I always feel all of a muddle the days the clock goes back. If it’s quarter to one now but it was quarter to two 24 hours ago does that mean that I should have ate my lunch an hour ago because that is when I would have been hungry yesterday? And if society is allowed to faff about with the communal clock isn’t it time we all gave up the whole twenty four hour thing and starting living according to our internal clocks? The one that says Alison May you won’t be truly hungry until about half past three so eat then and stop worrying that you will miss your lunch…
No I don’t know what I’m talking about either.
It is Sunday afternoon. My little boy has been daddy-napped and there is dust under the
Some days have no shape at all do they? No reason to them and so we are faced with the challenge of lining them with purpose and treading their dirty waters. Some days I feel so terribly obliged to fill the hours between yawning emptiness and a shivery bedtime with all manner of worthy deeds and jobs ticked off life’s long to do list- when all I really want do is waste away an afternoon on an engaging story and a tin pot full of scalding coffee.
And therein lies the rub.
Waste. Waste away an afternoon I say. Because satisfying my authentic need to do nothing other than fill my mind with someone else’s story make’s me feel like a domestic deviant. A lazy good for nothing slob, all piggy toes and dressing gowns, piles of words absorbed and quickly forgotten and a rising stack of clothes I’d rather throw away than iron. And yet, and yet, and yet: if the day is our own, if time can be so spectacularly fiddled with, if obligation exist nowhere else but in our own minds, and if something call’s to us louder than scrubbing the kitchen floors does, where , pray tell, lies the waste? No-one owns our life but us.
So what if instead we think of it as re-fuelling our batteries? What if today we make wearing sloth into something scrumptiously appealing? Taking an afternoon bath and slipping into something snuggly warm from the radiator? What if we shove guilt into the backyard and pretend we are Nigella Lawson and thus couldn’t give a flying fig-roll about the guilt society associates with self-indulgence, embracing yummy gooi-ness and unadulterated, sugar coated pleasure?
Yes please is what I say today. Yes to all manner of waste and vice. Because there is always tomorrow and if there isn’t then we will fly to heaven safe in the knowledge that time makes no sense at all and we only waste it when we force ourselves to endure what today our entire souls are refusing…
That sounds like absolute bliss!
My favorite way to recharge in this fashion is to slink back under the bed covers with something warm to drink, sweet to eat and my laptop sitting on my belly and a happy-ending-guaranteed dvd…. Yes, even if the sun is shining outside!
This is exactly how I'm spending my Sunday afternoon, snuggled up in bed with some lovely dvds and snacks. Bliss!
I needed to read this today. I was having the guilties for going to bed embarrasingly early last night, snuggling under the warm blankets, doing word searches and reading a book.
You do realize we don't set our clocks back until next week? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21490034/
🙂 Just in case!
Sherry
That picture…my does she ever remind me of someone I know all too well. 🙂
I'm all for doing just as you suggest. Today, I said that I was going to fritter away a chunk of time, too. Must get to it.
BTW, I adore your blog.
That picture…my does she ever remind me of someone I know all too well. 🙂
I'm all for doing just as you suggest. Today, I said that I was going to fritter away a chunk of time, too. Must get to it.
BTW, I adore your blog.
I've always believed that Sunday is the one day I get to do just what I want. If I want to read all day( a frequent choice), then I have no guilt about it!
Enjoy a lovely, restful day, just for YOU!
i love reading you words. You have the gift of saying just what needs to be said more elequently than the words I can think of.. I do enjoy yoyr blog, the words & pictures – thank you for allowing all of us to appreciate them as well.
Colleen
I think you are probably grieving for your uncle. It tends to knock one on ones keester and make it hard to focus.
I think you are probably grieving for your uncle. It tends to knock one on ones keester and make it hard to focus.
All this clock setting hoo-ha was instigated by a fitness fruitcake. I saw it on Country File today. So bah humbug to it.
Re sloth/slugging it….it should be an Olympic event by gum! And I like Nigella. She defies the size 0 Nazis.
Ali x
Now Alison, there's nothing wrong with having a lazy day, sometimes we all need to just relax and re-charge our batteries. In fact I find I get more done when life's really busy. Give me a week off and I just can't be bothered! The dust will still be there tomorrow, it's going nowhere so it can wait…
Love your blog, you are brilliant!
Gillx
I've been spending my Sunday afternoons like that for ages. I grew up in a household where we had to have a lie down on Sundays. So it became a lovely habit! Now I cherish it, and rarely miss my Sunday nap and me time. I pile the bed with magazines, sometimes make myself a tea tray and hibernate in there all afternoon.
Frankly, I've started to get a bit miffed if I don't have a day somewhat like this once a week–or part of a day, at the very least!
I took myself off to the cinema on sunday afternoon for two hours of escapism and laziness on my part in the form of 'Stardust'. Nothing wrong in 'me time' on a Sunday.
Enjoy even these days, for they may someday seem quite full and rich, not wasted and ordinary at all. Love you.
That sounds so fabulous…didn't you say that one day should be devoted to relaxing…as if it's the job for the day? I do that every Sunday since I read that! I love it!
xox
Rebekka
That sounds so fabulous…didn't you say that one day should be devoted to relaxing…as if it's the job for the day? I do that every Sunday since I read that! I love it!
xox
Rebekka
In my parents home, we weren't allowed to do much on Sundays. No shopping! That was a huge rule (though I don't agree with it now). It was pretty much just for resting. But it was ok for us kids to ride the horses, create forts in the bales of hay, have a tea party under the weeping willow or, in the colder months, make-over the attic into an "apartment". I never really understood the logic but I'm oh so glad I had those days!! Believe me, in 14 years or so when I don't have children in that attic bedroom that cost a fortune to have finished, I'll be up there playing "apartment" once again. Sundays allude me but, I'm getting better at it. Blessings… Polly (and I was just wondering when you have the time to do all these wonderful things with your blog)
This is what Sundays were invented for you know!!! We too spent them from morn til night living and playing in our own imaginative and creative worlds as kids, stopping only for Sunday dinner, while my Dad had all manner of music wafting through the house, and my Mum did nothing other than prepare the meals, singing as she went. Bliss. I have to confess to not always following the trend, but yesterday was near to my childhood bliss. Thanks to the clocks, my natural body clock woke me up at 7am (which of course would have been 8am!). Hubby played golf in the am. I slung a pair of jeans on with my pj's, and a cardy over and that's how I stayed ALL DAY!!! My daughter and I prepared Sunday dinner, carved halloween pumpkins, played with the kittens. We had kids coming in and out to play (to whom my state of dress was, worryingly, not a shock!) parents popping in for tea, new bedroom furniture to place and fill, Sunday papers to read, chess games by evening. Total ecclectic loveliness! We all felt happy by bedtime – just by bumbling through the day doing only what we fancied and what made us happy. we all NEED one day like that don't we??? And sometimes we need these days more than others – allow yourself the need Alison, without guilt or regret.
After church, Sundays are expressly for laziness at our house. We only do what we feel like doing and rarely make fixed plans ahead of time. We flatly refuse to do anything that feels like work – shopping, cleaning, meetings. . . Because it's in contrast to the rest of our week, it feels deliciously relaxing and necessary. Contrast is everything!
After church, Sundays are expressly for laziness at our house. We only do what we feel like doing and rarely make fixed plans ahead of time. We flatly refuse to do anything that feels like work – shopping, cleaning, meetings. . . Because it's in contrast to the rest of our week, it feels deliciously relaxing and necessary. Contrast is everything!