If traditional bank holidays aren’t for you, perhaps these alternatives would be a welcome addition
There is plenty about modern life to cause celebration and aggravation in equal measure. Thankfully, old hand Christopher Howse and young gun Guy Kelly are here to explore the way we live now...
I don’t know how it is, since I think Philip Larkin a good poet (though of course a bad man), but I had never read The Whitsun Weddings. I have now. Indeed I’ve heard the author read it in a voice like a gent’s, with ‘lane’ for ‘line’, ‘heppy’ for ‘happy’, and a general tone like Michael Berkeley’s on Private Passions.
The occasion of the poem is a slow, hot railway journey across England. The narrator doesn’t quite travel first class, but like Betjeman’s ‘bath salts and inexpensive scent’, Larkin speaks of ‘nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes’.
As I listened, I wondered about younger readers who have never taken a steam train from Hull to London (or even to Loughborough, the journey in 1956 that provoked the poem). They would keep thinking: ‘What do you mean, “All windows down, all cushions hot”?’ ‘What do you mean, “the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth”?’ ‘What do you mean, “porters larking with the mails”?’ The iceberg beneath such questions is what Larkin meant by Whitsun.
In the olden days when honeymoon couples caught trains, there used to be a bank holiday Monday after Pentecost Sunday, or Whitsun, as Larkin called the whole weekend. Surprisingly the state even now allows us other religious holidays (Good Friday, Christmas). Scotland, made of sterner stuff, did not declare Christmas a bank holiday till 1958, when Larkin had already spread his great twill-swathed bottom on the reeking carriage-cloth. Now May has two bank holidays: one vaguely tied to the workers of the world uniting and the other celebrating spring, which is pretty well over by the end of the month.
Again, Larkin’s journey really happened at an August bank holiday weekend, which in his day fell at the beginning of that thundery month. But why do we all still have to take bank holidays at once and sit in hot-cushioned traffic jams? Banks are hard to find open any day; shops seldom close, with workers stacking shelves on Sunday or on Friday when some want to be at mosque.
Sir John Lubbock introduced bank holidays in 1871. We’ve had enough of the experiment, thanks.
A lovely tradition we have in this country occurs in August. For one day a year, when the newspapers are quiet and the evenings are long, the TUC will disinter calls for there to be several more public holidays. (The Japanese get 17.) And every year, the government replies: lol, no.
But the more the merrier, I say. So let’s consider some additions, should the next government decide to give us a rest.
1. The Monday after that one Sunday night in the year you accidentally treat like a Saturday and get horribly drunk on
You get one – only one – of these, to use as and when you choose. When your boss calls to ask you where you are, you have to cut them off by saying ‘BANK!’ in the manner of a Weakest Link contestant, otherwise it doesn’t count.
2. The first actually hot day of the year
The issue with the current system is that it’s always raining on bank holiday Monday, while the first actually hot day is usually some godforsaken Tuesday full of sweaty meetings. We can remedy this with a floating date triggered as soon as the Met Office gives the thumbs up.
3. The first proper snow day of the year
Same as above, only the opposite.
4. Put Your Kids to Work Day
You’ve surely seen how much better Junior Bake Off is than the regular version. Watching kids try and do adult stuff is funny. So for one day a year – let’s say the third Monday in October – it should be mandatory for all parents to have their children do their job for them. Anyone childless can have the day off. (This will, on reflection, be difficult in the arts, media, politics, or Royal family, where people’s children already do the same jobs as them.)
5. Little Treat Monday
‘Ohhhh the economy suffers so much,’ whines the anti-bank holiday crowd. Well, we can get around that with Little Treat Monday – a new holiday on a useful date (maybe the day after the Traitors finale), when we are all legally required to buy ourselves a little treat. Minimum spend: £10. Morale up, economy boosted.
Good. Now who do I send my ideas to?
