Next Monday is Spring Bank Holiday, where
we get a paid day off for no real good reason. We’re all grateful for these
handful of leisure days that the government grant us, but we deserve more.
I’m working on a book idea called “You Need
Never Work Again” in which I attempt to find a valid reason to make every day
of the year a Bank Holiday. I need only create 366 feast days and we can all
sit with our feet up the whole year round and drink ourselves into oblivion. I
see no downside to this
They need to have a strong argument to
convince employers that they can’t force you to come in; maybe religious or
cultural significance or association with some indisputably great person.
18th July is easy, it’s Nelson Mandela’s birthday – what boss is
going to argue that his life isn’t worth a day of reflection? 5th December
is the anniversary of his death. If they’ve given you his birthday off then
they’re going to look pretty despicable if they don’t let you mourn his demise.
But humanity hasn’t thrown up many worthy candidates: it’s basically Mandela
and Jesus. Try taking today off because it’s the birthday of Tina Hobley from
Holby City. You can argue she’s deserved it because her name is nearly an
anagram of her most famous show. But I
don’t see anyone buying it. You might have more luck saying you wish to honour
of the death of Pope John XXI, the only Portuguese Pope. But your employer
would be narked off that you’d already taken the day off for the first 20 Pope
Johns, especially when he finds out there was no Pope John XX. This is like
when you tried to take the day off school for a grandparent’s funeral for the
fifth time.
I’d go for saying you can’t work on May 20th
because it’s World Metrology Day and you feel very strongly that it’s important
today as it was in 1875 to celebrate the worldwide uniformity of the metre.
So far I’ve really only come up with one really good extra day off and you’ll
have to wait a while – It’s St Scholastica’s Day on February 10th.
St Scholastica is the patron saint
of convulsive children, nuns and storms. Her patronage also extends to
being “against rain,” which seems a bit shortsighted to me.
On St Scholastica’s Day in 1354 some posh students were drinking in the
Swyndlestock Tavern in Oxford and accused the landlord of serving them
“indifferent wine”. The regular non-University punters of the establishment
took exception to their attitude and the argument escalated into a full-blown riot.
The townsfolk beat and killed the
Gownsfolk and ransacked their colleges for three glorious days before order was
restored.
Nowadays, thanks to political correctness gone mad, attacking students
is against the law, EXCEPT on St Scholastica’s Day when all decent, hard-working
people are allowed to absent themselves from their place of labour and search
out University students. If they discover any they must playfully batter them
round the head with twigs, branches or iron bars, but the beating MUST STOP
once the student is dead. The only place where students can seek sanctuary from
is within the confines of their library. Most of them would rather die. But with
the students out the way, the rest of us can stay in the pub with our feet up
drinking indifferent wine to our heart’s content. Sweet!
I hope I can get the book out soon, but the more days I take off, the
harder it is to complete.
