Bank Holiday Monday (May 4)

For anyone reading this who is not American, first let me explain the connotation of the term "bank holiday" for an American.  A "bank holiday" to an American is a bad joke.  It's the pathetic, sorry-excuse of a holiday that no one celebrates or gets off work unless you actually work in a bank or for the government.  Americans tend to distinguish between real holidays, like Thanksgiving and Independence Day, and not-real holidays, i.e., the bank holidays, like Presidents' Day.  Most of the time we forget the bank holidays even exist, until one of our friends posts something about it on Facebook or we wonder why our mail didn't get delivered or why the trash wasn't picked up.  Advertisements for furniture (especially mattress) sales always presage bank holidays, too.

For my American friends reading this, a "bank holiday" in the UK is a Big Freaking Deal.  There is only one type of holiday, and it's a bank holiday.  It's a statutory, public holiday that everyone gets as a day off, unless you are one of the poor unfortunates working in a service industry like grocery, dining or tourism.  But in general, most businesses shut down.  Mini-holiday getaways over the long weekend are common, but a lot of people just enjoy a "staycation" and stay at home to relax, work in the garden, whatever.

Having had some past experience with the frequency of German and French holidays, I had high hopes for the UK, but the British are fairly stingy with their bank holidays, as stingy as the Americans.  Most American companies I have worked for in my life give you at least 9 or 10 paid holidays.  In the UK, you only get 8!  For 2015, they are:

• New Year's Day (Jan 1)
• Good Friday & Easter Monday (Apr 3 and 6)
• Early May (May 4)
• Spring (May 25)
• Summer (Aug 31)
• Christmas Day (Dec 25) and Boxing Day (Dec 26)

If a holiday falls on a weekend, you get either the Friday or the Monday off instead as a 'substitute' day.

For the past few years, there has been debate about making St. George's Day (the feast day for the patron saint of England) a Bank Holiday as England's national day on April 23.  Apparently there are some concerns that this might offend the Scots, Irish or Welsh (or all of the above) as well as concerns about the economic costs associated with adding another statutory public holiday, so it hasn't happened yet.  I can't really see people getting excited about a patron saint who never actually even set foot in the country, but whatever.  If it's another day off of work, I am ALL for it.

If I could pick a day to get behind, personally, I would pick November 5, because that was the date that William of Orange (William III of England) landed in 1688 during the Glorious Revolution.  The Glorious Revolution was the last time that anyone ever successfully invaded and conquered England.  It was a bloodless event which arguably established the "modern" British monarchy by deposing a hold-out believer in the Divine Right of Kings (James II).  November 5 has the benefit of occurring during a time of the year that currently lacks any bank holidays.

So yesterday (Monday) was the Early May Bank Holiday.  Why a holiday on that day?  I'm not entirely sure, but I would guess it has something to do with May Day and just picking the first Monday in the month of May.  There are still a lot of May Day and Beltane celebrations around the British Isles.  They could have come up with a more interesting name than "Early May" holiday with some minimal effort, one would think.

Anyways, after my big city escape to Amsterdam the previous weekend, I decided that this holiday weekend I should just stay home and get caught up on things and relax.  I had the best kind of Monday imaginable.  I slept in, did very little and took a nap.  My big accomplishment was making a robust breakfast.

(I don't bother with tomatoes, mushrooms or black pudding with my brekkie.  Only the good stuff.)

It wasn't raining, so I felt like I ought to get outside for a little bit of sunshine and fresh air.  I ended up taking about a 1 1/2 mile walk around my neighborhood and down to the Stamford Park, which is a medium-sized city park a couple of blocks away.  The park was filled with families out enjoying the day and was very pleasant for a stroll.  The Friends of Stamford Park volunteer group has obviously worked very hard with the landscaping, and the Springtime blooms were beautiful.  I was enjoying observing the water fowl at the pond, when I had a WTF? moment.

It's just Mama and Papa Goose keeping watch over their goslings, right?  It's always heart-warming to observe protective animal parents.

This is normal behavior for Canadian geese; they've even been known to attack humans to protect their young.

...

Canadian geese.  WTF are Canadian geese doing in England???  Canadian geese are a nuisance.  If there is any one animal I would like to hunt for the sheer joy of killing it, it would be a Canadian goose.  I've heard they are not even tasty to eat; I don't care.  I just hate them.  Why are there Canadian geese in the UK?  Apparently, some idiot introduced them here back in the day, and now there is a well-established, wild, native population to poop on everything.  Go figure.

That was my Bank Holiday Monday.  I wish every Monday could be like that.  :-)

An unexpectedly pleasant Saturday (May 2)

I don't know if I'll ever get around to filling in the gaps between December and May, but here's what happened yesterday...

As usual, my stupid internal alarm clock woke me up at 6:30 AM, regardless of it being both a Saturday and a long bank holiday weekend.  And as usual, I refused to accept being awake so early, so I laid in bed playing with my phone and re-reading the 3rd Outlander book, Voyager, until after 10:00 AM.  I'm obsessed with Outlander, and finishing all 8 books, re-reading 3 of them so far, and watching each STARZ TV episode 3+ times does not assuage the obsession.  The morning was cold, rainy and dreary anyways, so motivation to get out of bed was low.  My continuously rumbling stomach is what finally made me get up and go downstairs to make breakfast.  After treating myself to some eggs, streaky bacon, coffee and a jam-covered crumpet (I normally just have a yogurt or something quick and easy for breakfast), I took care of a couple of financial things and bills, which gave me an excuse to continue being lazy in my pajamas for a few more hours.  If I hadn't made plans with a friend, I honestly might not have showered or gotten out of my PJs at all.  However, plans I had made, so after 1:00 PM, I finally hopped in the shower, made myself presentable, grabbed my umbrella and caught the 2:31 PM tram into the city centre.

I knew when I rented this house that it was close to the train station, but living here, I have truly come to love the proximity, as much as I loved living walking distance to the MARTA station when I lived in Decatur, Georgia.  From locking my door to getting on the tram (including time to buy a ticket from the machine) takes me 8 minutes or 10 minutes maximum.  It is so convenient, especially since the trams run every 12 minutes, and an offpeak return fare is only £4.60.  I'm at Altrincham Station, and it's 11 stops or ~25 minutes to get to St. Peter's Square in the city centre.  So total trip time is 35 to 40 minutes, and I don't have to worry about traffic, parking, if my car will get broken into or stolen or (perhaps most importantly) how many pints I consume.  :-)

St. Peter's Square is currently the scene of a small homeless protest, which involves perhaps a dozen people camping out together.  They were outside the city hall, were forced to move, and have now set up camp outside the public library.  I've been searching my heart to try to find any drop of interest or compassion for the "plight" of these people who feel they are not being given enough that was taken out of the pockets of working people, and I keep coming up dry.

This afternoon I was meeting up with a new friend, M, whom I met a couple of weeks ago chatting in a pub.  I had to laugh at myself with my big umbrella compared to him, a proper Manc with no umbrella and just a tweed newsboy cap on his head.  The subject of the homeless protest was best not discussed, since he is an openly avowed socialist who works for the government in the delivery of social services, and I think it's safe to say our opinions on the matter diverge.

A potentially less contentious subject was that morning's Royal Birth.  I do not have strong opinions one way or the other on the British monarchy, my own ancestors having successfully rebelled and thrown off the chains of kings 232 years ago.  I enjoy some casual Royal Family watching (it's quaint), and I think it would be difficult for anyone not to find joy in the safe birth of a healthy baby.  My friend unsurprisingly is anti-Royal (quite right, as any good socialist should be!), but even he could find no fault with celebrating the birth of the princess.  And, as I pointed out, it's not like people are still living under King George III, that "old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King".  The Royal Family today are largely symbolic, and I'm not sure they do (or can do) any real harm.

Ironically, we were having this discussion just around the corner from the site of the infamous Peterloo Massacre, the event which inspired Percy Bysshe Shelly's famous poem, England in 1819.

There's some pretty amazing history in Manchester.

St. Peter's and politics behind us, we started at the Manchester Art Gallery, a smallish but quite varied and interesting public art museum just off St. Peter's Square.  Some of the 18th and 19th c English art and portraiture was average, but in all fairness, anything would seem average after the mind-blowing Late Rembrandt exhibit I had just seen at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam last Monday.  Their special East Asian Craft and Design exhibit of Japanese and Chinese arts and crafts was very well done and fascinating.  They also had a wonderful special exhibit called "Emily Allchurch In the Footsteps of a Master", juxtaposing 19th c. Japanese printmaker Utagawa Hiroshige landscape prints with modern interpretations of those scenes, made by Emily Allchurch using digital photograph collages and backlit in lightboxes.  Truly beautiful work.

My favorite experience, though, was seeing two famous paintings that I know very well and recognized immediately, although I had had no idea that they were located in the Manchester museum.  Stumbling across them so unexpectedly and then being able to enjoy them in person instead of just a printed photograph on a page in a book was a thrill.  The first one was John William Waterhouse's Hylas and the Nymphs.

Then I turned and looked across the room right into the sad, depressed eyes of Auguste Charles Mengin's Sappho, getting ready to jump off a cliff.  She has graced the cover of a recent novel; some of my friends may recognize her.

I enjoyed the entire museum, but seeing those two paintings alone made the entire excursion worthwhile to me.

After the museum, we walked over to Brewdog Manchester for a pint.  The place was doing lively business, but we were able to find two stools sharing a table with some other people.  One of their guest taps was a Stone Ruination IPA, which M tried, so I told him all about the beautiful Stone brewery in San Diego, California, which I visited a number of years ago.  It's wonderful to see some American craft breweries becoming more prevalent and popular over here in the UK.  M had suggested maybe trying out a stand-up comedy club for our next activity.  Along the way, we stopped at a lovely heritage pub, The Briton's Protection, for a quick half-pint before proceeding to The Comedy Store at the Deansgate Locks for their 7:00 PM show.

I actually love stand-up comedy, and I think it has been more than 4 years since I've been to a show.  It was a blast.  There were 4 acts - an American from San Francisco, a Canadian, and then two local Englishmen.  They all got some belly-laughs out of me, but the last two were definitely the best overall.  I just about died when the last comedian (a local chap from Warrington) joked about Americans trying to adjust to the English attitude towards customer service.  Then he role-played an American customer service interaction as it would play out in the USA versus how things would go with a Brit in the UK.  I laughed so hard I could hardly breathe, because it was spot-on.  Customer service over here generally does not exist, and where it does exist, it is barely a notch above "sod off".  Even though my previous travel experiences had somewhat prepared me for the lack of customer service that is common in European countries, it has still been a big adjustment, and seeing his take on it was hysterical.

The show ended at 9:00 PM, and with a 40 minute journey home, I figured it was time to call it an evening.  Besides, things in the Deansgate area were already starting to turn into a stereotypical Saturday night out in a northern England city centre, which means that the hard core party was well-underway, and the shit storm of drunken debauchery with public pissing and vomiting was imminent.  I've seen it in Leeds; I've seen it in Liverpool; I am disinclined to witness it in Manchester, too, not unless someday it is actually my own hen party (unlikely in any event).

I bid farewell to my friend and hopped on the tram at the Deansgate Metrolink station just up the stairs there for the short ride home.  It was a good night.