No more bank holidays

I don’t think there should be bank holidays any more. I know, I know, there will be people reading this going - what? Are you mad, man?

Maybe I am, but seriously folks, why should there be bank holidays?

I mean shouldn’t the bank people be working every goddamn minute there is to try and rectify the situation they have helped put the country in.

Bad enough that they’re being bailed out time and again without rewarding them with a holiday too.

I could never figure out what was so special about the banks anyway.

You know, why if they were taking a holiday, should other people have to get the day off too?

I say ‘other people’ because for many years in my chosen profession I never seemed to manage to get bank holidays off and yes folks, I was slightly jealous.

Did I say slightly jealous, I meant very jealous.

But, before you get me wrong, I’m not opposed to holidays, I’m just opposed to bank holidays.

And I know it wouldn’t irk me as much if they weren’t called bank holidays.

But I’m not sure if what other profession we could have them named after.

I mean I’m not sure that people would be over thrilled if they were called, say ‘politicians holidays.’

Or maybe they would, because that might mean we’d have a lot more of them in the year.

Come to think of it, if they were called ‘teachers’ holidays’ the same might apply.

So what profession could we name these elusive holidays after?

We can’t call them a busman’s holiday, because the poor oul busman often has to work driving people around who are off for the day.

Anyway I don’t think people would like it called ‘busman holiday’ because they might get fed up waiting for it to come.

And I don’t think the sense of anticipation for the holiday weekend would be as great if it was a ‘refuse collector holiday,’ because people might just think the weekend would be rubbish.

Fireman’s holiday perhaps? Nah. ‘Hose’ to say when it might be interrupted and you’d get called back to work…

But there must be an appropriate occupation we could choose that would reflect this – day off for almost everybody idea.

Like for instance, we might call them ‘dentist holiday’ because it would mean a few days where people would not be looking down in the mouth.

Or what about calling it a ‘quilt-makers’ holiday,’ so people could look forward to it and associate the few days off work with somebody who wouldn’t be feeling ‘down’ for a few days!

Instead we get holidays called bank holidays and, while it might have been valid at one time, I think it doesn’t add up any more.

And I can think of billions of reasons why it doesn’t add up, but hey who am I to question these things?

Well I don’t care whether I should be questioning this or not, I’m still going to do it.

In fact I’m half thinking about starting a campaign to get the name changed if I can.

At the minute I think I’ve settled on ‘astronaut holiday,’ but I’m not really sure if it’ll take off…

Old school habits...

It was a strange kind of a feeling when I found myself heading off this week to my daughters’ secondary school for an information night about Transition Year.

My eldest girl is due to sit her junior certificate in the summer and so, it seems, we have to look at all the options ahead of her afterwards. I don't recall my parents having to do stuff like this - and on a Champions League night too!

That said, it seems like yesterday when my eldest actually started school and now she’s getting ready to sit her first state exams at the same secondary school I went to what seems like a lifetime ago.

Going back to these open night thingys always seems to bring back all sorts of strange recollections for me of school.

Until my girls started there, I hadn’t really all that much contact with the school that I attended since, well, since I left really.

But funnily enough there’s always that one piece of contact that does stand out.

That came about a few years ago as a result of a phone call from one of the teachers I actually liked at the place.

Still, it was the kind of call that sales people normally make. 

You know the kind that catches you out in the morning when you’re still running around trying to get the kids to school and you’ll say anything just to get off the phone.

It was only afterwards I realised that I’d just agreed to write a piece for the school for some publication or other about the long running association my family had with it over the years.

Now this might sound silly, but I especially realised I wasn’t exactly all that fussed about such a task – because my former English teacher was still there.

I mean the bad spelling I could put down to typos due to my one-fingered typing skills, but what about the grammar? 

I was picturing the red pen-marks before I’d even laid a finger on the keyboard.

Anyway my family had a long association with the school mostly due to the fact that there were so many us. We were kind of like hives. First just one appeared but after that came another and then another.

There was no getting rid of us you just had to let us run our course, which, as it happened, turned out to be a marathon.

Member after member of my family passed through the school followed quickly then by members of the next generation.

Year after year we trudged the couple of hundred yards from the house to the school that loomed over the top of our estate like a giant people magnet.

Most of time, even though we were literally five hundred yards away, we somehow always managed to get through the gates about two minutes after the first bell.

The principal at the time - who often stood there waiting for stragglers - maintained the closer we were to heaven, the further away we were from God.

In fact he didn’t just maintain it – he said it over and over again, like a broken record.

Even though I always kind of knew what he meant, I always wondered why he kept saying it?

I mean we were students, this was school - surely the word hell should have been in that sentence somewhere!

Back to the open night though and it was interesting to see how much has changed now and how these school courses were being sold to students and of course their parents.

It all sounded so great that I had to check a couple of times in case I’d gone to the wrong place.

But then I realised I was definitely in the right place, after all I had managed to arrive in two minutes late...

This week's scrapings...

Writing about wallpaper covering school books for my last blog post got me to thinking about the last time I went on the tear and ending up wishing I had got in a professional stripper.

Steady on there now folks - I’m talking about removing wallpaper here!

Thinking back to it you know I’m pretty certain that removing wallpaper must be one of the most horrible jobs of the whole DIY scene.

Thankfully it’s been a while since I’ve had to do it – and even though we don’t have much wallpaper in our house any more, I know I’m very unlikely to be the first to suggest it needs replaced.

You see I still recall fairly vividly the last time that happened and it was left to yours truly to get the old stuff off the walls – even if I wasn’t to be trusted to put the new stuff on afterwards.

And so it was, with trusty scraper in hand I set about to remove paper that I’d agreed was getting to look a bit tatty, but which all of a sudden had me wondering why I was doing this?

After about three or four minutes of scraping off pieces no longer than a centimetre and two broken nails (isn’t amazing how you think your nail can tear pieces a sharp metal scraper can’t) came the temptation to just leave it on and have the new stuff put on over the top of it.

Hey, I know it can be and has been done before.

However that’s not really a good thing to do if - say a few years down the road - you might still want things in the room like, well…furniture.

The problem you see is this - if new paper is continually applied over the old paper then with each new layer your room will get smaller.

And if enough layers are applied well eventually you’d just end up with a tiny space in the centre of a well insulated and probably sound-proof room.

That would probably be great if you happen to need somewhere to practice the bagpipes. But if you are attached to stuff like the sofa and the tv, well there’s nothing else for it but to get the old layer of paper off first.

Now I know there are steam thingys you can hire out to help you strip the paper off the walls, but by the time I realised I was going do have to do this job (this translates to - by the time I was told I had to do this job) all the places where you might hire such equipment were closed.

The best I could manage was a bottle of gooey liquid stuff that had to be mixed with 16 pints of warm water and then applied to the walls with a sponge.

After that apparently, it was just a matter of letting the stuff soak through for a few minutes, then take the scraper and hey presto the old paper should just peel right off.

That was the theory behind it anyway, but of course in practice it was different.

Instead all my memories of wallpaper removal kept coming back to haunt me as the paper tore off in wee strips hardly the size of a finger-nail.

To make matters worse, even though I clearly recall the paper being applied as only one layer, it had decided that it would double the work for me and come off in two – the pattern on one layer that came off with not too much trouble – and then a plain thin piece that stuck to the wall like a leech.

But eventually even that scraped off too, leaving just the piece de resistance – the border!

Now I must admit that it never really crossed my mind before, but I now wonder why anybody in their right minds would want such a thing on their wall.

After all, look at all the wars and conflict borders have caused all over the world over the years, why would anybody want one in their living room?

Just like most of the other borders, once established these things don’t like to be torn away easily and I soon discovered that however ineffective the gooey stuff was against ordinary paste it was useless altogether against border adhesive.

But having set a time limit to get the whole job done, that meant there was nothing now for it but a lot of hard work and elbow grease to scrape away that border. In the end I made it….even if I just scraped inside the time!

I was assured as well that the replacement wallpaper would have a very long lifespan, but a few years on I’m beginning to wonder, just exactly how long is long?

In fact I’m wondering it so much that it might even be time to reflect on whether I really like that sofa after all…and wouldn’t now be a about a good time to start to take up the bagpipes…