This is the week when it is completely acceptable to sit on the sofa all day, substituting wine and chocolate for actual meals
One of my favourite things about being a kid was this time of year, when we’re all on what is best described as a collective holiday. Few things thrilled me more than leaving school on the last day of term and knowing that everyone around me was experiencing the same heady thrill at our imminent freedom. The only thing that was better was waking up the next day and knowing that, instead of staring down the barrel of a double chemistry lesson, I could go round to my friend’s house and she’d be home, too, and then we would spend all morning – all day – playing Zelda II: The Adventure Of Link. I know what you’re thinking and, yes, I was quite a rock’n’roll 15-year-old.
So one of the biggest shocks to me when I started working was that there wasn’t, actually, any collective holiday; you just had to grab your two weeks here, your two weeks there, if they hadn’t been baggsied already by your colleagues, that is. Because it turned out that, as an adult, the point of holidays was not sharing them with the people you spent all day sitting next to, but snaffling the time off before they could. Then, when you leave the office, instead of jumping up and down with the people around you, you have to slink out apologetically while they make resentful half-hearted waves from behind their computers. Being an adult has its compensations – the independence, the sex, the fact that you don’t have to ask permission to watch TV – but it sure comes at a helluva cost.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2Vd6RrI
