Easter Egg Hunt

We went on an Easter egg hunt at a park near our house today, which had been arranged by a consortium of local churches. We were slightly concerned that they might have some sort of message about the 'true nature of Easter', but there was very little of that. I thought it might be some sort of church fete equivalent. But in England (and probably Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) church fetes are to raise money, and this seemed designed to get rid of it.

However, it was rather strange, for a number of reasons. The first reason was that everything was free. There was hair colouring, face painting, donkey riding, goat stroking (and rabbits and a sheep and some chickens), ice cream, cans of fizzy pop, hot dogs, fairground games (like ring tossing - with prizes, you got a crap prize if you didn't win, and a slightly less crap prize if you did), coffee, doughnuts, fire engines to climb on, a puppet show (more on that in a minute) and probably some other stuff I've forgotten. Oh, and an Easter Egg hunt.

Maybe I'm getting less radical in my old age, but it did rather successfully demonstrate the usefulness of a market economy. Because everything was free, it meant that everyone took it, whether they wanted / liked it or not. And because it was free, there was no incentive to give people what they actually might have wanted, they were taking it anyway, so a lot of it was a bit crap. Plus, there were really long queues for everything, and if they'd charged, the poor people would have got out of our way, and we could have had a go.

The main purpose was the Easter egg hunt. This was divided into age groups, so we had to wait our turn. The Easter eggs were plastic eggs which either had some sort of sweet or a small toy inside them (or sometimes both). There were, they said, just over 8,000 eggs per age group, and there were four age groups, making 34,000 Easter eggs. In the picture on the left, they are spreading out the eggs, ready for the hunt. Obviously it wasn't much of a challenge to find the eggs, but it's hard to hide one egg, when it's coloured and all you have is grass to hid them in, never mind 8,000. Children were given a bag, and sent out to collect the eggs in a special bag - you were only allowed to fill one bag. Luckily, there were plenty of eggs, 'cos A and D didn't really get the whole idea of hurrying. They'd pick up an egg, try to decide if they liked the colour, shake it to see if it sounded interesting, reject it and select another. Meanwhile, other children were rushing forward and hoovering up eggs. There were stewards around to make sure you didn't offer assistance to your children, and that you didn't put eggs in your own bag or pockets.






There was also a raffle - which was free. And it had LOTs of prizes, none of which involved tinned food. They started with bikes - there were 36 (count them) bikes. About 10 fluffy rabbits (which disappointed people who won), two Playstations, two $50 shopping vouchers, and two prizes of $500 in cash. It was an anonymous donor who gave the money for that - but why? Why would you decide that a random person who turned up for a free ticket is the person who is most deserving of your $500. I left before we got to that part of the raffle. Partly because that meant I avoided the quandary of what I would do if I won. But mostly because I was with D, he was very tired, and they were doing an awful lot of stuff about how church is great. (Not God is Great - church is great). They were handing out prayer cards, which you could fill in your, or someone else's details on, and they would then pray for you (or the other person).

The most religious part was the puppet show. The puppets sang songs about God. The video shows (bits of) them playing "We won't be fooled again" by The Who (that's the CSI: Miami theme song), except they sang "You must be born again". (There's also a bit of A and D eating their sweets - I couldn't be bothered to edit into two videos, sorry.)



Want to see some more photos? Oh, OK then.

Here are some Easter eggs.


Here's a photo of me, that was taken by either D or A.



This was the main stage, there were bands and stuff playing. This was a Christian rock band. Which reminds me of a story in The Onion - Bassist Unaware Rock Band Christian
I try to explain to people that we live near the airport, and they say things like (I'm talking about you, JD), "My parents used to live really near Gatwick (or was it Heathrow? I forget), like a 20 minute drive away". The photo below was taken from the park where the Easter egg hunt was held - it's about the same distance from the airport (runway) as our house. That's a plane (it's heading East, so it's taxiing).



That's a plane heading West, and taking off. It's harder to get the photo, because they're moving faster when they're taking off (obviously).