What’s so unacceptable about taking a break?

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

There are times you have to wonder how we managed to survive at all before the advent of 24 hour supermarkets and petrol stations – or, for that matter, television.

Remember those innocent days when RTE started in the late afternoon and finished before midnight with the national anthem?

Late night television was a thing of the weekends, something so noteworthy that the big film could be any oul’ rubbish at all – but it was still the Midnight Movie.

Most shops didn’t open on Sunday at all and many also took a half-day during the week – Oughterard’s used to fall every Wednesday and if you didn’t have the bits and bobs in by lunchtime, you went without.

The world didn’t stop revolving because we didn’t enjoy instant access to the grocery store; we didn’t die of the hunger on a Sunday.

Nowadays, if you’re an insomniac who decides to turn adversity into opportunity and you do your supermarket shop in the middle of the night, you may well be greeted with the sight of fellow shoppers with their pyjamas concealed under their coat.

And while there is merit in getting the groceries out of the way before the breakfast, wouldn’t it be a lot more effective to make a glass of warm milk and count sheep under you slumber?

Those who work long hours, of course, may not have an alternative to Sunday shopping – but weren’t people busy in the old days too, and still they didn’t starve even when the shops observed the Sabbath?

German stores still stick by the Sunday tradition and, apart from the odd souvenir shop, you’d be hard-pressed to find as much as a pint of milk.

Yet there’s no one suggesting the German economy is faltering as a result; they made enough to bail us out of hock for a start.

The Spanish used to take it to a different league altogether with their daily siesta, proving that they cherished that work/life balance just a little more than the rest of us.

But now, apparently and regrettably, no more.

Those three-hour lunch breaks – followed by a little lie-down – are set to follow the peseta into the annals of history as our Spanish friends look to drag the country into the 21st century.

And there is good reason for doing this – there’s no such thing as a free lunch, so an afternoon snooze means a late night at the office; more and more people can’t avail of the lie-down anyway unless they recline the seat in the parked car…and most of all, it would bring them into line with the rest of us.

But why?

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.