Sunday Lunch used to be one of my favourite parts of the week. For once in my life, it wasn't actually all about the food, although generally, the menu could be a drawcard of it's own.
It's more about me raging against the dying light of the weekend in order to bang out one last good time. Too often, there is a little too much wine with the consequence being a 5:00pm headache, although that's easily avoided by making it an extra long lunch that just rolls into dinner. And that's perfectly fine, because it's Sunday. There's time to wander about the garden and have lively discussions that linger on far too long when you're with people you actually like and can be bothered to spend time with. Not just any old time- Sunday time.
At Sunday Lunch, there isn't a place at the table for those you 'should catch up with' out of obligation. No, no. It's for those you genuinely miss when they're gone; the ones you feel a little ache for and a lot of love for.
For introverts who sometimes seem like extroverts but definitely are not (like me), the ideal Sunday lunch guests are likely to be a handful of quirky characters cherry picked from across the decades. That's the guest list taken care of.
And then there's the food. Usually it's something smoked, or if we're being traditional, a jazzed up roast of some description. Roasts are fine, if done well, which is entirely different from being well done, but it's the accompaniments that win my vote.
Like sage and onion stuffing. Bread, butter, salt and herbs (sage, oh sage) stuffed into a chicken carcass and roasted with chicken fat dripping through. I honestly would take a bowl of stuffing over meat any day of the week, and especially on Sundays, but that's another tale for another day.
I say Sunday Lunches used to be my favourite, as they've largely fallen by the wayside in the past few years. Something to do with kids taking up every waking moment I'm sure, but this time they can't be blamed exclusively. There's something bigger at play.
It's been hard to pinpoint exactly what 'it is' but it's irking me and making me miss Sunday Lunch, which is at the very least- extremely annoying, and at the most, really alarming. It's the symptom of a much bigger problem.
It finally dawned on me what that problem is when I spent my entire Sunday cleaning, mopping, organising and packing lunch boxes and upon whinging about it, my irritatingly virtuous peachy friend quipped back 'Sunday well spent, brings a week of content'. My instant reaction? Absolutely fucking not on my watch.
Content and prepared for what? To go back to the grind and make sure you're working diligently for the man? Be organised enough to stay busy, keep the kids busy and live busy? To 'hustle' making ourselves sicker, more mentally unwell and more disconnected than ever before? I've had sick kids for weeks now, as has everyone I know, and I calculated that if I'd been back at work, this year I'd already have taken in excess of 30 sick days. That just isn't workable.
And all for what? For keeping up with the Jones' - whoever the Jones' may be? So that I toil towards an unattainable life that I don't even really want. If social media is anything to go by, it should include a perfectly manicured garden, a renovated house with white furniture, a Pinterest worthy kitchen that I can swan my designer clad, pre baby body around in making macro dense food for my well read, well behaved and well rounded children?
What is the end goal here? Take pride in doing exactly as our post- industrial revolution selves are supposed to do and work excessively, make enough money to almost pay off whatever debts you've got and set aside enough time to have one or two (instagrammable) holidays a year for the next 40 years until you retire then die?
What is it that I want out of my life? More Sunday lunches. More Sundays. More days being like Sundays. More time with special ones. More marking occasions. More living in tune with the seasons. More slow. More living as though our time is short- because it is.
More drinking tea
More time in the garden
More phone calls with old friends
More baths
More reading
More concocting
More writing
More foraging
More laying on the trampoline and looking up at the stars
More noticing the changing colours in the leaves
More fire pits
More watching the birds
More exploring
More breathing
I want to drink the best wine now. I want my children to know what's important, not because they've missed it and long for that life but because they've lived it and inherently know what feels right for them. I don't want their imaginations zapped or their personalities changed by an outdated schooling system that turns them into corporate drones stuck on a hamster wheel repeating the same cycle.
Let's be extremely clear- this is not a cry for help. It's well beyond that. This is a quiet whisper urging, no- begging for revolution. The return to the village. A change for all of us. And for me, it's going to begin with reclaiming Sunday lunches.
As Dave Grohl says ever more succinctly and eloquently than I ever could - "It's times like these we learn to live again."
What's for Lunch next Sunday?
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