One of the side effects of being heavily pregnant is that I wake up at least twice a night to visit the little girl’s room and though this rarely elicits emotions a couple of weeks ago was a little different. At 5am the world is a quiet place and that Wednesday night was no different except that the stillness was enhanced by the most beautiful red sky and the silent drift of snow flakes settling softly on the frozen garden outside. Watching the world turn white was easing and the crisp scentless air transported me to memories of  earlier snow and all the benefits that accrued to me from it.

I grew up in the Essex suburbs but was schooled in London and the journey to school was via British Rail Great Eastern. Heavy snow meant a guaranteed extra holiday. Even if the railway was running (which was often not the case) it was a simple enough procedure to sit shivering with my sister on Platform 3 for twenty five or so minutes and then to trundle back up the stairs and call mum to tell her there were no trains. The extra day off school would then be spent making the best of the frigid weather in the garden, we built snowmen, threw ice bombs at each other and as a piece de resistance would lie prone and flap our arms up and down to create the impression of angels in the white tabula rasa.

Later in my 20’s snow was the cause of an epiphany. I was in Istanbul in December when a white blanket came down a wrapped a picturesque but grimy city in a bright white sleeve. Supposedly there to revise for accountancy exams and to get away from friends and phonecalls I spent the day on my friend’s large top floor balcony making a mini snowman and throwing snowballs at passing cars. I did no revision and by the time we came in from the cold I had made a decision that changed the course of my life. I called my boss at Shell and told him I would not be sitting the exams, I had realised I had no interest in becoming a bean keeper. The glorious day had persuaded me that there were more interesting and, ironically, more profitable ways to spend the short period of one’s youth than counting other people’s money.

Perhaps both incidents demonstrate that by nature I am a skiver, more interested in the occasional day off than in the routine and responsibility of regular work be it academic or financial. If I was working here now the ‘heavy weather’ warnings and pronouncements by the officialdom to only make ‘essential journeys’ during these latest snow falls would no doubt have led to me staying home rather that struggling to get to work. But there is a lot to be said in defence of skiving. Skiving is nothing new. In the centuries-long battle between industry and idleness, labourers have always resisted regular hours and overwork. In the 17th century the irregular working week was the norm and Monday was sacrosanct, the custom was called Saint Monday.. It was an unofficial day off and was to be spent drinking with friends. An observer writing in 1681noted; ‘The weavers, 'tis common with them to be drunk on Monday, have their head-ache on Tuesday, and their tools out of order on Wednesday. As for the shoemakers, they'll rather be hanged than not remember St Crispin on a Monday.’

With the advent of the industrial revolution strict working schedules began to be imposed on peasants who had previously worked to their own timetable. Yet according to E P Thompson  Saint Monday was still widely honoured throughout the 18th, 19th and even the 20th centuries. A contemporary moralist complained of London saddlers in 1811 that; ‘we see Saint Monday so religiously kept in this great city . . . in general followed by a Saint Tuesday also’, so absenteeism is merely the modern word for Saint Monday.

After this weeks snow you can almost gurantee that the CBİ (Confederation of British Industry) will come up with a figure for the ‘cost’ of the snow. That is to say, the number of people who took a day off. İn 2006 they estimated that absenteeism cost British industry £11.5bn. According to various surveys, the British worker takes on average eight days off sick per year and those working in the public sector call in sick more often than those in the private sector. Prison officers, civil servants, police and nurses tend to take the most days off sick around 12 or 13.

Yet even if Britain does lose £11.5bn a year to absenteeism, who cares? My lack of pity is motivated by a figure that tends not to get such widespread coverage as the CBI guilt-inducing declarations. The figure reflects the amount of unpaid overtime that the British worker puts in and is released by the Trades Union Congress. In 2006 the TUC estimated that the figure for unpaid overtime was to £23bn. Do the simple maths and deduct the money lost to sickness from the money gained through unpaid overtime and one can only conclude that in the battle between capital and labour capital makes a clean profit of £11.5bn a year. So despite the skiving employers are still getting more than their money’s worth from employees – a little St. Monday doesn’t seem such a bad thing when the two figures are compared.

We all take days off because we don't like working. Given the choice between lying in bed watching old films and dozing all day or doing six hours non-stop at a supermarket checkout for £6 an hour or ten hours staring at a screen while daylight slowly fades away and  I know which I would choose. The real problem is that most jobs rob us of our spirit and we don't like them. We only do them for the money and absenteeism is a way of reclaiming some of our own time. Skiving off is therefore a natural and justifiable reaction to an inhuman and enslaving system of work.