I hate Sundays. At times enough to drive me to do something extreme, like taking up golf or Catholicism. Sunday is like Saturday's irritating younger brother. There's no reason Sunday shouldn't be as much fun as Saturday, but it's a pale imitation.
Also, you already heard from my better half what she would be doing, and that would almost inevitably involved me in a bout of enforced relaxation as terrifying as the Bataan Death March. (Only kidding sweetheart!) As for the other Londonistas, I can only imagine what theirs would involve - having met them, I'd guess ketamine binges, morris dancing, happy-slapping and dogging will feature prominently.
So for me the perfect Sunday is not one of restful inactivity, meat-related hedonism or self-improving asceticism. Although it might not be the most enjoyable Sunday for me, my perfect Sunday is not the Day of Rest - it's the Day of The Rest. During the week I do a lot of work. On Sunday I do The Rest.
Working? On a Sunday? Is the man mad? Not in the least. The fact is, working in London is often no fun. This is mostly because almost everyone else in London is working at the same time. The Tubes are rammed. You queue for sandwiches. You spend half your life waiting for a crowded lift to come. You queue for cashpoints and to pay cheques into the bank and to get to a counter at the Post Office.
Not on a Sunday. On a Sunday, the office is a cathedral of calm. The Tubes are uncrowded. Charming cafes value your custom. You can arrive at work at 11am, take two hours for lunch, and knock off at 4pm. You can actually get things done without having to endlessly answer the phone or address the piddling quotidian concerns of your colleagues the whole time.
But that's not the best part of going into the office on a Sunday. The best part is when you ring your boss at home at about 12 noon and say: "Hello, boss? Sorry to call you at home on a Sunday. I'm in the office looking over the project, and ..."
Bingo. Enough brownie points to ensure that you can spend the rest of the week playing Solitaire on your computer, and if challenged you can say: "Well, I did come in on Sunday ..."
All the same, it takes a special kind of slacker to invest that much weekend work in weekday idleness. There's a much more agreeable way of working through your Sunday without trudging into the office. Rise from bed at the gentlemanly (or ladylike) hour of noon. Enjoy coffee, something to eat, and stilted conversation with better half, "reading" the paper until the black squiggles on the page begin to form words. As we are all now self-facilitating media nodes, grab your laptop and head to your nearest quiet cafe or pub. Find quiet corner. Fire up laptop. Do some work while sipping coffee/beer. Then, you can do something else, like work on your novel, or knock out a post for a London-based group blog you've been neglecting lately.
The important thing is: make sure you have something you can take into the office on Monday to utter those magic words: "Well, I was doing some work at the weekend, and ..."
Cheers.
The above image was taken from basewireless.net. There are many things to love about it. There's the fact that there is clearly no espresso in the cup. And also the fact that the thrusting young executive is so absorbed by the lingerie sale ad he's staring at that he hasn't noticed that the couple sitting behind him are in the midst of a messy break-up. Thanks, basewireless.net, for making my Sunday a bit brighter.
