Saturday morning

As a youth I have few recollections of Saturday morning.  When I was very young – before adolescence – I recall bicycling in the family neighbourhood or often venturing by foot with the neighbour’s Yellow Labrador Sheen into the nearby countryside to abandoned barns or distant streams. In my teenage years at boarding school we all stayed busy on most Saturday afternoons with football games or cricket matches, either home games on the lower field or away at other schools (predominantly the Little Big Four namely Upper Canada College, Trinity College School, Bishop Ridley College and of course St. Andrew’s College).

When we hadn’t a Saturday afternoon game we diverted ourselves on the tennis courts or by lying in the sun on the Upper field (what we called the Back Forty). The tennis matches were frequently arranged for early in the morning before we were beaconed by the bell to go to the Great Hall for breakfast. In the dormitory one awakened deftly without disturbing the others. I only ever had one roommate but others had three or more, mostly reflecting Lower or Upper school. It was only in Upper Six year when I had been appointed a Prefect that I had a room to myself.

In later life the habits continued. Saturday morning was always a special time, an occasion for diversion from necessity to recreation or pleasure.  Once in undergraduate at Glendon Hall I recall congregating on Jarvis Street in downtown Toronto at a pub. By contrast on another Saturday my former roommate Keith Forsyth and I took my young “adopted”companion or “little brother” (from a difficult part of Toronto) to an afternoon outing of games organized by a charity.

At law school my great friend (and subsequent though ephemeral fiancé) Heather Gunn and I would drive to Lawrencetown to the cliffs overlooking the ocean outside Halifax Harbour. She prepared crabmeat sandwiches and muffins which we ate in the car while staring at the sea. There was also hot black coffee poured from a thermos.

During my working career Saturday morning was normally a moment of application to whatever had been deferred during the week. Sometimes Saturday morning was an unglamorous recovery from the night before, a Bacchian assortment of pleasures and unrestrained revelry.

Now that I’ve retired and all of that is behind me I seldom reckon any day is other than a Saturday. I am back to cycling about the neighbourhood.  This afternoon we’re attending a wedding.  This evening we propose to visit a Vietnamese Pho restaurant.