Friday- the end of another week

Friday- the end of another week

Fridays have always had something of a raw deal. There it sits at the end of the week like some remote location in the wilds of the countryside. Every Friday most of the working nation sprints out of their office doors, races towards the pub, loosens its tie, jostles and pushes their way to the front of a crowded bar and then demands eight pints of the amber nectar and a liberating libation for Pete from accounts. Friday has to be the best day of the week because all of the weekly deadlines have been met and you don't have to worry about that outstanding project that could take months or even years.

So it is that Friday is our punctuation mark of the week, the final word on the subject and an emphatic end to all work, drudgery. pressure, anxiety and nerve shredding panic. But for most of the nation Friday represents the pinnacle of everything we've striven after but didn't quite have time to finish. It may even be the perfect release of stress, tension and suffering. In some respects we just hug Friday afternoons because suddenly there is a dawning realisation that maybe it hasn't been that bad a week anyway and besides it could have been far worse.

There must come a moment half way through Friday afternoon when you just want to stop staring at your screen and count the hours to the end of the working day. You look at the clock, gaze glumly at the passage of time and find that the clock has become your worst enemy. It's time to tap your pen and pencil on your desk, flick through your e-mails on your I Pad, catch up on all of the latest Apps and scroll down the bewildering number of games that you hadn't played yet. And then you try to unwind and relax but know that you might have forgotten to attend that vitally important meeting or time has just become  deliberately slow and therefore very spiteful.

That's it. Friday has run out of batteries, grinding to a halt at roughly 3.00 in the afternoon because it just can't be bothered to do anymore. Then it just throws a tantrum, folds its arms defiantly and gets very tetchy and irritable. Suddenly you have a strike on your hands. There is an anger and militancy in the air as Friday puts down its keyboard, strides past the filing cabinet and just hides in a dark room. Friday just wants some space and privacy because quite frankly the week has been too long and it's time to put on your coat  regardless of those tumultuous events around the world that have just surrounded and overwhelmed us.

It just seems that Friday couldn't have come quickly enough because you can only take so much and your tolerance threshold is at breaking point. Sometimes it just seems that however hard you've tried to make an impression on your boss there can be no satisfaction and resolution on some trivial problem. In many ways Friday afternoon is rather like that special moment when the referee finally blows the final whistle and your team has just won the FA Cup at Wembley. This is a release, a therapeutic blowing of the cheeks when the whole world seems a much better place than it was on  Monday morning.

And that's the puzzling conundrum. Why do we dread Monday mornings and then almost cry out longingly for Friday afternoon? Some perhaps gain enormous job satisfaction and this may never be questioned. But for those whose work schedule becomes a terrible grind and imposition then suddenly everything becomes excruciatingly unbearable. In many ways there is a hidden conflict in our mind that never gets a chance to be addressed. But of course there are those people for whom career and promotion at work are deeply rewarding.

Of course from a personal point of view the whole working experience quite literally drove me to a perhaps unfortunately premature retirement. So in many ways Friday was a metaphorical end of my working life. I think there must have been a point when Friday was not only a blissful relief but a welcome break from the humdrum and mundane days when nothing seemed to go right.

Now I think I ought to say that any personal criticism of  work is completely unintentional because I know you may love your job and every day is wonderfully exhilarating. This is undeniably true and if this is the case then I apologise for passing judgment. But there are people who work long hours for whom the hours after work are just spectacularly memorable. So you slump on the sofa with that delightful pizza, switch on the TV and then rummage around for that brilliant DVD. Then you pour a bottle of sweet wine into your glass and Friday is some paradise island with swaying palm trees and lazy hammocks, the lovely smell of hibiscus in the air. Then Fridays assume a more pleasant character and then everything seems just perfect.

So here we are. It's Friday evening and the weekend is about to stretch before us rather like some golden sunset. You've performed your ritualistic duties, made all of the decisions that had to be made, perhaps regretted things that at work that could have been done differently and then just gratefully accepted that you still had time to finish things off on Monday morning.

You've put down your tools at work, closed down your computer and resigned yourself to whatever fate might bring you. You become philosophical, realistic and privately ecstatic. You begin to recognise that nothing disastrous has taken place and there was nothing you could have done under the circumstances. So it's time to look at Friday straight in the face. It's good to see you old friend. It's time to unwind, talk about the world, family, friends and relationships, time to congratulate each other for being there  when the rest of the week just became intolerable.  Friday, you're a diamond.