I seem to have spent a disproportionate amount of the day in tears.
It was disproportionate because the amount of the day I usually spend crying is fairly close to ‘none at all’.
I trapped my finger in the window yesterday, and not a tear rose to my eyes. The children can come and go, the dogs have misfortunes, Mark can be as grumpy as he likes, and on the whole I just soldier on.
Not today.
I cried this evening when Boris growled his humble gratitude to his nurses, and told us that the NHS ran on love. Then I cried again a couple of minutes later when we found out that Tim Brooke-Taylor had died.
He was on the radio a lot, and I thought he was a splendid chap.
That was the end of the day. I started the day in tears as well.
We had an email inviting us all to attend the Aysgarth Easter Sunday chapel service. Obviously they did not mean to attend it by actually driving over to Yorkshire and turning up. School had closed, and hadn’t been able to do the usual Easter chapel service, and so the headmaster had decided to do it online, and invite everybody, Aysgarthians old and new, to join in.
Of course we did, and at ten o’clock this morning we all assembled around the computer.
It was not entirely a bad thing that it was not in person, because we would have had to get dressed. It looks ridiculous to go to church in your dressing gown.
It was unspeakably moving.
There was nobody in the beautiful Aysgarth chapel except the headmaster and his little family. There were flowers from the gardens on the altar, and the candles were lit. The music master played the organ, and the senior master filmed it, and between them they held a faithful Easter service, trusting and believing that we would all be there as well: and we were, singing alongside them, across the empty miles.
School had sent us an an order of service to follow, and the words to the hymns, only when the sheet said that the Senior Choir would sing the Hallelujah Chorus, there were no voices. The Senior Choir were all thrown to the four winds, singing valiantly, alone at home. The music master played, and Oliver sang, and we remembered the glorious soaring of the other boys’ voices, from better times.
They read about the Good Samaritan, and the Headmaster gave a brave sermon about being kind to one another.
I was crying so much by the end of the first verse of Make Me A Channel Of Your Peace, that I could hardly sing, and when the headmaster stood up and played the trumpet for the final rendition of Thine Be The Glory, I was lost.
The tiny congregation filed out to the crashing chords of the Arrival Of The Queen Of Sheba, and we blew our noses, in an English sort of way, and got dressed for a walk.
This will pass.
When we came home from our walk it turned out that the Flutter Ponies had visited.
The Flutter Ponies bring Easter eggs to our house, instead of the Easter Bunny. Lucy was responsible for this peculiarity years and years ago, even before Oliver was born, when she insisted that there was no such thing as the Easter Bunny, and every sane human being knew that Easter eggs were brought by flying ponies. We had some half-hearted efforts at encouraging her along more traditional lines, but to no avail, and in the end we gave in under the weight of her conviction, and it has been the Flutter Ponies ever since.
It turns out that the Flutter Ponies even hide Easter eggs to be found by grown up policemen, and there were several secreted in the flower pots.
The children retreated to their floor to do Young People things, and Mark and I spent the rest of the day gardening.
Mark has built a bed just outside the conservatory windows, on the top of the water tanks for the roof water, and we have planted onions in it. We have planted barrels with melons and tomatoes and basil and coriander, and I have taken the sweet peas and planted them in the front garden, where I shall probably never think about them again.
It has been a lovely day. We are so happy, and so fortunate.
It will pass.
