The Aardvark Blog

Easter 2025 is upon us
18/04/2025

I have been thinking a lot about past Easters recently as we prepare for our Easter Event tomorrow ( not to be missed with an extra £0.50pence sale, live music from Jack Brett and tons of stalls and plants).

By coincidence Easter 2025 falls on the same day as Easter 2011 - the year that my great friend and business partner Edward was taken from us. Edward had a great fondness for our Easter event, and would usually sneak off to a church around Easter ( not always to the actual Easter service). In his early life he had done many years training to become a Catholic priest, and had his diocese sent  him to Rome rather than the chilly northern climes of Valladolid in  the dog days of Franco's  Spain, I think  that he would have completed his training. He would have made an extraordinary priest - the kind who makes a real difference in people's lives - but the Church's loss was our gain, and I will be grateful for ever for the years that we had as friends and business partners.

This year has marked the loss of another great friend Helen Vine, without whom Aardvark would almost certainly not have got started. Helen like Edward was an incredibly generous person, and there are numerous people and organisations in the Marches who benefited from her positivity and enthusiasm.

But if I sound in a mournful mood this morning, actually I am not. Thinking about old friends, those who are still with us and those who have ( to quote Monty Python) 'joined the bleeding choir invisible', brings me great joy. And it also makes me think about my father whose favourite holiday was always Easter. His loss was the first great loss of my life, but the legacy he left in  terms of my sister and my wider family, is one of the great joys of my existence. This Saturday whilst we are running the Easter event, my sister will be spending her Saturday running a stall at a big collectibles and vintage fair in the South East of England. As they say, more than noses run in my family.

Easter in Britain was built by the early church upon the scaffold of a much older festival which celebrated éostre or Ostara the ancient germanic goddess of spring ( see here practising rhythmic gymnastics with her winged children).   So come and join us tomorrow for a celebration of Easters past and future - Christian or Pagan - the sap is rising and soon summer will  be upon us. And what better way to celebrate all the possibilities of the coming year than music, good company, plenty of bargains and best of all our special Easter Chocolate Cake!