Saturday Sorted Quotes

I remembered what it is I like about sex: what I like about sex is that I can lose myself in it entirely. Sex, in fact, is the most absorbing activity I have discovered in adulthood. When I was a child I used to feel this way about all sorts of things—Legos, The Jungle Book, The Hardy Boys, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Saturday morning cartoons...I could forget where I was, the time of day, who I was with. Sex is the only thing I've found like that as a grown-up, give or take the odd film: books are no longer like that once you're out of your teens, and I've certainly never found it in my work. All the horrible pre-sex self-consciousness drains out of me, and I forget where I am, the time of day...and yes, I forget who I'm with, for the time being.

When you are born and put into your crib, the whole world sticks their heads over the tops of the bars. They give you a name and they have all sorts of different ideas about you. … But your task is to become something much more unique and surprising than anyone your parents could ever imagine you to be. You have to know that the life you have is completely yours.

I loved IRON MAN: Robert Downey Jr. has been and probably will be my favourite actor for a long time…but IRON MAN, THE INCREDIBLE HULK, SUPERMAN RETURNS and all the others feel a little like Saturday morning cartoons next to the carbon black glory that is 'The Dark Knight.' Trust me, *this* is the future of this sort of thing.

There is a feeling which persists in England that making a sandwich interesting, attractive, or in any way pleasant to eat is something sinful that only foreigners do. ``Make 'em dry,'' is the instruction buried somewhere in the collective national consciousness, ``make 'em rubbery. If you have to keep the buggers fresh, do it by washing 'em once a week.'' It is by eating sandwiches in pubs on Saturday lunchtimes that the British seek to atone for whatever their national sins have been. They're not altogether clear what those sins are, and don't want to know either. Sins are not the sort of things one wants to know about. But whatever their sins are they are amply atoned for by the sandwiches they make themselves eat.

We just thought of old age as some sort of clown routine.

Bunch was always a rescue of sorts...whether from the confusion and regret of a hangover, the intolerable presence of a roommate, or just the general despair of Saturdays.

Do you write every day?' 'Oh, no. Oh, I sort of try. I don't work very hard, really. Really I'm on vacation. All the time. Or you could say I work all the time, too. It comes to the same thing.' He'd said all this before, to others; he wondered if he'd said it to her. 'It's like weekend homework. Remember? There wasn't ever a time you absolutely had to do it - there was always Saturday, then Sunday - but then there wasn't ever a time when it wasn't there to do, too.' 'How awful.' ("Novelty")

Here they were grocery shopping in Fairway on a Saturday morning, a normal married thing to do together— although, Graham could not help noticing, they were not doing it together. His wife, Audra, spent almost the whole time talking to people she knew—it was like accompanying a visiting dignitary of some sort, or maybe a presidential hopeful—while he did the normal shopping.

And a one-night stand made you feel as if you had just been invented. You were with someone who couldn’t quite believe in your existence … In longer relationships you end up having to think up all sorts of fantastic fantasies to be excited by the person. but now, the first night you are enough. Who really wanted to know themselves? Instead I could exist happily in this world of first impressions.

Pathways toward a New Shabbat Do 1. Stay at home. Spend quality time with family and real friends. 2. Celebrate with others: at the table, in the synagogue, with friends or community. 3. Study or read something that will edify, challenge, or make you grow. 4. Be alone. Take some time for yourself. Check in with yourself. Review your week. Ask yourself where you are in your life. 5. Mark the beginning and end of this sacred time by lighting candles and making kiddush on Friday night and saying havdalah on Saturday night. Don’t 6. Don’t do anything you have to do for your work life. This includes obligatory reading, homework for kids (even without writing!), unwanted social obligations, and preparing for work as well as doing your job itself. 7. Don’t spend money. Separate completely from the commercial culture that surrounds us so much. This includes doing business of all sorts. No calls to the broker, no following up on ads, no paying of bills. It can all wait. 8. Don’t use the computer. Turn off the iPhone or smartphone or whatever device has replaced it by the time you read this. Live and breathe for a day without checking messages. Declare your freedom from this new master of our minds and our time. Find the time for face-to-face conversations with people around you, without Facebook. 9. Don’t travel. Avoid especially commercial travel and places like airports, hotel check-ins, and similar depersonalizing encounters. Stay free of situations in which people are likely to tell you to “have a nice day” (Shabbat already is a nice day, thank you). 10. Don’t rely on commercial or canned video entertainment, including the TV as well as the computer screen. Discover what there is to do in life when you are not being entertained.

Bread shouldn't be some sort of bland, spongy starch that you use to push down your food. When it's done right, it's as complex as wine- the pleasantly sour flavor of well-fermented dough, the nutty quality of freshly ground wheat flour, the bitter caramel notes from the crust. Haven't you ever wondered why the Bible says Jesus is the bread of life? Bread was once worthy of that metaphor. Somehow I don't think He would like to be compared to Wonder Bread.

Last Saturday he set out to fix a screen upstairs. He went to the basement to get some nails. Downstairs he saw that the workbench was a mess, so he started organizing the workbench. Then he needed some pegboard to hang up the tools, so he jumped into the car and went to buy the pegboard. At the lumber yard he saw a sale on spray paint, so he bought a can to paint the porch railing and came home totally unaware that he hadn't gotten the pegboard, that he had never finished sorting out the work bench, and that he had started out to fix the broken screen, which we really needed fixed.

With great reluctance— sitting in the chair with Kate and doing nothing but hold her was surprisingly satisfying— he stood, lifting her in his arms as he did so, and then set her back in the chair. “This has been a delightful interlude,” he murmured, leaning down to drop a kiss on her forehead. “But I fear your mother’s early return. I shall see you Saturday morning?” She blinked. “Saturday?” “A superstition of my mother’s,” he said with a sheepish smile. “She thinks it’s bad luck for the bride and groom to see one another the day before the wedding.” “Oh.” She rose to her feet, self-consciously smoothing her dress and hair. “And do you believe it as well?” “Not at all,” he said with a snort. She nodded. “It’s very sweet of you to indulge your mother, then.” Anthony paused for a moment, well aware that most men of his reputation did not want to appear tied to apron strings. But this was Kate, and he knew that she valued devotion to family as much as he did, so he finally said, “There is little I would not do to keep my mother content.” She smiled shyly. “It is one of the things I like best about you.” He made some sort of gesture designed to change the subject, but she interrupted with, “No, it’s true. You’re far more caring a person than you’d like people to believe.” Since he wasn’t going to be able to win the argument with her— and there was little point in contradicting a woman when she was being complimentary— he put a finger to his lips and said, “Shhh. Don’t tell anyone.” And then, with one last kiss to her hand and a murmured, “Adieu,” he made his way out the door and outside. -Anthony & Kate

In this country faith is absolute and universal. The choice, if there is a choice, is made at birth. Everyone believes. For these people, God is a near neighbour. I thought of Sundays at home when I was a child, buttoned up in an uncomfortable tweed jacket and forced to go to Sunday communion. I remember mouthing the hymns without really singing, peering between my fingers at the rest of the congregation when I was supposed to be praying, twisting in my seat during the sermon, aching with impatience for the whole boring ritual to be over. I can’t remember when I last went to church. I must have been since Mary and I were married but I can’t remember when. I don’t know anyone who does go to church now. It’s extraordinary, isn’t it? I know I live amongst scientists and civil servants, and Mary’s friends are all bankers or economists, so perhaps we are not typical. You still see people coming out of church on Sunday morning, chatting on the steps, shaking hands with the vicar, as you drive past on your way to get the Sunday papers, relieved you are too old now to be told to go. But no one I know goes any more. We never talk about it. We never think about it. I cannot easily remember the words of the Lord’s Prayer. We have moved on from religion. Instead of going to church, which would never occur to us, Mary and I go to Tesco together on Sundays. At least, that is what we did when she still lived in London. We never have time to shop during the week and Saturdays are too busy. But on Sunday our local Tesco is just quiet enough to get round without being hit in the ankles all the time by other people’s shopping carts. We take our time wheeling the shopping cart around the vast cavern, goggling at the flatscreen TVs we cannot afford, occasionally tossing some minor luxury into the trolley that we can afford but not justify. I suppose shopping in Tesco on Sunday morning is in itself a sort of meditative experience: in some way a shared moment with the hundreds of other shoppers all wheeling their shopping carts, and a shared moment with Mary, come to that. Most of the people I see shopping on Sunday morning have that peaceful, dreamy expression on their faces that I know is on ours. That is our Sunday ritual. Now, I am in a different country, with a different woman by my side. But I feel as if I am in more than just a different country; I am in another world, a world where faith and prayer are instinctive and universal, where not to pray, not to be able to pray, is an affliction worse than blindness, where disconnection from God is worse than losing a limb.

The last week hadn’t been any better, come to think of it. On Monday they arrived at Gorda, just to find that the cargo of electronics he was to ship to Beowulf had been taken by another freighter for a lower fee. It took him until Wednesday before he found another cargo – which had to reach Earth by Saturday. The last straw was when his crew mutinied a day out of the Hermes system and demanded a pay increase. The union tended to call that sort of thing “collective bargaining”, not actually mutiny, but hey – the results are the same. He tended to favor the term “piracy”, but this wasn’t the high seas and out here, there were real pirates to worry about. His former crew had also wanted more time off and a better cook – at least one who knew how which end of a frying pan to hold. He was unable to comply, and so was forced to stop at Beowulf anyway. That was the last time he saw them. Fortunately for him, Weaver, Fuller and Jang opted to stay with him. Whether it was out of loyalty, or perhaps just convenience, he never knew.

BILL MURRAY, Cast Member: Gilda got married and went away. None of us saw her anymore. There was one good thing: Laraine had a party one night, a great party at her house. And I ended up being the disk jockey. She just had forty-fives, and not that many, so you really had to work the music end of it. There was a collection of like the funniest people in the world at this party. Somehow Sam Kinison sticks in my brain. The whole Monty Python group was there, most of us from the show, a lot of other funny people, and Gilda. Gilda showed up and she’d already had cancer and gone into remission and then had it again, I guess. Anyway she was slim. We hadn’t seen her in a long time. And she started doing, “I’ve got to go,” and she was just going to leave, and I was like, “Going to leave?” It felt like she was going to really leave forever. So we started carrying her around, in a way that we could only do with her. We carried her up and down the stairs, around the house, repeatedly, for a long time, until I was exhausted. Then Danny did it for a while. Then I did it again. We just kept carrying her; we did it in teams. We kept carrying her around, but like upside down, every which way—over your shoulder and under your arm, carrying her like luggage. And that went on for more than an hour—maybe an hour and a half—just carrying her around and saying, “She’s leaving! This could be it! Now come on, this could be the last time we see her. Gilda’s leaving, and remember that she was very sick—hello?” We worked all aspects of it, but it started with just, “She’s leaving, I don’t know if you’ve said good-bye to her.” And we said good-bye to the same people ten, twenty times, you know. And because these people were really funny, every person we’d drag her up to would just do like five minutes on her, with Gilda upside down in this sort of tortured position, which she absolutely loved. She was laughing so hard we could have lost her right then and there. It was just one of the best parties I’ve ever been to in my life. I’ll always remember it. It was the last time I saw her.

I know he’s had his problems in the past… “He can’t keep his hands off a liquor bottle at the best of times, and he still hasn’t accepted the loss of his wife!” “I sent him to a therapist over in Baltimore,” she continued. “He’s narrowed his habit down to a six-pack of beer on Saturdays.” “What does he get for a reward?” he asked insolently. She sighed irritably. “Nobody suits you! You don’t even like poor old lonely Senator Holden.” “Like him? Holden?” he asked, aghast. “Good God, he’s the one man in Congress I’d like to burn at the stake! I’d furnish the wood and the matches!” “You and Leta,” she said, shaking her head. “Now, listen carefully. The Lakota didn’t burn people at the stake,” she said firmly. She went on to explain who did, and how, and why. He searched her enthusiastic eyes. “You really do love Native American history, don’t you?” She nodded. “The way your ancestors lived for thousands of years was so logical. They honored the man in the tribe who was the poorest, because he gave away more than the others did. They shared everything. They gave gifts, even to the point of bankrupting themselves. They never hit a little child to discipline it. They accepted even the most blatant differences in people without condemning them.” She glanced at Tate and found him watching her. She smiled self-consciously. “I like your way better.” “Most whites never come close to understanding us, no matter how hard they try.” “I had you and Leta to teach me,” she said simply. “They were wonderful lessons that I learned, here on the reservation. I feel…at peace here. At home. I belong, even though I shouldn’t.” He nodded. “You belong,” he said, and there was a note in his deep voice that she hadn’t heard before. Unexpectedly he caught her small chin and turned her face up to his. He searched her eyes until she felt as if her heart might explode from the excitement of the way he was looking at her. His thumb whispered up to the soft bow of her mouth with its light covering of pale pink lipstick. He caressed the lower lip away from her teeth and scowled as if the feel of it made some sort of confusion in him. He looked straight into her eyes. The moment was almost intimate, and she couldn’t break it. Her lips parted and his thumb pressed against them, hard. “Now, isn’t that interesting?” he said to himself in a low, deep whisper. “Wh…what?” she stammered. His eyes were on her bare throat, where her pulse was hammering wildly. His hand moved down, and he pressed his thumb to the visible throb of the artery there. He could feel himself going taut at the unexpected reaction. It was Oklahoma all over again, when he’d promised himself he wouldn’t ever touch her again. Impulses, he told himself firmly, were stupid and sometimes dangerous. And Cecily was off limits. Period. He pulled his hand back and stood up, grateful that the loose fit of his buckskins hid his physical reaction to her. “Mother’s won a prize,” he said. His voice sounded oddly strained. He forced a nonchalant smile and turned to Cecily. She was visibly shaken. He shouldn’t have looked at her. Her reactions kindled new fires in him.

There is a feeling which persists in England that making a sandwich interesting, attractive, or in any way pleasant to eat is something sinful that only foreigners do. “Make ’em dry” is the instruction buried somewhere in the collective national consciousness, “make ’em rubbery. If you have to keep the buggers fresh, do it by washing ’em once a week.” It is by eating sandwiches in pubs at Saturday lunchtime that the British seek to atone for whatever their national sins have been. They’re not altogether clear what those sins are, and don’t want to know either. Sins are not the sort of things one wants to know about. But whatever sins there are are amply atoned for by the sandwiches they make themselves eat. If there is anything worse than the sandwiches, it is the sausages which sit next to them. Joyless tubes, full of gristle, floating in a sea of something hot and sad, stuck with a plastic pin in the shape of a chef’s hat: a memorial, one feels, for some chef who hated the world, and died, forgotten and alone among his cats on a back stair in Stepney.

You see,” resumed Laura, “I really have some grounds for supposing that my next incarnation will be in a lower organism. I shall be an animal of some kind. On the other hand, I haven’t been a bad sort in my way, so I think I may count on being a nice animal, some thing elegant and lively, with a love of fun. An otter, perhaps.” “I can’t imagine you as an otter,” said Amanda. “Well, I don’t suppose you can imagine me as an angel, if it comes to that,” said Laura. Amanda was silent. She couldn’t. “Personally I think an otter life would be rather enjoyable,” continued Laura; “salmon to eat all the year around, and the satisfaction of being able to fetch the trout in their own homes without having to wait for hours till they condescend to rise to the fly you’ve been dangling before them; and an elegant svelte figure—” “Think of the otter hounds,” interposed Amanda, “how dreadful to be hunted and harried and finally worried to death!” “Rather fun with half the neighbourhood looking on, and anyhow not worse than this Saturday-to-Tuesday business of dying by inches; and then I should go on into something else. If I had been a moderately good otter I suppose I should get back into human shape of some sort; probably something rather primitive—a little brown, unclothed Nubian boy, I should think.

ANNA •   •   • SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 2013 MORNING I drove to the gym in Northcote for my spin class this morning, then dropped into the Matches store on the way back and treated myself to a very cute Max Mara minidress (Tom will forgive me once he sees me in it). I was having a perfectly lovely morning, but as I parked the car there was some sort of commotion outside the Hipwells’ place—there are photographers there all the time now—and there she was. Again! I could hardly believe it. Rachel, barrelling past a photographer, looking rough. I’m pretty sure she’d just left Scott’s house. I didn’t even get upset. I was just astounded. And when I brought it up with Tom—calmly, matter-of-factly—he was just as baffled as I was. “I’ll get in touch with her,” he said. “I’ll find out what’s going on.” “You’ve tried that,” I said as gently as I could. “It doesn’t make any difference.” I suggested that maybe it was time to take legal advice, to look into getting a restraining order or something. “She isn’t actually harassing us, though, is she?” he said. “The phone calls have stopped, she hasn’t approached us or come to the house. Don’t worry about it, darling. I’ll sort it.” He’s right, of course, about the harassment thing. But I don’t care. There’s something up, and I’m not prepared to just ignore it. I’m tired of being told not to worry. I’m tired of being told that he’ll sort things out, that he’ll talk to her, that eventually she’ll go away. I think the time has come to take matters into my own hands. The next time I see her, I’m calling that police officer—the woman, Detective Riley. She seemed nice, sympathetic. I know Tom feels sorry for Rachel, but honestly I think it’s time I dealt with that bitch once and for all.

Strong underneath, though!’ decided Julian. ‘There’s no softness there, if you ask me. I think Emma’s got authority but it’s the best sort. It’s quiet authority . . .’ ‘Rita wasn’t exactly loud, Martin!’ Elizabeth pointed out, rather impatiently. ‘I bet Rita was very like Emma before she was elected head girl. Was she, Belinda? You must have been at Whyteleafe then.’ Belinda had been at Whyteleafe longer than the others. She had joined in the junior class. She frowned now, deep in thought. ‘Why, Elizabeth, I do believe you’re right! I remember overhearing some of the teachers say that Rita was a bit too young and as quiet as a mouse and might not be able to keep order! But they were proved wrong. Rita was nervous at the first Meeting or two. But after that she was such a success she stayed on as head girl for two years running.’ ‘There, Martin!’ said Elizabeth. ‘Lucky the teachers don’t have any say in it then, isn’t it?’ laughed Julian. ‘I think all schools should be run by the pupils, the way ours is.’ ‘What about Nora?’ asked Jenny, suddenly. ‘She wouldn’t be nervous of going on the platform.’ ‘She’d be good in some ways,’ said Belinda, her mind now made up, ‘but I don’t think she’d be as good as Emma . . .’ They discussed it further. By the end, Elizabeth felt well satisfied. Everyone seemed to agree that Thomas was the right choice for head boy. And apart from Martin, who didn’t know who he wanted, and Jenny, who still favoured Nora, everyone seemed to agree with her about Emma. Because of the way that Whyteleafe School was run, in Elizabeth’s opinion it was extremely important to get the right head boy and head girl. And she’d set her heart on Thomas and Emma. She felt that this discussion was a promising start. Then suddenly, near the end of the train journey, Belinda raised something which made Elizabeth’s scalp prickle with excitement. ‘We haven’t even talked about our own election! For a monitor to replace Susan. Now she’s going up into the third form, we’ll need someone new. We’ve got Joan, of course, but the second form always has two.’ She was looking straight at Elizabeth! ‘We all think you should be the other monitor, Elizabeth,’ explained Jenny. ‘We talked amongst ourselves at the end of last term and everyone agreed. Would you be willing to stand?’ ‘I – I—’ Elizabeth was quite lost for words. Speechless with pleasure! She had already been a monitor once and William and Rita had promised that her chance to be a monitor would surely come again. But she’d never expected it to come so soon! ‘You see, Elizabeth,’ Joan said gently, having been in on the secret, ‘everyone thinks it was very fine the way you stood down in favour of Susan last term. And that it’s only fair you should take her place now she’s going up.’ ‘Not to mention all the things you’ve done for the school. Even if we do always think of you as the Naughtiest Girl!’ laughed Kathleen. ‘We were really proud of you last term, Elizabeth. We were proud that you were in our form!’ ‘So would you be willing to stand?’ repeated Jenny. ‘Oh, yes, please!’ exclaimed Elizabeth, glancing across at Joan in delight. Their classmates wanted her to be a monitor again, with her best friend Joan! The two of them would be second form monitors together. ‘There’s nothing I’d like better!’ she added. What a wonderful surprise. What a marvellous term this was going to be! They all piled off at the station and watched their luggage being loaded on to the school coach. Julian gave Elizabeth’s back a pat. There was an amused gleam in his eyes. ‘Well, well. It looks as though the Naughtiest Girl is going to be made a monitor again. At the first Meeting. When will that be? This Saturday? Can she last that long without misbehaving?’ ‘Of course I can, Julian,’ replied Elizabeth, refusing to be amused. ‘I’m going to jolly well make certain of that!’ That, at least, was her intention.

I had long wanted to see “true” indigo, and thought that drugs might be the way to do this. So one sunny Saturday in 1964, I developed a pharmacologic launchpad consisting of a base of amphetamine (for general arousal), LSD (for hallucinogenic intensity), and a touch of cannabis (for a little added delirium). About twenty minutes after taking this, I faced a white wall and exclaimed, “I want to see indigo now—now!” And then, as if thrown by a giant paintbrush, there appeared a huge, trembling, pear-shaped blob of the purest indigo. Luminous, numinous, it filled me with rapture: It was the color of heaven, the color, I thought, which Giotto had spent a lifetime trying to get but never achieved—never achieved, perhaps, because the color of heaven is not to be seen on earth. But it had existed once, I thought—it was the color of the Paleozoic sea, the color the ocean used to be. I leaned toward it in a sort of ecstasy. And then it suddenly disappeared, leaving me with an overwhelming sense of loss and sadness that it had been snatched away. But I consoled myself: Yes, indigo exists, and it can be conjured up in the brain. For months afterward, I searched for indigo. I turned over little stones and rocks near my house, looking for it. I examined specimens of azurite in the natural history museum—but even they were infinitely far from the color I had seen. And then, in 1965, when I had moved to New York, I went to a concert in the Egyptology gallery of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the first half, a Monteverdi piece was performed, and I was utterly transported. I had taken no drugs, but I felt a glorious river of music, four hundred years long, flowing from Monteverdi’s mind into my own. In this ecstatic mood, I wandered out during the intermission and looked at the ancient Egyptian objects on display—lapis lazuli amulets, jewelry, and so forth—and I was enchanted to see glints of indigo. I thought: Thank God, it really exists! During the second half of the concert, I got a bit bored and restless, but I consoled myself, knowing that I could go out and take a “sip” of indigo afterward. It would be there, waiting for me. But when I went out to look at the gallery after the concert was finished, I could see only blue and purple and mauve and puce—no indigo. That was nearly fifty years ago, and I have never seen indigo again.

Olive,’ Mum said, stroking my fringe. ‘I need you to listen to me, and I need you to be brave.’ Opening my eyes again, I swallowed nervously. ‘What’s happened?’ ‘Your sister didn’t arrive at work today.’ Sukie was a typist for an insurance company in Clerkenwell. She said it was the dullest job ever. ‘Isn’t today Saturday, though?’ I asked. ‘She was due in to do overtime. No one’s seen her since she was with you and Cliff last night. She’s missing.’ ‘Missing?’ I didn’t understand. Mum nodded. The nurse added rather unhelpfully: ‘We’ve had casualties from all over London. It’s been chaos. All you can do is keep hoping for the best.’ It was obvious what she meant. I glanced at Mum, who always took the opposite view in any argument. But she stayed silent. Her hands, though, were trembling. ‘Missing isn’t the same as dead,’ I pointed out. Mum grimaced. ‘That’s true, and I’ve spoken to the War Office: Sukie’s name isn’t on their list of dead or injured but-’ ‘So she’s alive, then. She must be. I saw her in the street talking to a man,’ I said. ‘When she realised I’d followed her she was really furious about it.’ Mum looked at me, at the nurse, at the bump on my head. ‘Darling, you’re concussed. Don’t get overexcited now.’ ‘But you can’t think she’s dead.’ I insisted. ‘There’s no proof, is ther?’ ‘Sometimes it’s difficult to identify someone after…’ Mum faltered. I knew what she couldn’t say: sometimes if a body got blown apart there’d be nothing left to tie a name tag to. It was why we’d never buried Dad. Perhaps if there’d been a coffin and a headstone and a vicar saying nice things, it would’ve seemed more real. This felt different, though. After a big air raid the telephones were often down, letters got delayed, roads blocked. It might be a day or two before we heard from Sukie, and worried though I was, I knew she could look after herself. I wondered if it was part of Mum being ill, this painting the world black when it was grey. My head was hurting again so I lay back against the pillows. I was fed up with this stupid, horrid war. Eighteen months ago when it started, everyone said it’d be over before Christmas, but they were wrong. It was still going on, tearing great holes in people’s lives. We’d already lost Dad, and half the time these days it felt like Mum wasn’t quite here. And now Sukie – who knew where she was? I didn’t realise I was crying again until Mum touched my cheek. ‘It’s not fair,’ I said weakly. ‘War isn’t fair, I’m afraid,’ Mum replied. ‘You only have to walk through this hospital to see we’re not the only ones suffering. Though that’s just the top of the iceberg, believe me. There’s plenty worse going on in Europe.’ I remembered Sukie mentioning this too. She’d got really upset when she told me about the awful things happening to people Hitler didn’t like. She was in the kitchen chopping onions at the time so I wasn’t aware she was crying properly. ‘What sort of awful things?’ I’d asked her. ‘Food shortages, people being driven from their homes.’ Sukie took a deep breath, as if the list was really long. ‘People being attacked for no reason or sent no one knows where – Jewish people in particular. They’re made to wear yellow stars so everyone knows they’re Jews, and then barred from shops and schools and even parts of the towns where they live. It’s heartbreaking to think we can’t do anything about it.’ People threatened by soldiers. People queuing for food with stars on their coats. It was what I’d seen on last night’s newsreel at the cinema. My murky brain could just about remember those dismal scenes, and it made me even more angry. How I hated this lousy war. I didn’t know what I could do about it, a thirteen-year-old girl with a bump on her head. Yet thinking there might be something made me feel a tiny bit better.

We were a motley crowd. His Majesty’s Life Guards and Royal Horse Guards jostled along in their army trucks beside the Bedouin of the Arab Legion - Glubb’s Desert Patrol, swathed in garish robes, who raced about in light trucks armed with Lewis guns. We even embraced eight Royal Air Force armoured cars. Tough stuff, these boys. They had left Sidi Barrani in the Western Desert on Thursday and were reported in action against the Iraqi guerrillas at Rutbah on Saturday, a thousand miles away. They were all rogues, God bless them, for whom the War had come as an eleventh hour reprieve. They were the sort of men to whom legend clung like the cloak of Mephistopheles.

For the past hour, I’ve been riding with my cheek pressed tightly against his back. It feels nice and safe and comfortable. “I didn’t want to come back,” he says to me from over his shoulder. He doesn’t look at me. Something tells me he would look everywhere but at me even if we were facing one another. “Then why did you?” I lean to the side so I can see his face. He has a fine dusting of hair on his jaw and I want to touch it to see if it’s bristly or soft. I force my hands into my lap. “I figured you’d be ready to ditch me.” His eyes meet mine and hold them. “I wasn’t,” I say softly. A grin tips the corners of his lips. “Good.” “I’m really excited about Saturday. How should I dress?” “I was hoping you might wear nothing.” I freeze. Mainly because I can’t take a deep breath. Air? What’s that? “I’m just kidding!” he rushes to say, and he raises his hands to cup my face, forcing me to look into his eyes. “I was only joking. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. What you have on now will work. We’re not going anywhere fancy.” “Okay.” I draw in a breath. “I’m in the A building in the complex. Room 23. Or should I just meet you somewhere?” “I’ll pick you up.” I can’t stop smiling. I probably look like the worst sort of ninny. “I’ll see you then.” He unstraps my helmet and I get off his bike. My legs are wobbly as I stand up, and he helps me straighten myself and get steady with a hand beneath my elbow. “I had a lot of fun today.” “I did too.” He looks almost like it hurts him to admit that. “I’ll see you Saturday,” I whisper to him.

I hate this. It seems like a Sunday afternoon.” “It is Sunday afternoon,” said Thack. “I know, but … I mean, like when you were a kid, when you knew that Monday was coming, and the clock was ticking away. Saturdays were perfect, because there was Sunday, which was sort of a buffer. But Sundays just got worse and worse.” Thack

Tom Schiller recalls going in to ask Lorne about a new ending for a sketch he was working on. “Lorne would say, ‘Well, I like it for three reasons and I don’t like it for four reasons.’ And suddenly he’d whip off these four reasons, and you’d think to yourself, ‘How could he remember four reasons to talk about?’ But then you’d think that maybe he was thinking of the next one while he was saying the first one and he made it up. So you would be spellbound at the process, and you would leave sort of befuddled and enthusiastic at the same time, and sort of despondent that you had to rework your piece. That happened over and over again.

At Wal-Mart, if you have some important business problem on your mind, you should be bringing it out in the open at a Friday morning session called the merchandising meeting or at the Saturday morning meeting, so we can all try to solve it together. But while we’re doing all this work, we like to have a good time. It’s sort of a “whistle while you work” philosophy,

Many people believe that the metric system isn't so well suited to construction work. The old system is in better harmony with art and carpentry, where we operate with wholes, halves, and thirds—just think about the golden ratio. At one time, there was even an agreed model for sorting out any disagreements over the Saxon measurements. "Oh? Tell me!" "Four reputable men, who had never met before, would, on the king's orders, gather on a particular Saturday and spend the night travelling to some randomly chosen church. They would wait outside and, when Mass was over they'd pull aside the first sixteen men who came out and tell them to remove their right shoes. Then they'd take all these shoes and line them up toe to heel—in the order in which the men had emerged—and stretch a thin rope along the entire length of the shoes, cut it and bring it to the king. The rope would then be folded four times, and the resultant sixteenth part would be the new standard foot.

Finally, the simplest, easiest Everybody Sort of Wins: Tom now sleeps in on Saturdays, and I sleep in on Sundays. Everybody sort of nearly wins! For the most part!

No problem,’ said the girl. ‘If Melanie’s okay with it. Didn’t she say she’d be in tomorrow?’ ‘So she did. I forgot. Well, it can be quite busy on a Saturday. She’ll find plenty for you to do. There’s a whole lot to learn about stock rotation, and how different sorts of flowers need to be kept. But if you can’t make it, don’t worry.’ ‘No problem,’ said the girl again.

Don’t you want to know why I’m here?” Emma made herself meet his eyes. “No,” she said. “I do not.” He chuckled, unmoved, as always, by her discourtesy. “We’re going on a picnic Saturday,” he announced. Emma had had all she could take of Steven Fairfax’s audacity. She glared at him, her cheeks throbbing. “I hardly think that will be possible. You see, I’ve agreed to attend a party with Fulton on Saturday evening.” Steven sighed. “So you’re still seeing the banker, huh?” “Honestly,” Emma snapped, amazed, “you are insufferable. And I’m not going on any picnic with you, now or ever!” The silk crumpled between her clenched fingers, and she nearly stuck herself with the needle. “Perhaps I have finally made myself clear?” He smiled. “I do comprehend what you’re trying to say, Miss Emma. I just disagree with you, that’s all.” Emma hurled down the bodice of the dress she’d been sewing and bolted out of her chair. “What on earth gives you the idea that it matters, whether you and I agree or not?” His eyes glittered with firelight and humor as he watched her. “You are indeed a beauty, Miss Emma—the kind of prize a man dreams of winning. Win you I will, and when I do, I intend to have you well and often.” A tremor of mingled fury and desire coursed through Emma’s slender frame. “What will it take to make you go away and leave me alone?” she whispered, clasping her hands together as though she were praying. Steven drew her to him without moving, without extending a hand. Before she knew what was happening, Emma was standing on the hearth, looking up into his face. He touched her lips, very lightly, with his finger, sending a storm of fire all through her. “Go on the picnic with me,” he said quietly. “Then if you still want me to leave, I will.” Emma’s eyes widened. She felt hope, but also a raw sort of dismay. “You mean you’ll actually saddle your horse and leave Whitneyville entirely? You won’t even work on Big John’s ranch anymore?” “That’s right,” Steven answered hoarsely, winding an escaped tendril of Emma’s blaze-colored hair around the same finger that had caressed her lips. “If you can tell me you never want to see me again after our picnic, I’ll ride out.” Emma bit her lip and laid one hand to her heart, as though to slow its rapid beat so Steven wouldn’t hear it. “But the dance…” “You’ll be back in plenty of time for that.” Within Emma’s breast, reason and whimsy did battle. And as so often happened where this man was concerned, whimsy won. “All right,” she sighed with resolution. “But I expect you to keep your word.” She waggled a finger at him. “There’ll be no backing out after I say I never want to see you again.” He bent his head and kissed her lightly, tantalizingly, on the lips. “You have my word of honor,” he told her between soft samplings of her mouth that sent sweet shocks jolting to her nerve endings. Emma

Iwas glad Saturday was in the rearview mirror. The shop had been insane with customers, and I had zero time to check in with Gage about the investigation. Now that it was finally Sunday, and in my opinion the best day of the week, I could relax. I always had breakfast with Aunt Mimi and Nate. Sometimes, if I got lucky, she’d make her legendary Belgian waffles and a thick slab bacon. But today I was bringing over the big book, and Milo was going with me. She was going to help me work on the next spell and practice the first three I had sort of learned. I dressed quickly, called to Milo that we needed to hurry, and when he didn’t appear, I went looking for him. 

And I’m starting to wonder if I might not be one of those people like Anne Sexton or Sylvia Plath who are just better off dead, who may live in that bare, minimal sort of way for a certain number of years, may even marry, have kids, create an artistic legacy of sorts, may even be beautiful and enchanting at moments, as both of them supposedly were. But in the end, none of the good was any match for the aching, enduring, suicidal pain. Perhaps I, too, will die young and sad, a corpse with her head in the oven. Scrunched up and crying here on a Saturday night, I can see no other way.

One way I’ve managed to keep up with everything on my plate is by coming in to the office really early almost every day, even when I don’t have those Saturday numbers to look over. Four-thirty wouldn’t be all that unusual a time for me to get started down at the office. That early morning time is tremendously valuable: it’s uninterrupted time when I think and plan and sort things out. I write my letters and my articles for Wal-Mart World, our company newsletter.

down. ‘Good evening,’ he said innocently. ‘Just checking why you’re parked here at 10.30 p.m. on a Saturday night,’ the security guard said suspiciously, eyeing our baby wipes in the middle of the seats. ‘We’re just out for a drive,’ Dan replied. ‘Seeing the sights.’ ‘Round ’ere? Good luck finding them,’ he scoffed, taking a cigarette from the pocket of his shirt. ‘Not to worry, mate. Drive on. Just checking you’re not up to no good.’ He winked, slapping the side of the van as he walked back to his post. Dan started the knackered engine of the scruffy Volkswagen. ‘Let’s get all this food back to the fridge at the kitchen. We can sort through it in the morning,’ he said. His hand brushed mine as I reached over to turn the radio on, and he changed gear. ‘Sorry,’ we mumbled at the same time, but I couldn’t ignore the rush of excitement I felt when our skin touched. I averted my eyes from Dan to the window and watched his reflection in the driver’s seat as we trundled through the dark streets. ‘You survived your first dumpster diving trip then,’ Dan said, breaking the tension between us. ‘It appears so,’ I agreed. ‘I don’t suppose you’re free tomorrow afternoon, after work, are you?’ My stomach did a teeny flip.

If Chevy heard something he didn’t like in a meeting, he’d have no qualms about saying, “Gee, I don’t think that’s very good at all,” and he generally smirked when he said it. He was also a viciously effective put-down artist, the sort who could find the one thing somebody was sensitive about—a pimple on the nose, perhaps—and then kid about it, mercilessly.

11am I plan to sort out my books and record collection, which I've been trying to do since about 1959 and, of course, I never really do because then the newspapers arrive and my determination to do something constructive is wiped out by the fact it takes so long to read them. ['My Saturday', Sunday Telegraph, December 2023]

One way I’ve managed to keep up with everything on my plate is by coming in to the office really early almost every day, even when I don’t have those Saturday numbers to look over. Four-thirty wouldn’t be all that unusual a time for me to get started down at the office. That early morning time is tremendously valuable: it’s uninterrupted time when I think and plan and sort things out.

Right at the end sat the man called Saturday, the simplest and the most baffling of all. He was a short, square man with a dark, square face clean-shaven, a medical practitioner going by the name of Bull. He had that combination of savoir-faire with a sort of well-groomed coarseness which is not uncommon in young doctors. He carried his fine clothes with confidence rather than ease, and he mostly wore a set smile. There was nothing whatever odd about him, except that he wore a pair of dark, almost opaque spectacles. It may have been merely a crescendo of nervous fancy that had gone before, but those black discs were dreadful to Syme; they reminded him of half-remembered ugly tales, of some story about pennies being put on the eyes of the dead.

Easter is sort of a gruesome holiday—you don’t get to the eggs or the pastels or the new life without confronting a violent death and a silent and desolate Saturday.

Alex picked up his fork and knife and cut a piece of scallop, then forked it into his mouth with a stack of greens. The seafood was indeed perfectly cooked, tender and sweet and juicy, and the slight tang of the dressing complemented the mild flavors of the scallop. "What's in the dressing?" he asked. A crafty smile formed on her lips, a sparkle in her eye. "The dreaded fennel." "That's fennel? I like it. It's not all that licorice-y." "Not in these concentrations." Rachel took a bite, lifting her eyes to the ceiling as she considered. "I like this one. Simple. Tastes like summer to me. But it's too..." "Common?" "That's exactly it." "I don't know. I like the scallops. They're perfect. Maybe with some sort of starch. Not as light." Rachel took another bite. "Puree. Artichoke maybe, with wild mushrooms.

a western hero, as writer J. Bryan III described it in a 1939 Saturday Evening Post article, “who goes around righting wrongs against tremendous odds and then disappearing immediately.” Trendle is given the salient quote. “I see him as a sort of lone operator. He could even be a former Texas Ranger.” At this point, according to Bryan, one of the XYZ staffers cried, “There’s his name! The Lone Ranger! It’s got everything!

As they often did when I was tired, my thoughts took a funny turn. Perhaps, like the lighthouse, there were people who were meant to stand out, who were made to be noticed and make a difference. It brought me slap-bang to Sukie. All week I’d savoured doing the delivery round as a time when my brain went blissfully blank. And yet back at Queenie’s I’d looked at Sukie’s note so many times the paper was wearing thin. It had to be a secret of some sort: why else would it be written in code? I’d no idea. My sister had liked raspberry jam on toast, and left long brown hairs in our sink that blocked the plughole. She’d slept late on Saturdays. Turned the wireless up loud when a dance tune came on. But when I thought of her now, it was like there was this whole other Sukie I didn’t know, and it frightened me.

The Chav is a strange sort of creature. The male of the species is often fond of wearing sportswear, and from the number of them meandering aimlessly around the town centre on a Saturday night, you could be forgiven for thinking that you had suddenly been transported to the Olympic village.

had long wanted to see “true” indigo, and thought that drugs might be the way to do this. So one sunny Saturday in 1964, I developed a pharmacologic launchpad consisting of a base of amphetamine (for general arousal), LSD (for hallucinogenic intensity), and a touch of cannabis (for a little added delirium). About twenty minutes after taking this, I faced a white wall and exclaimed, “I want to see indigo now—now!” And then, as if thrown by a giant paintbrush, there appeared a huge, trembling, pear-shaped blob of the purest indigo. Luminous, numinous, it filled me with rapture: It was the color of heaven, the color, I thought, which Giotto had spent a lifetime trying to get but never achieved—never achieved, perhaps, because the color of heaven is not to be seen on earth. But it had existed once, I thought—it was the color of the Paleozoic sea, the color the ocean used to be. I leaned toward it in a sort of ecstasy. And then it suddenly disappeared, leaving me with an overwhelming sense of loss and sadness that it had been snatched away. But I consoled myself: Yes, indigo exists, and it can be conjured up in the brain.