Wagner’s Ring, Fidel Castro’s speeches, War & Peace.
None of them as long as rainy October Sunday afternoons in the 1970s.
Nothing to do, nothing to do, for ever and ever, amen.
One long grey drizzle from beginning to end, dusk seeming to start just after breakfast and somehow stretching itself into eternity until the sweet release of bedtime.
There would be lunch, of course. Maybe even a roast, with crispy potatoes and all the gravy.
But then what? A black and white film on BBC2, probably some tedious Fred-and-Ginger dancey nonsense (god I hated black and white films when I was 11 – they were eternally pointless, a never-ending cycle of indistinguishable people doing nothing at all in murky shadows), show jumping from Hickstead (oh please), something gardeny (ugh) on ITV.
Songs of effing Praise.
And then you looked at the clock and it was still only 3.30.
It’s different nowadays. Today we don’t just have three channels – we have 587 of the bastards and there’s still nothing on.
The tedium. The toe-curling, teeth-grinding, head-against-wall-bashing tedium of it.
And yet, then as now, there’s health in boredom, in allowing yourself to submit to nothing-muchness from time to time, to spending a whole day doing little more ambitious than curling up in an armchair and a pool of light and reading a couple of chapters of an old favourite (The Code of the Woosters for me, but you’ll have your own – Georgette Heyer, maybe).
And there was, and is, comfort too.
Crumpets, so heavily buttered that they left little yellow imprints on the plate, ripe for mopping up with a greedy index finger.
Hot chocolate, made with too much chocolate and a heaped teaspoon of sugar to offset the bitterness and then maybe another teaspoon because it’s raining.
Mashed bananas and cream and dark brown sugar.
Sugar sandwiches.
Sugar, just sugar, eaten from the bowl in a teaspoon.
Honestly, it’s a wonder I have any teeth left.
Forty years on, the greyness persists, the comforts change.
Now I love Fred and Ginger, and will happily while away half an hour on YouTube watching their best routines. And while the hot chocolate is more likely to be tea or coffee, there will undoubtedly be several cups of it.
And there is something to relish about that eternal quality that makes Sunday afternoons different from all the others; something releasing, in a world of managed time and perpetual action and no-I-can’t-stop-sorry-because-I’m-busybusybusy, about not quite knowing what time it is, but not really caring either.
And ooh look, it’s getting to that time when I can justify pouring myself a drink, and I might put some crisps in a bowl. Because putting them in a bowl, as we all know, transforms them miraculously from junk food to dainty snack.
Close the curtains, cocoon yourself from the savage world. Turn everything off.
Sundays. Best day of the week. We should do them more often.
So much to treasure in the simplest of things. Sunday “lunch” (it was a bit late) for six, elbow to elbow around a makeshift table that shouldn’t seat six, was gobbled up; eldest tried roast parsnips and agreed they’re not the food of the Devil after all. Now counting down the minutes to Doctor Who, passing the time amid glances at the clock by playing Jenga. And reading your blog 😊. We haven’t had pudding yet… it’s waiting for us. Best day of the week indeed.
Well this is utterly nostalgically delightful.
My Sunday also included a glass of red wine and a packet of crisps, yes, daintily decanted into a bowl!