Great names, great ideas to make it a day to remember

“It’s so the bank manager can have a day off”, he said, “and he can stop thinking about money for a whole day.”

They were innocent times back then, I realise. I had an image of the boss of our local branch, still in his suit but with his trousers rolled up, sitting in a deckchair on the beach at Cleethorpes with folded pages from the Yorkshire Post’s financial section keeping the sun’s rays off his clever head.

Maybe that’s what Bank Holidays always are, in essence; a chance for the majority of people in the country to sit on a beach with a newspaper on their head, literally or metaphorically.

However, there are changes afoot in the complex ecology of the Bank Holiday; we’re already getting an extra one this year for the Royal wedding and now the Government is mooting the idea that we shift the May Day Bank Holiday down the calendar and across the diary until it reappears in October as UK Day or Trafalgar Day.

Tourism bosses are saying that this would extend the holiday season, and this could be true, although I have to say you’d need more than the Yorkshire Post’s business section over your head on some of our beaches in October.

Of course, you wouldn’t expect a Conservative-led coalition to be in favour of a holiday that celebrated workers’ rights, but as the idea is still in the consultation stage, I’ve got a few suggestions to make from the White Rose end of the spectrum that just might be acceptable and not too ideologically contentious.

The first and most obvious candidate for a new Bank Holiday is our very own Yorkshire Day, on August 1; although this is a fairly recent holiday, begun in 1975 by the Yorkshire Ridings Society, I think the day is a perfect bridge between what people used to call Whitsuntide and what people still call August Bank Holiday.

A day off at the start of August would be just right. It would get you in the mood for the rest of the summer and the nights would still be light enough to barbecue your Yorkshire puddings without having to turn on any artificial heat. And wouldn’t it be great to get the rest of the country to celebrate Yorkshire once a year? That would wind them up in Northamptonshire and Avon.

Or how about April 19 for a Bank Holiday? It might be too close to Easter some years but what better way to celebrate the birthday of the great Yorkshire icon, Dickie Bird, than by having a day off to play cricket on the back lawn?

Ted Hughes Day, on August 17, could be too close to the existing August Bank Holiday, as might Philip Larkin Day, on August 9.

We could have more luck with an annual JB Priestley Day: the great Yorkshire prose stylist was born on September 13. That would be a good day for a holiday; you’d just be starting the long haul downhill towards Christmas after the lovely warm summer and then here’s a free gift: another day off!

Ian McMillan Day would have to be on January 21, my birthday, which might make it a bit too near Christmas, although I have to admit that, as often as I can, I have my birthday off like my own little personal Bank Holiday for a stroll in the chilly air.

And that leads me to my revolutionary Bank Holiday idea: the bespoke Bank Holiday. One of the joys of having a day off in the week or on your birthday is that somehow it feels special. The shops aren’t crowded and you can get a spot on the sands.

So how about giving everybody a holiday on their birthday, whenever that happens to be? Obviously there would have to provision for the poor unfortunates born on Christmas Day or Boxing Day or New Year’s Day, and the best solution would be to draw a neutral date at random from a hat. You could save your holidays up in a Personal Bank Holiday Account until, after five years, you could have a working week off – with 20 minutes interest at current rates.

Maybe in the 21st century, with its fractured working patterns and social mobility, it’s time for a radical rethink on Bank Holidays. Remember: you read it here first.