Monday 7 January 2019

Any Day but Sunday

When I was a little girl Sunday was always the best day of the week. Sunday night was rubbish because we had to have a bath and Monday was school but the dawning of Sunday was the best ever.  We didn't have the kind of awful Sundays which other people had, church and silence and being good except when I had to go and spend the afternoon in my father's car with his parents as he drove them around the reservoirs! I soon got out of this and elected to stay at home with my mother since I was always horribly car sick. You can get out of a lot of stuff if you can claim car sickness. threaten to throw up on the leather seats gets you a long way.
Apart from that Sundays were good. My father hated church. I think it had something to do with the idea that he thought his mother wanted him to be a vicar. Thinking back I think he probably imagined this or made it up since his father owned a steelworks and he would undoubtedly end up there but anyhow he had an aversion to church so we never went. Sunday school was awful so maybe I went once or twice but to us Sunday was the day when you did what you wanted.
The Sunday papers took up a huge amount of space, my mother spent her morning peeling vegetables, checking on the roast and helping herself to sherry. I don't think my father did anything much other than read the newspapers
We ate at one or was it two?  Whatever, we were always very hungry by the time we sat down and ate and boy, could my mother make a Sunday roast. We didn't have pudding but you didn't need it. We would have half a dozen vegetables, Yorkshire pudding which my father and sister had first smothered in gravy and white pepper and the cauliflower had white sauce and the meat was always superb. My mother was a farmer's daughter and wouldn't have settled for anything less. We had pork with crackling she had laced with salt, sirloin with horseradish, lamb with garden mint, never chicken. By then chicken had become almost commonplace. We had turkey at Christmas.
On Mondays the leftover from the roast was minced or turned into a frying pan dish with potatoes and onions.
On Sunday evenings when we had tea it was pork sandwiches with sage and onion stuffing and of course my mother made the stuffing.  And in the afternoons she made cakes.
How on earth she found the energy I have no idea.  I was thinking earlier today that we all went to private school and every garment had to have a name tag sewn on to it. She had help but dear God, it must have been tedious. We had a big house, loads of washing and ironing, three meals a day, mostly hot meals though as we got older we had cereal for breakfast which must have been a blessing.
After I married we determined not to have Sunday dinners so Sunday was still the best day of all. We ate in the evening, I made a good dinner every night, no fish fingers and chips for us. we made the best of the day and then ate late with good red wine.
Now Sunday is the hardest day. Living alone makes weekends almost endless, Sunday is empty so you have to fill it with things and sometimes it's too difficult;. Now Monday is my official day off so I like Mondays better than any other day. I don't take the day off. I work early and late and in between I usually go to the spa and toddle up and down he pool and then read. Monday is wonderful, things are back to normal and I stop holding my breath. Every day now is better than Sunday.

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