Miserable Friday
Grandad April 2nd, 2010
Good Friday, Huh?
What the fuck is good about it?
This is a day when Christians commemorate the day that their founder was tortured and executed, and they decide to call the day ‘good’? That is weird. Surely from their point of view, it would make more sense to call it Bad Friday or Sad Friday?
I always hated Good Friday. I don’t know why. In fact I always hated the word ‘good’ because, as a kid it meant not having fun. Any time I was really enjoying myself, my mother would pop out from nowhere and tell me to stop. “Put those matches away and be good,” she’d say, or “Stop playing with that carving knife and be good”. Good just became synonymous with boring.
Then there was the church bit. I used to be dragged off to church on a regular basis, and the sermons were always full of creepy stuff about nails through flesh, torture, suffering and blood everywhere. It’s enough to twist any kid’s mind. Then to cap it all, all the statues in the churches would be covered in cloth and wrapped up which used to really freak me out.
My mother was a very strict Catholic [my father had more sense but knew when to keep quiet] so Good Friday meant we got nothing to eat which was a pain in the arse. I discovered years later that my father used to sneak off to less observant neighbours and scrounge a meal there. Cute bastard! Apart from the lack of food, I wasn’t allowed to enjoy myself in any way. Good Friday was a day for prayer and that was it. It was the most boring dreary day in the calendar.
Then of course there is the shit about the pubs.
What the fuck is it with this country that pubs have to close on Good Friday? I have heard excuses that it provides a day of rest for serious drinkers, which is a load of bollix because any serious drinker worth his salt is going to stock up on the hard tack the day before. Or is the Catholic Church so unsure of itself that it’s afraid that if pubs are open that no one will attend church? Why does the Catholic Church have any say in the matter at all? I know the law stems back to the time when that bastard McQuaid ruled the roost here, but surely times are supposed to have changed?
It’s freezing cold and pissing rain outside. The spring flowers have enough sense to stay well wrapped up in their buds. It looks and feels like winter. Good Friday, my hole.
At least Pullit has the sense to open the pub when he feels like it.
I think it’s a day for the High Stool.
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