Bank Holiday

BANK holidays - don't you just love the glorious, gratuitous pointlessness of them?

Today is the Spring Bank Holiday, quite a piece of timing given that we are a mere seven days from June and the start of Summer. Maybe we ought to have a Winter bank holiday - at the end of February.

Had we the same system in force now as during the Sixties, today's holiday would not have fallen until next Monday - Whit Monday, or the Monday after Pentecost. But Pentecost, or Whitsun, being 50 days after Easter, is a moveable feast, thus offensive to the bureaucratic mind. Out went Whit Monday, in came Spring Bank.

Of course, the replacement holiday is scarcely more fixed than the old one - being the last Monday in May, its actual date can move round from the 25th (as today) all the way to the 31st.

Public holidays have taken a lot of sniping recently from the sort of clenched young men who run assorted think-tanks and other institutions. They are old fashioned, we are told, harking back to an era before the legal entitlement to paid leave. They are divisive, because they reflect Christian festivals. They inhibit the proper 24/7 functioning of a modern capitalist economy. Oh, and it always rains.

This last is true enough. As I write, drizzle falls from a Sussex sky and the decision to go ahead by the organisers of a cricket tournament in which our youngest is taking part looks like a piece of heroic optimism.

But the other criticisms either do not stand up or are not criticisms at all.

Yes, bank holidays are a little old-fashioned, bringing to mind picnicking families perched on the tailgate of a Triumph estate car, the children munching egg sandwiches, mother drinking plastic-flavoured coffee from a plastic cup and dad trying to light his pipe in the blustering wind. So what? In our new age of austerity, such innocent pleasures will make a welcome return.

Divisive? There are eight bank holidays in England, of which only two (Good Friday and Christmas Day) are Christian festivals, a further two (Boxing Day and Easter Bank Holiday Monday) are not Christian festivals but would probably not exist were they not to be next door to such festivals and the remaining four - New Year's Day, May Bank, Spring Bank and the August Bank Holiday - are entirely secular.

They snarl up the economy, do they? Too bad. Given the mess that has been made by the masters of the 24/7 universe during the last few years, maybe it would be a good idea to have a few more public holidays during which banks and stock markets are firmly closed.

Bank holidays are jolly good things. Given half of them fall in the Spring, they mark our progress towards Summer. And no, we do not want a mid-autumn bank holiday. The pleasure of the August Bank Holiday Weekend is sharpened, not dulled, by the knowledge that a long haul awaits us all the way down to Christmas Eve.

Bank holidays are good for the economy in two ways - they may dampen activity in some areas but boost spending in others. More to the point, they help keep members of the workforce sane, happy and in touch with their families, friends, loved ones - or even just their hobbies.

So ignore the goggle-eyed think-tankers. Enjoy it all. Have a burnt barbecue sausage on me.

Rain permitting.