h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've never been able to shake off that dreary, bleak, awful Sunday late afternoon/early evening feeling of childhood.

That time of the week when the only things happening on television were Going For a Song and a classic serial (another Dickens adaptation, or maybe The Water Babies... again), followed by the God Slot (probably with David Kossoff).

There was a delicious () tea of boiled ham (or possibly tongue), limp lettuce, a few tomatoes, some sliced cucumber, and salad cream. Maybe some Jacob's Cream Crackers and a bit of cheddar. Tinned fruit and single cream for afters.

The choice of entertainment on the wireless was either Pick of the Pops or Down Your Way.

The shops were closed and had been all day except for the newsagent, who shut at 3pm (where else were you going to buy that box of choccies while on your way over to see Gran?).

There was no sport. All the footie happened on Saturday and the cricket Sunday League hadn't been invented yet, nor was there any Sunday play in test matches.

The pubs would have shut at 2pm and they wouldn't open again until 7 o'clock (not that that was likely to matter to an eight-year-old kid, particularly as kids still weren't allowed in pubs then... oh, what halcyon days those were for the beer drinker).

The cinemas were also shut, until the 7pm showing of the new release. That's right, the film week started on Sunday evening, when everyone was either at church, coming back from Granny's or watching Sunday Night at the London Palladium. There probably wouldn't have been a 10pm show.

It could be worse. You might have had to visit the relatives and put on your Sunday clobber and your best behaviour.

Despite being in a place now where there's no such thing as a God Slot, there are 400 channels on television (not that I have one), a full panoply of sport is to be had, the bars, cinemas, restaurants and shops are all stiff with punters and doing a brisk trade; although I have at my fingertips more films than I can shake a lava lamp at and there are no relatives to visit, no parents telling me I can't go out because it's Sunday, certainly no tongue, limp lettuce, or salad cream for tea (or fruit cocktail), Sunday between 5pm and 7pm still feels as grim as it did 50 years and 5,000 miles ago, and it takes a superhuman feat of will to dig up the motivation to do anything.

It's the main reason I've enjoyed Monday mornings so much all down the years.

in the 70s when I was still at primary school sometimes I got up early and put the TV on to find that yoga bloke and the two women doing weird contortions. Followed by the endless, endless endlessssss series The Great War which we watched if my dad was in the room otherwise we played with matchbox cars.

We pretty much used to have a roast every sunday, either beef, pork or chicken - occasionally venison or pheasant depending on if my dad had been invited to a shooting party, or one of his friends had and got very lucky - almost never lamb because my mum loathes fatty meat. There was ALWAYS Yorkshire pudding (served first, with the main and if there was any left, for tea with jam) and usually 2 types of potatoes and 2 types of veg. Dessert was usually lemon meringue pie, or a block of Wall's ice-cream divided between the four of us with tinned peaches or other tinned fruit.

Tea was usually a sandwich of leftovers.

Often my dad would take the two of us out for a walk in the woods before lunch (he helped my mum prep all the veg etc before we went, a very modern chap, my dad) and he'd always have some chocolate or "soldier" sweets in his pockets (the chocolate was Cadbury Tiffin, only available in ration packs and the sweets were waxed paper wrapped boiled sweets that came in the tins with the chocolate).

In the afternoon we usually played board games, Risk! being a particular favourite but also a game called Mine a Million which nobody else I know has heard of. We'd usually also all have a book on the go so there would be reading, and often there was a cowboy film to watch.

After tea we watched the Dickens (or Bronte or whatever it was) - my favourite was The Last of the Mohicans.

Then it was shoe cleaning, getting school uniforms and stuff ready for school for the next week, bath, hair washing and bed.

Boarding school was different...

Ah yes - Sunday afternoons.

Lining the shoes up on the coal bunker and polishing them all.

I would often go to my friend's house on a Sunday afternoon, (reached across a field) where we would play the piano to each other, listen to the latest (reel-to-reel) recording we'd made of "I'm sorry I'll Read That Again", or tickle her big brother.

All grandmothers too far removed to visit or be visited by, but friends would come round and play croquet for hours (we had a huge manicured lawn set up for it and kept strictly to the rules).

I know that Sunday afternoon feeling of my youth, too - for me I knew it was a long day if I ended up watching the Clothes Show... Mostly I had to do my homework or found some good games to play, but sometimes there wasn't anything else on...

These days I avoid that feeling, though - I either find somewhere good to spend the afternoon, or work/play on my computer, so the afternoon is never quite that sparse...

I never played Mine a Million myself, but the game is legendary in our house as my parents used to play it every New Year with their friends