It’s Friday and they think it’s all over. Time to Pause for Thought – except no one wants to Pause. I don’t. I just want to get to the end of the day, the end of the week and have two blessed mornings not riding the bus to Oxford.
So spare a thought, ladies and gentlemen, for today’s extraordinary guests. For these are the people who help the weekend be the weekend. These are the people whose work is our play. These are the people we turn to when we need to laugh or cry, when we need to sing and dance, or when we just need to sit on the sofa scratching our backsides.
Good people of rock and roll, TV and the movies: we salute you.
Everyone loves the movies. Churchill, who spent much of the war deep beneath Whitehall in a secret bunker, perfecting his impression of Oscar-nominated Gary Oldman, was a tremendous filmgoer. He consumed films voraciously and, like a child who will eat nothing but jam sandwiches and crisps, he knew what he liked: he saw Vivien Leigh as Lady Hamilton no less than 17 times and was a huge fan of the Marx Brothers.
Thing is, though, the rest of the time Churchill worked. He worked to the point of exhaustion, had some dinner and worked some more. And the next day he did it again.
Now I don’t think that’s necessarily a model for all of us but finding a balance, even a weird one like Churchill’s, is fundamental to our wellbeing as human people. The story of creation in the bible is a story about balance. God works for six days and then takes a rest. He doesn’t even get a whole weekend, but then, he is God.
You might think of it as work/life balance, but work is part of life so I reckon it’s just balance. It’s how we’re supposed to be.
And although I won’t be at the pictures this weekend, I will watch the telly. I will go to see Dulwich Hamlet play Leatherhead. I’ll run and climb and see some friends. And I reckon when I go back to work next week, I’ll be better for it. I’ll be back in balance.
It’s Friday and they think it’s all over. It is now.
Not long after this, in early March, Dulwich Hamlet were locked out of their ground at Champion Hill by the ground’s owners, Meadow Residential. There began a long saga of exile (at Tooting and Mitcham’s ground, Imperial Fields), protest, parliamentary debate, promotion to the National League South and eventually return home at the end of the year. The ultimate fate of Champion Hill, however, remains unresolved.
In the picture, they are in the process of defeating Worthing 3-0 at Imperial Fields.
