Would I Lie to You?

I am off for the weekend to visit my family. The kids are excited at the prospect of the long journey, because we always stop at the motorway service station for a burger. Its not really the burger they want – just the plastic toy that comes with it. I keep suggesting to them that they would be better off eating the plastic toy, and playing with the food, but they will have none of it.
I am already developing an unhealthy level of anxiety about my role as The Easter Bunny on Sunday morning, when I will have to escape undetected into my Dad’s garden to hide some little Easter eggs for the kids to find. I have always insisted on scrupulous levels of honesty from my children, yet I continue to lie to them in the most bare-faced manner about the existence of the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and Santa Claus. I know that any day now they are going to unmask me as the craven liar I really am, and I’m dreading it. As a result, like Madame Bovary, I have resorted to crafting an increasingly tangled web of deceit to cover my tracks. I am seriously considering doing the egg hiding on the Saturday night, when they are asleep, so I won’t be caught red-handed.
The risk is that one of the urban foxes will get to the choccies before the kids do, and I will be faced with explaining away the carnage of empty foil wrappers to my weeping children, who no doubt would be convinced that the Easter Bunny had been eaten along with the eggs.
On the other hand, my family are rather big drinkers (no surprise there) and my children very early risers, so in order to continue the deception, I will have to get up at the crack of dawn on Easter Sunday with a hangover. On that basis, the potential bunny-massacre scene is looking worth the risk – at least I won’t have to lie about it next year.
As I am savouring a glass of citrussy Nepenthe Sauvignon Blanc (£7.99 Ocado) I am beginning to see a form of salvation from my years of gratuitous fraud. How about telling my kids that the Tooth Fairy has retired to a ‘Sprightly Seniors’ Community’ where she operates a successful dental implant business? And Santa? Thanks to global warming and high cholesterol levels, he is now running a celebrity ‘fat camp’ at his golf and leisure complex in Marbella.
Happy Easter! I’ll be posting again when I’m back on Tuesday 10th.