Sunday Blues
Having had a rather lovely laid-back year which had the luxury of including six weeks theatre work, I hadn't really planned to turn the Autumn into a globetrotting extravaganza. Between 31 August when I flew out to Bucharest and Dec 3rd when I will return from holiday in Cape Verde, I've managed to rack up 27.5 thousand miles in the air.
That means lots of airports, lots of lounges, lots of failed expectations, lots of hours of Netflix, and mercifully, lots of extra legroom.
Today I'm breaking into my Sunday to get the Eurostar to Paris at 5:30 PM for a job tomorrow. I find it desperately hard to break out of a warm fog of domesticity on a Sunday afternoon and head to a station or an airport. Surely these days it should be easy. Sunday has lost that special quality it used to have and now, on my journey later today, there will be ample retail opportunities, and good transport connections. Not of course that anyone has told Network Rail that. Given that we are all encouraged to get out and about as much as possible on a Sunday these days, the skeletal train service is a little bit of an embarrassment.
I can remember in my drama school days and in the first couple of years of my career, when getting a train on a Sunday wasn't a possibility at all. If you didn't manage to get a lift back to London from whichever repertory theatre you were appearing in on a Saturday night, then you were marooned in some provincial town for the whole of the weekend. Good for Sunday lunches with the people you were working with, but not so brilliant for maintaining a domestic life back in London.
Sundays, when unemployed, were even worse. It was a day when you knew the phone wouldn't ring. when it was exceptionally hard to generate any thoughts of creativity, and if your week had consisted of six days of nothing, then Sunday was the most painful day of them all.
Now it's a very valid chance to recharge the batteries. I still try and do a little bit of work on a Sunday morning, hence sitting here writing this. Sundays as a young unemployed actor meant doing my accounts in a ledger, putting receipts into an envelope and enjoying a Sunday lunch consisting of a can of Heinz tomato soup and three slices of Battenberg cake. Mercifully the tomato soup and the Battenberg cake are long gone, but an essential part of my Sunday is the brunch cooked by my partner. Wherever I am in the world, it's still more painful to be away on a Sunday.
So even if your week has been unfulfilling and empty, try and treat yourself to something special on a Sunday. Brunch, a good movie, whether at the cinema, or downloaded, a long hot soak in the bath, or a nice bottle of wine. Or indeed all of the above, but preferably not at the same time. It's just good to have some special time in your life, and Sunday is as good a day as any to make it happen.
That means lots of airports, lots of lounges, lots of failed expectations, lots of hours of Netflix, and mercifully, lots of extra legroom.
Today I'm breaking into my Sunday to get the Eurostar to Paris at 5:30 PM for a job tomorrow. I find it desperately hard to break out of a warm fog of domesticity on a Sunday afternoon and head to a station or an airport. Surely these days it should be easy. Sunday has lost that special quality it used to have and now, on my journey later today, there will be ample retail opportunities, and good transport connections. Not of course that anyone has told Network Rail that. Given that we are all encouraged to get out and about as much as possible on a Sunday these days, the skeletal train service is a little bit of an embarrassment.
I can remember in my drama school days and in the first couple of years of my career, when getting a train on a Sunday wasn't a possibility at all. If you didn't manage to get a lift back to London from whichever repertory theatre you were appearing in on a Saturday night, then you were marooned in some provincial town for the whole of the weekend. Good for Sunday lunches with the people you were working with, but not so brilliant for maintaining a domestic life back in London.
Sundays, when unemployed, were even worse. It was a day when you knew the phone wouldn't ring. when it was exceptionally hard to generate any thoughts of creativity, and if your week had consisted of six days of nothing, then Sunday was the most painful day of them all.
Now it's a very valid chance to recharge the batteries. I still try and do a little bit of work on a Sunday morning, hence sitting here writing this. Sundays as a young unemployed actor meant doing my accounts in a ledger, putting receipts into an envelope and enjoying a Sunday lunch consisting of a can of Heinz tomato soup and three slices of Battenberg cake. Mercifully the tomato soup and the Battenberg cake are long gone, but an essential part of my Sunday is the brunch cooked by my partner. Wherever I am in the world, it's still more painful to be away on a Sunday.
So even if your week has been unfulfilling and empty, try and treat yourself to something special on a Sunday. Brunch, a good movie, whether at the cinema, or downloaded, a long hot soak in the bath, or a nice bottle of wine. Or indeed all of the above, but preferably not at the same time. It's just good to have some special time in your life, and Sunday is as good a day as any to make it happen.
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