My favourite day of the week?

What is your favourite day of the week?  Is it Friday, like a couple of good friends of mine, who get their last working day of the week underway by bopping with their morning brew to McFly?  Is it Saturday, with long afternoons in the pub putting the world to rights?  Or Sunday, starting with a late, leisurely breakfast?

Can anybody guess the favourite day of the week for a traveller?  Here’s a clue, it’s not one to be found on a conventional Gregorian calendar.  When you are travelling long term, why would a Thursday be any different to a Tuesday, or a Sunday any better than a Wednesday.  The significance of days disappears and you just live.  Live for whatever moment you are in.  I guess this is where the quote, “forever is composed of lots of little now’s” comes from.

So, what marks a day out as being different?  Laundry day.  There.  As simple as that.  Not pay day.  Not the weekend.  But laundry day.  The day that you get to smell fresh clothes again.  The t-shirt you have basically lived in.  For the briefest of times, it’s like new all over.  You don’t own many clothes as a traveller.  Where would you carry them all?  So each item gets recycled a lot more that you would at home.  A lot more.  It does make you realize how little you need.  There is a sense of liberation.  Being set free from the shackles of consumerism.  So, on laundry day, it’s like the first day you set out from home.  New bag, packed with clean, fresh smelling clothes. 

This is the other perspective that travel gives you.  Not just immersing yourself and learning about new cultures.  Not solely making new friends in foreign climes.  But how to take the pleasure and see the beauty in the little things life gives us.  Like clothes smelling of lavender.

How many of you have laundry day as your favourite day?