Suzanne Harrington: An Easter miracle! I rolled back the stone from my cave and had a garden party

And lo! As Jesus emerges from lockdown, so too are the frazzled citizens of Brexitland blearily rolling the stones from the front of their caves. Now allowed to mingle outdoors in groups of six, thanks to the miracles of Big Pharma, crucified social lives have risen again, albeit shakily as newly hatched chicks. Sorry about the mixed Easter metaphors, but that’s Easter for you – a mixed bag of bunnies and chocolate and daffodils and eggs and crucifixion torture.

Anyway, with the Rule of Six allowing residents across the Irish Sea some minor outdoor mingling, posh event planners with names like Arabella and Allegra and Araminta having been coming out of the woodwork, advising on how to make this long-awaited six-person event rally, rally spesh. Luxury marquees and table linens, floral centre pieces, place names in gold leaf calligraphy, bone china, polished silverware, crystal outdoor lighting, perhaps a PPE-wrapped butler serving roast swan on a bed of orchids on the sweeping lawns of gracious gardens. Maybe a socially distanced string quartet.

I am listening to all this on the radio as I prepare my own garden for its first event of the season. I say garden. The reality is more windswept junkyard of tussocky weeds, potholed by digging dogs, ten years of dead Christmas trees wedged in the hedge, and a collapsing shed in the corner. Not sure how Arabella / Allegra / Araminta would approach the whole thing, but I start with the basics - checking the grass for rogue deposits from our giant new lockdown puppy. 

Making sure the blocks of rodenticide dotted around (“irresistible to rats and mice”) are out of sight, and checking the ground around the fire pit – a hole in the ground encircled by old bricks - for broken glass. We don’t want any visiting friends’ dogs poisoning themselves, or any visiting humans needing tetanus jabs. This is the first rule of a rally, rally spesh occasion – no dead dogs, no trips to A&E.

As the six – although in truth we were seven, so sue me – assemble around the fire, the sommelier proffers our finest refreshments: two kinds of beer in a plastic bucket - alcoholic and non-alcoholic. Smoke from a feeble fire blinds us in all directions, without keeping any of us warm. There is no table linen, because there is no table.

Luncheon is served on flapping paper plates balanced on our laps as we perch on damp camping chairs, food threatening to frisbee away from us in the wind. I seem to have completely forgotten to organise the floral centrepiece – just as well, as the dogs would have peed on it – and the stupid solar-powered fairy lights are on the blink due to a winter long lack of solar power. It is very cold.

None of this puts us off. Not the cold, not the wind, not the absurdity, not the blinding woodsmoke. All that matters is being together. We have waited long enough.