Easter / Pacques / Пасха

Hello chaps,

So it was Easter Sunday recently and I just wanted to write a little something about it. It must have been the first really sunny day that we’ve had in a while here in Tours, so I thought I would make the most of it and go for a walk. I personally love walking as you can stumble across so many little things that you otherwise wouldn’t and it really clears your head. It’s also the first Easter I’ve spent away from my family, so I thought I’d take a bit of time to reflect. I’m not religious but I’ve usually spent the weekend at home eating more chocolate than can possibly be considered good for me.

Easter in the UK, as my UK readers will know, is a hugely commercialised “festival” where chocolate manufacturers and card shops cash in big time. Here, though, it seems eggs are reserved more for children, where Carrefour sells its net worth in Kinder Surprise. Easter is instead a day for family; I have never seen so many people out walking their dogs in big family groups. One of the things I love about France is the strong sense of family. Girls and their mothers walk arm in arm with the dog, in a way that is just so quintessentially French.

Everything shuts in France on a Sunday, except the odd boulangerie (where else would you get your brioche?) so it seems the whole of France, or Tours at least, leaves the house and does more spiritually fulfilling activities than shopping. I’m not necessarily talking about religious activity, such as going to church, though of course some choose to do this. People go to chateaux, museums and the cinema. The Sunday roast does not exist here, as we do it in the UK, but the French certainly know how to “do” lunch, as I read an article recently that discussed their campaign to UNESCO to get it internationally protected – such as is the case with parmiggiano reggiano and er, Melton Mowbray pork pies…

So what, you ask, did I do for Easter? I savaged two Lindt milk chocolate bunnies sat in my jogging bottoms watching the American sitcom “Community”, drank impossible amounts of tea and walked in the sunshine for three hours when the guilt of such profane acts of domestic sluttery proved too much.