Parenting foibles....

Have you ever eaten somebody's Easter egg, or at least a large part of it, and carefully replaced the foil to look like it was untouched and whole?
No, neither have I.
Well, not this year at least, but it used to go on a fair bit when the my children were little and easier to fool. 'Yes, darling, Daddy ate it while sleep-walking. Don't mention it to him.. '
Frankly, I regarded it as one of the unwritten rules of parenthood ... chocolate-snaffling.
Dear Lord, had to to do something to keep up one's strength.
There was of course, the time when darling daughter and I snuck into a box of Godiva chocolates that belonged to dearest son which were (because of the fresh cream content) being kept in the fridge. But for how long? The girls asked themselves as they surreptitiously palmed  another. Eventually the gaps we'd left in the box far exceeded the remaining chocs, so I invested in some Milk Tray to plug those tell-tale gaps. A thirteen year old boy is not going to know the difference, we thought...
How wrong can one be?

But Easter isn't about scoffing for many teenagers, it is the last school holiday before the dreaded GCSEs or A Levels. A time for cramming of an entirely different nature.
So my sympathy is very much with all those souls busy revising, or wracked with guilt because they are not.
I can remember the run up to O Levels, as they were called, as being the most challenging of my entire education.

I was a diligent student, in most ways, and took revising for exams seriously. However, I can remember feeling totally overwhelmed at one point when it seemed that the task ahead was too monumental. Young hooligan that I wasn't, I tried banging doors at home: they were the sort that refused to provide the appropriate resonance. So I started a classically misguided rant at my parents who exchanged glances.
"Come and help me collect the washing," said my Dad whose domestic chore was to use the Laundrette which was conveniently close to The Swan; there he would happily while away the time it took for a service wash.
Bemused, I went with him, still banging on about how I had worked so damned hard but could remember nothing, absolutely nothing.
He sat me down on a table outside the pub ( as I was 16 and underage) and put a shandy in front of me.
As I sipped gingerly, beginning to wonder what my mother would make of this (headline in local rag: 'Head's daughter in underage drinking scandal with her father') my father explained that all this hiatus would be the same in a hundred years time... and "You," he said, "Lella, in the nicest possible way, are just a pimple on the arse of evolution."
It was either the shandy or the advice, but everything slotted back into perspective and my mother applauded my father's genius.
We never mentioned our little detour to The Swan..