Amongst the various advertising emails and posts that come my way there is one from M&S all about getting ready for Easter. This includes decorative eggs, tastefully coloured and patterned to hang in a tree - indoors or out! Sostrene Grene (a delightfully twee company that claims to be run by two ever so artistic sisters, whose shop in Manchester I love to visit) does the same thing. On social media they post videos of how to make your own wreaths and decorations. And a house up the road from here has a wreath on their door all decorated with pastel-coloured eggs. Since when have we been putting decorations up for Easter, apart from in primary school classrooms?
It always used to be enough to have hot cross buns on Good Friday (hot cross buns are now deliciously available all year round) and Easter eggs on Easter Sunday (not available all year round but usually in the shops early in the new year, or at any rate straight after Valentine’s Day). I suppose it was inevitable that the card and decorations companies would take it over and expand it. The same has happened with Hallowe’en!
Thinking about Easter I was struck, not for the first time, by the fact that the House of Commons operates on a kind of academic timetable. At Christmas and Easter everything seems to stop for a couple of weeks and in the summer they close down for several weeks. I always assumed that the summer break was originally to allow the members to return to their estates and oversee the harvest but that doesn’t explain Easter and Christmas. They only need to start having half term holidays to match the school pretty exactly. Ordinary working folk (their constituents) don’t follow such a timetable for holidays - just a few days for Easter and Christmas!
Some of this thinking was prompted by reading that Rishi Sunak and his wife plan to take their Easter break in their Santa Monica flat in California. It must be nice to have a £5.5 flat on the other side of the world standing empty most of the year. Somewhere to escape to when the pressure of keeping the poor in their place, I suppose.
Coincidentally, I listened to Francesco da Mosto (architect, author, historian, film maker and television presenter, according to Wikipedia) talking on the radio about the “burden” of maintaining a palace in Venice. We have probably gone past his palazzo Ca’ da Mosto on the Grand Canal, at the time unaware of the existence of Francesco. Since then we have enjoyed his programmes about travelling around Italy and ending up at his family home in Venice. His family is old Venetian nobility, going back to the fifth century. Francesco himself is the younger son of Count Ranieri da Mosto and Contessa Maria Grazia Vanni d'Archirafi, who comes from a very old Sicilian noble family who are the Dukes of Archirafi and include many noted Italian diplomats and bankers. Italy may not have a king but they do seem still to like their counts and dukes and so on.
I have been listening to Francesco da Mosto on BBC Radio 3’s Private Passions, a sort of posh version of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. Guests on the programme choose their favourite pieces of music and explain their significance to,their lives, but don’t get sent off to a desert island at the end of the programme. Francesco da Mosto waxes positively passionate about conservation problems in Venice, explaining why wooden supports are better than concrete ones for his city - if the supports remain encased in mud they don’t rot or give off pollutants but eventually calcify and endure better than concrete. He’s also concerned about cruise ships visiting his city and the damage they cause. This is hardly surprising as his wife is an environmental scientist. She’s from a rather rich family too but they do both seem to be working to help save the planet. Good for them.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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