The Day the British Earth Stands Still: Sunday : England: The shops, bards and bookies shut down for Sabbath. The quiet is eerily reminiscent of what life used to be like in Los Angeles.

Except for weather, British Sundays are like the lazy Southern California Sundays before the 1950s, before Saturday became the main day for “leisure” and Sunday turned into the day to catch up on laundry and shopping before high-voltage Monday.

Sunday is still sleepy Sunday in Britain, with nothing to do except read about the wrangling over the purpose and function of Sunday.

“Sunday trade ruling hailed.” “Anti-Sunday trading groups to report defiant stores.” “Truce call in Sunday trading war.”

So the stories go in the United Kingdom. Mind-boggling to us ex-Californians, so used to open-every-day, almost-every-night--the consumerist’s birthright. Almost everything shuts down on the British Sunday.

In November the European Court of Justice decided that the isles could keep their Sabbath closures. Settling the appeal of a do-it-yourself garden shop chain, the court said that the British Sunday shutdown didn’t discriminate against other European Community suppliers--any more than against British suppliers.

In December members of the national shop-workers’ unions hit the sidewalks to check out stores that stayed open.

According to the Guardian, more than 2,000 prosecutions for earlier violations are outstanding. The law provides a 1,000 (about $1,600) maximum for each violation; reportedly, one firm has been fined about $75,000 so far.

The most common objection to Sunday closing showed up in our local paper: “Sunday is the only day I can do any maintenance at home.”

But how can a conscientious homeowner maintain without maintaining materials?

Our city council just slapped about $8,000 worth of fines on a nearby chain store and promised more this month. The chain said it would stay open anyhow, gambling on the outcome of its latest prosecution.

The manager of a small business in Ely, about 25 miles from here, responded: “The fact that any organization is prepared to pay hefty penalties for keeping its door open does not show that there is a demand for Sunday opening, only that it is still more profitable to do so.”

Except for “necessaries” money is not supposed to change hands on the Sabbath. Family-run “corner shops” are usually open for a few hours, because they can supply baby food; also open are caterers to the motor trade like automotive parts suppliers, thanks to the 1950 Shops Act, controversial since birth.

Southern California, elders may remember, took the opposite path around the same time. Before then, about all one could do on L.A. Sundays was see a movie, take a drive and eat out.

Those upstarts determined to revise the Shops Act now insist that the British Sunday subverts the will of the people. Charges include paternalism and an uneven, unworkable prohibition. But not an alcoholic prohibition: English pubs can open on Sundays, for much longer hours than in the past; you can buy booze at the corner shops. In a pique of rhetoric, one politician fumed that he could buy a girlie magazine on Sunday but not a Bible.

In this betting-mad land where bookie shops have created their own credit cards, there is no Sunday horse racing. In the world’s theatrical capital, there is no Sunday theater.

Public transportation is sharply reduced on Sunday. It stops altogether for three days during the Christmas holidays, when even newspapers sleep.

Reform of the Shops Act is, as the British say, “one hot jacket potato.”

Last year Margaret Thatcher’s government scuttled its own plans to open up the British Sunday. Two years earlier a similar plan had been beaten outright, and British governments hate to lose.

The same party that advocates “thrusting” entrepreneurial behavior and unbridled competition is also supposed to be conserve “British” ways. Small-town voters won’t let the Tories forget that.

Although the Keep Sunday Special movement is supported by the established church, only about 10% of the people say they go to church. Most religious needs are served by the “God slot,” a half hour of televised seasides, hills and singing. Broadcasting on British Sunday is more pastoral than solemn.

Sunday is full of newspaper reading and museum-going--including establishments devoted to steam engines, garden gnomes and flies’ kneecaps.

Sundays provide the prototypical British potterer his or her finest hours.

Sundays are full of families, getting together--willingly or not--for the obligatory roast; full of dog-walking and children-tending and what the natives call “rambling,” forays into the countryside along the disrupted public rights-of-way through “private” property.

In summer, when the light holds until 10 p.m., Sundays are a time of outdoor band concerts, cricket matches and rounders, which sure looks like baseball.

There are always cars to wash, streams to fish in, boats to exercise in, gardens to dig in and birds to observe. Then, on classic wet and chill British Sundays, there are whodunits to read, tea to sip, cakes to munch, great TV and radio to interact with and toes to toast.

So, in England, we rediscover what life used to be like in the old country, California.