Sunny Sundays, like today, were particularly taunting. One of the reasons, to this day, I mostly find bright sunlight depressing.
Once I hit 15 and pubs came into the equation, Sundays became even more crap. A day which is totally unencumbered by other obligations like school or work, and the bastards have the pubs closed for most of the day.
It could have been worse. At least I was in England. Licensing laws were even more annoying in Scotland and Wales on Sundays.
I'd already escaped to foreign-land before they loosened all this shit up in Britain. I remain equivocal about Sunday. Hard to love a day I hated so much through all my childhood.
The gin and tonics Dolores prepares at Sunday noon are helping. And not having work on Monday.
I've almost come to terms with Sunday. Once the shittiest day of the week. Almost.
Sunday Brunch helps - when Mark Dredge doesn't zone out. And there are Yorkshire puddings. That was always the best part of Sunday. The Yorkshire puddings. Now I know how to make them myself.
The worst part of Sunday has disappeared forever: going to work the next day. That always used to depress the shit out of me on Sunday evening.
Happy, happy, fun times from now on.
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4 comments:
The Sunday licensing hours in Wales were even more restrictive than those in England.
Some areas were "dry" all day but others had pubs that were open at varying times (depending on what the local licensing authority thought was appropriate for the Lord's Day). So, if you lived in the Welsh Marches and had access to a car, it was possible to drink at pretty much any time during the day.
Not that I ever made my Dad take my friends and I to weird Welsh pubs on a Sunday.
Was it common to keep kids indoors on Sundays in the UK? I think that was not true in general in the US by the 20th Century, except maybe in places like Utah.
We still have a lot of places with pretty significant rules against Sunday alcohol sales, although I think a lot of that has as much to do with anti-competitive squabbles between different types of businesses selling alcohol as it does with any moral concerns.
Anonymous,
I don't know how common it was, but it certainly applied to us. My parents were of the pre-war generation - born in 1911 and 1916 - so might have been atypical.
WRT to the hours in Wales as recounted by Michael N above.There used to be a fleet of cruise ships, the White Funnel Fleet that would take you from Cardiff to Weston Super Mare or Bristol and back on a Sunday. As soon as they crossed the marine "international" borderline, the bars on board would open and many people would be pissed before they even got off the boats and flooded the dockside pubs.
They were still running up to the end of the 1970s but as pleasure craft, and I took a trip to Lundy Island and had a few pints of Courage in the pub there.
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