Happy Easter, if you celebrate it.

Was discussing Easter traditions with some friends earlier this week. I learned that Italians don’t hide Easter eggs for their children. ‘Oh, it must be an anglo-saxon thing,’ I thought, only to find out a few days later that the French do have egg hunts. I guess the tradition of finding spare chocolate eggs tucked away in odd locations months after Easter transcends language barriers.

Do Australians even have any traditions besides egg hunts? I couldn’t think of any, and felt a bit inadequate on the folk-tradition scale. To be fair, it was a comparison with Hungary where apparently on Easter Monday the men in the village all go out and spray perfume on the women. Yeah, nah, can’t compete with that. Don’t even want to try, really.

Despite my total lack of traditions, I’m enjoying my Easter weekend. Low-key board games last night. Church this morning, then lunch with some friends I hadn’t seen for nearly a year. Going to a barbeque tomorrow.

(Aside: If you’re wondering how I’m getting on with recovering from my accident in February — that list is an enumeration of things I’ve done this weekend that didn’t involve sitting on my sofa and I’m glad I’m not doing anything more. Fatigue kinda sucks. On the plus side, it’s definitely manageable and it’s getting better.

Aside number 2: I have discovered possibly the worst category of blogs for me to be reading right now: people who hike long distances and blog all about it. Reading those from the sofa is like reading fashion magazines when you have no money for clothes — sure I don’t actually want to hike through the desert, but I’ve suddenly discovered that I wish I was able to do that.)

On a final, also unrelated note, a classic “things you hear in Italy” quote from yesterday: yeah, it was recent, like, seventeen, eighteen hundred…

But then, a couple of Easters ago (I was going to say “exactly 2 years ago” but the lunar calendar doesn’t work like that!) I was in the Archeological Museum in Napoli. I thoroughly recommend it, it’s full of statues like this:

I bet in Roman times that expression didn’t even signify “stop staring at me while I scratch my ear”.

I didn’t think to make a note of how old it was, but I’m pretty sure it makes 1700-1800 seem pretty recent.