Subject: Taking a break to smell the roses.
In the old days Sunday was sacrosanct few people worked from 1pm on Saturday afternoon, the shops closed and on Sunday people put on their Sunday best many going to church many to visit friends for Sunday lunch, the men to the pub which was only open from 12 midday to 3pm.
Weekends were celebrated, looked forward to as a genuine break from work and if you had to work the employer was required to pay you double time to compensate for you having lost your weekend break. But somehow this was all changed, the weekend became like any other day, you worked but without the premium pay and Saturdays and Sundays became like weekdays, as the 1950s song goes, "a little day older and deeper in debt, St Peter can't call me cause I can't go, I sold my soul to to the companies store" . The lyrics 16 tons from the song by Tennessee Ernie Ford.
Somehow we had become cajoled into working when the 'company store' wanted us to work and we became chattels to business and industry.
Anyway retirement has brought an end to all that pressure, each day is much the same except that Sunday seems different. It's as if its bred into the psych, that the mind has an expectation of something different on Sunday, something to look foreword to, something out of the ordinary on what used to be known as 'a day of rest'.
The shops and cinemas are open, sport is played, and of course the churches are open.
In essence little is different but I feel it in my bones that it is. Breakfast has a special feel to it as does the walk or the drive later. Sunday Lunch is still celebrated as being a special family meal with a Sunday Menu to differentiate the day from other days in the week. The shops are open for fewer hours, presumably to allow staff to enjoy a little more time at home with their families and friends. Perhaps also to divert us away from being consumers for a few hours, to take a break and smell the roses.
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