A National Gift - the story of a long weekend

When I finished my allotted task on Wednesday - a delivery in Brownhills (for the uninitiated, that's somewhere near Walsall, but doesn't boast a League One football team) - I realised that I just had time for a meal at a truckstop on the way past and make church for the 8.0 meditation.  There are normally meditative services on the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Holy Week and, unusually, I've made it to all three this year.  It was well worth it.

What I wasn't worried about was getting onto the list for work the next day.  Holy Thursday is renowned in the industry as the busiest day of the year.  Everyone, it seems, is keen to get away for the four-day break, but more anxious to get their stuff out and delivered to customers before they go.  It's like trying to cram two days' work into one, as one controller put it to me a few years ago.  I certainly had no fears about getting work on Thursday.

The office staff were certainly busy.  Tearing their hair out would be but a slight exaggeration.  The snag, from my point of view, was that most of the work coming in was either for bigger vans than mine, or forward bookings for next week.  Eventually, I was called early in the afternoon, and given deliveries in St Albans and to a building site in Bracknell.  By the time I reached the building site, I was getting a mite anxious that the workers there would have cleared up and gone home.  There was no need to worry: my delivery was expected, and I was met at the gate by a foreman who quickly indicated where I should park, and unloaded my van.  A last minute panic came as he returned to the van to sign my sheet.  "That one's the wrong size!" he said, pointing.  However, he quickly realised that nothing could be done about it at 4.10pm just before the holiday, and signed me off, resolving to sort out the difficulty on Tuesday.  My own holiday weekend was about to take off.

It began with a very pleasant duty that comes round about six times a year.  I'm on a rota to read news items from the local paper as part of the process of distributing weekly tapes to the blind or partially-sighted people in the neighbourhood.  Five of us gather in someone's front room: three readers, the 'editor', who has already given up half his afternoon to fillet the papers, and someone to man the mixing desk.  An hour later, we have filled both sides of a 'master' tape, and one of us takes it to the office where the following morning it will be copied and despatched.

So to the holiday weekend itself.  Good Friday, of course, is special.  There are church services to attend, and there was a March of Witness in the town, where the various denominations join in a common act of worship.  I chose to come home after the preliminary service at St. Paul's, but in the afternoon I went along to the hour's meditation service at All Saints'.

Saturday is a 'normal' day, with regular domestic preoccupations to fill the hours.  I had said I'd be available for work on Saturday and Monday, but the phone has been remarkably silent.  Sunday has its regular pattern of worship - special this weekend, of course, being Easter Sunday - and relaxation.  After reading the weekend papers and catching up with correspondence, e-mails and so on, where does the day go?

But now it's Bank Holiday Monday: the first of three that clutter up the calendar just now.  What is their nature, their purpose?  Why do we either love or hate them?  According to Saint Wiki, they began in 1871, when legislation made 'bank holidays', i.e. days when the banks were closed for business, into public holidays, i.e. holidays for everyone - and incidentally, changed which days should be so designated.  Others have been added to those first four over the years.  Some years, depending when Easter falls, the spring pattern is quite regular, with two normal weeks between two that are shortened by bank holidays.  This year, because of the Diamond Jubilee, the last of the three is a week later so, work-wise, we have longer to recover from the impact of May Day.

You'll gather that, being self-employed, I'm not a lover of these imposed breaks into the working week.  I guess that's true, up to a point.  I certainly resent the reduction of the number of available days in which to earn a living, which is why I mainly offer myself for work on them.  However, with a few notable exceptions, there is little likelihood of actually getting work.  This means that, subject to some obvious restrictions, I can enjoy much the same freedom and relaxation as the next man.  And that brings me (at last!) to what prompted this blog in the first place.  It's a Holiday, a gift from the nation to me.  This gift is a day when I can do whatever I want.  No religious disciplines, no shopping trips, no chores to fulfil; a day to relax and not feel guilty at doing so.  I'm jolly well going to enjoy doing nothing all day!

But ...

... but ...

... I wonder if ...

... maybe I could ...

... what else was I ...

... is it over yet? ...

... gosh, it's boring with nothing to do!