Mondays, I don’t mind Mondays. It is the start of a new week, the chance to renew and begin again. Sure on Monday morning, you still have the weekend hangover and for some souls Sunday through Monday is a sleepless night, but I like Monday, especially at the canteen at work. Monday lunch is steak and chips, even if the meat is as hard as shoe leather and still bares the traces of the week before, you know at least that you will get fresh fries, that will then be refried throughout the week until Friday when the fries are too old and the oil is unfit for purpose.

For some, Monday begins on Sunday afternoon – all those who work far from home and have to “hit the road”a a reasonable hour on Sunday to be at the right time and in the right place for Monday morning.

I used to call it the “Heartbreak Express,” all those years ago when I worked in Paris during the week and returned home every weekend to be with the love of my life in small town France. The 6pm Paris train from my provincial station,  would whisk me away from a weekend of good food and good sex, back to the capital, to sleep on a mattress on a floor at a friend’s house, so I could labour all week until the end of the week to pay the train fare home back to my fair lady.

On this first day of the week, I have a thought for all those who are working far from their homes to earn a crust for those honeys where they never live. The nation’s teachers and civil servants who have been sent far and wide to work in places they hate; the nation’s errant plumbers, decorators, electricians and artisans who spend their time criss crossing this land in white vans, living in cheap hotels and working far from home and family for that home and those families that they never see.

A pleasant and happy week to all you refugees.