M’aider
Today is the May bank holiday.
Why does this unsettle me?
Obviously for a major part of my life bank holidays were significant as it meant a day off work. Sometimes I would have to work and that would involve extra pay. Bank holidays were grand.
Nowadays of course they mean little or nothing. It is irrelevant whether banks open or shut their doors as I do all my banking electronically. All the shops in the village are open apart maybe for the chemist, but I only call in there once or twice a week anyway. Nothing is essentially any different from any other day.
There’s no post today. That is the only thing that remotely may impact on my quiet life but seeing as nobody bothers to write to me and the only post I get is usually official bumf so that also is of no consequence. A while back I trained the postman to just quietly drop off parcels at the door and not to bother ringing the doorbell as he always got me out of bed. As a result I never even see him these days anyway.
So why do I feel today is different?
Why will I feel a little easier when tomorrow comes?
It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
You’ve obviously got a guilt complex, why should all your days now be as Bank Holidays when most of your wretched countrymen and women still have to go out to work the rest of the year? Seems you do have feelings after all.
When I quit daily suit-wearing a few decades ago, I resolved never to feel guilt, it worked but I didn’t. I savour every day of the hard-earned freedom. Life’s good.
Guilt? Never! I frequently switch on the traffic reports and take a sadistic joy in hearing about all the traffic jams trying to get in or out of Dublin. Nothing could ever entice me back into that nightmare.
Perhaps you had a slight sense of missing out on something, like being at the beach, as per
Bank Holiday On Killiney Beach (1937) (0:49, mercifully short? I wouldn’t have minded longer.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VucFffE54wI
I do remember, when I worked at a film library in the ’90’s, I think, seeing this, albeit in black and white:
Bank Holiday 1971 Whole Film (28:15)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAJjg0yekes
Other links show a Margaret Lockwood smoking – “Bank Holiday” (1938)
Shock! Horror! An unfiltered cigarette! And life goes on …
(Just to let you know that someone got the pun/reference in the title)
“There’s no post today.”
The Hell there isn’t! I just read it.