Early spring is the best time of year for Fridays. The sun starts breaking through the bedroom window around 6.30 in the morning, and if you are lucky like me and have a east facing room you get awoken by the gradual brightening of the room and the first sounds of people moving in the street.
Finding the energy to actually get out of bed depends on a number of factors. First of all, the level of hunger is a critical issue. Friday is pancake day; the house I share with seven other colleagues employs the best chef in Kabul, who makes the world�s best pancakes on a Friday before taking the rest of the day off. There is no better way to start a sunny Friday than orange juice, coffee, cigarette and World Service in the background, sitting on the patio knowing that there is no reason to do any work at all for the next 24 hours.
If hunger is not an issue, then the next temptation is to stay in bed. Slowly, technology is improving and the latest addition to our entertainment options is South African satellite television and radio. So we can now listen to high quality BBC and music channels without having to get up every five minutes to shift the radio antennae around to minimize the crackling. There is something strangely comforting about lying in bed, listening to the sounds of London keeping us informed of what is happening around the globe.
The office is a short distance from where I live, and so if I am going to pass by the office on a Friday, it means a quick walk through the park. On a Friday, Shahr-i-Naw Park � once one of the main attractions of the city � is full of kids on their bicycles, or playing football or volleyball. Groups of men lie on the (albeit parched) grass and listen to transistor radios. In the summer, the huge fir trees provide a cool shade, and walking through the park really does provide a few moments of peace and calm before facing the barrage of emails that brings you back in touch with reality.
In the summer months, there is nothing quite like lying in the garden with a good book. Kabul urban gardens are beautiful, usually full of rose bushes which flower throughout the summer months. Security being such a concern, our house has high boundary walls so there is complete privacy (unless the kids from next door climb on their roof to better fly their kites) so sunbathing is never a problem. For those with more energy levels than me, there is always the option of taking a long walk up on to one of the surrounding hills. The really mad ones even go jogging there in the mornings, although safety rules dictate that you have to carry a handheld radio with you ... which I always think would cramp the real fitness fanatic's style. I am more than happy with my book, the roses and the sunshine.
Friday is also shopping day. There are a number of supermarkets now open in the famous Flower Street, where for hard dollars you can buy pretty much anything you want in the way of western foods. But you need to have deep pockets; a trip last week for coffee, four packets chocolate biscuits, two packets of chips, one carton of Camel Lights and a few packs of milk cost US$50. Ouch. Even worse is the adjacent Chicken Street, which is the Kabul tourist trap. Here you can buy everything from carpets to jewellery to muskets to �antiques� (most of which were made in factories in Pakistan a few months ago) to classy prayer mats embroidered with pictures of F-15s and the words �Thank you America for our freedom�. The military tend to be the main purchasers. The humanitarian workers look upon such items as beneath contempt. We just buy checkered scarves and try to look �local�. The shopkeepers love us all equally. If shopping is too much like hard work, you can always take the "newbies" tour of the city, especially to the west of Kabul, which was obliterated during the ongoing Soviet, Mujahadeen and Taliban power struggles over the last twenty years.
Friday evenings are often movie nights; every two months we get a few days �rest and recuperation� in Dubai where one of the main tasks is to stock up on DVDs. Trying to find something that accommodates the tastes of every one in the house is not easy � those who shared digs as students will understand how we live. However, with a little compromise we have ended up with a large stock of movies, plus plenty of pirated copies from Pakistan which are watchable if you don�t mind the occasional head appearing on the screen as someone in the cinema audience stands up. Communal living reaches new heights when seven people sprawl on a pile of cushions with plates of snack food watching some terrible film, before the argument breaks out about whose turn it is to go and make tea.
And then to bed, usually realising that nobody has really achieved anything at all, but at least not much work has been done either. Saturday marks the start of another long week. Friday is that little oasis of serenity which we all look forward to for six days, but somehow never seem to profit from as much as we should.