Bank Holiday Special

August Bank Holiday!  Or, as the media seems to be calling it these days, Late Summer Bank Holiday.  I can't help but think that the 'Late' bit is somewhat redundant, as it is the only public holiday we have in Summer.  Indeed, the alternative name for it was always simply Summer Bank Holiday.  It has always been taken to mark the end of Summer - a last chance to take a break courtesy of the long weekend.  A last chance which inevitably results in road congestion and crowded beaches.  In those respects, nothing much has changed about the August Bank Holiday weekend in the fifty plus years since the above newsreel was made.  Although, at least this year, we had good weather.

What has changed is the idea that everyone is on holiday, that businesses close down for the duration.  Go into any town centre today and you would find it bustling, with the majority of shops open for trade.  The number and type of 'events' going on has certainly changed.  We can't have a 'Navy Day' any more as we don't seem to have much of a Navy left.  Nowadays we have the Leeds and Reading festivals over the long weekend, not to mention the Notting Hill Carnival.  Mind you, this year they've made it virtually impossible for anyone outside of London to get to the latter, thanks to engineering works at many of the main London railway termini.  But, as I've noted before, when I was a kid in the seventies, if you didn't want to go out on a bank holiday, TV used to provide you with entertainment via their special schedules for the day, packed full of 'Bank Holiday Specials'.  Sure, a lot of it was crap - 'Seaside Specials' hosted by the likes of Ed Stewart or Michael Barrymore, for instance - but at least it helped mark out the day as being 'special'.  It was clearly different from a normal working day.  Now, however, you'd be hard pressed to know it was a bank holiday just by looking at the TV schedules.

Personally, I decided to do very little this August Bank Holiday.  I didn't want to get caught up in Bank Holiday traffic and I'm on leave for the rest of the week, anyway.  It was far too nice a day to spend stuck in a car.  So, I decided to stay at home, potter about in my garden, do some more work on that model railway I'm building and watch some DVDs while crashed out on the sofa.  A pretty good  day, actually.  Interrupted only by my neighbours' cat turning up (I left the back door open as it was so warm) and trying to persuade me to let him have my lunch.  I declined his offer.  With luck, I'll be back down in the New Forest tomorrow - hopefully the holiday makers will all be back at home, preparing their kids for their imminent return to school.