SundayBloodySunday

Do you remember when Sunday was a quiet day, when nothing happened, shops and entertainment were firmly closed, and there was a pause to breathe and think between last week and next?

It isn't like that in the Anglo American world any more, and it is all the less for the change. I happen to be Jewish so my rest day, my Sabbath, is a Saturday, but I grew up in the UK and therefore, not being overly religious myself, I was happy with sleepy Sundays.

Now you go to the shops on Sunday and they are packed with people who look fraught and tense, not relaxed or with their families, not taking the time to smell the air. Their lives are all the more limited because of this lifestyle change.

As I suggest above the reason for the old style Sunday in the UK and the States is religious in origin, and traditional thereafter. There was a group in the UK called The Lord's Day Observance Society who made sure the rules were kept. As a teenager I remember being hugely frustrated that there was absolutely nothing to do on a Sunday because of the efficiency of the Society's resistance.

I was one of those angry teens who battered at their reactionary gates to remove their silly rules. Our argument went roughly like this, "It does no harm if you just allow a local grocery shop or cinema or supermarket to be open for a couple of hours."

History tells us that once you remove the finger from the dyke the waters will flood in and sweep away everything in its path. Taking our metaphors a little further, once you open Pandora's Box you cannot put away the little devils you have unleashed.

We were wrong, I was wrong, our argument was wrong. I know we can't do anything about this now, and I'm sorry that we will be leaving our children such an inheritance. But next time someone argues for a small change to your life think about it very carefully before you agree.