I never used to appreciate Sundays. Rather than considering them to be the second half of the weekend, I could think of them only as the precursor to Monday morning. The origins of my Sunday phobia stem from childhood. Sundays in the 80s were awful – instead of the Saturday morning fizz of children’s television there was religious programming or something about farming and then Police 5 with Shaw Taylor. If you were lucky there’d be an episode of The Smurfs after that. Later on there was Bullseye, Antique’s Roadshow or Last Of The Fucking Summer Wine to look forward to. Meanwhile the miners were on strike, nobody had any money, it was probably raining outside and the last thing you’d get to watch before being sent to bed would be That’s Life with Esther Rantzen. Grim times.
Then for many years in my drinking and pub-frequenting days, Sunday became “Hangover Day”. Lie in, cooked breakfast, coffee and a day on the sofa with the newspapers, roast dinner then lie in a vegetative state until going to bed, dreading work the next day.
These days Sundays are very different. Today started at 7am morning with my son (9 weeks old) announcing the fact that he was awake and wanted attention with his customary morning greeting. My new Sunday routine is typically to take him downstairs so Mrs Sane can catch up on some much needed sleep and Baby Sane and I get to spend some time together. I make a large cup of coffee (for me, not him), then we watch the Andrew Marr Show. It’s a great way to start the day. Later on comes breakfast, radio on in the background, the papers (speaking of which, I got the relaunched Observer today… it’s not that much different to the pre-launch Observer if you ask me – still dull as hell, even with the all the excitement about Gordon Brown the bruiser). The three of us spent the whole day at home and it was great. This is what Sundays should be about.
Sundays – no longer part of the axis of evil, but the second best day of the week.
Let’s hear it for Sunday – words I never thought I would say.
Centrist. Atlanticist. Dry liberal. Anti-totalitarian. Post-ideological pragmatist. Child of The Enlightenment. Toucan.
Citizen Sane 
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