Sundays. Not an activity, but several rolled into one lugubrious horror. Here's part of a piece I once wrote about growing up in N. Ireland in the 50s:
Everything in the land was bilghted by religion and respectability, but mostly by religion. The leaden hand of the Lord's Day Observance Society was on everything: on Sundays the pubs, the shops, the restaurants and cinemas were closed, and if the public parks were open it was only because the gates had been taken to make tanks during the war. The kiddies' swings, though, in those same parks, were chained and padlocked to avoid sinful swinging.
It was only on suffrance, and after paying the tribute of an interminable morning in church and Sunday-school that we were allowed out to play on Sunday afternoon. To play quietly, that was - cowboy outfits, guns, bicycles, scooters and our Grand Prix races up and down the road were strictly forbidden. More likely would be the ceremony of the Sunday Afternoon Walk. You would shine your shoes, put on your tie and brush your jacket until you were sweaty and your arms were dropping, pass the muster of a microscopic inspection, during which the slightest speck of lint meant another five minutes with the brush, then hide the whole damned thing under a coat and set off with father, sister and an ill-trained dog to do four or five miles of cold tramping through the neighbouring country roads. The dog expressed my sentiments exactly: after dancing around in brainless joy at the prospect of a walk, every step of the outward trek he would drag backwards towards home until we turned, and then he would pull like a dray-horse all the way back.
