14 Mar 2016
It won’t have escaped my readers’ notice that there was an attempt last week to change the Sunday trading laws in England and Wales. After a three-hour debate, MPs rejected the proposals by 317 votes to 286. Labour referred to the attempted changes as “tawdry”; others cried foul at the SNP, spluttering they had no right to comment on proposed legislation that had no impact in Scotland. Ministers have since said that they will “respect the wishes of MPs” who imposed only the second defeat on the Government since it came to power, but they looked jolly cross saying it.
Here at Casa Dawes, there was keen interest. I’m a firm believer that shops should remain closed on Sunday, and was deeply irritated that the Tories had tried to introduce legislation that was not in their manifesto. To be clear, this is not because I’m religious (far from it). I last attended church by accident (I got the wrong day, and indeed venue, for a Christening). Neither am I steeped in the traditions of the 1970s, when Sunday consisted of church in the morning, roast chicken at lunch, and an afternoon of “Guess the Colour of Harry Secombe’s Anorak (aka Songs of Praise). Although, writing that has rather made me sigh with nostalgia, even though at the time I was bored senseless.
No, my reasons for delighting at this Tory defeat are far more prosaic in that I am, dear reader, profoundly lazy, and Sunday is my supremely lazy day.
Sunday is for waking up with a mouth like the bottom of a budgie cage and wondering why on earth you thought you were still young enough to survive that much wine. Sunday is for surfacing long enough to locate proper coffee and sausages and then return to bed with the papers. Sunday is for reflecting on a weekend of not having to drag yourself to the office, and for assessing the office-dragging week ahead. It’s for fireside snoozing, and dog walking. For no make-up and long phone calls. For pyjamas and trashy magazines. For just about making it to the pub again.
My worry is therefore entirely self-centred. If everything is open and we can do anything we like, I fear I may begin to see my lazy day as a “waste of time”. I’ll start to think that perhaps I ought to be doing some of those chores that I didn’t used to be able to do, because the places I needed to go were shut.
I am, of course, aware that they are not in fact all shut, at least not all of the time, but because trading hours are restricted, I am able to persuade myself that by the time I am in a fit state to leave the house they will probably all be closed and so they are, de facto, closed. To me at least. The idea that I may no longer fool myself with such dreams is deeply disturbing. The only defence I have against my loafer-chiding inner voice is the fact that I am physically, legally prevented from achieving great things on a Sunday.
