This bonus bank holiday is worrying me. We’re not used to this many days off – will we cope? Using Christmas as a precedent, I predict fights in shop queues, a spike in divorce requests, dangerous swims in our sewagey seas and A&Es rammed with sporting and DIY casualties. I don’t know if it’s a Protestant work ethic thing, but British bank holidays feel terribly frenetic. We shouldn’t be overdoing it like that at the moment – we don’t have the resources. The country has all the structural and emotional integrity of a coronation quiche left out in the rain.
We need to chill, radically. Why not take inspiration from places such as my previous homes, France and Belgium, where this month is a blur of bank holidays? The first day of May is sacrosanct: on my first ever French one, my husband explained to me reverently it was the only day McDonald’s closed. France also takes Armistice Day on 8 May off and then Ascension falls on a mystery Thursday (Jesus apparently returned to heaven on a Thursday, FYI). The real miracle of that one is you can do the “pont” (bridge) – and not bother to go back to work on the Friday. Pentecost Monday is another holiday, celebrating the arrival of the Holy Spirit (yes, even in France where church and state were legally separated in 1905). When I worked in Belgium, corporate life was additionally complicated – enhanced! – by Schuman or Europe Day, celebrating the declaration that led to the formation of the EU on 9 May. It was never clear which of the European institutions might or might not be working (“not” was usually a better bet).
