I’ve recently been working shifts, so I’m often at work at night, and over the weekends, with my days off during the week. Last weekend, I had a rare complete weekend off, and I enjoyed a very peaceful and relaxing Sunday, which I really needed. It led me to reflect a little on how much Sundays have changed in my lifetime, and what I remembered from Sundays past. I’m therefore going to publish a little series about Sunday life that I remember.
A particularly nice “aide memoire” in all of this has been a song, one you may not be familiar with, but you’ll almost certainly have heard of the band responsible. The song is “Sunday Morning”, and the band is Madness. It’s a track from their 1982 album “The Rise and Fall”, which is arguably one of their most interesting releases. Madness are best known for their their exuberant and often quite daft songs, but this album sees them in a much more reflective and serious mood. They’ve always dealt with serious themes, of course, but this record feels like a much deeper and more substantial release than their previous ones, and it remains one of my favourites. Anyway, here’s “Sunday Morning”…
Sunday morning silence
Curtains stay closed late
No-one thinks of kitchens mornings
In a filthy state
Dishes, cups and beer stains
Ashtrays on the floor
Sunday morning papers are left
Outside the front door
Sunday school and Sunday roast
Sunday papers, Sunday post
Sunday morning, Sunday rest
Sunday sermon, Sunday best
Glass of fizzy water
Helps to start the day
Sit and listen to Sunday silence
Problems fade away
Sunday cars and drivers
Break the morning air
Uncollected milk outside
Reveals there’s no-one there
Sunday school and Sunday roast
Sunday papers, Sunday post
Sunday morning, Sunday rest
Sunday sermon, Sunday best
Sunday school and Sunday roast
Sunday papers, Sunday post
Sunday morning, Sunday rest
Sunday sermon, Sunday best
Bathrobes hanging waiting
Windows steaming up
Somewhere in the sink downstairs
There lies an unwashed cup
Tea and toast for breakfast
Clear away the plates
Wash up, prepare for cooking
Sunday lunch awaits
Sunday lunch awaits
I think these lyrics are Madness at their observational and poetic best, and along with the gentle relaxed pace of the music, this song is full of fantastic imagery. A 1980s Sunday morning was so quiet outside you could hear a pin drop, and you were almost scared to make a sound in case you disturbed it. The song picks up on the reflective mood the quiet encouraged, while hinting at a hangover and a messy kitchen and living room after some Saturday night excess. Life picks up slowly as the house stirs into activity, and preparations are made for the big family occasion of a traditional Sunday lunch.
In so many ways, this feels like a snapshot of a world that has vanished completely. It’s only forty years old, but so much has changed. While Sunday mornings are still perhaps the sleepiest of the week, no longer are you limited in what you can do. All the shops are open, there’s plenty in the way of leisure activity, the roads are busy, and a lot of places attract big crowds. While in the past you could always go out for the day, and many people did, Sundays are no longer that distinctive day where everything was different – at least not for most of us.
This song very much reflects what Sundays were like for a lot of my childhood, at least until my parents discovered car boot sales and got up at godawful o’clock to trudge around muddy fields in freezing temperatures, seeking out treasures. We usually did have a Sunday dinner, and the day was usually noticeably sleepier than the others. A trip to a garden centre might be on the cards, and my dad would perhaps play a round of golf, or potter around in the garden, after a busy week at work. By late afternoon, he’d probably be asleep on the sofa.
All of this changed a bit in 1990, when I started going to church, which made Sundays much more vibrant and busy, becoming social occasions and a time for thinking about big issues. I have fond memories – from my early churchgoing days at least – of coffee in the hall after the service, occasional invitations to lunch (all of which were of the traditional kind, around a big table), and a feeling that this was the highlight of the week, an important gathering of like-minded people. It began to lose its shine after a while, but although I no longer go to church and am no longer a Christian, I do feel some of the people in church had the right idea about what an ideal Sunday should look like.
In the early 90s, the government began to ease England’s Sunday trading laws, which had previously stopped most shops from opening at all, and had placed heavy restrictions on most smaller shops, depending on what they sold. The result was that pretty much only small corner shops were open. Changes made at that time ultimately resulted in pretty much all shops being able to open for at least part of the day, and soon Sundays ended up being as busy as anywhere else. This upset a lot of Christians at the time – the Sabbath is an important concept to many of them, and a lot of Christians will choose not to shop on Sundays, even though the shops have now been open for years. At the time when the changes to the law were being debated, the Keep Sunday Special campaign was making a lot of noise about the issue, opposing liberalisation of Sunday trading.
Back then, I jumped on the bandwagon for religious reasons. Looking back now, I still mourn the loss of the traditional peaceful Sunday, but for rather different reasons. Although shop workers were meant to be protected from having to work Sundays if they didn’t want to, this was never really properly implemented, and a lot of people ended up stuck in crappy jobs away from their families on a day they previously would have had to themselves. The peace of Sundays was shattered as lines of traffic headed for big shopping malls. It felt like – and still does feel like – a major victory for consumer capitalism over centuries of tradition. The Christian concept of the “day of rest” is one that should still be important, not for religious reasons, but for the reason that everyone deserves a bit of quality downtime. Shops opening seven days a week didn’t miraculously result in people spending more money, and I don’t think I’d lose any tears if we saw more businesses making the brave decision to close on Sundays.
The closest I’ve got to experiencing a traditional Sunday atmosphere again recently was at the height of the COVID lockdowns. I certainly wouldn’t welcome those draconian restrictions back, and I don’t think many people would, but a few days here and there of peace, quiet and calm would probably do us all good. Apart from anything else, there’s plenty of great songs inspired by a quiet Sunday morning of reflection and staring into space, before chowing down on a damn good roast. That all sounds like a great prelude to a nice nap as well. Who wouldn’t want that sort of day back? It sounds perfect to me.