Boxing Day calm...

Ah, Boxing Day...

Day of relaxation, day of doing nothing after Christmas Day, day of sport, day of hunting foxes, day of sales in the stores...

What do you mean, Boxing Day ?

Boxing Day in the British Isles is the day after Christmas Day and is taken as a public holiday, it has it roots in serfdom and the middle ages when all of us peasants would take boxes to our lords and masters place of residence for the placing of favors therein - our lord and master would give us his cast-offs and a few coins as a "christmas box", yes that really is the origin of the name.

Nowadays its traditionally the day when sporting fixtures take place and in my sport of choice, rugby league, it was always a competitive game against one of our local rivals, and Headingley was always packed to the rafters.

Rugby League is played in the summer now though and so the Boxing Day fixture is a "friendly" game, or its as friendly as rugby can be played, unfortunately the non-competitive nature of todays fixture means that with only seven more weeks to go to the start of the season few of the first team players will be risked and the crowd who pay full price for the fixture will be treated to a second string teamsheet playing without effort or cause - that crowd won't include me.

I actually did go last year with the intention of paying to go into the ground, met up with some friends in a bar outside but when kickoff time came around we'd just got another round in, seemed like a shame to waste the beer so we decided to go in at half time, half time came and we'd just got another round in, so we missed the game but had a good time in a bar outside - I can't be arsed doing that again today - I want to paint today.

The two paintings that I did for christmas presents for friends were received well and today I am inspired to do another, a coastal scene, need to build up some stock to put on the gallery web site where my page needs desperately updating before they chuck me off for not using it regularly enough.

A long, lazy day beckons ...