When Sunday felt like Monday

My favorite episode of Roobarb is called ‘When the day wasn't coloured in’. Roobarb wakes to find that everything is grey - even Custard - and he can't work out why the day hasn't been coloured in. Then the sun comes out and the colours of everything emerge and he realizes, eventually, that the day had started in a foggy haze. I had a Roobarb moment yesterday - had a bit of a wobble - when I realised that Sunday felt like Monday and that it woz the Sun wot done it.

You know that thing that happens when there's a Bank holiday. Your head doesn't quite register it because the routines, rituals and markers that define and signpost the beginning of the week are absent for one day. The telly is different, the shops are different and people are not where they should be or doing what they should be doing. So you find yourself a day behind - all week. Tuesday becomes Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday. Appointments are missed and dates forgotten because of a leisure quirk. So yesterday felt like Monday because the Sun came out on Sunday.

Sundays are different. They feel different. Their tempo is different to any other day of the week. For some Sundays are defined by faith, family or leisure. And for others it’s the total absence of routine, obligation and commitment that defines them. And we like it that way. Not for nothing is it called the weekend. And that’s why the Sun on Sunday got it so wrong. It doesn’t work. It turned us into a seven-day operation. It removed the very important veneer of difference.

Whatever your thoughts about News of the World, it and its distinct vocabulary was one of the things that defined Sundays for us. The tone of it, look of it and the feel of it: we like a bit of muck to replace the stuff we wash off the Sunday veg. So I suspect that there were lots of disappointed punters yesterday because it turned out to be a very tepid affair indeed.

To work it needs to be more 'Sunday'. It needs to adopt the visual vocabulary of the Sunday tabloids and its defunct predecessor. If it looks rushed and a product of convenience it's because it is. The title needs to change. Why not 'Sunday' as an extension of The Sun logotype? Or even The Sun on Sunday (ignoring the obvious nonsense about the SOS acronym, because you can take the piss out of anything if you want to) because that at least would be definite. 'The Sun' with a half-arsed 'Sunday' in a peeping sun at a size that renders it almost invisible doesn't. Either way it needs work, because at the moment it's just wrong.