I didn’t know how much I needed work until I lost it. But now I’ve learned to love Mondays again | Adrian Chiles

2026-03-18 - 18:19

After years of scrabbling about for jobs, I’m happy I have the right work/leisure balance: four days on, three days off I do like Mondays. I never used to – who does? – but just recently I’ve found a way. It’s been quite a journey. School Mondays were bloody awful. I can still feel the abrasion, mental and physical, of the school uniform. It was always freshly laundered on a Monday, something I not only took for granted but also disliked. Urgh, the brutal stiffness of the material after the softness of the weekend. Misery. For a year of my life, and only a year, I did proper work, for my dad’s scaffolding company. God, the Monday mood was terrible. For me, the edge was taken off by the knowledge that this was but a gap year, not my full-time life. My workmates didn’t have the comfort of this endpoint. Handsworth, midwinter, dark, freezing and wet with a week’s worth of scaffolding to erect and dismantle. Despondence reigned. Continue reading...