Happy Sunday! by Dorothy Courtis

Long ago, when I was young, Sunday was a strange day. In Calvinist northern Scotland, everything was shut - except the church. And the two ice cream shops. (They were owned by Italians who were Roman Catholics and apparently did things differently so that was all right. Actually a lot more than all right, especially in the summer!)

But there were rules for us about what you could do on a Sunday. Mainly what you couldn't do. Like cut your nails. If you did, you were inviting the Devil to be in charge for the rest of the week!

We were allowed to read books and go for walks. But nothing more strenuous. I recall the local newspaper covering the scandal when one of the younger ministers in town was seen playing football with his young son on a Sunday afternoon! The shock and horror that this outrage produced was... Well, it was of its time. I wonder what those folk would make of the Sundays we find ourselves in nowadays.

I actually enjoyed the peacefulness of a traditional Scottish Sunday. The quiet walks with my older sister and the new baby sister in the pram, and later with teenage friends.

And I used to go to church. On my own. Nobody else in my family did. My Dad worked shifts at Dounreay, the nuclear power station that sat like something alien from space on the north coast, and Mum was always too busy. She had taken us to church and seen us off to Sunday School when we were very small, then basically left us to make our own choices.

Mine was to sit upstairs in the balcony in the old family pew and enjoy the quiet. And the hymns. My memory is that the minister only ever preached from the Old Testament - but that's where some of the best stories are so I don't think, as a writer, I was deprived!

And it's as a writer that I'm writing about Sundays. We need time off - to recover our strength and our energy and our inspiration. And we all probably have different ways of doing that - including both going to church and playing football! So enjoy your Sunday! It is God's gift of love to you.

Dorothy Courtis is not a bestselling author nor has she won any awards or prizes, but she plods on, writing books under her pen name of Dorothy Stewart, and occasionally blogs at dorothystewartblog.wordpress.com