The August Bank Holiday Weekend

It’s the last holiday weekend before school, isn’t it? So what’s everybody doing, I wonder?

I went to Allendale area notices on Facebook a week ago and asked! Not overwhelmed with responses, but a few came in. Someone is going to a wedding, another couple are going to the show (it was the Flower Show yesterday of course) and skyping the far-flung children. One family is getting together here in Allendale. A happy correspondent reports that she is expecting to be spending the Bank Holiday weekend at the Towersey Festival. Carrie and I are driving back from Manchester Airport after a lovely week of creative activities in Yorkshire, she knitting with a dear friend at a workshop held in Parcevall Hall, and me trying to learn some creative writing skills. Another enquiry elicited a response that the family will be decorating all weekend long!

Another happy couple are also at home, busily putting the final touches to their Hymer motorhome before setting off on their Great Retirement Adventure at the beginning of September. As they related last week, they should be at the ‘curtains and fairy lights’ stage by then! We were doing the same thing last year, hoping desperately that Harry Hymer would get through his MOT before the scheduled ferry crossing! Similarly, another report relates a Sunday of anticipation at home before the 9pm launch of Season 5 of Peaky Blinders.

Everyone has something different to do this weekend, it seems. I rather thought there would be some exotic end-of-summer holiday adventures planned, as well as the traditional beach pursuits, or trips to Blackpool or another northern destination. It’s no surprise though to discover that lots of folks are spending the weekend quietly at home.

In fact, I suspect that most folks, like us, are metaphorically pulling up the drawbridge in anticipation of fireworks over the coming weeks, as national politics boil towards another crescendo. We’ve been worrying about this for some time, but our friend from America, an ex-pat for the past 40 years, observed that things will probably, mostly, stay the same, with typical ‘muddling through’ expected. Here in the deepest rural countryside, we’re pretty much cocooned against the onslaught of international affairs of any sort, except for the costs of energy which impact on transport, as I’ve mentioned in the diary before. We ourselves will be sitting on full heating oil tanks too, thanks to the surprisingly good price for August’s oil gleaned by the Allen Valleys Oil Cooperative, which will get us through another winter, come what may.

So in this final Bank Holiday weekend before the end of October and whatever that brings, it’s a good time for us all to try to chill out, enjoy life, and stop worrying, perhaps!

3 Comments

  1. Spot on, sir, apart from the fact that there is, apparently, another week before the schools reopen.

    1. Aye, but I really meant ‘holiday’ weekend . . . usually that weekend before school starts folks spend getting everything together to be sure the kids are ready for lessons, don’t they? . . . or, as in our household some years ago, rushing about in a tiz worrying whether things are going to work out okay. And this has turned into a real summer holiday feeling, hasn’t it? So that’s what I meant, all in all 🙂

  2. Sorry! I should have noticed your initial qualifying description of the weekend!
    Not having any children ourselves, and being retired, we do not particularly differentiate between weekends which precede the start of school terms or half-term!

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