A lovely Easter Sunday
Hey Bearbloggers, it's been a while! In my first post, I alluded to the fact that my next blog post would be about my experience of the web while growing up. But for whatever reason, I just can't bring myself to write about that topic right now, so I'm just going to get on with writing about what I want to write about. Maybe another day!
I got up pretty late this morning, but earlier than I usually do at the weekend, and made myself a bowl of porridge.
Today is Easter Sunday, and in the spirit of new life and fresh starts, I decided to do a bit of spring cleaning. I took a moment to clean up the bathroom counter and discard some expired products. There's still a lot left to do, but already the bathroom is feeling a bit less cluttered.
Then it was time for lunch, and I sat down to a traditional British Easter Sunday lunch: roast dinner. Instead of the traditional lamb, we had beef, accompanied by Yorkshire puddings, parsnips, carrots, and Brussels sprouts. It was lovely to sit down and spend time with my family - and I also enjoyed a couple of glasses of wine!
After the meal, I listened to my Dad talk about Dungeons & Dragons. It was nice listening to him talk about something he's passionate about, even if I must admit that it doesn't interest me all that much. I've probably got more experience playing role-playing games than he has, having played a bit of Pathfinder in the past, but to be honest I really struggled to get into it. Perhaps this is because I've never really read a fantasy book or watched a lot of fantasy films before. My dad, on the other hand, read as many fantasy books as he could get his hands on while growing up, and continues to be a voracious reader of fantasy books to this day. He was overjoyed recently to discover e-book versions of some of the series he started to read as a child but which he was not able to purchase all of the books.
Of course, it wouldn't be Easter without chocolate, and so at this point I decided to eat the chocolate egg that my mother had generously gifted me. Surprisingly, I had enough self-restraint to only eat half of it at this point in the day!
While I'm very grateful for the free Easter egg, I couldn't help but be a bit disappointed with how far the quality of Cadbury's chocolate has declined over the years. With rising cocoa prices, chocolate manufacturers have had to devise new ways to cope with the situation, and it seems this year they decided to flatten the eggs to reduce the amount of chocolate needed. Not to mention the chocolate itself barely even tastes like chocolate anymore. Of course, I didn't pay for it, so I can't really complain, but I will definitely be looking for a higher quality option next time, even if it costs a bit more. Besides, I'm trying to reduce the amount of money I spend on American-owned goods at the moment, with everything going on over there.
Still, perhaps I should be grateful that we even get Easter eggs at all. My friend in Brazil tells me that Easter eggs are very expensive over there, so if people want to eat chocolate at Easter, it's more common for them to buy bars of chocolate.
By this point in the day, it was still light outside, and I wanted to make the most of it. Only a few months ago, it would start getting dark at 4pm here in the UK. For some reason, I've been repeatedly getting ill a lot over the last few months, and in the last few weeks I've barely left the house at all. I decided to walk down to my local park, and was amazed to see sunlight and a blue sky upon stepping out of the door.
It's a shame that my descriptive writing skills are lacking, because I would really like to communicate just how magical of an experience it was. I've been feeling down for months due to the constant darkness, and now finally it feels like not only am I alive again but that the world is alive too. There's a lot of depressing stuff going on in the world at the moment, but when the world feels a bit brighter, it gives me hope that maybe one day, things will turn out okay.
When I got to the park, which was a lot more physically exhausting than I thought it would be, I sat on a bench for a while and paused just to take it all in. I noticed that a poetry trail has been added to the park - the second such incarnation since the first one was vandalised. Children from local primary schools have written poems which have been installed on plaques around the park. I didn't have time to follow the whole trail, so perhaps I'll save that for another day.
I ended up walking further into town to a convenience store to pick up some soya milk. They didn't have the one I wanted in stock, but I ended up coming away with a ready meal and another Easter egg :)
Part of the reason for my walk, besides enjoying the weather, was to warm myself up for the walk I'm planning tomorrow. My plan, if I'm up to it, is to visit my nearest city, primarily to buy an Easter egg from a local chocolate company (there's a bit of a theme here). The only problem is that I don't drive, and since it's a public holiday, the buses are few and far between. It leaves me with the option of a 50 minute walk to the train station, not to mention the 50 minute train journey, all the walking around the city, and then the same in the opposite direction to get back home. But I've been dying to visit this city for months at this point, and something always comes along to mess up my plans! I'm really hoping I get the chance to visit soon if not tomorrow.
Overall, there's no real point to this post other than to recount my (admittedly very simple) day. I enjoy reading these kinds of posts so I hope you did too.
Dani <3