#SHEER LUNACY FULL#

Press on with the work at hand, or drop everything and join the party? The latter is, naturally, the route of least resistance – but one that is fatal to venture down without testing one’s will-power or capacity to put the brakes on at a moment’s notice. To go there or to stay put here? To see or to be seen? To step out or to crawl under the covers and snooze for the next 48 hours?Very soon, one is on the horns of dilemma. The wheel of life begins to wobble a bit when the perverse bureaucrats who compose the country’s calendar are struck by the brain(micro)wave of inserting an usual, normal, ordinary, everyday, not uncommon Monday in-between a weekend and a full-moon holiday. So much for the traditional weekend! After which the start of the work-a-day, study-a-week routine of your life (what happened while you were planning something else) looks rather appealing – if only for a brief respite from endless rounds of socializing (in practice) or championing the cause of social justice (in theory). All in the same week… and every man jack and woman jill of them on schedules so tight that not even an Italian tenor could squeeze into them and still be happy. Which leaves precious little time for friendship and catching up with the pals, chums and other animals who insist on returning from the Diaspora of their Dispersion to the uttermost parts of the earth (which is to say, Australia). On Sunday, there’s Sabbath worship and discipleship and fellowship and after anything like five to seven hours of it, your ship and my ship are listing a little bit to port (and towards wine and beer, too, if we’re not careful).

Or if you can’t or don’t know, get a life… This itinerary oftentimes also encompasses – well, dears, you live too, don’t you? Just fill in the blanks with your own gruelling routines, would you.

#SHEER LUNACY FULL#

On Saturday, after a full week’s agenda of “from the crack of dawn to the break of day”, we must now clean, sweep, and do the laundry – while checking out the gift shop for one’s million or so immediate (and urgent) family members whose do’s we must attend or risk being written out of the Book of Life.Īnd paying due bills and purchasing overdue licensing and insuring, while trimming lawns and mowing hedges and fixing broken things that wait for the weekend to pounce on you, as if they were sin crouching at the door and waiting to master you. And mothers and mothers-in-law of invention and luxury. As for me and my household, we will, shall, can, and must serve the Lord of Necessity. Take the most recent long (latent) weekend that had many islanders of the drinking classes (whose curse is work, said Wilde wittily) partying like there was no tomorrow only a week ago. Think pets, children, charities, fairs, fetes, fiestas – without a decent siesta in sight – and you get only half the picture, Picasso. The double-edged sword that is staying on top of work schedules and domestic routines while still being in sync with the national holiday timetable. That is, until I realized the sheer folly or loony madness of adding stressful productivity to the placid schizophrenia that serenely prevails on most long weekends. I used to enjoy my full-moon holidays as much as you, the common or garden citizen, or your average lunatic – take your pick, dears.

Sheer lunacy