jonathan.beckett@gmail.com

Chocolate Egg Day

I'm deliberately staying away from the television and social networks today – the insufferable hoard of “He is risen!” folks are busy preaching to the converted. I'm not going to get into the history of the pagan fertility celebrations that have existed in Europe for millennia, and the positioning of religious festivals to disrupt existing gatherings. People tend to cherry pick concordant versions of history and accept as alternate fact anyway.

I'm just glad we have an excuse to eat some chocolate.

It's tempting to sink into a Mr Robot monologue rant about the commercialisation of everything, but I'm resisting the temptation today. This may have something to do with already eating a small packet of chocolate frogs while drinking the first coffee of the day.

Anyway.

I'm hoping for a relatively quiet day today – after busting my ass in the garden yesterday, getting all the clothes washed, clearing the washing up, and going grocery shopping *again *this morning.

My other half is making noises about sneaking out to sit in the garden. She's been in isolation for a week upstairs, and is still testing positive for COVID. The government guidelines recommend isolating for five days after the initial positive test – which seems to be more about retaining a functioning economy than stopping the spread of the virus. If she stops isolating and we all catch it, I won't be happy.

On a lighter note, I'm actually enjoying writing again. I'm not sure why. While recent posts have been somewhat acerbic in nature, it can only be a matter of time until a little humor creeps in.

While walking into town to get groceries earlier I passed through a small piazza bordered by boutique cafes. Sitting around one of the tables in the sunshine were a group of smartly dressed seventy-somethings. “People who lunch”, or however they are typically described. They were not talking to each other – they were all coughing, repeatedly. There was a certain morbid humor in it – watching them lean in to shout conversation at each other, coughing in each other's faces.

It struck me that they might have been doing Darwin's work for him.