It pains me to recall what normally I felt on a Monday morning back in my working and student days.  I mention this because today is Monday and quite honestly if I hadn’t checked my iPhone I wouldn’t have known. Besides it feels like a Sunday. Perhaps because the air is calm.  I yearned to play some choral music.  It must have been at that point that I checked my iPhone or remembered we had met with friends at the golf club for breakfast yesterday – a Sunday.

There are two reasons my historic Monday experience was traditionally less than favourable. The first is the obvious servitude to get out of bed by seven o’clock (a near punishment in the winter when there was no sunlight) then assume the mantle of duty and obligation which prescribed a crisp white shirt (often with French cuffs and gold links) and a three-piece flannel suit (not exactly a leisurely costume).  And don’t forget the black laced shoes. Rigid doesn’t begin to capture the pulse! The second reason is the predictable recovery from weekend gourmandizing which until six years ago when I abandoned alcoholic beverages entirely meant drying out.

As it is impossible to track the changes which daily affect us, I direct my focus upon the progress of young people in particular.  Oddly I regularly contemplate what it must be for them to face the same challenges as I had once confronted along my path of education and employment. No doubt they eventually become hardened – as must we all – to both the mundane and seraphic realities of life; viz., a mixture of inexpressible beauty and random misfortune.

The adage “Old habits die hard” putatively covers those prep school customs which remain embedded in my daily projects. I would not for example blame industry as the seat of my erstwhile devotion to performance and enterprise. Indeed I relish the prospect of an early morning followed by something at least approaching utility or substance. Typically this morning’s expiation was bicycling along the old railway right-of-way.

Upon my return from the leafy corridor I wasn’t long readying myself for another of those mechanical routines of mine – namely, the celebrated car wash and aimless meander about the countryside.  What an embarrassment to confess such patent commonality! Yet I likewise reason that it is a harmless engagement by any standard. Less irritating than going to work!