I don’t often have to work on a Sunday morning, nor do I often choose to. When I’m in the UK, Sunday mornings are for family. My son has swimming lessons, and some weeks the whole family will go swimming afterwards. We cook a nice lunch. We see my in-laws or our friends. We try to relax after a busy week and a Saturday running errands and doing chores. Sundays are, despite the general lack of Churchiness, sacred.
When I’m away, the rules change though. I didn’t really work much on Friday because I was travelling, and I have to get ready for a big meeting this week. Partners on a research project are flying in today, and I’ve promised to have words on a page that we can discuss. I don’t mind working on a Sunday like this, because I’m very privileged to being doing work like this in the first place.
Having said that, willingness and ableness are two very different things. Look at this sofa. Look at the antler chandelier filled with fairy lights. Look at the pillows. How on earth is a woman supposed to concentrate when this luscious cosiness is calling out to her!! Take your shoes off…sit on me…curl up with a book… put away the Macbook and come to me…
So I will shake the cobwebs out of my head and order another coffee. I’ll start to put some words on the page. I’ll send a couple of emails (which will earn me brownie points as, hellooo, working on a Sunday morning!). Then, when I’m done, if the sofa isn’t filled with blonde and beautiful Swedish undergraduates, I’ll kick off my shoes and curl up with my book.
An Off-Duty Academic 