Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Labouring

It had been my original intention to post a wryly ironic comment about having to labour on this Labour Day holiday. But I changed my mind, for two reasons.

The first of these is that my labour involved activities of a dramatic nature and, tiring as these were, there’s something that isn’t really work in the usual sense about trying to make something that works on stage. And it helps that the players do all the real work, which is a way of playing after all.

And then I saw the figures for people out of work in Europe and America at this time, and read about recent suicides related to being in this state in economically wounded Greece. Suddenly light irony didn’t seem such a good idea. I first got a holiday job when I was fifteen and I’ve never been out of work at a time when I needed it since then. So, just for now, I’m celebrating with gratitude all those years of work.

1 comment:

Trebuchet said...

Same here. Was about to grouse about working 4 hours on a public holiday. And then remembered what an old mentor told me once: "Some day, people won't want you to work and then you'll regret not working when you were young."