THE PROBLEM WITH SATURDAYS

I don't like Saturdays. There! It's said; I said it.

Sorry if you find that a bit sacrilegious. After all, a lot of people look forward to the weekend with misty-eyed hope and longing. From the first coffee-soaked blur of a Monday morning to the weary triumph of 4:30pm on a Friday afternoon, the prospect of the end of the week glimmers and grows like the shimmering freedom at the end of the dreary tunnel.

Here's my beef: I don't talk to anyone on Saturdays. Mostly I just wander around shops (Stockholmhaven, for example) getting depressed about how disorganised my kitchen is while I look for shelving units that are 11cm deep.

Either that or I listen to the radio, put some washing on and do the washing up. There are things I need to do, after all. It hardly seems like the thing to long for at the end of the week.

Oh and it isn't anyone's fault! I do understand that; Saturdays are family days and travelling days and shopping days and football days and all the rest of it. I get it. I guess I'm just saying that living alone is loneliest on days that stretch out in silence, from first light to weary end.

What I need I think, is some plan and some structure. Perhaps I could do some voluntary work, or go out of my way to find people to hang out with, chat to and do life together with, on these miserably lonely Saturdays.

At the moment I get to the end of it, feeling tired and a bit like I've wasted half the weekend. And then Sunday blinks into view.

If being an introvert means you derive energy from being alone, and being an extrovert means you thrive on the energy of people around you, then weekends dissect the difference in me like a sharp knife.

Sundays are a whirlwind of people, conversation, church, family, church meetings, playing in worship, playing with the Niblings and answering every difficult question that my Mum and my sisters can think of about my health, my relationships, my house and my job.

Perhaps I should make the most of my Saturday solitude. I should definitely stop wandering hopelessly around Stockholmhaven anyway.