The luxury of having Sunday
evenings free is something that I’m going to enjoy getting used to from now on.
As much as I love doing The Sunday Alternative,
can you imagine motivating yourself when you’re full of roast dinner to go to
work on a none-working day right at the time when you should be settling down
for the evening? Not that I’m complaining of course. The dynamic of the day
will shift for me as from the 24th, as I’ll have to be awake enough
to broadcast from one o’clock. I want to aim to be at the studio for twelve in
order to get properly prepared, which probably won’t happen. As soon as the
show is finished at three o’clock I’ll go to my dad’s for lunch, and from there
I can have a proper Sunday.
Yesterday was a lovely day,
both in terms of the weather and the day itself. After the Remembrance Day
service we walked back into town along the canal, the peace only occasionally shattered
by Jack getting wound up over the pigeons and ducks (he doesn’t seem to object
to geese). It made me think about what Sunday means to different people; there
were a few people fishing along the canal, jogging, walking the dog, feeding
the ducks, and enjoying the peace and quiet of the day of rest. The day has
been different things to me throughout my life; from a day of drinking in my
single days, when I was younger I used to work on Sunday as I was that greedy
colleague that volunteered to work for double pay. Mandi and I used to go for
afternoon tea on a Sunday afternoon, something that I stopped feeling
comfortable doing once I was doing the show as I was clock watching. Doing the
show at lunchtime means that I can even start reading the Sunday papers
properly again; I miss the afternoon calm of the Sunday papers while listening
to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.
Maybe I’ll bring back the tradition of cooking egg and chips for Sunday tea.
We took the bus back from town
and I went to take Jack home and met Mandi back at my dad’s. I was going to get
changed before I left the house again but decided against it. I was quite
enjoying wearing a suit to be honest. When I go out I try to look good, but
wearing a proper suit like a grownup with real shoes and not Converse was a
rare thing for me. Dressing for Sunday is one of those long forgotten customs
that really should be brought back into normality; I might even start wearing a
shirt and tie to do the radio when the show returns. In the early days of the
BBC the announcers used to wear full evening dress for radio, despite the fact
that nobody could see them.
While on the park with Jack I
came up with an idea for a possible business idea, (writing it on this blog
proves that I thought of it and will pursue anyone who acts on this idea for my
share of the profits) that will cater for those people who are slaves to the
latest weird trends. People who obsess over health and fitness seem to be keen
to throw money at ridiculous new ideas, and these are the people I am aiming
at. In the late 1990s there was a short lived concept of the oxygen bar;
instead of drinking you would buy canisters of oxygen. I once heard the line “people
would stick rolled up ten pound notes up their bums if you told them it was
fashionable”, and there is an element of truth in that. Jack is seven years old
(in real years, I don’t really understand dog years) but still has a sweet
puppy-like quality. He gets such an unbelievable amount pleasure from playing
fetch that I could easily envy, and it was that enthusiasm that got me thinking.
Fetch Therapy is what I’ll
call it, based on the sheer joy that a dog gets from simply running after a
ball that you’ve just thrown, and bringing it back to do it all again. Stressed
out office workers paying twenty pounds an hour to meet a trainer in a nearby
park (possibly during lunch hour) and run after a ball. I don’t mean they’re
acting like dogs and bringing the ball in their mouths, this isn’t some bizarre
sexual fetish club. It’s just a way of forgetting the stress of the day job and
experience the joy that a dog feels. They’ll all be doing it in a month or two.
===
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