I bloody love a Hot Cross Bun, and you just can’t get good hot cross buns over here. You can get warm angry rolls, and you can get heated mad muffins, and you can even get burning furious beignets, but a proper hot cross bun cannot be found. There might be things that resemble them in the stores, but nothing that actually tastes like the ones we get in England. But here are some proper hot cross buns. Well they did have some colourful dried fruit in them which I can allow because that was nice, but the rest of it tasted right and was had warned up with butter on and a nice cup of tea. Those Easter-y things that I miss so much from back home, chocolate Easter Eggs, hot cross buns, the four day weekend and people complaining about other people not appearing to celebrate it, I miss those traditions. These ones were made by a British parent my wife knows (thank you they were delicious!) that made a huge batch of them. Definitely made my Easter. One of my Easter traditions is to watch The Long Good Friday on Good Friday, the old London gangster film with Bob Hoskins. It’s a great film but when you watch it in 2025 the, er, outdated terminologies are a bit, yeah. Still, some of it was filmed at Copthall swimming pool which is where I learned to swim, dive, and talk like an east end thug. I do love a hot cross bun though. When I was a kid, I used to get a lot of big chocolate eggs at Easter, there was no shortage in my house. My dad loved them. I love a Cadbury’s Creme Egg too though unlike in America, they are an all-year item in England. I have a photo of me as a baby, literally two months old (“Peter’s First Easter” my Mum had written underneath in my photo album), with my Nan where she is feeding me a Cadbury’s Creme Egg, chocolate all over my two-month-old baby face. Different time innit, they probably thought, well it’s still an egg, sure it’s healthy. I was allowed to stay home when I was a young kid on Easter Sunday when the rest of my family went to church because I didn’t go for all that stuff, and fair play to my parents for not making me, but I had to do all the hoovering and dusting and any washing up while they were out.  We would have a big Easter dinner, though often we’d have that on Easter Monday. Films like Mary Poppins or The Sound of Music were always on the TV, and of course my favourite, The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe, the old animated version which inspired me to put on a stage version when I was living in France years later. I completely missed all the religious allegories when I was a kid, and was surprised as an adult to finally make the actually obvious connections. I don’t remember any hot cross buns in it though, just some cold grumpy beavers. I’m reminded of a joke from Easter with a punchline “Hot Cross Bunnies!” but I can’t for the life of me remember the actual joke itself, one of those “what do you get if you blah blah blah blah?” jokes, and I’m happy not to actually know it, so if you remember it, please don’t tell me. I prefer living in ignorance and coming up with my own versions.