Egg Hunt

Easter's a strange time of year for me. I got to thinking about how it's impacted on my life up 'til now. I went all the way back to my first memory of Easter, which just happens to be in Grade Prep at Primary School. I'm talking 1971. Mrs Hunt's class. I would've been five years old. We all made small baskets by cutting and gluing square pieces of coloured paper. I imagine we lined the bases with cotton wool and used pipe cleaners for handles. Then the class went outside into the yard to play a game or something. I don't recall exactly what we did, but I know it was a diversion because when we got back into the classroom our baskets were filled with two or three tiny chocolate eggs and a fluffy yellow chick.

It's great to have such a wonderful first memory of Easter because in later years I came to realise that, for me, this time of year often coincided with bouts of depression. Don't ask me why. It's not like I timed it that way, but sure enough, if I go back to my darkest daze, they seem to be inexplicably linked with Easter...

It's not all doom n gloom though. I remember one time - before the days of being hounded by the black dog - when I shared a house with two sisters in St Kilda. The three of us loved to throw a party, any excuse would do and all our friends would join in. One particular night a group of us went mental after drinking who knows what (topped off by shots of sambucca with the requisite coffee beans). With music blaring we ran around the house yelling and screaming, "Egg hunt, egg hunt" and throwing little chocolate eggs around. The sisters had been given some 'Elegant Rabbits' as an Easter treat, but in the frenzy (and without the sisters' knowledge) they'd been smashed, their chocolate carcasses left shattered in the bathtub with large plastic rats (leftovers from a Halloween party) strategically placed so as to look like they were feasting on the rabbits. Somewhere during the mayhem real chook eggs were smashed against the kitchen wall just above the heads of our guests - someone always goes too far (yes, I'm afraid I'm guilty) and one of us (I swear it wasn't me) wrote in thick black texta on one of the doors: 'Egg Cunt'

Wishing you all a peaceful Easter