The school holidays are over now, not that it makes much difference to me because I don’t work in a school, but the rest of the house have been off for two weeks.  Last week they all went off camping, leaving me to my own devices for a while.  I had a couple of evenings getting soaked while canvassing for Ian Irvine in Broadfield or delivering anti-BNP leaflets in Pound Hill but at least I had a warm house to look forward to.

The rest all came back on Friday so I put political activities on hold a bit to catch up with them. We went into Horsham yesterday, but ended up at a big camping shop looking at tents.  It looks like a return trip to Dorset or the Isle of Wight might be on the cards again this year…

School holidays were very strange this year though.  This is what you would call the Easter holidays, but the Easter weekend itself was a few weeks before.   Its always been a bit awkward basing the length of terms on what is a moving feast.  Every now and then someone comes up with the idea to fix the date of Easter, but surely that is a non-starter.  It would require the agreement of all the Christian churches for a start.

Far better, I think, to divorce the public holidays from the religious days.  The long weekend is nice, so have a fixed public holiday on a Friday and Monday at the end of March or start of April – whatever fits in with school holidays – and make Good Friday and easter Monday normal working days.  Most of us do not do anything remotely religious on Good Friday or Easter Monday anyway and those who do should be allowed to take a day’s holiday for that, just like Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims take days off if they want to take part in their religious days.