It’s a terrible thing, to
have time and no money on a beautiful morning like this. You throw open the curtains and the day
calls to you, invites you to share in its possibilities. Blue sky and sun, and the slightest of
hazes that makes the world outside your window seem to shimmer with
expectation. It’s been a long
winter, after all. You prepare
yourself to meet the day with a growing sense of excitement. You sing to yourself in the shower, you
are suffused with goodwill as you sip your coffee. And as you sip your coffee, you make your plans for this
perfect day.
This, of course, is when
it hits you. Your options are
severely curtailed. Your initial
response was, inevitably, to flit
from pub to pub for a while, basking in the atmosphere that only a sunny day
can bring, letting what will happen, happen. The pub on the brink of summer is
the embodiment of exactly that sense of freedom that you long to embrace. The pub, though, at any time of year,
is an expensive proposition, and its freedom does not come cheap. In your mind you run through some
economic gymnastics, but no matter how many financial somersaults you perform,
there’s no way to square an embrace of the day with the more prosaic pecuniary
necessities of living.
Your longing, your desire,
is turned back on itself, your cheerful mood is frustrated. There are other options, of course,
some as simple as going for a walk.
But a walk for you is always a walk to the pub, and if it isn’t it only
serves to emphasise that the day you wanted is not to be yours. As the sense of freedom fades, any
other course of action loses its flavour.
The sense of possibility has no way to express itself, and the sunny day
becomes dead weight to be suffered.
You draw the curtains, and pass the day in shadows.
