Thirsty Thursday: Time for the Quee... wait, King's Birthday'
"If anyone should be rich and fabulous and have lots of crowns and swords and castles by being born in the right place at the right time then it should be me."
Entertaining wordsmith Sarah McCarthy writes a weekly column for The Southland Tribune called Thirsty Thursday.
THIRSTY THURSDAY 5
I love a long weekend. It is far superior to any other kind of break and I will fight anyone who disagrees with me as I feel like I am getting too nicey nicey in my dotage and want to bring back a bit of mongrel.
Long weekends beat holidays because you either have the extreme pleasure of that one extra day without a proper bra on or, if you are lucky enough to be able to pop away somewhere, there is less to pack and sort and organise than if you were going somewhere for a week. In theory, she says, while baking an actual pissing fruit cake.
Of course I am speaking out of my privilegehole here and I do remember what it was like to have to work on a long weekend, on any weekend, every Friday night unless there was a good enough reason to beg for the night off and also when the boys were small and it was just one endlessly long winter of discontent for several years with no weekends, holidays, Thirsty Thursdays or going to the toilet without an audience.
And I hope that if you are having to work this weekend there is holiday pay and time in lieu being awarded and if there isn’t then come and see me and we’ll set some buildings on fire.
See? Mongrel.
I do find it interesting that we have all so easily started saying King’s Birthday.
Every time someone says anything about it at all I wait, breathless, for them to say “Quee … oh no! It’s King isn’t it?” and then titter, embarrassed, and say “Ooh lummy I just can’t get this newfangled name into my head!” but they don’t. People just say “King’s Birthday” and smoothly move on, leaving me wondering for the thousandth time if I spend too much time making up imaginary scenarios in my head and not enough time working out how to contour my face, dusting the skirting boards or doing my actual job.
And I don’t love the monarchy really because I think that if anyone should be rich and fabulous and have lots of crowns and swords and castles by being born in the right place at the right time then it should be me, although to be fair I would behead so many people it would be a nightmare for my Communications Team and I hate to put people out.
I imagine there is a great deal of cash being flung about by tourists in England so they can watch the changing of the guards so I am mindful of their economy but possibly people just like seeing the men in the fun outfits and big hats and the horsies so we could just totally keep them and bin the rest.
Then there would be so much more cash floating about because they could put all the jewels on TradeMe and pay for teachers, nurses and school lunches for everyone and instead of having the monarch on coins and banknotes bleak rich people could pay for the privilege in every commonwealth nation and that would possibly mean the end of sausage sizzles because schools would be funded up the wazoo. Anyway, something to think about.
Also, it is super weird how Charles has the same birthday as his mum.