Easter advice for the disorganised and desperate

How we scoffed during that quiet period between Christmas and New Year when the shopkeepers started sneaking Easter eggs on to the shelves.

Who needs a Cadbury’s Mini Eggs egg, we sneered, when there are still tubs of Celebrations and half-eaten Chocolate Oranges strewn around the house?

Admittedly, maybe we did not do the sneering or scoffing, but I’m willing to admit that I did say to myself: “Thankfully the cornershop stocking up on Buttons eggs doesn’t mean you actually have to buy one, let alone tuck into one until the end of March comes around.”

Fate preserve us from naive and foolish beliefs...

Well at 6pm on Easter Saturday, staring at a wall of empty supermarket shelves which had been full of chocolate eggs for three whole months, there was something to be said for better planning.

The sort of planning that means Mrs Hill would wake up to an egg on Easter morning and not just the empty disappointment of being married to a man who is not very good at remembering to buy a chocolate treat to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Staring at the wall, waiting for something unlikely to happen, the local barber appeared by my side, as if by magic, like the shopkeeper from Mr Benn (readers aged over 50 will know precisely who and what I’m referring to).

The barber is an individual with seerlike powers of observation who knows everything (apart from not to leave buying his wife an Easter egg until the last minute).

We compared notes on the shops we had already visited without success since embarking on our respective panic buys.

And while we pondered the problem in front of us – and the size it would grow to in a little over 12 hours if not resolved – he had an idea.

Being the man who knows everything about local life, he naturally had the number for the manager of the local corner shop saved in his phone, because why wouldn’t he?

As a succession of men of a certain demographic walked up to the barren supermarket shelves before shuffling off to see what flowers were left, the barber made the call.

And so it was that we convened across town where eggs which had been available at two-for-the-price-of one for weeks were now available at one-for-the-priceof-one to cash-in on the disorganised and desperate.