Sunday runday

I stand corrected! A sampler embroidered by my grandmother the better part of a century ago, dug up by my mother as evidence, undeniably shows that in the Netherlands, too, Monday and not Wednesday was the traditional day for washing.

The full list reads:

• Monday - Washing
• Tuesday - Ironing
• Wednesday - Mending
• Thursday - Market
• Friday - Scrubbing
• Saturday - Baking
• Sunday - Resting

Since my grandmother was a vicar's wife, I assign this a lot of authority. (Well, she might not have been married when she embroidered this.) On the other hand, the all-knowing internet does not confirm the Dutch version of this list, with the exception of Monday and Tuesday.

In English, on the other hand, I have found (from Little House in the Big Woods): "Wash on Monday, Iron on Tuesday, Mend on Wednesday,
Churn on Thursday, Clean on Friday, Bake on Saturday, Rest on Sunday", which comes very close indeed, except for Thursday's churning, which might have been outdated even in my grandmother's day. We must conclude that there is some international cultural heritage here.

I have vague memories of seeing this sampler hanging on the wall, though I do not now remember whether this was at my grandparents' place or at my parents'. I also vaguely recall wondering even then why all days had associated verbs except Thursday, which has to make do with a noun. This is certainly something that struck me once more seeing it again. It's amusing to speculate how long my grandmother tried to find a good verb to cover the meaning of "going to the market". "Shopping" conveys the wrong image, and "marketing" is not a word in Dutch - never mind that the English word has a different meaning altogether. Having discovered the link with the (probably older) English verse, we can now hypothesise that the market was a stopgap replacement for churning. (Would this make a nice MSc project in some remote corner of literary sciences?)

I could go on about this sampler, for instance pointing out how utterly traditional it is, and then jumping to the current uproar in the Netherlands because a large Dutch toy shop chain has brought out an ad folder in which the idea that household chores are an exclusively female department is very much confirmed. Monday is for washing, indeed. But who would be interested in that sort of humdrum stuff?

Let's rather go to the modern interpretation of the Sunday rest. About 6000 Yorkers took this to mean that they had to run for some 42 kilometers, preferably in four hours or under. I started a bit of running of my own at about 8:30: it turned out that this time slot, usually reserved for the Secret Society (runners and dog owners, remember), was invaded by groups of people converging to a spot directly bordering the university. It was not hard to add two and two, so after a jog up and down the Ouse I joined the crowds at what indeed was the start of the first-ever Old York Marathon. Not as popular yet as the New York one, still the turnout was quite good, aided a bit by the weather which was mostly sunny.

The assembled runners were collectively helped through a warm-up by a trainer looking suspiciously like one of my spinning instructors. At a certain moment, mere minutes before the start, a handful of much darker "elite runners" (in the words of the announcer) suddenly appeared in the front row: these were the Kenyans without whom no self-respecting marathon can exist - if they can't get Ethiopians, of course.

The start was at 9:30, which meant the fastest runner could be expected to arrive well before 12:00. I decided to drop the idea of a bike tour, and instead went to spectate at the finish for a bit. The Kenyans did what was expected of them and ended first, though I think there were one or two breaks in their hegemony. Other runners came in in a variety of styles: some completely focussed, others spurred on by the crowd, some still looking reasonably fresh, one threatening to stumble at every single step (he was put on a stretcher the moment he crossed the finish line). I went home after seeing the three-hour mark pass by (one women making it at exectly 2:59:59, which I'm sure made here very happy) to write a bit of blog and then - which is now - leave for the Bolshoi Ballet.