Well, half three on a sunny Sunday afternoon and I’m at a loose end.  All alone in my room in Chelmsford, nothing particular to do.  Not that I haven’t done useful things today, you understand – washed the bedclothes, shaved my head, cut fingernails, grazed on a bit of lunch, participated in a few online debates, that sort of thing.  And there are things I couldbe doing if I felt in the mood – like ironing (hmmm…) or writing (tempting but I’m doing really well – past 65k words and steaming ahead!!) or even planning a great new future!!  After all, work tomorrow and back to the grind.  Weekends don’t last long…

Hey ho, time to think instead.  About how this reminds me of Sunday afternoons when i was a kid, to begin with.  Sundays seemed so dull.  Nothing much on TV, and in those days shops didn’t open on Sundays.  My dad would be mowing the lawn or doint other jobs, my mum would be cooking and I would be mooching about aimlessly, maybe watching some cricket or listening to the radio, playing a few vinyl albums on my old-fashioned mono record player (remember them?)

All my mates would be similarly closeted at home and on the prowl for something to do.  God we were soooooooooooooooooooooooo bored!!!!  Tedium knew no limits….  Even when we went out en famille, it was hours in the car and feeling fed up.  And when we got there, wherever it was, there would be little or nothing to do.

Either being polite for elderly relatives who would reward you with some obviously useless gift you neither wanted nor needed.  You would be so bored you would have to examine the many and varied knick knacks and ornaments scattered across the furniture like a bric-a-brac blizzard sweeping in from the west.

Then before you knew it, it was back to school on Monday morning and the teacher would ask you what you had done, and you would reply, “I dunno sir.”  And he would say in a voice laden with sarcasm, “You must know what you’ve been doing.  The weekend only just ended!”  But it was true – you really could not rember where the time went.Anyway, more later – time for my bubble bath now, I think! 😀