The just and the unjust

You may laugh, but I've emptied a whole selection box in here, 

plus a couple of eggs I nicked from the bots 

and the left-over cooking chocolate.  

That should do me until Monday.

We had a delicious houseful over Easter - all arrived with chocolate and one with a new game of murder.  As we were to be together for several days, we each picked a name, place and object.  The deadline was 9pm Easter Sunday and before then, you had to get your victim into the place assigned and hand them the object - thus killing them.

There were several false starts - Edward insisted the pub was a viable location, even for the children, and Rose minded dreadfully that boys planned to be in her huge, perfectly-filed wardrobe with handfuls of raspberries and a football boot.

I was so distracted by hiding chocolate and refereeing the church refuseniks and the tradition-at-all-cost-niks that I was murdered within minutes.  'Mum, can you sign this for school, you need this green pen, ha! you're muu-uu-rdered!'

The others strung it out and showed remarkable ingenuity; a chili in the newsagent, reading specs in the shed.  There was an elaborate hoax involving a blocked sink and chisel and some jokes in very poor taste about nails and crosses.

The Pretty One and I went to church by ourselves in the end, pretending religious choice and freedom; in reality, cowards in the face of wrangling sleepy six-footers into chinos and clean shirts.

On the walk there we remembered the time when, as little girls, we got dreadful giggles at a bearded man snoring like a buffalo in our pew.   Our Granny was furious and worse, disappointed, and we walked home with downcast faces and hearts.  Just as we reached our drive, she pulled out a little packet of chocolate buttons and let us share them.

I'd like to think she gave us wisdom too, but neither of us can remember anything she said, only the painful scrubbing we had to subsequently endure with a spat-on tissue to remove the chocolate evidence.

We are many decades on now, and so perfectly capable of removing, from our almost-50-year-old faces and fingers, the traces of praline and dark chocolate that we had stashed in our handbags with the collection fiver and savoured, smugly and secretly, on our walk home after the service.  Full of peace, laughs and Godiva,  the Pretty One was a sitting duck as we passed the bus stop.  "You've got the evidence all over your chops, quick, use this bit of loo roll.'  Murdered. Best bit of Easter.