Saturday sentiments

SATURDAY. The best day of the week. The day after work. The day after school. The day before Sunday. The beginning of two days off. The day for a lie-in. The best day of the week. Of course, they always did their damnedest not to make it so (by 'they' I mean either your parents, your school or the BBC).

Saturdays always meant being dragged round town when you were a kid. It felt a real bind at the time, but it was really grounding for when you were a teenager. You got to check out all the places to hang out – slot-machine arcades, bookshops, cafes, record shops, pubs. Places you could file away, store and remember again when you needed them.

School tried to ruin your Saturdays by arranging sporting fixtures, such as football and rugby matches. With your schoolmates there and a couple of teachers thrown in, shouting at you from the sidelines, this just felt like a sixth school day.

And the BBC tried to ruin your Saturday lie-ins by giving Noel Edmonds his own show. Multi-Coloured Swap Shop was good for about two weeks, then the novelty wore off quicker than a Christmas cracker magic fish.

It was so staid and unexciting. Moribund and studio bound. There's only so much time you can devote of your short, short life to staring at a man with a beard and loud shirts (ask my wife).

And I never understood the swapping aspect of it, either. The way I saw it, it went like this.

Gary in Cheadle Hulme had a Ker-Plunk and he wanted an Action Man helicopter. Brian in East Dulwich had an Action Man helicopter, but he wanted a Ker-Plunk and a Buckaroo.

There was a team of telephonists working flat out behind the scenes, trying to make Gary and Brian's wishes come true.

Looking back, this was like a medieval form of eBay. And just as iffy.

What if Gary sent Brian his Ker-plunk and his sister's Buckaroo and Brian had used a fake address – say an empty shop on East Dulwich high street. He wouldn't have to send Gary his Action Man helicopter, would he? He could have got away with it.

I believe there's a string of heartbroken people in their 40s who were ripped off by Swap Shop's shoddy follow-up service. That must have really ruined their Saturdays. I'm glad I only watched it for two weeks.

And speaking of disappointments ... do you remember your first-ever real girlfriend/boyfriend? You fell for them hard. They were beautiful. Everything they did seemed to be elegant. Everything they said seemed to be witty or intelligent. You looked forward to going to school just so you could be with them.

Then, miraculously, your voicebox somehow managed to vibrate that hardest of sentences: 'Would you go out with me?' And even more miraculously, they said yes.

The first week or so was heaven. You hung around together every break time. You did silly things. You swapped notes for each other to read during double maths. You called for her before school and you rode the bus together. You walked her home afterwards.

You were bathed in a warm, sunny glow.

Every night you phoned her and you didn't stop talking until your mum reminded you about the phone bill.

Then, gradually, you seemed to be thinking and talking more about them than actually seeing them. When you went to call for them in the mornings, they had already set off or were still not ready and they'd 'see you there'.

The notes stopped. They sat with other people during break times. They began talking rubbish and what they said wasn't funny anymore but a bit cruel. You walked home alone after school.

You felt foolish for ever believing it would work between you.

And this is exactly the same with British summertime.

Ooh, great, you think in spring, it'll soon be summer. Then it comes. It makes you do silly things. You put on silly hats and rub unguents into your body.

You look forward to waking up every morning just to be warm and bathed in a warm, sunny glow.

But just like that first girlfriend/boyfriend, the novelty wears off. You seem to be thinking and talking more about sunny days than there are actually sunny days.

It isn't really sunny at all. In fact, there's the probability of intermittent showers becoming heavier throughout the day.

Your clothing is suddenly thin and inappropriate. You feel foolish for ever believing that summer was truly going to arrive.

And in some long, convoluted, tortuously drawn-out metaphoric way, that's why autumn and Saturdays go together like chips and vinegar.

There's no disappointment because the weather can't spoil it.

You can't get up early in the morning because it's darker, so even Jesus wants you to have a lie-in.

The world turns into tunnels. The garden fills up with leaves. Gold, orange and red all over the overgrown lawn that you cut just before your last ruined barbecue. Which was on a Saturday in summer. And it rained.

Today it's raining because it's autumn. So it makes perfect sense.

Now cooking on a Saturday means stews and boiled potatoes in Pyrex dishes smeared with butter. Steaks in a pan as fat and red as bibles. It means carrots and peas and broccoli boiling up clouds of steam from the saucepan while the radio talks to itself.

Saturdays in autumn are made for windows filled with rain and stuck with leaves. Too-bright lights in the kitchen and the results service on the telly.

As kids, even those of us not into football used to lay on the rug in front of the gas fire, close our eyes and try to guess the scores.

If the broadcaster said 'Leeds 2...' and kept his voice level, you knew that Manchester United had also scored 2.

If he went, 'Bradford City 1...' and then went down, you knew that Huddersfield Town was nil. If he went up after 'Middlesboro United 1...' then QPR could have been anything from two to five. If a team had scored as high as five, the broadcaster had a little delighted trill in his voice when he said the number, as if he couldn't believe it.

Match postponed and late kick-off were always hard to gauge and for the former I always felt sorry for the fans and imagined them walking home in their stripy scarves with their heads bowed down, their rattles silent. And for the latter I always felt sorry for the teams because they had missed out being mentioned on telly.

Autumn Sundays are full of exotic names like Partick Thistle, Queen of the South and Hamilton Academicals.

Make the most of today. It's Sunday tomorrow and Jesus doesn't really want you to have a lie-in.

Then it's Monday and more importantly, the man who pays you your wages doesn't really want you to have a lie-in either.

And just think, if you hate autumn, you might as well be at work, eh?