Column: I Have Solved Tuesday

This column first appeared in the Lancashire Evening Post

It is a Tuesday and I am tired.

I am tired because it is a Tuesday. Tuesday is always a tired day. Monday lulls you in with a false sense of vigour. Rested from the weekend, you think, it’s not all bad.

And then – Tuesday. You realise you have to get up and get dressed again – and do all the things you did on Monday but without the cushion of a restful weekend.

Tuesday also comes with added pressures. There are expectations that you don’t get with a Monday. If somebody sends you an important email on Monday, you don’t need to reply there and then. No need to panic, you’re just getting into the swing of the week and your inbox can wait a while. Do you have a bill to pay? Never mind, it’s Monday, you have important emails to read, you’re still finding your feet and the whole week is ahead of you. Do you have a bit of dusting left over from Sunday? Ah, well, it’s Monday. Come on. You have more important things to do and plenty of time for that. Not today.

Monday is fine. Monday is breezy. Monday is forgiving. But, Tuesday – Tuesday expects. Tuesday has no mercy. No more excuses, no more putting things off. You have to turn on your computer and reply to emails. It is a tired and busy and demanding day. It is one of the mankind’s great, unsolved problems. Tuesday.

That is, until now.

The COVID crisis has caused much inconvenience. I have wrinkly hands from relentless washing, the happy birthday song has lost all joy and ‘Spitting’ Steve is no longer a harmless sprayer of spittle when he speaks – he is an international biohazard. Much of our lives are complex and different, too. I haven’t hugged my Mum in months, a trip to Aldi is like playing a terrifying game of viral dodgeball and more and more of us are working from home. Back bedrooms have become businesses, kitchen tables have become retail headquarters and in one case, I’m sure a man was trying to sell me insurance from his boiler cupboard. Wherever you can find a space out of the crowded hell of an office, it can be your work station.

This opens new possibilities, of course. You can pop a load of washing on during a conference call or do the washing up while reading the annual report. You can be clocked off and sat the sofa with a glass of wine before you’d usually have squeezed onto the train. It is an exciting new era for our weekly structures.

Or, so you would imagine. Because one thing has remained steadfast. It is unwavering in its certainty and relentless in it’s exhausting expectation.

Tuesday. Tuesday, it seems, is unaffected by a global pandemic.

It is still tiresome. It is still unforgiving. The obligation to reply to the email, pay the bill and finish off the dusting hangs in the air like a thick fog. No mercy, no escape. But that is about to change, because I have solved Tuesday – and it goes hand-in-hand with the upheaval of our strange new world.

Sure, working from home means you can do the dishes or pop a load of washing on – but, blinded by the novelty of easy, all day access to the kitchen, many have failed to recognise that another important part of the house is at hand.

The bedroom.

The bedroom is an unfamiliar companion on a Tuesday afternoon. It is a place we usually bid farewell to in a morning and return to of an evening. We make the bed as we depart for the office and crawl back into it after enduring the horrors of emails and bills.

Not anymore. This new, unfiltered access has opened up a whole new cultural phenomenon – and one we should embrace with open arms.

An afternoon nap.

Since working from home, I have become an afternoon nap aficionado. Just as the strain of the day begins to take its toll, I turn off my phone, unplug my laptop, pull down the blinds and slip into the warm grip of my bedsheets. The benefits are extraordinary and my energy levels are at an all-time high. And at no other time are those benefits more welcome than on an ordinarily tiresome Tuesday. I tackle the important email with ease, take the bill in my stride and that extra bit of dusting is done with a flourish.

I have unlocked a whole new world of possibilities – and alleviated the human race of one of its greatest burdens.

Go forth, my friend, and nap your way through Tuesday.

August 20, 2020  |  No Comments