Good Friday

It's rather peculiar that it's after 2 in the afternoon on Good Friday and I, a single, white female (should that be in inverted commas, one wonders) am finding it impossible to relax.

There ought to be a name for that: it's akin to being insomniac. You really do suffer the same kinds of symptoms...and others that are just off-the-wall; while the health problems ranging from the physical to the mental, are well known and documented.

Now, back in the day, Good Friday was the longest, and the most boring, day of the year. Nothing happened.The whole world died. We sneered at the misnomer "Good" Friday.  There was nothing good about it all. But the Catholics were the strongest, and wealthiest, power in the land, or at least in Brisbane - the biggest-little-Country-Town-in Australia,  and at some point in the legislative procedure and the mists of time, they had prevailed. Even unto the next few generations.

Not content with forcing every shop, office, shopping centre to close down, they shut down all the pubs,  clubs, amusement parks, public swimming pools and most of the transport system as well. They even invaded the media with live broadcasts of all manner of arcane rituals but with hymn singing taking over from the usual public holiday afternoon movies, or insane telethons, or interminable sport. (No sports on Good Friday in any way, shape or form).

It was thereby the one day of the year when all one could do was relax.  Unless you were interested in taking a long, hot. voyage of discovery to try to find an Indian or Muslim shop. No matter how busy anyone was, for that one day the Catholic church ruled the nation. We relaxed or we didn't survive it. (Unless, of course, we were the Indian or Muslim shopkeepers who stayed open.)

I experienced two of those kinds of "Good" Fridays in the course of my life and they have remained my lasting impression of what the day meant in the West.

Which is why I was surprised to see, yesterday, no perceptible panic at the tills.  This was a phenomenon I'd discovered  much to my amusement - and sometimes despair - in most countries. Let it be known that the shops will be shut for one whole day and the crowds go wild.  Every shop has long lines snaking out from the tills; people who usually walk are now taking up all the taxis as they can't walk home with all the loads of emergency provisions that will be needed for a day without commerce; and shelves go bare with unbelievable speed.

So I started to look around me more carefully and started spotting numerous signs on windows and doors announcing that for a lot of venues it will be business as usual.  Probably because of the 50,000 or so people who are coming for the 2nd Brighton Food Festival. It's fiesta time!

However, I'd mentally prepared myself for a day of somnolent indolence, and I was going to have it.  Despite the flurry in the streets, businesses wouldn't be open.  Schools will be closed. I don't have to go online.  Neither is it probable that my flat-mate is even going to notice if I don't take the garbage out, or clean the bathroom.  And no-one in the world is going to see if I don't make my bed or put my washing away.  As for the seeds I was going to plant? Is there are chance at all those seeds are going to crumble to dust if I plant them tomorrow?  Or next week, considering the weather?

But I can't do it.  I did manage to talk myself into staying in bed till 11. But I read Richard Dawkins instead of Dean Koontz because I felt better learning things than wasting all that daylight, productive time reading a novel.  And then I ran a bath.  So checking my email over that long-drawn-out process was the logical thing to do.  Hardly the time to settle down into the world of golden Labrador Retrievers and people that call each other 'hon'.That would be better savoured in the bath.

Only I had to clean the bath first because I've discovered that having other people's pubes floating round in the bubbles is not conducive to relaxing.

When I got in the bath it suddenly struck me that, while one flatmate was away, the other hadn't yet surfaced and would probably do so at any time.  How I could I have a long relaxing bath with him jumping up and down the passageway trying the squeeze that morning pee back inside? I decided I'd better get on with it fairly briskly.

But at least the bath had warmed me up so this was the prime opportunity to go out and clean up the verandah now that the outside workmen, who swathed the whole building in scaffolding and blue mesh several months ago, but only appeared to do things- at great speed - a few weeks ago, have finally gone.  Once it was sorted properly I could go out there with my plant pots and potting mix, which was rather practical.  I'd done it inside last time and had to sweep up all the soil and bits of plant on my hands and knees with a dustpan and brush because my flatmate (the peeing one) broke the vacuum cleaner.

When I finally I'd finished on the verandah and lost so much body heat my fingers were numb, it became obvious that the only way to warm them up was to wiggle them as I am doing right now.

Now I know the preceding  diary of the day  reveals nothing new.  One of the biggest indicators of how wrong we are going, is the rising number of people who have lost the art of relaxation.

I however, am not one of them.  Relaxation is a skill with which I was born. It led to my being named Serene.  

No, it is not inability to relax per se which is confounding me. It is the inability to relax in the middle of the day.  A day in the working week. While being unemployed. And it is at the feet of The Nuns, corn-plastered feet and encased in sensible black lace-up shoes, that I place the blame.

 For as anyone who has been either brought up Catholic, or been schooled by nuns will tell you:- Catholic guilt is as pernicious as one of those internal viruses which, once contracted, may lie dormant for long periods of time, but is never eradicated.

Which is why, for every hour of this day that the sun has been up, I have been consumed with guilt.  Oh, sure, guilt is the default position for all Catholics.  But there's always those untapped layers lying dormant that are ready to be wheeled in when the really big guns are needed. Even if you aren't, or are no longer, Catholic.  I think all nun's habits used to be impregnated with the substance when I was a kid.  Not only is it highly toxic, but its highly contagious.  Just  being in the vicinity of those damned, guilt-soaked women is enough: much more highly efficient than any plague-bearing fleas.

It's now 7 and finally dark.  I can feel all those tendons and sinews losing their rigidity. The voices in my head are finally conciliatory.  I am not, I hasten to add, referring to the kinds of sound which cause dramatic actors to stagger round clutching their temples and crying "The Voices. The voices. Tell them to STOP."  I mean the ones that say that the rules that govern the rest of the planet no longer apply to one.  This might be a holiday for everyone else, but all is rendered null and void if one is a transgressor.  And being unemployed is, next to being gay or being a feminist, one of the biggest transgressions of all.  It renders one Guilty.

On Good Fridays in Brisbane they may, these days, have naked gay parades through the centre of the city.  All the parks today might be full of people engaged in Bacchanalian pursuits for all I know. And unemployed people might quite freely mingle with the joyful crowds.

But not for me.  The Catholic Church might not be wielding the same big stick as it once did, and its power in political circles may now be negligible.  But it makes no difference.  The Catholics have chalked up yet another triumph. However many more Good Fridays are included in my life's span, the Church has earmarked them all.  Tormented with guilt, fighting the demons, I shall probably never again enjoy another public holiday until the day I can claim to be either gainfully employed or submissively married - or in any other way in my proper place under some man's thumb.

So who still insists that religion is a good thing?