Tuesday, January 12, 2010

So, Tuesday

So, Tuesday, we meet again. Tuesday and I have met often and no good has ever come of it. We go way back, to school. Term always began on a Tuesday and it bore all the worst lessons such as Double Latin or Craft with Muggsy* and all the worst dinners like the chicken supreme with the precise texture of snot. Tuesday is much crueller than Monday. Monday is still in too much of a daze to really hurt you but Tuesday knows exactly what it’s doing and tells you what it’s going to do before it does it. Were you aware that virtually a seventh of your life consists of Tuesday? Or that 98% of dental appointments are on a Tuesday, or that the Royal Mail is required by law to deliver nothing on Tuesdays except hefty bills and car tax reminders? Nobody ever saves a treat for Tuesday; you get your dullest meal of the week out of the way on it which is why all the takeaways are closed. Saturday bursts into the room with a tray of bacon sarnies, a football and a crate of beers and Friday is a very decent bloke but Tuesday is a flinty-eyed former Inspector of Taxes with a thin moustache and grey skin bent at a plain desk in a windowless office under a single electric bulb frowning at a loud clock which ticks at half-speed. It is well known that time moves twice as slowly on a Tuesday. Yet still we persist with it. Who knows why? But then, who knows why anything? This is how the world ends, fizzling out on a Tuesday afternoon.

In the office car park yesterday’s slush has re-hardened into a rippled slab of ice. Treacherous. I slip-slid my way cautiously across it and with relief pushed through the door onto solid ground. “Good mor-” I began, and instantly stumbled hard into a bookshelf, thwacking my elbow. I looked down. Bloody shoelaces undone.

*Muggsy was a very fat man with a keen hatred of children who nonetheless decided to become a teacher.

15 comments:

malty said...

Mick thought that Tuesday was Ruby as did Marianne although by Wednesday she was singing as tears go by.
Mick also wanted people to paint his hacksaw black, an odd request I often thought.

worm said...

It's true, Tuesday is the most thoroughly Fred West of weekdays

MattF said...

Elections in the US are generally held on Tuesdays. I'm guessing that some 19th century do-gooder decided that it's the day of the week on which the greatest proportion of the population is stone cold sober.

Gareth Williams said...

Does this bad vibe have anything to do with the Norse God Tyr whose day this is? Where's Elberry's ghost when you need him?

martpol said...

Wonderful stuff, Brit.

Robert Smith of The Cure claimed that Tuesday and Wednesday should be lumped together, casting a collectively grey, heart-breaking pall over the week. He's wrong, of course. By Wednesday you can start thinking about Friday, and all begins to seem rosy once more.

Sean said...

Very funny and very true, have you any suggestions on how we could improve Tuesdays ?

Brit said...

I suspect Tuesday is beyond help, Sean. I propose we simply give it up as a bad job and scrap it.

Matt - the irony being that most US election results can only be explained if you assume 90% of voters were pissed.












Bit of political satire for you there.

Anonymous said...

Tiwaz or Tyr is the old sky god who was superceded by Wodanaz (Odin, Woden, Wotan). Tiwaz is associated with inflexible law, what is right in a not very human sense, your pencil-moustachioed accountant indeed. It seems that the Germanic tribes originally worshipped Tiwaz as the chief god, but he was shunted aside by Wodanaz - so Tuesday gave way to Wednesday. If Tiwaz is the god of inflexible law and self-sacrifice (in the legends, he sacrificed his hand to Fenris), Wodanaz is the god of intoxication, frenzy, enlightenment through battle.

Naturally, i'm Wednesday's man.

worm said...

interesting stuff elberry, although personally I've always associated Tiswas with saturday mornings

Anonymous said...

The full horror of Tuesday is the inability to avoid immediate obligations and/or people you are accountable to in some way. A Monday absence can always be feigned through extended weekends or non-specific illness, and while it takes experience and creativity to be occupied and unavailable from Wednesday all the way to the weekend, it can be done with a strategic combination of false emergencies, private appointments, end-of-week crises and early getaways on Fridays. But the S.O.B.s have you pinned to the wall on Tuesday.

Sean said...

Google results speak thus.

"Good Monday", 179,000
"Good Tuesday", 71,700
"Good Wednesday", 65,800
"Good Thursday", 75,500
"Good Friday", Left out for obvious reasons, manually adjusted to around 100k.(the climate people can do it, so can I)
"Good Saturday" 148,000
"Good Sunday", 614,000

So Sunday is best and we take some of that good feeling into Monday, but its still a big drop, then another big proportional drop to Tuesday, then levels off with a small drop to Wednesday, then a slight pick up to Thursday, then the weekend


Seems to me Tuesday maybe taking a bit of the heat away from Monday and getting unfairly blamed for for the tedium, Wednesday really is rock bottom.

I was going to survey with a different search term "I dont like Mondays ect" But like "good Friday" a modern Messiah in the shape of Geldof distorted the results.

OutaSpaceMan said...

In my dissolute past Tuesday was the day that all the liquids, chemicals and vapours I'd ingested during the weekend left my body with the consequences of hedonism..

O.S.M.

malty said...

Tuesday was a good day, back when the world was young. Many people were paid weekly, on a Friday, that's when the weekend really began. Late Sunday evenings were sombre affairs, the working week looming large, Mondays were dog days, five long days to go untill the weekend. Then, joy, happiness, Tuesday had arrived, only Wednesday Thursday and wham, Friday, pay day, life could once again begin in earnest, like mole emerging into the spring sunshine, let the good times role.

Tuesdays forever!

worm said...

Im with outa spaceman on this one, tuesdays were normally the day when your dark and twisted soul stares you back in the face and tramples your ego into paté before setting fire to it.

Rob said...

To be honest, I've always found Monday to be the worst. Here's morrissey's view:

Monday - humiliation
Tuesday - suffocation
Wednesday - condescension
Thursday - is pathetic
By Friday life has killed me
By Friday life has killed me

Morrissey - I Have Forgiven Jesus.