Bank Holidays and the rhythm of life

Maybe it's just me, but I find Bank Holiday Mondays consistently depressing. In fact I always have done, even as a child. It wasn't the forced visits to ancient aunts who made weak tea and never handed out enough biscuits or the absence of anything exciting on the telly. As an adult it isn't the voluntary visits to the now ancient daughters of the aforesaid ancient aunts (who also make weak tea and never hand out enough biscuits) or the absence of anything even vaguely watchable on the telly. Being British we like to joke about how it always rains on a Bank Holiday Monday, even when it doesn't, but it isn't the weather.

It's actually a simple matter of the rhythm of life. School weeks do not start on a Tuesday, they start on a Monday. At the end of term they might finish on a Wednesday or Thursday and that is a treat because the extra day(s) of the week away from school follow days when you were at school. Everything was normal with a Monday start.

When at my pomp I usually worked six or seven days a week, but the working week started on a Monday. I have always been self-employed and have been able to take days off subject to existing bookings. From time to time I would take Monday off, especially if there was gardening left unfinished over the weekend either in London or at the modest FatBigot annex in Sussex. It ruined the whole of the week because my flabby knees squeezed under the desk on Tuesday and I was doing Monday's work, it just felt wrong. If I also took Tuesday off the extra long weekend became a holiday and the rest of the week was like the first few days back from a real holiday, I was just fiddling around with a few things until proper work started again with the new week the following Monday. My habit became to take Friday off if I knew there were heavy gardening commitments so that I could be sure to start my next working week properly and make it productive.

Most courts do not sit on Bank Holiday Mondays. I could never perform as well during one of these truncated weeks as I did when the judge or jury heard my fluting tones on Monday as well. As I got older most of my working time was spent on paperwork and one might think that the intervention of a Bank Holiday should make no difference because I could still sit at the desk and do what I had to do. But it was never the same. Colleagues were not in, the Clerks' room had a skeleton staff, solicitors I needed to talk to about their cases could not be contacted in the office (and rarely enjoyed being telephoned at home on an official rest day), the rhythm was all wrong.

Curiously the long enforced period away from work following my cardiac incident did not change this feeling. I still had things to do which were very much work such as sorting out my tax affairs, jiggling around my pitiful assets to best advantage and keeping up with developments in the law. These were done on Monday to Friday. Unless Monday contained some work, perhaps just an hour or two, very little was ever achieved in the rest of the week. The same pattern is being followed now although I am only doing a little work here and there and do almost all of it from home so that I can smoke.

Dorothy Fields was right when she wrote "the rhythm of life is a powerful beat". Bank Holiday Mondays have always upset my rhythm. It would be far better if they were Fridays and far better still if we removed the absurd May Day Bank Holiday completely.

What's wrong with drinking and driving?

In my younger days I occasionally drove whilst drunk. The most extreme example was on a cold winter's night following a thoroughly enjoyable curry in the company of old friends. A few pints were taken before dinner, a few bottles of wine with dinner and a lot of port thereafter. I stood dutifully in central London waiting for a taxi but more than an hour passed with no joy. My bladder was telling me I had to go home, my freezing hands and feet were telling me I had to go home and my brain was telling me the taxi option was not likely to bear fruit. So I walked to the carpark at my work place and drove home. Getting out of the car I fell over and was able to make it to the front door only in carefully planned and determined steps. Had I been caught my licence would have been revoked for at least a year, a thought which passed through my head when a police car pulled alongside me at a set of traffic lights during the three mile journey. Not only was I not caught, but I got home and did no one any harm. Since then I have not driven when I thought I might be over the limit.

Ah yes, you will say, I did no harm on that occasion but I could have done. And a valid point you would be making. But just how weighty is your point?

The argument for a strict anti drink-drive law is that it has two effects, it takes dangerous drivers off the road and it sends a warning of serious consequences for anyone tempted to drive after consuming alcohol. Leaving aside the curious phenomenon that many of those who argue strongest for the deterrent effect of this law decry suggestions that prison sentences have a deterrent effect, I want to look at the alleged danger.

Because I do common sense rather than statistics, it seems to me that a dangerous driver is one who drives dangerously. If someone is driving perfectly safely I can see no compelling reason for him losing his licence simply because he might drive even more safely when sober. "But it dulls your reactions" say the supporters of the law. No doubt it does, but so does tiredness. "But it distracts your attention". Maybe it does, but so do arguing with a passenger, singing along to the radio, eating a pork pie, adjusting the air conditioning and a thousand other things we might do lawfully while driving.

What troubles me in particular is that there is no single standard of driver. Some people pay good attention to the road, anticipate potential hazards ahead, keep to a speed suitable for the circumstances, always know how close the vehicles behind them are and do all the other things which form a very good and safe driver. Others press the pedals, hope for the best and have absolutely no clue what is going on around them. Someone in the first category might well be a safer driver after five pints of cider than everyone in the second category, yet he runs the risk of a serious penalty despite doing no one any harm. It is a very curious state of affairs.

At heart this law is designed to be preventative. Criminal laws do not always require harm to have been done before a penalty is justified, if they did, all attempts to commit crimes would go unrecognised and I doubt that many would think an attempt to kill should only be prosecuted if the attempt were successful. This law is not, however, in the same category as attempting to kill, burgle or assault because those crimes require acts to be done which are intended to achieve a harmful result. The only justification for a mandatory disqualification for drinking and driving is that the potential risk from driving after consuming alcohol is so great that it justifies the penalty in all cases (I know there are exceptional circumstances in which disqualification is not imposed, but driving safely is not one).

Making drinking and driving an offense can be likened to health and safety laws, the sensible ones of which (such as that which allows a restaurant to be prosecuted if its kitchen has rats) impose a penalty because the potential harm is great and the cost of compliance is not. There will always be anomalous instances, such as the driver who is tanked to the gills but still perfectly safe, but extreme examples are no basis for any law. Laws like this must look at the average driver and form a view of the effect drink will have on him. But that does not provide an explanation for removing for at least one year the driving licence of a driver who is over the limit but has done no harm. By all means fine him and put points on his licence, but removing that licence for a year makes no sense if he has done no harm.