It's the Saturday before Easter. We sit underneath the Jacaranda in the late afternoon and play Scrabble on a table stained with bird shit. In between turns there's the valley as the view. Noonie throws a tennis ball for Pickle and eventually he comes across a brown and white rabbit on the lawn. It's large and fluffy and gorgeous and dead. Not a mark on it. Couldn't face another Easter we joke.

I think of other Easters. A sunny Sunday in Rome after days of rain. Christ is risen. Hordes of Italians framed by bouganvillea on the Spanish Steps, and still more in the shops on Via Condotti. Before that as a kid there was part of an Easter Sunday spent trapped in the toilet with the door handle broken. I was wearing navy and white stripey knee-high socks. More rain at Smiths Lake years later and a game of Monopoly stopped ubruptly so one, fearing they'd been duped, could read the rules in entirety. Rain again at...Sunshine Beach before everyone was married with children. Forresters Beach. Rain. Too small house. Not enough couches. Lee's humour only consolation and prevention from cabin fever.