SMUNDAY SMUNDAY

I have a suggestion that will benefit the world as we know it. We need to add an eighth day to our week, hereby known as SMUNDAY. Calm down, I'm not talking about 'working smarter, not harder' and all of that consultant crap that gets crammed down our gullets in an effort to disguise the fact that you're now doing two jobs instead of one since Tony left and hasn't been replaced...... No.

Let's all calm down and accept as a fact we all work hard from Mondays to Fridays. Whether you're in the office, out on site or at home, there's hard yakka involved. Some of that will include the inevitable school drop offs and pick ups, attending school committee meetings, thinking of vaguely edible dinners to cook and clean up after, reading and homework with the kids, doing dishes or scraping off the muck before loading the dishwasher, returning phone calls and ignoring those annoying 'Hello, we are from southern television service' calls from Mumbai during dinner time...all before flopping down on the sofa in exhaustion by 9pm, only to realise that there's nothing on TV you want to watch. All OK? All agree that that's pretty much what your weekdays and nights are like? OK, let's continue.

God (for want of a better word to describe whatever it is up there) originally gave us Sundays for rest and recuperation. Nice one, but somehow we also managed to snare ourselves the Saturdays for the same purpose. However, over the decades, these two special days have been slowly eaten up with more work, commitments and socialising than actual rest and recreation.

Common activities are usually taken up with hosting our kids' playdates, escorting them to birthday parties and refereeing sleep-overs. Let's not forget the six loads of washing, drying, folding and ironing there is to do, plus having to pick off the bits of tissue that of course got stuck in the dark load. (That's when I really, really HATE polar fleece and am firmly convinced that it's the devils' own velcro).

The weeds leer out as us each time we get in the car and out of the house, the dog 'nuggets' in the back yard are piling up higher than Eddie McGuire's paycheck and the hairs on the bathroom floor could only have fallen from a passing Yeti. Despite these visual stressors, we focus on making up curried lamb shanks and lime tartlets with creme fraiche from 'delicious' magazine for our Saturday night dinner party.

Said dinner party becomes a raucous event, because the two couples you invited each have three children, and none of them look tired or even prepared to consider the idea of being put to bed in the various bedrooms. Any hopes you had of witty and intelligent adult conversation over dinner instead becomes a stream of unfinished sentences: "And then the bazaar owner got the cobra and - NATHAN! WE DO NOT PUNCH! PUT YOUR SISTER DOWN!", or "So we met Nelson Mandela, who said - EMILY! GET THAT PIECE OF PIZZA OUT OF THE DVD PLAYER!" By 9pm, we all give up and the couples take their kids home to bed whilst we clean up the mess with ringing ears.

And we all know that drinking too much at dinner parties will guarantee that our children wake up at 5am on Sundays, reminding us that we promised to make muffins/take them yabby hunting/make plaster-of-paris fridge magnets with them.

The introduction of Smunday will give us back our day of rest – not only from our work, our domestic life, but also from each other. The introduction of Smunday will undoubtedly break all laws of time, physics and common sense because the entire world will be turned off. This God person will press their cosmic 'pause' button and everyone around us will be frozen in whatever mode they were in on a Sunday afternoon. Say, about 4pm.

Smunday will be a day where I - and you, in your own chosen way - will be allowed to do whatever I feel like on my own. It will finally give a real meaning to old phrase ‘do it in your own time.’

Just imagine what world-shattering things you could do –

• Being able to eat Kit Kats for tea, left-over cheesecake for breakfast and CCs for lunch (Important note: there’s no fat content in Smunday foods);
• Leisurely wandering into the shops for a browse minus the frustrations of entertaining a whiny hanger-on, finding a car park or having to rush in and rush out before the lunch guests arrive. Staying in the shops and being able to look through everything without having to say “It’s OK, I’m just looking thanks.”
• Being able to wash the dog, who, being motionless, is cooperative, willing to stay in the bath and not shake itself all over you.
• Being able to read the paper. In one go. With a hot coffee.
• No phone calls, interruptions or pleas to help put together the ello shopapopolis set.
• Having the TV and DVD player to yourself, so that you can watch Jude Law, John Cusack, Keanu Reeves, Brad Pitt, Colin Firth and Hugh Grant without sarcastic comments from your husband.
• Wear your pyjamas all day
• Burp, pick your nose and fart wherever and whenever you want to
• SLEEP.

That would be enough for the first few Smundays, but then I suspect that I’d be yearning to take it a few mischievous steps further. Slipping into the designer boutiques that always intimidated me to try on ridiculously expensive outfits that I’d never have the reason to wear anywhere. Popping into Haighs to sample every flavour of chocolate truffle behind the glass cabinets. Hanging a yo-yo from Colonel Light’s finger. Removing all hipster jeans above a size 8 from clothing racks to spare us the agony of seeing stomach rolls flapping freely in the breeze.

Smunday could be a day to finally carry out some petty revenges. Slipping a couple of prawns into your office whinger’s curtain rails or simply being able to stand in front of your enemy and really let ‘em have it – verbally I mean. Having a good shout at that person for whom you can always think of witty retorts – three hours later. Or – and this would take a bit of psyching up because of the intimate touching involved – unzipping your boss’ fly whilst he’s in freeze mode at his local café?

It's just an idea, but I'll keep my fingers crossed.