I used to enjoy my full-moon holidays as much as you, the common or garden citizen, or your average lunatic – take your pick, dears. That is, until I realized the sheer folly or loony madness of adding stressful productivity to the placid schizophrenia that serenely prevails on most long weekends. The double-edged sword that is staying on top of work schedules and domestic routines while still being in sync with the national holiday timetable. Think pets, children, charities, fairs, fetes, fiestas – without a decent siesta in sight – and you get only half the picture, Picasso.
Take the most recent long (latent) weekend that had many islanders of the drinking classes (whose curse is work, said Wilde wittily) partying like there was no tomorrow only a week ago. As for me and my household, we will, shall, can, and must serve the Lord of Necessity. And mothers and mothers-in-law of invention and luxury. (What? Sorry! I drifted off there.)
On Saturday, after a full week’s agenda of “from the crack of dawn to the break of day”, we must now clean, sweep, and do the laundry – while checking out the gift shop for one’s million or so immediate (and urgent) family members whose do’s we must attend or risk being written out of the Book of Life.
And paying due bills and purchasing overdue licensing and insuring, while trimming lawns and mowing hedges and fixing broken things that wait for the weekend to pounce on you, as if they were sin crouching at the door and waiting to master you. This itinerary oftentimes also encompasses – well, dears, you live too, don’t you? Just fill in the blanks with your own gruelling routines, would you. Please. Or if you can’t or don’t know, get a life…
On Sunday, there’s Sabbath worship and discipleship and fellowship; and after anything like five to seven hours of it, your ship and my ship are listing a little bit to port (and towards wine and beer, too, if we’re not careful). Which leaves precious little time for friendship and catching up with the pals, chums and other animals who insist on returning from the Diaspora of their Dispersion to the uttermost parts of the earth (which is to say, Australia). All in the same week… and every man jack and woman jill of them on schedules so tight that not even an Italian tenor could squeeze into them and still be happy.
So much for the traditional weekend! After which the start of the work-a-day, study-a-week routine of your life (what happened while you were planning something else) looks rather appealing – if only for a brief respite from endless rounds of socializing (in practice) or championing the cause of social justice (in theory). The wheel of life begins to wobble a bit when the perverse bureaucrats who compose the country’s calendar are struck by the brain(micro)wave of inserting an usual, normal, ordinary, everyday, not uncommon Monday in-between a weekend and a full-moon holiday. Hmm. Wait. To be or not to be?
To go there or to stay put here? To see or to be seen? To step out or to crawl under the covers and snooze for the next 48 hours?Very soon, one is on the horns of dilemma. Press on with the work at hand, or drop everything and join the party? The latter is, naturally, the route of least resistance – but one that is fatal to venture down without testing one’s will-power or capacity to put the brakes on at a moment’s notice. Down this primrose path of dalliance lies… but no, you know what dragons be there. The former is no less dangerous. We’re against sex because it may lead to some truly atrocious dancing. Don’t say you weren’t warned. I’ve been there, done that, given the by-now tight-fitting T-shirt to charity, and bought it back unbeknownst, believing it to be a bargain to boot.
Which is why I’m all in favour of abolishing long weekends – even if it means having to do away with that nice little bonus of a holiday that comes around every month when the crescent has waxed beyond gibbous to full. Get real, you lunatics, we have too much free time on our hands, anyway! Everyday is not the cricket world cup final, you know (although with ODI, test, 20-20, beach, premier league, and other arenas vying for our constant attention, every other day is an off day of a sort…)!
And all of this is just the civilian life… sans any consideration of trivialities such as business and personal productivity; corporate or commercial connectivity; industrial, er industriousness; and all the other -ities and -isms that make the world go round.
Here’s where I put a stopper in it – before they sic the stark raving philosophical types or the pure and simple religious fanatics on me. Time to get back to undiluted work tomorrow, without the undue pressure of having to take an enforced holiday in the midst of a productive vacation. Confused? Then just TGIM, folks! It’ll make a nice change from the idle pursuit of that empty pleasure we call working while long-weekending! |
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