26 Mar Saturday…with an Easter Table

I used to spend every Easter when I was a child visiting my Grandpa in the Lake District…

On Easter Day we’d always have lunch at an hotel which was really old fashioned and we were only allowed into the dining room after a gong on the staircase was sounded…

The waiter wore a short white jacket and didn’t need a notebook to take the order; he remembered everything which always really impressed us.

After we’d eaten there was a room, which overlooked the garden with the sea beyond, where coffee and biscuits were served. At that point my brother and I would escape; there was a big hill we’d roll our dyed Easter eggs down…my brother, who’s older, usually got a bit bored with simple ‘rolling’ and would take to bombing my egg until there was nothing left, until it was destroyed, and then he would decamp to the pond and round up strands of toad spawn and newts and get completely filthy.

I would walk around pretending I was a ‘good’ Victorian child…until I got bored too, and joined my brother at the pond. After a while I would run back to the coffee and biscuits room and report back to the grown ups about what he’d been doing. No-one was really interested in my reports; they were probably so relieved that they were having a quiet moment with a cup of coffee without us arguing and winding each other up!

In the afternoon I’d go for a walk, often in Cartmel, with my Grandpa and my Mum ( my Dad and brother would go back to the house to fall asleep in a chair and play billiards respectively…even though billiards was banned to my brother unless my Grandpa was present! ) and in the evening I seem to remember small sandwiches and the Antiques Roadshow featured heavily!

I grew up in Warwickshire, right in the centre of England, and even as a child I felt land-locked and claustrophobic by my home turf and though it was very pretty, I longed for these Lake District escapes; full of natural space, high fells, sea and lakes.

I still have a deep yearning at this time of year to be back up North, particularly at Easter…maybe that’s one of the reasons I enjoyed my recent trip up there for The Landmark Trust so much; it captured or at least helped me re live something about my childhood Lake District memories.. So, Easter is genuinely something very special for me…it always feel like things are at last looking pretty, bright and hopeful after a long, cold and bare spell…

I mentioned in my last post about the #mystjames project which I’m currently working on, that Fortnum and Mason is in the St James’s area, and one of the brilliant perks of this project is that I was given a bag full of Fortnums Easter treats to play with on the table…

I love putting my compositions together; not only placing objects in pleasing combinations of colour, structure and texture, but also thinking about the emotional sense behind it…and there was something about the memories of my childhood Easters in the Lake District, my love of Spring, blossom, chocolate eggs and tea which inspired the images below…

a bit of stop frame bag opening…

You can see the Steller Story version here