Picture from The Guardian

Last night I had one of my somewhat rare assignments for the Nottingham Post with a comedy show at the Nottingham Playhouse. I think I prefer comedy gigs to music on a Sunday night as there is a more relaxed atmosphere befitting the day of the week and at the same time taking your mind off the fact that life goes on tomorrow. Part of me still finds it a bit naughty to be going out on a Sunday night which I guess is because of my age and upbringing. People my age are the last generation that will remember when Sunday was a closed shop, literally, with very little to do. It makes little difference to me now that Sunday is a sort of working day for me but I still feel as though I should be having a bath and thinking up creative reasons for having not done my homework while watching Bullseye, making sure my bag is ready and my clothes are clean and having an early night.

Oddly enough, those habits are still with me to an degree because I do like to have everything ready the night before. By laying out everything that I need at night I shave minutes off my getting ready time in the morning which all acts as extra time in bed. Everything is on the kitchen table in my bag ready for me to just grab and go, if I didn't need a shower in the morning I would probably sleep in my suit just to save even more time - I have taken to wearing my smart working gear for Jack's walk in the morning to save me the bother of getting changed when I get home. 

My favourite thing of all though, and something I am looking forward to now that the weather is changing for the worse, is putting tomorrow's clothes on the radiators so they have plenty of time to get warm when the heating comes on, usually about an hour before we wake up, so I can go downstairs and put on warmed up clothing. When I was a postman and in marital prison I tried, as Norman Stanley Fletcher often tried to do in Porridge, was to claim little victories. First of all we had a very attractive single mother in her twenties living next door to us who my wife was paranoid about not only me fancying but also her fancying me. I used to get up at four o'clock in the morning to get ready for work and one very hot summer morning I walked outside to the garden completely naked and got dressed from the washing line. When I told my wife she was horrified and asked what I would have done if our neighbour (I can't remember her name)  had come out and seen me. I replied in all seriousness that I would have held my stomach in.

The Sunday Alternative Podcast #60 is available from here

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October Housekeeping

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