Firstly, a Happy Easter to all.

Whether believers or not, the festival is still an important milestone in most people's calendars. In pre-COVID19 days, it was a chance for families to meet up and the entry point to the coming springs and summers that lay in wait.

This year the weather was like a mischievous teenager – deliberately messing things up. I like my Holy Weeks to be brooding under troubled skies, building up to an overcast Good Friday which starts to relent during Holy Saturday before bursting into utter sunny glory on Easter Day itself – and thereafter.

Of course, 2021 just had to reverse the required meteorological sequence, didn't it? A balmy few days in the previous week have given way to a northerly wind so brutal that it made not being able to watch Ipswich Town Football Club live even more joyous than normal.

But the contrary weather patterns didn't stop the youngsters of Hadleigh – plus their parents as baggage carriers – cross-crossing the town in pursuit of carefully hidden chocolate eggs and other consumables, so placed by the good folks of various local churches.

Some of my co-religionists get a bit frowny when the Easter story of Jesus's death and resurrection is muddled by all manner of earlier or later non-Biblical additions. For me, it's more about sharing in the excitement and joy of the Good News – there will always be time to turn on the theology once church has become associated with happiness and acceptance.

Mind you, youthful imaginations do tend to create some wonderful Easter mash-ups. My favourite was from the young gentleman who was convinced that the Easter Bunny was crucified for eating too many of his friends' eggs!

Easter this year falls just before many people in our town face the first anniversaries of those friends and family who died as a result of COVID19. This is a heart-breaking time for them and indeed for all of us. Too many gone too soon.

That's why I'm impressed with the gumption of the always admirable Jo Sheldrake who has set up a memorial hedge outside her house, which people are being invited to decorate with coloured hearts and other designs to recall their beloved ones – and not just those who died due to the pandemic.

This is a simple yet enriching idea – a prelude Jo hopes to a more permanent memorial bench. Support for this seems to coming from all the right places, including our various councils. I understand that other commemorations are planned – which is exemplary as long as they are all treated equally and there isn't an unedifying race to launch one before another.

Hadleigh has a mighty heart but sometimes goodwill turns into a sense of good grief as rival initiatives turn on each like the chariot-racing scene in Ben Hur. Foodbank wars, anyone?

A jollier anniversary to which many are looking forward is the return of the swifts to Hadleigh and elsewhere. Their presence is a sure sign that better times are definitely on their way. Ted Hughes describes this euphoria simply but elegantly:

They've made it again,

Which means the globe's still working, the Creation's

Still waking refreshed, our summer's

Still all to come

So hat's off – or maybe boxes on – to the industrious Mark Brennan and others at the Hadleigh Environmental Action Team.

The more observant of our citizenry would have noticed a veritable blossoming in the numbers of swift boxes appearing under the eaves of many houses across the town. Soon they will ring with the recorded sounds of swifts to better encourage the real things to set up their nurseries.

Installed for free and without any fuss by Mark, they are a fine example of local direct action to help the prospects of this wonderful bird species whose numbers have been falling steeply for many years.

But, it would appear, not as steeply as the number of representatives serving on Hadleigh Town Council. To misquote the Weather Girls' greatest hit, it's been rainin' resignations, since Hadleigh Together came into power, although only one - Angela Gregg - has quit since Maritime Minns' came to office as mayor last September.

There are six vacancies (out of 14) to fill come election day in May and Maritime must be hoping that this new half dozen are more to his liking than their predecessors, a number of whom have been less than impressed with his draconian interpretation of the council's standing orders.

Once in post, perhaps Mark Brennan could be prevailed upon to install boxes for each councillor to sit in for when they come off Zoom and into the real world. Recordings of Maritime's abrupt callings might best be left for later.

*Rowland Taylor's column is written by a Hadleigh resident who is NOT employed by Nub News and is entirely their opinion.

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