seat by the Eastern wall

"Well! I think that's been absolutely smashing!"
said Bridget Jones's mother (mum) in a passage from The Edge Of Reason, sequel to the Diary.

"Absolutely smashing" would be a fun phrase to integrate into our American way to speaking but we don't...some things are just -- British.

"petrol" for gas
"mobile" for cell phone
"lift" for elevator
etc. etc.
It's the same language, and yet different...

Smashing.
smashing
"Absolutely smashing!"
"Absolute smashing...!"

I don't think it's a sell.
I like it when they say it, though.

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I think, sometimes, about the difference between a day when you go to work and a day when you don't.
The thing is imperative.
When you have to be at work -- get to work -- it's an imperative. A thing you have to do, by a certain time. It's a push. An imperative.

When you like your job and the people you work with, and it gets to be Friday and you are HAPPY that it's about to be the Weekend, and you ask yourself, "Why am I happy to not come back here for two days? I LIKE to work here. I don't not-like to come to work, so why is the weekend then such a Joy?..."

Because humans need some days -- hours, time, when there is no imperative.
No place you have to be.
No thing you have to do.

We need a break from Doing Things, so that we can come back and Do Things again.

There's a wonderful book titled Waiting For The Weekend, which tells some history of how weekends and holidays got started in the world. You study back about the ancient times, and it was -- every 4th to 8th day, being set aside for market or rest, or both.

Religions and governments would give edicts, dictates, policy, (scrolls and the like) to say, "On this day, you will do no work." But really, it was mostly the religious and government guys observing what people naturally did anyway, and then making it their own policy -- sort of -- putting oneself More In Charge by -- "A-hem!" mandating --
stuff people were --
Already Doing.

Legislating common sense, one might say.
Or -- taking credit for a great idea by putting in writing what was happening anyway.

And the things we look forward to Doing in our free time!
Sometimes the planning and dreaming can be more fun (and possible) than the actual doing, even when the weekend does arrive. Recently I noticed the same idea in two different films -- in both Fiddler On The Roof, and My Fair Lady, a character imagines if they had financial security and (thus) leisure, one of the things they would do is -- spend more time on Religion.

I thought that was interesting.
In My Fair Lady, Eliza Doolittle sings,
"One day I'll be famous, I'll be proper and prim
Go to St. James so often I will call it St. Jim..."

and in Fiddler-Roof, Tevye sings,
"If I were rich I'd have the time that I lack
To sit in the synagogue and pray.
And maybe have a seat by the Eastern wall.
And I'd discuss the holy books with the learned men,
several hours every day.
And that would be the sweetest thing of all."

-----------------------
There's leisure, and --
the Imagining of Leisure.

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