Easter Eggspectations

As Easter approaches the Ger-Man is dead keen to organize an Easter Egg Hunt in our local Hoff Garten for the Caspi-Man and 4 or 5 of his closest friends. (Have I mentioned before that the Caspi-Man has a posse?)

For all parents, I guess, there is a strong desire to re-create for our offspring the "best" memories from our own childhood. But as I'd never in my formative years experienced an actual "Easter egg hunt" (and have always harboured an unfounded prejudice that the concept is a bit of a contrived construct based on American television) I'd been ignoring his suggestion.


With all the parental indulgence that goes on these days, sometimes I feel that instead of creating wonderful, magical childhoods we're really just providing fodder for future therapy sessions. Whose needs are really being met here? (Mental note to self: tomorrow the Caspi-Man and I must get around to finishing those sock puppets!) Perhaps we are in danger of not heeding the warning in the Phillip Larkin poem (you know the one that sorta goes:


"they f*#% you up your parents,
they don't mean to, but they do,
they pass on all their own neurosis,
and throw in some extra just for you..."
etc etc.)

Naja, back to the hunt.

The Caspi-Man & I ended up (unexpectedly) in Venlo (Netherlands) this afternoon. A spontaneous invitation from a friend who needed to stock up on cheap coffee, cheese and fuel. It is one of the customs peculiar to this region that many local Germans like to pop across the border to save on their weekly shop.

(As an aside - every time I "pop" over the border I am set to pondering - how exactly did it come to be, over hundreds of years, thousands even, that two distinctly different cultures emerged, and remained? With different architecture, different language, and different attributes when there is absolutely no geographical reason for it? There are no rivers or mountain ranges to separate the people. One minute you are in Germany, and a scant 2 kilometres later you're in Holland. Why has there never been a merging at the boundary?)


Venlo also, I discovered today, has (compared to Dusseldorf) very cheap Easter eggs... So, good wife that I am, I stocked up and I'll indulge the Ger-Man this wish.

The Hunt will commence 10.30am Sunday. (Weather pending).

The Ger-Man.

Laying his own egg.