Relocating the Poles, and a proverbial lesson about eggs

Getting a different take on an everyday saying can sometimes invest it with a far deeper, sometimes even surreal, meaning.

I was absolutely certain I recently heard a radio newscaster announcing that ‘the Poles are getting closer.’

Immediately I found myself thinking about the way that in many sectors, including agriculture, catering and the health service, Britain has recently become massively dependent on support from Poland. So moving the Poles closer sounds like it might be a good idea. It would be tremendously convenient if Poland could be brought alongside and, say, moored next to South East Kent. It would also make it easier to pop over to Cracow, a city I’m told is well worth visiting, though I’ve never been there.

Then I realised that the radio had been talking about the forthcoming general election and was therefore making a much more mundane point.

Today another completely different phrase was brought to vivid life for me. We’re close to Easter now, and Danielle and I have come to Edinburgh to spend the weekend with our son David, his wife Senada and our granddaughter Aya.

In case any of my readers are a little vague on the details of Christian liturgy and need this explaining, Easter is the most important event of the Christian calendar. It’s true that Christmas seems bigger, but that’s only because commerce has got behind it far more. Easter commemorates the moment when Christ was scourged with whips, had a crown of thorns jammed on his head to mock the claim that he was King of the Jews, and was then put to death by crucifixion, a particularly long and cruel form of execution.

For most people, that would be the end of the story, but for Christ it wasn't: on the third day, Christians believe he rose again from the dead, the key miracle in the entire belief system, promising eternal resurrection to all who have faith in him.

Death, pain, suffering, resurrection, redemption. Matters of weight and spiritual depth.

So what could be more natural than to celebrate this moment of acute poignancy by pigging out on chocolate eggs?

Our family is pretty heathen, but it likes eggs and it likes children. So Danielle decided that she was going to introduce our five-year old granddaughter Aya to one of the delights of her own childhood, painting eggs for Easter. A colleague of Danielle's lives on a smallholding so he kindly provided two goose eggs.

They had to be emptied before painting. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Danielle went on-line to check just how it should be done.

To be fair they blew the eggs rather than sucking them – they weren’t that keen on having their mouths full of raw egg – but, hey, let’s not be picky.

As David pointed out, what we had just witnessed was the internet being used to teach a grandmother to suck eggs.

Aya blowing a goose egg

...and her grandmother, having been successfully taught how