Alan Sillitoe’s highly regarded novel of 1958, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, is structured around the daily and weekly work and leisure rhythms of Nottingham, one of England’s leading manufacturing towns. To the novel’s readers these would have seemed normal and everyday:

He had often heard Friday described as Black Friday…and wondered why this should be. For Friday, being payday, was a good day, ‘black’ would be more fitting if applied to Monday. Black Monday…because the big grind was starting all over again.