A Month of Sundays

A Month of Sundays

I'm often asked the meaning of English phrases or sayings, I sometimes get them wrong. I was slightly wrong about the title of this column.

I'd always thought that 'never in a month of Sundays' meant 'never ever' there being no such thing as a month of Sundays. However it apparently means a very long and probably dreary time and, to be honest, that's pretty much how Sundays felt when I was a child.

Not much happened Sundays, nothing was open and few events were organised.

In Britain we had Sunday newspapers, they were at least four times thicker than the daily editions and had endless extra supplements. My parents had two of them. Now I was fairly good at entertaining myself but hanging around while my parents read both newspapers was not a lot of fun. Then Sunday lunch had to be prepared which took considerable time, effort and sometimes argument even though it was the same every week. After lunch we might go for 'a drive'. This usually involved going by car into the nearby countryside and sitting somewhere. Just sitting is not something small boys are good at.

At some point my mother might point out that there was another little boy about my age that I could play with. Now, that was never going to happen, neither of us had a ball, we may well not like each other and even if we did find something vaguely enjoyable to do it would almost certainly get both of us into trouble!

Sometimes instead of a drive we would go for 'a walk', another thing that little boys are not very good at. Running, jumping, climbing up trees, okay, but just walking? Ah well, it kept the parents happy and it often involved ice cream. It could be worse: on the rare occasions we went visiting I was made to put on my 'Sunday Best'. This was close to being a prison sentence. Once dressed in these, neatly pressed, stiff and disliked clothes, reserved for special occasions, nothing, and I mean nothing, was allowed for fear damaging or dirtying them.

But at least we didn't have to go to church.

I can't really remember what my Sundays were like as a young teenager which is probably a good indication of just how exciting they were. Mornings were much the same, everything centred around the Sunday Lunch*. I think, sometime mid afternoon my friends and I would escape from our families and do nothing very much together for the rest of the day.

I left home, and all the Sunday rituals, when I was 18, but that didn't mean that Sundays were a lot more exciting, there was still not much to do besides recovering from Saturday nights. Even as a student it was hard to find any action, few fellow students showed their faces before the cathedral clock struck midday and the high point of many a Sunday was when Harry came around in the afternoon to sleep through Match of the Day, a football programme, on TV.

When visiting friends and family in the UK it is amazing to find that Sunday habits have not changed much. Getting up late. A lot of fuss about the Sunday lunch , maybe a short walk to the pub for a drink or two, back for food and then sit around watching football on TV. Some other activity may be suggested and if the walk to the pub had not overrun, the Sunday meal had not been delayed by some cooking disaster, the featured football match held no special interest, the kids could be bribed with the promise of ice cream and everybody could get their hats, boots, coats or whatever together before the sun went down, then ….

maybe then.....

Here in The Netherlands it is only comparatively recently that shops other than supermarkets have been allowed to open on Sundays and it's not so long ago that supermarkets were closed too. I've mostly filled my Sundays with sport, doing it in the mornings, watching it in the afternoons. For many though it was, and still is, a day when nothing much happens and then you visit grandma!

Who would ever want to live through a month of Sundays?

Who would ever have imagined that we would actually do it ...three times over?

Three months of Sundays. In many countries the shops have been closed all day and every day. Children and both parents have been at home. There has been little or no contact with friends or family. No outside entertainments. Not even sport on TV or a trip to granny to break the monotony. Here in The Netherlands, with a relatively relaxed lockdown, the days have been long and predictable not quite boring but far from exciting!

Now for better or worse, it looks like restrictions will be easing a little. Not back to normal but maybe we can at least move on to a month of Saturday afternoons!

* See: https://onlyalso.blogspot.com/2016/06/roast-beef-and-three-pinned-plugs.html