The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
May the Fourth be with you
After all the chit-chat last week about our new prince being born on St George’s Day, it’s been intriguing to discover that the notion of patron saints and their designated days remains alive and kicking.
You’d think there would be other things to think about but no. Looking for the answer to life, the universe and everything and going on the old Roman principle, I suspect, of bread and circuses to keep the plebs happy so they don’t notice they’re being mucked about, Jeremy Corbyn, lord love him, reckons that what we all need to set us back on the road to happiness, prosperity and loving our neighbours as ourselves (in spite of where they might have come from) is another four bank holidays each year on said saints’ days. Paid holidays, admittedly, but on set dates we can’t change or choose.
His argument is that we here in Brexitland suffer a dearth of state-sanctioned days off. Happy old Finland (see Wry & Dry April 13) has 15. The world average, however this mathematical conundrum is calculated, is apparently 12 and a bit, obviously the vacational equivalent of having 2.4 children. And Britain to date only has eight.
That is, of course, if you get them at all. In these days when it’s increasingly difficult to get the government to allow people even to rest and be thankful on Christmas Day, policy, one could go so far as to say, seems to be heading towards the creation of a hostile environment for those knackered by long hours, uncertain conditions and low pay rates who unreasonably want to spend time off with their families. The kind of Windrush generation of the High Street, if you like.
I speak as someone who didn’t get public or bank holidays (whatever the difference might be) in my almost-four decades at the coalface. We did get Christmas and New Year, to be sure, but the generations just before us didn’t and working over the season of goodwill soon crept back into the planning schedules for those members of staff deemed essential to keep the presses rolling and the aisles of the retail outlets of the city and beyond festooned with festive newsprint. Good for wrapping the giblets if nothing else.
It should also be noted that the aforementioned days off proposed by Mr Corbyn are all in what we might term the less clement part of the British climatic year; November 30, March 1, March 17 and April 23. Heaven forfend we should get a break when there’s a vague chance the sun might shine. It reminds me of another work-related innovation, when the powers-that-be decided it would be a wizard wheeze to give us all a day off on our birthdays, conveniently ignoring the fact that for those of us who came into the world at a time not of our own choosing (my father always blamed me on the Glasgow Fair Fortnight), no one in their right mind would want a day off on a dreich Tuesday in February.
And that applies to the idea of public holidays per se. I cannot think of any circumstances under which I would actively choose to go anywhere furth of my conveniently open local shops on any given public holiday you would care to mention.
You’re never done hearing about chaos on the roads, railways and in the airports, with people spending their breaks shouting at transport company staff members who don’t know, don’t care and don’t get the holidays themselves, so don’t give a monkey’s if you and your family get yours.
Twice – and both times by accident – I have fallen foul of these occasions. A friend and I once found ourselves trapped in a queue redolent of the Third Circle of Hell at the Dartford Tunnel because we had inadvertently booked ourselves a driving holiday to Normandy on what was then known (and may still be, for all I know) as the Whit weekend. Which was named, I can only surmise, for the battalions of innocent if unwisely mobile Scots trapped in their vehicles at all potential points of departure, looking at the mayhem around them and going: “Whit?”
The other time involved booking a holiday to sunny Spain over what turned out to be Easter; as a moveable feast, let’s face it, it does sometimes move in mysterious ways, especially to the irreligious, who don’t know when it is and don’t really want to know. The French air traffic controllers did, however, and beggared us all about accordingly, there and back. In between, as a tenuous plus, we did manage to take in quite a few edifying religious processions. Although it still rankled somewhat to realise that the inanimate Madonnas, being carted around on flower-strewn palanquins by men in Ku Klux Klan hats, were still enjoying far more reliable transport and comfort levels than we had.
Today, of course, is Star Wars Day – happening over a Bank Holiday Weekend but not yet a public holiday in its own right. May the Fourth be with you? It’s surely only a matter of time.
Tosay is Star Wars Day. It’s only a matter of time before its a public holisay in its own right