Hooray! Hooray! it's a holi-holiday

Hooray Hooray It’s a holi holiday was the refrain from a mildly successful hit by Bony M in May 1979 so its an apt song to be rattling around my brain this morning 26 years after I first heard it!

Yes I am looking forward to the Bank Holiday Monday. What I really want to do with this day is have what I believe is called a ‘duvet day’. This means staying in bed all day reading and eating cornflakes. I have, on occasional, sampled the delights of the ‘duvet day’ and I can tell you it is delightful. In fact I believe it is beneficial to ones whole well being. One website tells us that duvet days are ‘part of the psychological contract between workers and their employers’. That’s great I never realised that apart from the paper contract we all have and which we all know is as worthless as the paper its written on, we also have a psychological contract!

Here’s what it means: ‘The term 'psychological contract' was first used in the early 1960s, but became more popular following the economic downturn in the early 1990s. It has been defined as '…the perceptions of the two parties, employee and employer, of what their mutual obligations are towards each other'

It’s a bit like being in a psychological thriller then, being at work? Both of us stalking the other with that eek eek music from ‘Psycho’ playing in the background. I take a duvet day; the Boss tries to catch me out with clever psychological questions, a bit like Columbo,

Boss: ‘so where were you yesterday’?
Me ‘er ill, yes I was ever so ill’
Boss ‘ O yes what was wrong with you, you look fine now’
Me ‘ er I had a dodgy stomach, must’ve been that curry’
Boss ‘ O, I heard you tell the secretary you had one of your headaches’
Me ‘yes I had a dodgy stomach and one of my headaches bought on by all that heaving and straining’
Boss: ‘Well the computer tells us that you seem to have regular headaches every Monday' (they have a bit of software that analyses employee’s sick days – really they do – and it picks up regular patterns)
Me: ‘er yes well it must be a reaction to sitting in front of the screen all day and all the driving I do’
Boss: 'Well I hope you’ve seen the doctor'
Me: 'yes I have an appointment next week' (No I haven’t)
Boss ‘OK I hope you feel better then’ he gives me the ‘glad eye’ and turns to leave, he reaches the door to the office and turns –
‘Oh by the Way what book were you reading in bed yesterday’
Me ‘ The Da Vinci Code’ I blurt out giving the game away
He smirks…..’Book him Danno’ he mutters out of the side of his mouth

So it’s a holi holiday on Monday and I can do what I want. Stay in bed all day. The problem is I now have a wife and the psychological contract we have is even more terrible than the one I have with my boss. My wife (and I believe this to be a common trait amongst all wives) is an expert in psychological warfare. Her silences are more damaging and disorientating than the CIA playing Jimi Hendrix out of speakers the size of the Empire State Building for Three Days None Stop (Oh yes that was Woodstock wasn’t it, people enjoyed that) Well playing that irritating frog ring tone that Mike Da Hat is on about in his blog.

So I know as it’s a bank holiday THINGS will have been planned. I have heard mutterings about the Eden project, shopping, gardening and beach. None of these come close to a day in bed, reading and eating cornflakes.

In a much much earlier blog I think I wrote about the temptations of hoiking a brick through Debenams windows or knocking the helmet off a policeman (are we allowed to say that now a days?) just to get banged up for 30 days at the local nick. Luxury eh? A month off doing nothing except reading and being buggered senseless by the large psychotic criminal one would have to share a cell with (by the way the buggering bit does not equate with the ‘luxury’ bit, perhaps I should have made that clearer in the beginning, I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea!) (But being buggered senseless by a psychotic criminal is probably better than having to share a cell with Jeffery Archer! – just a thought)

Yes

Hooray! hooray! it’s a holi-holiday
What a world of fun for everyone, holi-holiday
Hooray! hooray! it’s a holi-holiday
Sing a summer song, skip along, holi-holiday
It’s a holi-holiday

Have a nice one!