Yesterday, once again, I had that familiar thought: “Thank God it’s Friday!” The end of the standard working week for many of us, and a chance for a couple of days without the stresses and strains of battling along playing our tiny part in the great economic cycle of life. Once upon a time, one retailer of chocolate bars tried to leap on to the bandwagon of Fridayness by attaching their slogan to it – Thank Crunchie it’s Friday! – but I think in recent years, Friday has started to lose that significance. For those in the service, retail, financial and catering sectors, as well as many others in so many other spheres, Friday is merely a marker on their way through more shifts and flexible working patterns and the dreaded “home working”, and so for significantly increasing numbers, Friday has lost its special place as the full stop on the sentence of their week in the paragraph of their year. For the retired and the unemployed, Friday can slip into being without being even noticed, so maybe it’s now only schoolchildren who can honestly find true joy in that “Friday feeling”. I’ve even known a few parents who have gone against the grain and rather taken to liking Mondays in recent years because it means they can get back to work and “away from the kids” so maybe sales of Crunchie bars have fallen back and could be used as an indicator of social trends, in much the same way that the “Mars Bar” unit of economic comparison once was. I was once told that, for about 50 years, the number of Mars Bars you could get for the price of a new car for example remained surprisingly solid.
My own big Friday night out was to go out and have a trim. This meant a frantic hour driving about in the blatting rain trying to juggle with typically delayed train connections to collect my beloved, with whom I only got to spend the five minutes of her journey homewards, before negotiating another chunk of Friday evening traffic into town trying to get to the salon in time for my appointment, and I barely made it. I tried stopping on the way to get some much needed bread but the queues in the supermarkets were too long. I guess it was just a brief insight into the frantic Friday evening all those parents have getting their little tykes to their ballet classes or judo or football practice or the latest party. Sociable bunch these youngsters, aren’t they? I’m sure my own youthful Fridays were infinitely duller and, at best, involved bicycles and chat and playing in the street. I am, however, now getting a regular haircut after having spent several years resembling a yeti, as my own lengthy tresses never managed the silky smooth elegance of all those photogenic vampires, but just jumbled up into a tangled mess. Finally, I managed to find one that opened in the evenings and was prepared to make long-term regular bookings in much the same way as my dentist does, which was probably the only way I was ever going to get organized enough to remember to actually bother to get it done.
The talk in the hairdressers was all of football which I later realised was due to there being some sort of grudge game this weekend (or something like that anyway). Sadly I had to fess up (as I’m sure the kids don’t even begin to think of saying any more) to the blokes there that I had a (not very) tragic lack of knowledge about the subject, although I don’t think that my less than insightful observations of my own lack of understanding were taken too seriously. Despite having grown up on the outskirts of Manchesterford, the allegedly beautiful game had no place in our household (perhaps it was because my Dad was Welsh?) and so I am able to view it all with a remarkable sense of detachment. I do find all the tribalism rather bewildering and I never understood the ability to do a mental U-turn that the more venomous fans have when a player transfers from one team to another. Why is it that someone who is such an object of hate and derision can suddenly become the greatest player who ever lived just because he now puts on a different shirt to play his games? I don’t get all the hatred, either. Surely, if you enjoy the game of football, it shouldn’t matter who wins if the 22 blokes on the field have played well, but some of the spite and loathing that I’ve heard over the years just doesn’t seem rational to me. I guess that’s because I never got the football bug bad enough to understand it. I’ve known people who’ve had it so bad that they’ve sat down and publicly wept over a result or just sat on a terrace for hours with their heads in their hands unable to cope with the distress. Equally, I’ve known people who have been open minded enough to be willing to say “well played” at any result but who will still make exceptions for certain, deeply loathed teams. When it comes to national allegiances, it seems to get even worse. I’ve heard of supporters of certain nations who’ll stick up for anyone who’s playing against the team of a particular other country, but that happens on a local level too. Surely if the local side gets through to the cup final or whatever, you should feel at least some slight need to back them to win…? But no. If it’s the old local rivals even the hated opponents are more worthy of your support than them, no matter how happy the result might make some of your own friends and neighbours. I suppose it all just help makes up the “blokey banter” that some chaps seem to feel more comfortable with than discussing their real problems with each other, and I will admit that the game that apparently occurred whilst I was on holiday last year did seem to have the effect of being extraordinarily inclusive for tourists and locals alike for a day or two.
Friday also brought about a world altering regime change when, rather out of the blue (although the writing was obviously on the wall) President Mubarak stood down in Egypt which cued much jubilation in the streets of Cairo, and also from Polly Toynbee on “Any Questions?” Whilst this is obviously something to celebrate for a lot of people, I found myself feeling extraordinarily naïve when the news reporters kept banging on about the “brutal police state”, because I was generally oblivious to that whole aspect of life there last year as I sat safe and secure in my tourist’s bubble. Amongst all the jubilation there must be a certain amount of fear. This has, after all, been described as a “youthful revolution” and I do wonder how the older citizens might be feeling today. Will they have quite such faith in the future, or are they fearful of what comes next? Time will tell, of course, but change, whilst necessary, is sometimes a bit scary, and I think a lot of Egyptians will wake up this morning and wonder “what now?” as many of the fundamentals of their everyday lives have gone. I got to wondering how it’s going to feel in the UK when the sad day comes when our monarchy moves on to the next generation. I think we’re all going to feel very strange, because nobody under sixty will remember a time when Queen Elizabeth wasn’t our head of state, and, whilst it’s unlikely to be a massively political change, it will still feel very odd when it happens. All those little things that we deal with every day, like money and stamps for example, will all have to be updated. It felt odd enough when Mr Blair took over from Mr Major, and equally odd when the Clemeron took hold of the reins of power last year, but when that day finally comes, it’s going to mean a massive culture shock for all of us.
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