Let's celebrate the weekend!

The weekend is almost upon us and I am delighted. There's nothing like enduring the working week to make Friday seem like a cause for celebration. These days, we believe that a weekend of rest and play is our God given right, but this was not always the case.

The idea of leisure time (yes, that's right, leisure time is an 'idea'. As a member of the generation who believe in career breaks and yearlong round-the-world-trips, I can barely get my head around this) seems to have originated in Victorian England, near the end of the Industrial Revolution. In the early days, weekends were a brief one-day affair and given that factory workers often worked up to 18 hours a day, 6 days a week, my suspicion is that rather than 'going on a mad one' on Saturday and spending Sunday nursing hangovers, playing football and having brunch with friends, this one-day was probably given over to household chores and sleep.

As the working class gained more power and organised themselves they successfully fought to have the weekend extended to Saturday and Sunday. With the development of railways, workers began to travel during their time off work and to enjoy the sights and sounds of new areas and even (imagine the excitement when it initially became possible) the seaside.

With the development of leisure time, public parks were created for recreation and relaxation. In fact, the growth of leisure time has been one of the most important factors in the development of the society that we experience today and of the most common lifestyle aspirations. Without leisure time there would be no professional sports, the word hobby might only apply to the pursuits of the wealthiest people in society, the time that we would spend with loved ones would be severely limited, spas would be empty, hotels would be few in number and the word brunch would be banished from common usage. And who would we be without time off work? After all, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy and Jill a very dreary little lady.

So, as I set into the first true weekend that I've been in a position to enjoy for quite some time, I will try to remember that far from being short, my weekend will be twice as long as the weekend enjoyed by workers during the Industrial Revolution. However, I'm sure that, on Sunday evening, when I am cursing what Monday brings, I won't care how long (or little) my ancestors partied for, or how much workers rights have improved since then.