EVEN now, in my advancing years, I am expected to arrange an Easter egg hunt.

I was 51 last Sunday and should be taking it easier, but I still face demands to produce rhyming clues which lead the “children” to their Easter eggs.

Thankfully, the eldest – The Big Friendly Giant – has opted out, sensing that both he and his father are too old.

But the others, aged 20, 19 and 16, still want to stick with the Easter tradition they’ve enjoyed every year since they were at primary school.

To be absolutely frank, I could have done without it this year. There was a lot to cram into the day on Easter Sunday. I needed to go to the gym, be home in time for lunch, then drive across to see my Mum, and get back for tennis in the evening.

But the orders were made clear the night before: “You’re doing an egg hunt tomorrow, aren’t you, Dad?” said 20-year-old Hannah.

“Do I really have to?” I replied.

“I’m going to be really busy.”

The look I got back was more than enough, so I got up at 7am to give myself time to write the clever little rhyming clues which lead to the eggs.

I WAS under instruction to make them challenging this year, so I put a lot of effort in and, more than an hour had passed before I’d finished the sets of five poetic clues per child.

Hannah went first and, despite a bit of trouble with the clue cunningly hidden in a box of clementines, she was reasonably appreciative of my efforts.

“That was quite good fun, Dad,” she said. Note the word “quite”.

Max, 16, seemed pretty enthusiastic too, but he needed help finding one of his clues, hidden underneath the wine rack.

Then came Jack, 19, who is studying English literature at Cambridge.

He read his first rhyme, directing him to his second clue inside a dictionary on the bookcase, and let out a deep sigh.

“God, Dad, don’t you think your meter’s a bit off?” he groaned.

“Meter? What do you mean?” I asked.

“Your meter. It’s terrible. It doesn’t scan. Too many syllables.”

I don’t intend to publish the rhyme for fear of inviting further criticism from other smart alec English students, but let’s just say I was a hurt.

I’ve never pretended to be a literary genius. I’m just a dad, trying to do his best, and I’m willing to bet that William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens or Geoffrey Chaucer never got out of their nice warm beds at the crack of dawn on a freezing Sunday morning to compose rhymes leading to Easter eggs that could otherwise be simply handed over to their ungrateful offspring.

If my meter, or even my iambic pentameter, does not meet the Great Eggspectations of my English student son, then I’m truly sorry. In fact, I’ll hang up my quill.

As Shakespeare once wrote (King Lear – Act 1, Scene IV): “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.”

THE THINGS THEY SAY

THANK you to Lily Vardy, from West Auckland Women’s Institute, who sent me a letter recalling the time she and her husband had gone to the parents’ evening at their daughter Kathryn’s infant school.

They were looking through Kathryn’s exercise book and could not help noticing her answer to a question from her teacher on the theme of “size”.

Kathryn, who is now an Oxford-educated biochemist with a PhD, had written: “The biggest thing I know is Daddy.”

“As the owner of a gradually expanding corporate waistline, he was a little taken aback to say the least,” wrote Lily.

WEST Auckland WI president Juliet Metcalfe told me how her son, Joe, when he was six, was so ill with a brain tumour that he wasn’t expected to pull through.

Joe had been watching a video called Hocus Pocus when a priest, called Father Jarrod, came to the house to administer the last rites.

Father Jarrod was going round the bed with the incense and saying prayers and, understandably, the mood was rather sombre.

Suddenly, Joe piped up with: “Can you hurry up – I’m missing Hocus Pocus.”

Joe is now 25, and a living example to anyone with a sick child that they shouldn’t give up hope.