I had a good holiday this summer. It ticked many boxes: it was long, there was
tasty food, and it was almost as geographically as far away from my place of
work as it is possible to get, at least for the first three weeks.
I needed this break, not so much because I was in the
midst of an end-of-school-year burn out
as because I was in the midst of a very-real-danger-of-punching-someone-I
work-with crisis. It would not have been a good move, professionally.
Personally, I can't really judge. Violence is never the answer, but sometimes
you don't want answers, you just want to
smash things up.
I've been back home for over a week, and the greater part of
the bile has subsided. And I've been back at work for a week, with very little incidence
of any all-consuming rage. The break done me good, and no doubt about that.
But tonight, I'm feeling resentful. Not for any specific
reason, but because I had become used to waking up, musing the world over for a
couple of minutes, and going back to sleep. I'd become used to my biggest
decision being what's for lunch, what's for dinner, and occasionally, what's
for second dinner. In essence, I'd
become very much used to doing what the fuck I want, when I want.
Fortunately, I usually quite enjoy my job, and it is
something I want to do. Tonight, it's not
actually work that's irritating my psyche with the itching powder of life. It's
what work means for my Sundays.
I recall fondly the days when Sunday was still a day of the
weekend, when Sunday was another pub day. Admittedly, a slightly quieter, more
pipe-and-slippers pub day than a let's-blow-up-the-world pub day, but a day for
setting up shop in a boozy establishment, and wringing the last few hours of
life out of the dying embers of the weekend's
fire. Things would happen on Sundays. Quiet things, slow studied, slightly unsteady
things, but things nonetheless.
But being a teacher, that's not an option I have. Monday's
are never a slow slide into the working week, but an early morning slap in the
face with a spiked glove of awakening. Monday requires alertness, preparation,
pep and zest. It does not forgive the groggy hangover, nor make allowances for
the fuzzy head. Monday fucks you up.
Sunday evenings are now a bit of a graveyard of a time. It often feels like the gateway between this
world and the next has thinned, and not
just because of the living dead who often inhabit it - Last of the Summer Wine, Downton Abbey , Antiques Roadshow and
their ilk. I'd bet, statistically, more aged folk slip their mortal chains on a
Sunday night, home, alone, weighed down by the decades of Sunday night wistful
misery. All just to avoid seeing in another Monday. I'd imagine Sunday night is suicide night, for
those with suicidal tendencies. Conversely,
I can't image it being music night, for those with Suicidal Tendencies.
It is a morose evening. I've accepted this, and developed a
range of strategies to impede its grey grip on life. Hot Chocolate with a nip
of whisky. Long baths, Radio 3 and a good book. Shooting people in the head for
gleeful pleasure on Call of Duty. They pass the time, they keep the ghosts at
bay.
But the ghosts of the holiday are powerful, and there
remains a yearning for a couple of
Sunday night pints, maybe a cheeky
whisky or three, and a handful of fags. The summer is dying, and it should mourned
in the appropriate manner. However,
being the responsible adult I never asked to be, I shall resist.
Resist the pub anyway.
Q.I. is on TV. There are a few beers in the fridge. I'll
keep those ghosts alive, drink to the dying season, to the fading traces of the
holiday, to the memories of a lie-in.
After all, Monday is another day.
