An Odd Aversion to Weekends Especially Sundays

 

I’ve never really liked weekends even as long ago as when I was five or six years old, my father was back from the war and we functioned as a proper family once again.  I had infinitely preferred the lazy hazy days of Doodlebugs and V2s despite the obvious hazards.   In those latter days of the1940s conflict it seemed to me that we had all become accustomed to the idea of instant annihilation and in any case as a pre-schooler I had little appreciation of the permanence of obliteration.   The important thing to me was that I had my mother’s entire attention most of the time and although the adults around me complained about shortages, as far as I was concerned nylon stockings were totally uninteresting and I was never hungry because there always seemed to be delicious things to eat like cheese on toast and jacket potatoes.   My growing dislike of weekends began when we had progressed to the post-war stage and were looking forward to free doctor’s visits and National Health orange juice.  Even more excitingly we were told that soon there would be ice cream to buy and toys in the shops.   I knew little about ice cream but I did know what toys were and like all other children of similar age I definitely looked forward to them. 

Like so many children I found my father’s return to civilian life a trial and although he did his very best to bond with me I was not altogether keen on the idea.   I couldn’t understand why it was necessary for him to plonk himself in the very middle of our lives and take up so much of my mother’s time and focus.  These first days were of course before he embarked on his life as a Philanderer and he and my mother seemed over attentive towards each other, hugging and kissing and laughing at each other’s jokes.   I wasn’t impressed and wanted him to go back to being the photograph on the wall that I blew a kiss to every night on my way to bed.    But no matter how much I wanted to dismiss him he stayed with determination and persistence though at least he was at work a great deal of the time.   Sundays were the days when he was most likely to be at home all day, putting up shelves at my mother’s instruction or planting primroses stolen from Lord Darnley’s woods behind the now obsolete Anderson Shelter.   I certainly did not like Sundays and my earliest experience of what I later knew was called Being Depressed was when I realised one was looming up again.

Meanwhile my mother would be happily engaged in preparing the Roast Dinners I was determined not to become acclimatised to.  It wasn’t that I was completely unfamiliar with these basics of British cooking and needed to become accustomed to them.   Aunt Mag whose Harold had according to my mother cleverly evaded going to war, produced them frequently and at times triumphantly but they had never been a fixture at our house where there had for years been a dearth of male appetites.   I became a picky eater, and yearned for the spam and jacket potatoes of what was fast becoming an idyllic era.    Well I was very young and not terribly well versed in the ways of the world, adjusting only slowly to the fact that The War, always there sitting comfortingly in the background of life, was now firmly a thing of the past.  The idea of The War being Over seemed alarming to me.

Once we were established as a York Road Family I was taken to Mass on Sunday mornings by my father which came as a shock, was boring in the extreme and did little to establish good relationships.    As I’ve described more than once that my mother was eclectic in her attitude to religion and therefore insisted on also sending me to a Chapel organised Sunday School on Sunday afternoons which was less boring but nevertheless left me feeling that I was being regularly ousted from the family group and thrust into one religious experience after another.   It did not make Sundays much more bearable.

Meanwhile my poor father worked hard to make me love him and I would be lying if I said that this never happened because he was, overall, a lovable person and good at making decisions that enhanced my life, like insisting I join the library and writing poetry for me, but there was always to be a vast emotional gap between us.  As time went on and he settled into regular shifts at Bevan’s Cement Works my heart would sink not only on Sundays but on Saturdays also when his roster at times allocated precious time off.   These were the times when we piled onto and into the motorbike and sidecar and set out for Cobham Woods to denude them of primroses and have picnics.   By now my brother was born and I was given less attention than ever, both my parents investing a great deal of hope into him.   Sadly it was to be a long time before he managed to fulfil any of the expectations they might have had of him.  In fact neither of us were to be the kind of children a parent could be proud of and that was nothing to do with Saturdays or Sundays.

I now believe that my antipathy towards weekends began to solidify once my parents’ marriage became more troubled and they spent more of those precious leisure hours quarrelling, my mother crying a great deal.   I was totally mystified as to the reasons for this but enraged by her obvious distress, angry at a situation I clearly had no control over I often cried too and told my long suffering father that  I hated him and wished he would go away.   A sudden solution for this unhappy situation came with his unexpected death a few days before Christmas in 1951, from what I was later to learn was called Acute Hepatitis.   He had been dead for several days and I had suspected as much but for some reason was not told, my mother leaving this unpleasant task for a time when she had the support of her mother and sisters around her, exposing my reaction to all.  There was a feeling of  alarm and distress swiftly followed by one of relief.   She told me on a Sunday.

Years later, living in London with my little boy as what was then termed a One Parent Family, I avoided dissolving into a soggy depressive heap at weekends by ensuring I always planned something that he at least would find exciting.   Often the somethings involved violin concerts which he was mesmerised by or Soho lunches at Italian restaurants providing post-lunch film shows for child diners which were equally attractive.   I was always glad when weekends ended no matter how stimulating they had been.

Married and in New Zealand with three children we frequently drove for miles at weekends to beachside motels.   And if not I planned extensive lunches and dinners and as the children grew older insisted they take part in both the planning, cooking and cleaning up. When I embarked upon home schooling I was to barely notice weekends because every moment of my time was occupied.   But if I did from time to time stop to think about it, I knew for certain that my aversion to weekends had not diminished and always Sundays in particular were most disliked.

When our children finally flew the nest and established their own lives, two of them in far flung parts of the globe and the family home was sold, we found ourselves living in what was called a City Fringe Unit.   Once again the dreaded Weekends threatened to re-assert themselves although admittedly Himself seemed oblivious to the problem and happily planned trips into the city to Jason’s Second Hand Bookshop followed by Mezze for lunch with a glass or two of red wine for him and white for me.   There was a limit to how many books we could accommodate, however and so from time to time various title ranges were sold back.  Not a bad way to spend a lazy Saturday and often on Sundays we might drive out to other down-sized couples with time on their hands without their adult children.    Kevin and Shirley famous for their Sunday lunch parties were a popular destination at that time.  

It was a shock when the blood cancer, quiescent for so long suddenly decided to rear up from its hiding place and demonstrate that all those abnormal tests over the years were indeed an inescapable Truth.   How could that be fair?    He had always been strong, well able to take cartons of rubbish downstairs and deposit them in the bins but all of a sudden he couldn’t and once he started the chemotherapy he was unable to even carry bags of groceries in from the car.   I cursed what I had always believed to be the minor arthritis of the wrists and thumbs that prevented me from easily doing so.  Life suddenly became more complicated.   Patrick would come by after violin classes on Saturday and help with the week’s most troublesome tasks.  Sometimes he brought books with him from Unity Book Shop.  Titles he thought Himself would enjoy – and he did enjoy them.   Sunday now stood forth determined and almost radiant as the most dreaded day of the week.

Then came the time when if I had any sense whatsoever, which I appeared to lack completely, I would have known he was dying.   There was a steady stream of visitors to that depressing room at St Andrew’s.   Golfing friend Jack came most days and sat with him, not saying much but a comforting presence nevertheless.    The Barfoots came and on that last Saturday I asked Chris to say some prayers and he did.    I felt liberated by them and drove home to have a shower and change and then stayed home because the rain was so heavy and I dislike driving in the rain.   That telephone call just after five am on Sunday morning and filled every corner of the house.  I knew what it was about, what the message was going to be so I answered in a strangely unhurried way.     I rang Patrick and together we drove along the waterfront, past Rangitoto, past the suburbs where we had lived during all those growing up years of the children, back to St Andrew’s.    We both felt guilty because he had died completely alone.   And although I have never spoken of it, I knew he would die on a Sunday.  It remains still the day of each week I most dread.