All About August: It's time to relax - even if you aren't taking your holidays this month. Róisín Ingle on getting away with it in August
The wicked month of August can do strange things to a person. In these last precious weeks when a back-to-school mentality is setting in and even a power nap will shortly be out of the question, a friend is trying to get in touch with his inner Spaniard by making a siesta an integral part of his work routine.
Desperate to squeeze the last drops of summer from a month that pedants insist is technically autumn, this friend of mine will enjoy a doze in a secluded spot in the office for up to two hours a day.
"The boss is away, so there's no chance I'll be caught and I really feel I need that extra bit of sleep with the good weather and the nights still being longer," he says. Sadly, the sneaky snoozer must remain anonymous as he has threatened that if I expose his identity, he'll tell the relevant authorities that my mitching method of choice during August involves retiring to the ladies to pamper myself with relaxing five-minute-facials. You wouldn't get away with it at any other time of the year.
There's something about the dying weeks of summer that lead us to briefly rebel against the constraints of work, parenthood and domestic duties so we can act like we are on holiday even if the mound of paperwork on our desks or the pile of washing in the sink, clearly indicates that we are not. Hence, the alarming number of locals strutting around Dublin wearing chiffon headscarves and clutching oversized beach bags shaped like watermelons which may come off as oh-so-chic in St Tropez, but on a sodden Talbot Street? Mon Dieu!
Today we start operating on August time. Sauntering in a little later than usual, offering lame excuses about traffic, which we know quite well nobody will believe because, with the schoolchildren and the entire Civil Service still on holidays, you can drive from, say, Greystones, Co Wicklow, to your desk in Dublin in 40 minutes without once breaking the speed limit. Breaks are longer and take place on park benches, or on tables outside your favourite café where there are always heat-lamps if the sun doesn't play ball.
Serious Augustinians will start referring to their lunch boxes as picnic baskets and organising work parties on whichever scrap of green is closest to the office. These jaunts may or may not involve the by-now rusty set of boules they hauled back from their holiday in the south of France.
Sartorially, August more than any other is dress-down month. It's a time when men wearing sandals and three-quarter-length trousers are envied/secretly ridiculed by less daring but far sweatier suited and booted colleagues. Elsewhere, sunglasses can be found perched defiantly on the heads of those who are bitter they couldn't get away this month and woe betide the co-worker who points out that, actually, it's lashing outside.
As children, this time of year meant being dragged around shops searching for second-hand school books and snow-white knee socks, a travesty considering we were very much still on our holliers. As grown-ups we take our revenge by making the most of this laziest of months, knowing that in a few short weeks all energy resources will be employed to their fullest and there will be no place to hide.
Look around. All the politicians are gone racing or fishing or anything that takes their mind off that impending back-to-work bustle. Try phoning a carpenter, brickie or plumber and you'll hear nothing but tumbleweed blowing down the receiver. For four weeks you will have to learn to make mañana your mantra when you look at that blocked drain/unplastered wall/shoddy skirting board. August is no time for home improvements or buying houses or anything that threatens to increase stress. Plenty time for all that come September.
You'll see the influence of August at the shop-counter, where the assistants stop chatting about their fortnight in Lanzarote just long enough to swipe your purchase but not to meet your eye. You'll see it at work, where normally punctual colleagues begin slipping in later and lunching for longer. If there is a television in your office, you might have already started watching the re-runs of Dallas which are being shown on RTÉ between 11 30 a.m. and 12.30 p.m. Then it's time for an early lunch, spent browsing the kind of trashy magazines you would never normally dare be seen reading at work and by the time you get back, if you are as cheeky and enterprising as my friend, you might even find time for a snooze.
This is the month when enterprising television bosses are spoiling us with the European première of the, sob, final season of Sex and the City. This is a case of perfect timing because watching Carrie Bradshaw and Co is a bit like taking a holiday where for half an hour you get to imagine what life would be like if only you could afford to walk in their Jimmy Choos. When you think about it, it's a wonder anything gets done at all this month.
In fact, excuse me while I go paint my nails and mix the perfect Cosmopolitan. So much time, so little to do.
