Is there never an age when you grow out of 'the night before' syndrome? It starts at school with the dreaded Sunday night ... the night before the Monday when you haven't done your homework. Time goes all elastic and Einsteiny when you least want it to. It's all endlessly spread before you on the Friday and then all bunched up on Sunday.
My very first job was in a bank in Whakatane, New Zealand. On Friday nights the bank stayed open until 10.00pm which was precisely the time the bars shut. You can imagine my desperation - keen as mustard for Friday night fun but thwarted at every whiff and woo. So, in my tea break at 8.00pm I had a Kiwi cocktail called "horse's neck" - heady concoction of orange juice and lighter fuel to perk me up.
It hit the back of my throat and exploded through my eyeballs leaving me speechless and momentarily unconscious. Back at the till I began to sink into melancholy. "How come some people have lots of money and other people have tiny little accounts?" An old lady came in and asked to withdraw money and she didn't have much in her account so I slipped her an extra 10 dollars ... The bank could afford it, my till was bulging with notes. Well, it was at the beginning of the evening...
I spent Friday night in a rapture. I had given something back to the community. The weekend spread out before me. But then the elasticy Einsteiny thing happened. Sunday came and I'd no sooner eaten my breakfast then the light started going grey and a sort of green fog came under the door. I had entered the twilight world of the night before.
The other inevitability about the night before is that it ends and becomes the day of reckoning. The reality was much worse that my wild imaginings. I had to stay on at the bank and pay my wages back until I had paid off my debt and, even worse, I had to be forgiven by the manager in front of all the staff and given a second chance. My only ray of hope had been that I might be extradited back to England...
