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.