Monday 24 March 2008

Bank Holiday

Generally speaking I find Easter Monday one of the most deeply irritating Bank Holidays (Public Holidays) of the calendar. That or Good Friday. Basically you get two weeks in a row cut short by a day, which always plays havoc with workload and deadlines.

Bank Holidays generally do quite irritate me. There are constant complaints about how few Public Holidays there are in the UK compared to other countries and various campaigns to have another date declared as a public holiday (with increasingly unlikely proposals). The reason that it irritates me as that everyone seems to think that they are getting a 'free' day off, and very few people seem to realise that there is nothing under statute to declare that you are given time off on a Public Holiday, but that it is merely at the discretion of your employer. Where I work we are given a higher than usual holiday allowance but we are required to take Public Holidays from this allowance. The upside of this is that you can work most Public Holidays (if you want) and use the leave elsewhere. Very satisfactory.

OK, rant over.

I saw several friends for lunch today. Friends and assorted children. I was mortified to notice that my friend with a nine month old baby had a nappy bag roughly the same size as the bag I use for work. Mortified because everyone knows what a lot of things a baby needs, how can a 30-something woman need as much stuff every day?!