Sunday 28 August 2016

Spoilsport


I read of a local vicar in the late 18th century around here, who waited for the boys to kick a bladder close enough for him to pick up and burst with a spike when they played on the village green. He did not approve of football on a Sunday, I suppose.

I used to hate it when everything shut down on Sundays. All over the country, young men would sit together in silence, perhaps with all the Sunday newspapers strewn around an already untidy flat, until one would look at his watch, leap to his feet, and virtually run to the street - followed by the others - to arrive at the pub door just as it was being opened.

If you did not buy everything you needed on Saturday, you were at the mercy of 'the corner shop', run by a heathen who had no concept of the British Sunday Roast and all its vital ingredients, so found yourself eating pitta bread and baked beans instead.

Sundays were always the dread prelude to another week of school, work or unemployment as well. Only the rich unemployed could afford to get bladdered during the limited opening hours, or stay up late watching crap TV.

Once a year, we all got a treat - left over from a more agricultural time - the August Bank Holiday. If ever there was a time when it would be foolish to set out to the coast to relax and enjoy yourself, it is now, when hundreds of thousands of people do just that every year. Our coastline just isn't big enough to take all of us in one go.

The Christians know how to handle Sundays. It is nice and peaceful in Anglica churches these days.

20 comments:

  1. Maybe the Anglicans should establish pop-up churches on the beaches for August Bank Holiday.

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    1. Bouncy churches - now there's an idea to get them young. Good joke:

      An inflatable vicar sets up an inflatable church on a beach, but wears high-heels for the first service. The bishop is so angry with him that he calls him to the palace, and says:

      "You've not only let the church down, but you have let yourself down too."

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  2. I remember Sundays in a bedsit in London, a Fray Bentos pie was a luxury, that's if the cooker worked. I only had a cold tap and use of a shared cooker on the landing.

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    1. Fray Bentos makes a very good hash - and it is done in minutes. Was it a Baby Belling in your house?

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    2. It was covered in grease and had legs like cookers used to have. It was probably the baby belling's big brother. Sunday was a terrible day in that bedsit.

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    3. I thought Bank Holidays were a left over from banks when they thought they never had a day off except Sundays so bank holidays were invented for them. Did I dream that?

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    4. They used to have Saturdays off, but these days they charge interest in the middle of the night when everyone is sleeping. My daughter used to get a week off school in Scotland - to help with the potato harvest...

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    5. In northern Maine, where my family spent the summers, the schools still close for the potato harvest. Growing potatoes is all they do there.

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  3. I have always hated Sundays in Germany. It meant to me that the country died a weekly death. Of course, the day was meant for the family, but if you don't have a harmonious family it turns into the worst day of the week.

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  4. You should have been where I was ,said she smugly.

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  5. He asked what ?
    Soho and seashore.
    Sounds like a dodgy interior design company put like that.Read it if you like but I was just having a gloat after a good weekend actually.

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    1. I've just come from your post, where I have asked again and suggested Golden Cap. Nothing wrong with gloating about rare, good weekends.

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  6. "Sing something simple" on the radio on a Sunday evening…so depressing....even the thought of it now!

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    1. Oh, God - yes. That show took dreariness to inconceivable heights, and music to inconceivable lows.

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  7. 'Keynsham, Bristol. That's K E Y N S H A M, Bristol.' Horace is long gone but this was shoe cleaning time - for the week ahead - in our house.

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    1. Yes, we all learned how to spell and pronounce the name of that funny little town between Bristol and Bath in the days of Radio Luxembourg, didn't we?

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  8. Funny. Bank Holiday?? You are a weird lot..but we have holidays nobody fathoms anymore, but there are only two of those days that aren't connected to the christian church. Even if the deeper meaning of some christian weekends is long lost, they are willingly taken for granted. Closed sundays we had until I started school I think, 1970. Perhaps later, I'm not sure. Nowadays we have the traditional danceevening on Goodfriday...sundays are absolutely filled to the brim with activities. Church is then a quiet place to be...

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