What does the future hold for July fortnight?
TRADITION IS FADING, BUT REMAINS IN SCHOOL HOLS
DOWN your tools, step away from your desk, and pack your bags – we’re going on a July fortnight.
This tradition is slowly fading, but it was a part of life in the county for decades.
At the start of July every year, factories shut and families flooded out of Leicestershire by road and rail in their thousands to enjoy some time off.
Schools, offices and other businesses followed suit and the Leicester Industrial Holiday had begun.
Other places did it, too. Stokeon-Trent’s Potters’ Holidays saw workers flooding to resorts in Wales and the North.
Many Leicestershire families went to British resorts, as air travel had yet to become affordable for most.
Lincolnshire next door had Skegness and Mablethorpe with their resorts and wide open sands, and trains and buses were packed to the brim.
When the 70s rolled around, the international market caught up, and adverts bombarded people with the prospect of new and exciting destinations, where sunshine was more or less guaranteed. The Leicester Chronicle ran a competition to go to Salonika in Greece.
Ferries would take people to France and planes and boats went to modern-day Croatia.
Great times for the kids – less so for the wives.
Val’s View on the Holidays in The Chronicle in 1977 asked: “Is there a husband alive who can do his own packing without having his wife as washerwoman, ironer, airer, finder, selector, and folder of his seaside garb?
“Only once did I leave my husband to get on with his own packing, and we had to turn back home after travelling 50 miles because he’d brought with him only one pair of trousers, which he happened to be wearing at the time.”
Life went on in the cities and towns in everyone’s absence, of course.
Some teens might have got their first jobs doing temporary work at places that did not fully shut, such as shops or distributors.
In the 90s, some schools argued to bin off the July fortnight, with one in Loughborough saying actual holidays at this time “weren’t commonplace” any more.
This would let them even out the different term times and make life easier for teachers and administrators.
Others cited the advantages of cheaper holidays before the prices rose when the rest of the country was off.
The fortnight, it turned out, was still a big part of life in the 90s.
The county council gave extra time on consultations for new homes around Charnwood on account of the fortnight, and there was a huge amount of confusion in 1997 when education chiefs tried to change school dates.
The tradition has been under threat in the new millennium, with new companies replacing old ones that used to be in favour of the fortnight, changing work patterns and fewer factory jobs.
The city and county council asked everybody last year about moving school holidays back in alignment with other parts of the country, which was rejected.
So for now, term dates are the biggest reminder of those golden July fortnights of decades past.
■ So what do we think now? Should the city and county align with the country or go it alone?