AFTER the days of plenty in May-time, we are now entering the annual period of famine.

No more Bank holidays till Christmas. There was a half-hearted attempt, backed by the former UK Prime Minister, to establish one on Trafalgar Day, 21 October, to celebrate national military glories and alleviate the gloom of a British autumn, but it got subsumed into more ‘meaningful’ parades in the run-up to a general election, so it will be left to the Sea Cadets to honour Lord Nelson that day, with a personal endorsement from me (it’s my birthday!).

So come the last weekend of August, across the country – south of the Scottish border, that is – from the pulsating cacophony of the Notting Hill carnival to the Reading rock festival, a gourmet Portuguese cuisine in the People’s Park, garden fetes, sporting fixtures and model railway-running days, we feel obliged to cram a catalogue of fevered activities into a few hours before the late summer sun fades from the skies.

Institutional days off, peppered through the calendar, are a necessary release from our contemporary nose-to-the-grindstone existence, a chance to lift the foot off the accelerator, take a break, go out with the family – even if you can confidently expect anyone with an employment grievance linked to the travel industry to choose this time to exercise their human right to a strike opportunity, or the weather gods to conspire to rain on your parade.

Bank holiday Mondays have an inglorious record when it comes to fine weather. How often do we wish we could shift our Monday blues to another day of the week? It’s probably somewhat hypocritical in these secular times to suggest inserting any more days off in celebration of religious events; perhaps we should just be thankful that our predecessors were so obliging.

• Read the full column in Tuesday’s Jersey Evening Post