R-egg-volting

Last month Channel 5 asked to interview me about my opinion on Easter Eggs.

Now I know Easter has been and gone but some of us are still enduring the longest Easter holidays in living memory, and what with various well-meaning relatives continuing to pitch up every weekend with the oval chocolate goodies for the children, I felt it was still timely to discuss this issue.

As it turned out the interview with Channel 5 never happened.
At the last minute when they asked where they should send the camera crew to, I gave them my address and Quell’ horror they realised that I was in Newcastle and that they didn’t have a camera crew up here.
How exactly they thought that I was writing for Journallive and not living in Newcastle I’m not quite sure but there we are.

When the Channel 5 researcher first contacted me she asked me what my thoughts on Easter Eggs and their environmental impact were.

I explained that obviously they use lots of packaging etc and that’s bad, secondly that a few chocolate manufacturers have made efforts this year to do away with plastics in their packaging and that’s good.

BUT, I told her that I don’t give my children Easter Eggs and it has absolutely nothing to do with the environment at all.

“ Look’ I told her ‘I have enough problems trying to instil some sense of restraint and gratitude into my children as it is, without giving them a whole load of chocolate for no apparent reason whatsoever’
‘More to they point, I think that they look like a pair of pigs at a trough munching their way through Kilos of the brown stuff and don’t even get me started on managing the up and down effects of the sugar involved!�

I sensed that she was shocked and just a touch nervously she asked me what I did do for Easter instead.
I explained that we usually take them to visit one of the English Heritage sites up here so that the children can take part in a non-chocolate Easter egg hunt and that my Mother comes to visit and brings one bag of mini Divine eggs, with which we do a mini hunt in the house.

Easter was a bit early this year but it usually arrives at the same time as the children have outgrown their September bought shoes and trainers, therefore an unspoken tradition has evolved, whereby in-lieu of eggs, my Mother-in-law comes to visit and takes them out to buy their summer shoes.

Despite my protestations, well-meaning aunts and old neighbours of my Mother’s still send along eggs (which unbeknown to them I send in to school to be shared out).
“How can you be so mean to deny them Easter eggs?� asked one “It makes them so happy� said another.

It doesn’t make them happy, in my view it makes them a revolting uncontrollable sugar crazed pain in the butt and I have never understood why good intentioned parents give their offspring something that makes them fat and helps their teeth rot.

Depending on what side of the fence you sit, Easter is either a solemn religious period or just a chance to have a holiday and relax, neither of which brings to mind ‘feed your kids so much junk that they’re sick’.

“So there you are� I finished “nothing to do with the environment at all, just good old fashioned revulsion at gluttony�.

I could almost hear the drooling at the other end of the phone as the researcher thought she’d hit the jackpot - a mad ranting Geordie mother willing to say provocative things on TV!
“Just one last question? She asked “*You’re not related to Heather Mills are you?�

*This bit didn’t really happen

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