Roll up, Roll up!

At the risk of sounding monotonous I must say that I never cease to be amazed at the number of people who turn up to the egg rolling event on Easter Sunday, or at the fiercely competitive manner they adopt when faced with a few hard boiled eggs! More than 80 people turned up this year to the event which, contrary to popular folklore, doesn’t have its origins back in mediaeval times but was dreamed up about 12 years ago when the then Village Hall Committee was ruminating over events for the village children at Easter. Back in the day we had Easter bonnet parades and egg decorating workshops, all of which seems to have fallen by the wayside but the rolling goes on and the largest and most competitive group are… the mothers, closely followed by the dads, children coming a poor third! This year such were the numbers of adults taking part we had to have at least six heats.

As the church clock struck the half hour battle lines were drawn….well the start line and the ‘eggs must be on the ground by now’ lines were drawn by the Old Vicarage gates -  and we were off to a slow start, looking for more than one male competitor for the 0-2 category! He was quite happy to join the girls and of course win an egg by default!

That was the easy bit! Moving up the age ranges demanded more of our line judges! Duck eggs were disqualified as were eggs not making ground contact at the appropriate place, (what bit of the word ‘rolling’ is difficult to understand?). A cunning ruse with some Velcro or sandpaper strips was quickly discovered and we were left wondering about the brownness of some eggs. Epoxy resin? Yacht varnish? Forget the days of pretty floral decorations. This is war!

We had a special category this year for the 95-100 age range won by Mark Spindler’s Dad, George, who’d come all the way from Essex! Well, I must admit he was the only person in this category but he had come a long way!!! And so did his egg when gently rolled past the starting line!!

Hot cross buns were indeed hot, rushed round from Keighley’s AGA and there were chocolate eggs to munch on whilst considering the next possible outcome and watching the mums and dads limber up.

I have to say a huge thank you to my husband, who spent over an hour on Saturday brushing the section of road to make it ‘roller smooth’, and to Tracy who still loves egg rolling and has chickens, and to the Committee for taking on the roles of adjudicators and scrambled egg clearers.  One gets a little worried that if the decisions aren’t deemed to be fair by the crowd, you may find a dead chicken nailed to your door - or a hardboiled egg!

Why do we do it? Because it’s fun and because of what we overheard two men saying….one said ‘We don’t have anything like this in our village’, to which the other replied, ‘Oh there’s a really good community spirit in this village!’

Hurrah!! At last! The penny has dropped. Eggsactly!  All the efforts of the various village groups that go into trying to foster a sense of community have been recognised! Give that man a chocolate egg!

Isy Shackleton
Chairman: Staverton Village Hall Committee