One memory of this in my 1970s childhood (in Australia which often echoes England), is that we were not allowed to play games of chance on Sunday, which pretty much just left chess, which my dad always won.
I was really heartened to learn that the 16-year-old son of a family I've been friends with for decades is mad about chess. He was disappointed when I visited that he couldn't play against me because my level was so low. I had somehow got it into my head that nowadays children didn't play such intellectually challenging games.
I have four Teenagers, and yes Chess has really come back in these last few years. It's partly because they can play online on chess.com, and there are surprisingly engaging chess commentary videos on youtube by people like 'gotham chess' and 'agadmator' (I watch the latter's videos religiously).
I used to sometimes watch 'The Master Game' on the BBC in the 1970's. Who would have thought that chess could be a spectator sport! Not me, yet even I with my beginner's knowledge found it fascinating to listen to the players after-match commentary about what was going through their heads at the time. I'm guessing that Gotham chess and 'Agadmator' are similar? Or perhaps they are more high tech?
Either way I love the idea that chess is still popular and to know that each generation is not necessarily getting intellectually more lazy than the last. I would be quite happy to be the oldest and stupidest person in the room. That thought is much less depressing to me than the one that the human race, after a peak some time in the 19th or 20th centuries, is now reprimitivising.
Agadmator (real name Antonio Radic), will review recent games by the big stars (Magnus etc), on youtube, move by move taking about 10 to 15 minutes to get through his review. He's good at highlighting the key moments, looking at what was missed by the players, it's fun and he does it with wry humour throughout.
I followed your link to chess.com and thought I'd have a game by myself to see if I still remembered the rules. Before I knew it I realised I was in a game with someone else! I suppressed the desire to swiftly close my computer down and run away and managed a few moves before resigning after less than 10 minutes, by which time he had taken my queen, a bishop, various pawns and was closing in for checkmate when I threw in the towel.
My 1960s childhood Sundays were completely different. For a start, my parents weren't religious so that was church out. And they had a car, so Sundays were often a glorious day out in the country with a walk and sandwiches. Spring was Farndale and daffodils, spotting lambs, listening out for skylarks; summer might be walks on the moors and bilberries or a trip to the seaside; autumn brambling in the hedgerows. And there were always museums or castles when the weather wasn't good. Winter might be a trip up to Newcastle to see Gran, or a short walk to Grandma's. Or staying at home, reading or doing jigsaws.
By my teens I'd discovered archaeology so Saturdays and Sundays from May to October were up early, two buses to get to the site, dig all day, two buses back.
But then I was one of those children who could never comprehend how some classmates got bored in the summer holidays.
I’m a bit older than you (early 70s) but my English Catholic family went to church only on special days (Palm Sunday, for example). My grandmother said the world was God’s church, so we didn’t have to bother getting up early every Sunday morning. Despite our mostly church-free Sundays, I didn’t much like that particular day (also spoilt by the thought that it was back to school the next day). And, my imagination perhaps, it often seemed to rain on Sundays.
It's probably possible to correctly guess my age reasonably well by my memories of spending a few Sundays sitting on the chained up trolleys outside th esupermarket, because the Co-Op had been built and was open, but they weren't allowed to trade on Sundays yet.
We were Catholic too, so Sunday was obligatory mass, followed by obligatory Sunday school until I was a teenager. This was back in the Fifties and Sixties so mass was in Latin and there was no singing except by the choir at High Mass, which was high art. In those days I had to wear a dress to church (and a hat!), and I got a bit of a kick out of being in my nice dress all day--it was like being Alice in Wonderland. Then there was Sunday roast with the good china. I haven't had roast veal for decades but I still remember what it tasted like.
Great article. Being about 20 years older than Ed I've endured more of those boring British Sundays than he has, though growing up in what was basically an atheist household (only my dad couldn't make up his mind about God) I didn't have to attend church. Yet even though I was allowed to go out and play on Sundays, many of my friends weren't so my own freedom was of little value to me.
My mornings were usually spent trying to avoid topics that might prompt one of my parents to ask, 'Don't you have any homework to do?' Since I was a rubbish liar this would often lead to me sitting down at the dining room table with my dad who would 'teach' me (i.e. get increasingly annoyed at my inability) to do Maths.
In the evenings the whole family would sit and watch BBC period dramas like The Forsyte Saga, War and Peace and various Dickens adaptations, all of which I watched because the rest of my family seemed intered in following the story. Watching clips from them now on YouTube I'm struck by the poor picture quality as well as the low production values in general. I've always thought I was mostly interested in the story, the acting and the script but it turns out I'm now unable to watch anything that's looks and sounds like it was recorded on a Super-8 cine camera.
Yet despite being boring, Sundays were a good way to punctuate the week which would otherwise have been too samey. And perhaps those dull Sundays taught me how to deal with boredom since nowadays I really don't mind sitting and doing what amounts to nothing at all. It is only when I'm doing nothing that my usual illusion that I'm going somewhere (other than the grave) comes into view and I notice that it's sort of odd to be alive at all, in this place and at this time in history.
I still treat Sunday as a Special Day. I am a church goer (Orthodox now) and I look forward to that, including the "coffee hour" afterward-- which most Sundays is really more of a brunch event with serious food. But later in the day I'm enjoying "Sunday Funday" Depending on the weather I may go out on the bike for a while, then settle down at a bar and have a good stiff drink, maybe meet up with friends, maybe even go out to dinner. It's been one of the perks of moving back to Florida where there's actually life on Sunday-- in Baltimore, other than holiday weekends and football Sundays with at home Ravens games, the town was dead as a morgue. As my father would have said, They all but rolled up the sidewalks on Sundays.
We had only 2 channels and my stand it memory was the Black and White minstrel show. God it was boring but can’t you imagine the BBC doing it now - it was all blackface!
Enjoyed that, thanks. Pretty sure I remember that same 0-0 draw on The Big Match Live with Elton Welsby.
You’re right about staunch Protestantism. What they really objected to was people enjoying themselves. Good job those puritans have completely gone away and haven’t just adopted different ways of being sanctimonious bores…
Jews take it much further, they view it is impermissible to light a spark on sabbath, so all electronic equipment, lights, cookers, radios, lift buttons, cars etc are off limits
Many Orthodox Jews view tearing as a form of work, so they pre-tear their toilet paper on Friday afternoon.
I remember hearing some friend of Ben Shapiro's saying that he had to drive to Shapiro's house to tell him about the October 7th massacre, because Shapiro doesn't use any electronic devices on the Sabbath and so hadn't heard the news.
There are 600+ rules to follow, which is a lot of rules. In New York we have the tradition of the "shabbos goy" which is a non-Jewish neighbor who can do urgent things that are not done on the sabbath (like turning off your oven if you happen to have forgotten). But I will say, seeing the (usually large) families walking to and from temple outside my window makes me feel thoughtful about setting aside a time in the week to pay attention only to other people. Absent God's commandment, I don't think I'd have the discipline to do it, though.
When I was an American student in Britain (1982), I asked one of my classmates why almost nothing in London was open on Sundays. She said "we don't think it's right for working-class people to have to work on Sundays." This astonished me (I couldn't imagine anyone in the United States coming up with a thought like that: our blue laws are about the social gospel and the desire to cut down on traffic). Later I came to think of it as an expression of the profound basic decency of the English nation, like their concern for animals, or the shopkeepers who called me "my luv" when asking me what I wanted at the counter. Thatcher was then just getting started on her project to take the English by the scruff of the neck and shake this quality out of them. With all that has happened since, I pray that some of it has survived.
It was always during those long boring Sundays, with the low-level dread of the week ahead, that I would have great spasms of creativity as a child. I don't think we're bored enough as a society, the temptation now is to get stimulation from social media or another immediate dopamine hit, rather than take time to search for something worthwhile and lasting. Being catholic though, our post-mass Sundays were too often intruded upon by my parents' sporadic and guilt-ridden cleaning sessions.
As an aside, most people of my generation will share the horror at the sound of the 'Heartbeat' theme tune of a Sunday night, the death knell of the weekend.
Ben Elton had a good joke about “Songs of Praise Syndrome” that affected students on Sunday evenings, if an essay was due to be handed in on the Monday. The line was that although the essay required the student’s urgent attention, so also did Songs of Praise - although this only seemed to be the case on the eve of a deadline.
Might be class-based though. I have heard descriptions of Sunday as: lie-in to recover from Saturday football and night out; fry up; watch footie on telly; pub; back home for Sunday roast; snooze. Quite envious actually 🙂
Wow. I didn't know that Monday used to be part of the weekend. Saturday became part of the weekend later in the 19th Century as a response to labour agitation.
One memory of this in my 1970s childhood (in Australia which often echoes England), is that we were not allowed to play games of chance on Sunday, which pretty much just left chess, which my dad always won.
I was really heartened to learn that the 16-year-old son of a family I've been friends with for decades is mad about chess. He was disappointed when I visited that he couldn't play against me because my level was so low. I had somehow got it into my head that nowadays children didn't play such intellectually challenging games.
I have four Teenagers, and yes Chess has really come back in these last few years. It's partly because they can play online on chess.com, and there are surprisingly engaging chess commentary videos on youtube by people like 'gotham chess' and 'agadmator' (I watch the latter's videos religiously).
I used to sometimes watch 'The Master Game' on the BBC in the 1970's. Who would have thought that chess could be a spectator sport! Not me, yet even I with my beginner's knowledge found it fascinating to listen to the players after-match commentary about what was going through their heads at the time. I'm guessing that Gotham chess and 'Agadmator' are similar? Or perhaps they are more high tech?
Either way I love the idea that chess is still popular and to know that each generation is not necessarily getting intellectually more lazy than the last. I would be quite happy to be the oldest and stupidest person in the room. That thought is much less depressing to me than the one that the human race, after a peak some time in the 19th or 20th centuries, is now reprimitivising.
Agadmator (real name Antonio Radic), will review recent games by the big stars (Magnus etc), on youtube, move by move taking about 10 to 15 minutes to get through his review. He's good at highlighting the key moments, looking at what was missed by the players, it's fun and he does it with wry humour throughout.
I followed your link to chess.com and thought I'd have a game by myself to see if I still remembered the rules. Before I knew it I realised I was in a game with someone else! I suppressed the desire to swiftly close my computer down and run away and managed a few moves before resigning after less than 10 minutes, by which time he had taken my queen, a bishop, various pawns and was closing in for checkmate when I threw in the towel.
ha, you just need a bit of practice
Hancock's 'Sunday Afternoon at Home': https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jsys also seems to epitomise your feelings.
My 1960s childhood Sundays were completely different. For a start, my parents weren't religious so that was church out. And they had a car, so Sundays were often a glorious day out in the country with a walk and sandwiches. Spring was Farndale and daffodils, spotting lambs, listening out for skylarks; summer might be walks on the moors and bilberries or a trip to the seaside; autumn brambling in the hedgerows. And there were always museums or castles when the weather wasn't good. Winter might be a trip up to Newcastle to see Gran, or a short walk to Grandma's. Or staying at home, reading or doing jigsaws.
By my teens I'd discovered archaeology so Saturdays and Sundays from May to October were up early, two buses to get to the site, dig all day, two buses back.
But then I was one of those children who could never comprehend how some classmates got bored in the summer holidays.
See! This is how it used to be!
I’m a bit older than you (early 70s) but my English Catholic family went to church only on special days (Palm Sunday, for example). My grandmother said the world was God’s church, so we didn’t have to bother getting up early every Sunday morning. Despite our mostly church-free Sundays, I didn’t much like that particular day (also spoilt by the thought that it was back to school the next day). And, my imagination perhaps, it often seemed to rain on Sundays.
It's probably possible to correctly guess my age reasonably well by my memories of spending a few Sundays sitting on the chained up trolleys outside th esupermarket, because the Co-Op had been built and was open, but they weren't allowed to trade on Sundays yet.
We were Catholic too, so Sunday was obligatory mass, followed by obligatory Sunday school until I was a teenager. This was back in the Fifties and Sixties so mass was in Latin and there was no singing except by the choir at High Mass, which was high art. In those days I had to wear a dress to church (and a hat!), and I got a bit of a kick out of being in my nice dress all day--it was like being Alice in Wonderland. Then there was Sunday roast with the good china. I haven't had roast veal for decades but I still remember what it tasted like.
Great article. Being about 20 years older than Ed I've endured more of those boring British Sundays than he has, though growing up in what was basically an atheist household (only my dad couldn't make up his mind about God) I didn't have to attend church. Yet even though I was allowed to go out and play on Sundays, many of my friends weren't so my own freedom was of little value to me.
My mornings were usually spent trying to avoid topics that might prompt one of my parents to ask, 'Don't you have any homework to do?' Since I was a rubbish liar this would often lead to me sitting down at the dining room table with my dad who would 'teach' me (i.e. get increasingly annoyed at my inability) to do Maths.
In the evenings the whole family would sit and watch BBC period dramas like The Forsyte Saga, War and Peace and various Dickens adaptations, all of which I watched because the rest of my family seemed intered in following the story. Watching clips from them now on YouTube I'm struck by the poor picture quality as well as the low production values in general. I've always thought I was mostly interested in the story, the acting and the script but it turns out I'm now unable to watch anything that's looks and sounds like it was recorded on a Super-8 cine camera.
Yet despite being boring, Sundays were a good way to punctuate the week which would otherwise have been too samey. And perhaps those dull Sundays taught me how to deal with boredom since nowadays I really don't mind sitting and doing what amounts to nothing at all. It is only when I'm doing nothing that my usual illusion that I'm going somewhere (other than the grave) comes into view and I notice that it's sort of odd to be alive at all, in this place and at this time in history.
I still treat Sunday as a Special Day. I am a church goer (Orthodox now) and I look forward to that, including the "coffee hour" afterward-- which most Sundays is really more of a brunch event with serious food. But later in the day I'm enjoying "Sunday Funday" Depending on the weather I may go out on the bike for a while, then settle down at a bar and have a good stiff drink, maybe meet up with friends, maybe even go out to dinner. It's been one of the perks of moving back to Florida where there's actually life on Sunday-- in Baltimore, other than holiday weekends and football Sundays with at home Ravens games, the town was dead as a morgue. As my father would have said, They all but rolled up the sidewalks on Sundays.
A joke from my Hebridean childhood: why shouldn’t you go parachuting on Lewis on a Sunday? Because nothing ever opens.
We had only 2 channels and my stand it memory was the Black and White minstrel show. God it was boring but can’t you imagine the BBC doing it now - it was all blackface!
No church though so I was that much ahead.
We are completely distracted now. No one sits quietly and thinks. No meditation. No observation. Boredom is an affliction of small minds.
Enjoyed that, thanks. Pretty sure I remember that same 0-0 draw on The Big Match Live with Elton Welsby.
You’re right about staunch Protestantism. What they really objected to was people enjoying themselves. Good job those puritans have completely gone away and haven’t just adopted different ways of being sanctimonious bores…
Jews take it much further, they view it is impermissible to light a spark on sabbath, so all electronic equipment, lights, cookers, radios, lift buttons, cars etc are off limits
Many Orthodox Jews view tearing as a form of work, so they pre-tear their toilet paper on Friday afternoon.
I remember hearing some friend of Ben Shapiro's saying that he had to drive to Shapiro's house to tell him about the October 7th massacre, because Shapiro doesn't use any electronic devices on the Sabbath and so hadn't heard the news.
Not even a phone?
For him and some very Orthodox Jews, evidently not even a phone. I was surprised too.
There are 600+ rules to follow, which is a lot of rules. In New York we have the tradition of the "shabbos goy" which is a non-Jewish neighbor who can do urgent things that are not done on the sabbath (like turning off your oven if you happen to have forgotten). But I will say, seeing the (usually large) families walking to and from temple outside my window makes me feel thoughtful about setting aside a time in the week to pay attention only to other people. Absent God's commandment, I don't think I'd have the discipline to do it, though.
When I was an American student in Britain (1982), I asked one of my classmates why almost nothing in London was open on Sundays. She said "we don't think it's right for working-class people to have to work on Sundays." This astonished me (I couldn't imagine anyone in the United States coming up with a thought like that: our blue laws are about the social gospel and the desire to cut down on traffic). Later I came to think of it as an expression of the profound basic decency of the English nation, like their concern for animals, or the shopkeepers who called me "my luv" when asking me what I wanted at the counter. Thatcher was then just getting started on her project to take the English by the scruff of the neck and shake this quality out of them. With all that has happened since, I pray that some of it has survived.
It was always during those long boring Sundays, with the low-level dread of the week ahead, that I would have great spasms of creativity as a child. I don't think we're bored enough as a society, the temptation now is to get stimulation from social media or another immediate dopamine hit, rather than take time to search for something worthwhile and lasting. Being catholic though, our post-mass Sundays were too often intruded upon by my parents' sporadic and guilt-ridden cleaning sessions.
As an aside, most people of my generation will share the horror at the sound of the 'Heartbeat' theme tune of a Sunday night, the death knell of the weekend.
Ben Elton had a good joke about “Songs of Praise Syndrome” that affected students on Sunday evenings, if an essay was due to be handed in on the Monday. The line was that although the essay required the student’s urgent attention, so also did Songs of Praise - although this only seemed to be the case on the eve of a deadline.
Might be class-based though. I have heard descriptions of Sunday as: lie-in to recover from Saturday football and night out; fry up; watch footie on telly; pub; back home for Sunday roast; snooze. Quite envious actually 🙂
Wow. I didn't know that Monday used to be part of the weekend. Saturday became part of the weekend later in the 19th Century as a response to labour agitation.
https://theconversation.com/history-of-the-two-day-weekend-offers-lessons-for-todays-calls-for-a-four-day-week-127382
Under current trends, it wouldn't surprise me if Friday becomes part of an even longer weekend as it is the Muslim day of prayer!:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_prayer