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Mondays

I was vaguely amused last night by a slew of facebook status updates featuring people moaning about monday being imminent. I couldn't concur, for the last few weeks it's been my only day off. Sometimes not even then (witness intemperate outburst of rage at bank hoidays not so long ago). I'm inclined to like them as a result. Should you work in the catering industry and you're lucky enough to get two days off at the same time they tend to be Sunday/Monday or Wednesday/Thursday (Mon/Tue if your employer is an absolute swine). This is why, as Anthony Bourdain points out, your best bet for going to a restaurant is midweek, the chefs are rested, the horrors of the weekend are at the back of our minds, we're refreshed, we're eager to send you out a nice meal.

Saturday, as I may well have noted elsewhere, is amateur night.

But this is all grossly off topic, the point of this post is to eulogise Monday, the day of rest, when half the chefs in the country have their feet up. When even if you are a poor restaurant lifer with the midweek weekend, you know you're going to get a relatively easy day, go over your stock, a bit of light prep maybe.

And this is a particularly picquant day of rest for me, as it is conceivably the last one I'll have for a loooong time. I'm working cover for the next fortnight after this, so no days off, and at some point in the next 2-3 weeks Mrs Coastaltown will phone me half way through a shift, tell me to drop everything and get my arse home, and an unspecified period after that a small Coastalbaby will rock up. And that will be that.

So. Peace and quiet today it is. And in that spirit I'm going to go and have a nice sit down. Enjoy your Mondays.

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