Carol’s Column

Those weekends just ain’t long enough

When God decreed that on the seventh day, we should rest, He wasn't thinking clearly.

It would probably have been better to put in some extra effort and create the world in four days thereby earning a three-day break.

Because of the diversity of religions, sabbath happens on several different days and thus the weekend has evolved.

Although for the religious this is an occasion of rest and restoration of the soul, for the majority it becomes the time in which you have to pack in all the things you can't do during the week plus accommodate essentials such as watching World Cup rugby.

I fall into the latter category and this past weekend was definitely too short.

In an attempt to live longer, I have joined a gym and three things induce me to go each morning at 6am.

The fact that I have paid for it, an outstanding steam bath in which you can hide and steam away your worries and the Petulia Gribble factor.

Petulia Gribble, a retired mud wrestler, is 78 and is able to run a kilometre in under five minutes.

She's my partner and together we do the circuit, attack the cycling, rowing and treadmill machines and then swim the required 20 lengths.

If it wasn't for Petulia, I would have given up after the first day of such self-inflicted purgatory.

As I pant along behind her, she encourages me to heights of exhaustion to which I could not have imagined I was capable.

In such a way begins my weekend.

For working mothers, weekends are prime get-the-essentials (like food) shopping time, clean the house, wash the sheets and dog and throw away non drip-dry things.

It's granny visiting time, braaiing with friends and watching rugby, soccer, tennis or cricket and movies time.

And it’s also go out to listen to cool jazz or go walking in the wild and watch a pair of black eagles circling above time.

Then there are newspapers and books to read, and sales of demo cars to attend.

Which is why I was horrified when on Sunday I realised I'd miscalculated and arranged for someone to come and paint the interior of the house (done less than two years ago) which was peeling due to the remarkable lack of talent of the previous brush waving engineer. Who later, we discovered, was not a painter at all but a wheel tapper on what used to be South African Railways.

In this home, war broke out as we tidied up for Louis Manuel, our Leonardo da Vinci of house painting.

"Why are you throwing my crutches away?" I howled at my partner.

"You haven't used them for 20 years."

"I may need them," I snapped and the crutches remained.

As often happens, my husband got totally carried away.

Out went suitcases of irreplaceable old papers, 13 used tyres, the coffee grinder with the turning handle, the antique party-line telephone, the manual tumbledrier, the singing toaster and my mother. Back in I brought them. It's not that I'm a collector or hoarder, it's just that I don't like throwing old things away that might one day be useful.

I explained this politely to my husband, who snorted.

"Listen, you're old, and I'm not giving you away," I remarked, waving a crutch not a little aggressively in the vicinity of his head.

"Why?" said my mother, always pragmatic.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, the weekend ended and yesterday morning I came down to the kitchen to discover Louis Manuel had painted my husband, mistaking him for a coat rack.

What an improvement.

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