evening was a great success, and involved a huge variety of performances, from Shakespeare to singing to clarinet to hula-hooping. In a shameless act of self-promotion, we even performed one of my own pieces. There were several laughs which I’m hoping were of enjoyment rather than pity.....and two of my teachers turned up, something which although daunting did make me really happy- it was lovely to feel so supported.

                             As you can imagine, all this activity has taken its toll, and I am currently extremely fatiguée. Therefore, instead of go on a date with a short Frenchman (he literally comes up to my waist...Tina Wilkinson here is your shout-out as I'm sure you lol'd at this) and avoid copious Miranda Hart-style forward knee bends to hide my own height, I’ve decided to ditch free food and awkward company with a man I’m highly unlikely to ever see again (though if it was the yoga instructor, that would be a wholeeee different story) in favour of soup, chocolate and countless New Girl episodes. In fact, I just heard the microwave ping. Laters.