Sunday 13 February 2011

The Perfect Gloom of Particular Sundays

The peculiar gloom of Sundays, I can feel it now, 7:08pm on a Sunday night, sat in the (very tidy) bedsit, a cup of tea on the arm of the sofa, and the sounds of rain outside.
I call it the peculiar gloom of Sundays, but it should really be the gloom of particular Sundays.
Like this one.
A steady drizzle all day. Not cold, not wet. Just wet. Mildly wet. A grey sky. One monotone shade of grey. Earlier as I walked the roads by George Street with Em, I noticed the wet, brown branches of trees seemed spiky and painful, the definition of a weird discomfort, wet and unrestful and Sunday-ish. It isn't just the weather oif course, though, apart from the nauseous heat of deep summer, the last of winter is my least favourite meteorological condition. That great sword of Damocles that is WORK hangs over Sunday too. In less than four hours I shall go to sleep. In about twelve hours that alarm will go off. I often awake before the alarm, but only just. I lie there in that dark hour before the alarm goes off, and this is the worst part of the week. The absolute apotheosis of Sunday gloom is, in fact, on Monday morning. Or could it still be called the last of Sunday night.
By the time I get to work, or WORK as it seems now, it won't be the weekend any more, and WORK will just seem work again. There will be the usual jokes at the coffee machine of how the 'weekend went by far too quickly' and 'we only left an hour ago'. Often, it is me who is the perpetrator of such 'amusing' asides. But really, it is the best I can manage on Monday mornings.
Sundays in summer - well early summer, spring and autumn, are easier. The days are longer and one can forget Sundays by lazing on the beach and reading, or going for long walks through the countryside. Sundays like today just seem to be infectious somehow.
Trawling YouTube for more Castrol GTX adverts, showcasing their creepy music and dream-like visuals, I came across another comment that seemed to further underline these adverts petrol-station gothic. The comment was, simply, that these adverts reminded the commenter of  'rainy Sundays and late nights'.
I can't quite recall how that was meant to fit into the rest of this post. Maybe it wasn't. It may be a rainy Sunday but it is hardly late. 7:24pm now. I really should turn off this laptop before that magical and malevolent internet side-effect of time-consumption kicks in. This is particularly noticeable on Sunday nights, when suddenly, you realise that you have spent four depressing hours on the internet, looking at nothing in particular and now it is time for bed, and that great sword of Damocles and WORK really is about to descend, and-
Anyhow.
Sundays.
Nobody ever really likes them do they?