DATELINE MONDAY 25TH APRIL 2022

Monday morning greetings on this the first full working week for two week, I hope you and yours are well, I also hope you had a great Easter break whatever you were doing. Welcome back to the real world.

First and foremost may I take this opportunity to wish our Sovereign Monarch Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second a very happy 96th birthday for last Thursday long may she reign over us. I had every intention of strolling up to Hyde Park to see the 21 Gun Salute to mark Her Majesty’s birthday but yikeees I got busy, this being her 70th year on the throne there will be plenty more gun salutes to see I am sure.

Congratulations to Mr Emmanuel Macron who has been returned for another term as the President of France. I am the first to admit that I know very little about the politics of France but what I do know is that Mr Macron seems to be a safer pair of hands than Ms Marine Le Pen, I remember what a radical man her father was and as my father always used to say “little apples don’t fall far from the tree”

I hope that everyone celebrating Orthodox Easter had a wonderful family time on Sunday. Orthodox Christians in Europe, Africa and the Middle East celebrated Orthodox Easter yesterday. As ever I like to know the reasons behind festivals, so here goes :-

Orthodox Easter, often referred to as "Greek Easter," is celebrated by Eastern Christians to mark the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Eastern Orthodox church follows the Julian calendar, first proposed by Julius Caesar in 46 BC, rather than the Gregorian calendar adopted by Catholic Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. This means the holiday typically falls later than Easter Sunday in Western Christian tradition.

Greek Orthodox Easter marks the end of "Great Lent" a 40-day period of fasting from Clean Monday until "Pascha," Easter Sunday.

Most of the world’s approximately 260 million Orthodox Christians live in Central and Eastern Europe, and an additional 15% live in sub-Saharan Africa,

Russia, Ethiopia and Ukraine have the largest national Orthodox populations, and the country with the highest percentage of Orthodox Christians is Moldova,

About 78% of Ukrainian adults are thought to be Orthodox Christians, while Russian adults were about 71% Orthodox Christian

To all our friends that follow the Islamic faith only another week and a bit to go until Ramadan is over, I hope is it going well for you so far, Ramadan is scheduled to end on Tuesday 3rd May

Finally Happy Birthday to my amazing Mum for Thursday, Mum will be celebrating her 96th birthday 😊

MM and Company news update

The awesome DMCs that MM and Company represents have all been enjoying their Easter break so hopefully next week my Monday morning e mail will be full, full, full of destination developments and news of funky creative products from our DMCs

And that’s it you are once again up to date

Wishing you an outstanding full five working days ahead