There are more than a thousand comments on a Guardian story which asked: "Why should I have to buy my 4-year-old an Easter egg?" The writer claimed to have never had Easter eggs as a child and not to have been adversely affected by the fact. The writer expressed resentment at having to take part in the annual sugar festival. Some responses: "When I was a lad my parents used to celebrate Easter by starving myself and my brother for 40 days and 40 nights before nailing us to a cross. We only got to eat our Easter eggs once we had successfully managed to resurrect ourselves," wrote Matt1975; captainunsensible quipped: "I will keep a look out for a letter sent to the Guardian in about 35 years time from a woman who never got an Easter egg when she was little and how it ruined her childhood."
Fire fiasco - this is not a drill
Dael Armstrong-West writes: "When I was attending Epsom Girls Grammar School in the late 1970s the fire alarm went off. However, the teachers in almost every class would not let any of us out of the classrooms as it was NOT a fire drill. We were told to sit at our desks and wait until they could verify that it was in fact a fire. We did try explaining to the teachers that if there was in fact a fire the alarm would go off with no prior warning for anyone. The alarm kept ringing and the teachers finally allowed us to leave our classrooms and assemble at the school field on Silver Rd. It took 25 minutes to evacuate the school and the principal told off all the pupils at the next school assembly for not evacuating the school fast enough."
Winter weirdness
In case you missed it ... Orange snow fell across parts of Eastern Europe last week, resulting in some strange and beautiful pictures on social media. British meteorologist Steven Keates, of the UK Met Office, told the Independent that it was "feasible" that the deeply tinted snow was the result of intermixed sand and dust kicked up by storms in northern Africa, as has been widely reported. The newspaper also pointed out that a similar effect occurred in Siberia back in 2007, though at that time locals who encountered the snow described it as "foul-smelling" and "oily to the touch". According to the BBC, orange snow has turned up in social media posts from people in Russia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Romania and Moldova. One winter sports enthusiast apparently called out, "We're skiing on Mars today!" as he slid across the bizarre snowpack, CNN reported. (Via livescience.com)
