Catch up

Maundy Thursday and Good Friday were a mixture of quiet reflective worship and sharing the Easter story with children - storytelling, music, decorating biscuits and some very messy crafts. Bebe and I reckoned we might get about fourteen children, and if there were over thirty we'd run away. There were twenty-eight, and I don't know if they went home exhausted but we did. Today is catch up.

I like to decorate an Easter candle with flowers, but there isn't a single open daffodil in the garden. Even Much has just stuck his head out of a snowdrift, muttered 'Blimey O'Riley' and gone to sleep. Heaven help any hedgehogs that wake up this week, the earthworms are all deep frozen and the beetles are wrapping themselves in duvets and huddling by a campfire.

There is a heap of stuff that needs tidying - I have a chronological filing system, which means that today's stuff is on the top. It's like archeology, the oldest stuff is on the bottom layer. I've been through it sort of recently, but you never know, there may be a fan letter from Queen Victoria in there. And there are some odds and ends of story things to tidy up.

And on a separate pile is the heap of 'new ideas'. Half written things, scribbled notes. Some of those tight little buds will never come to anything. But some of them have roots, and will grow and open, and suprise me. Like Easter.