May bank holiday weekend

Some weeks, when considering the weekly missive, I can barely muster up a theme. But this week? – well, it’s very different.

Should I choose the unseasonably hot weather? It seems that the country has been split between those of us who’ve had to stare at the sun from inside increasingly warm buildings, the workers, as I might label them, and then those who have more ‘flexible’ working habits or locations. We’re back to normal next week. With that will come the need to reassert the uniform code, the need to turn up the thermostat and I’ll need to dig my gloves back out.

Should I choose the bank holiday? As I’ve discussed in previous years, we might want to remember that this bank holiday is there to recognise international workers’ day. From a very different time, the day was set across many countries where the ’working people’ had fought for their rights, to be liberated, to be free. It became very popular after the second world war as the soldiers returned and were promised a very different world than the one that had led to the fighting in the 1930s.

Should I choose, and very much linked, the VE day 80 celebrations? There will be some who are uncomfortable with the word celebration, when so many died throughout that struggle. I get that and understand the concerns. It is, though, probably the final opportunity to recognise the sacrifices made by the ordinary men and women from across the globe who were drawn into something that they could not control, didn’t understand, except that they heard the call to protect and fight for their homeland. All very confusing for many. As I’ve written before, it is only as a result of a quirk of history or geography that you and I have not had to fight. For much of written history, it has been the ‘worker’ who has been given the weapon and instructed to walk towards fire. It is in that light, and with those sentiments that I will take time to reflect, rather than celebrate.

Should I choose the impending papal conclave? Maybe not, as there was mention of this last week. Other than to say, come 7th May some momentous decisions will be taken; in a real world not as in the film.

There can only one topic this weekend. Something that will have an enormous impact upon great swaths of the population. Almost 400, 000 Brits claim that they were so committed to the theme that they were happy to state they had some religious affinity – an order of warrior monks who serve as “the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy”.

Are you with it yet?

Sunday 4th May.