A few days ago the family and I embarked on a brief foray into the gypsy life. Let me clarify that. No, we didn’t all get big hoopy earrings and bandanas. We did muck about with some tambourines recently, but that’s another post (or, on second thoughts, maybe not). No, we went on a brief caravan holiday.
Caravans are great. It is living out childhood dreams of wanting to live in your cubby house. Even if you didn’t have a proper outdoors cubby house or tree house, many kids made a make-shift cubby in their lounge room by draping sheets across the backs of the chairs. These kids grew up to enjoy tent holidays. Cubby house kids like caravans.
It is interesting the snide sneering that goes on between tenters and caravanners, and vice-versa. Tenters believe that true camping can only be done under canvas. Well, perhaps not canvas these days, but some light weight space age material that breathes in the summer while keeping dry in the winter, the whole time reflecting adequate sunlight to avoid fading while still retaining appropriate levels of warmth to ensure the comfort of the occupants. Tents these days are made of materials more sophisticated than most Nike running shoes. However, the tenters still insist that caravanning is a bit of a soft option. Caravanners, in the meantime, watch tenters shivering around a small gas stove while it pours with rain, hoping they can cook their tin of baked beans before the tent catches on fire or they run out of oxygen from burning the propane stove. The caravanner observes this from the dry comfort of 4 solid walls, while their twin burner stove cooks up a steak and some potatoes they’ve just taken out of the fridge, which has kept it fresh and flavoursome. The caravanner also knows that the great outdoors is just a quick opening of the door away. I can see that both have their merits. It is very hard to pack a caravan into a backpack if you want to hike up a mountain somewhere, but I also enjoy a few creature comforts while on holiday. I believe the true root of this sly jeering and jibing is the tenters are secretly jealous of the fact that caravanners had proper cubby houses as kids, while the caravanners are the whole time suspect that maybe they’ve been gypped and didn’t have to be constantly chasing spiders and other children out of their cubby house, but could have had just as much fun with a bed sheet and the coffee table.
Personally, I had a cubby house outside made out of an old cupboard. At one stage we were fortunate enough to have a cubby house made of an old Ford Transit van. My brothers and I also, however, indulged in the occasional bed-sheet-tent construction inside. So, when it comes to camping, I ended up doing both. My family has a caravan with an annexe so have the best of both worlds; a portable house, but also a canvas bit to convince us we’re camping. That way, we get to sneer at everyone.
Today is a public holiday, although I’m not sure why. I could probably look it up, but it still wouldn’t change the fact that today is a day off work. Well, unless you are a police officer or ambulance driver or something. Or a service station attendant. Actually, we took our family to the pool today and the lifeguards were working, as were the café staff and the friendly people at the entrance desk. Come to think of it, it appeard the only people on holiday today were my family. My wife is 8 months pregnant and not currently employed, and my kids don’t attend school yet, so actually the only person with a day off work was me. Although, technically, I’m on school holidays anyway as I work in a school.
So, let’s start this post again. Today is a public holiday. Nobody has a day off, but at least it reminds us of the importance of… er… why is it holiday today?
The whole public holiday concept has irritated me for a while now. I like the day off, but feel sorry for those who still have to work. Before finishing university I worked for a while in a service station. Public holidays meant double or triple pay or some such good deal, but not usually a day off. They often meant a day off for the boss, funnily enough, because I guess he found it difficult to pay himself triple rates. Christmas Day we all took it in turns, just doing a 2 hour shift so nobody had to miss the whole day. Too bad if your 2 hours was while everybody else ate your turkey, though!
If you are one of the fortunate few to actually get a day off on a public holiday there is, as you will realise, a downside. As most of the shops are shut you can’t just “pop out” to get something you need, unless of course you go to a service station where you can buy a carton of eggs for about the same price as you’d pay for an entire chicken farm.
Enough! I have a revolutionary new idea. Why not roster our public holidays over a few weeks. Whatever the public holiday today, it could be stretched over the next 3 Mondays, rotating through various areas of work to ensure everybody gets a break but also ensuring there are also sufficient people staffing facilities to make the day off useful. So today everyone who works in, say, hospitality, tourism, engineering and finance could have a day off. Next week it could be all maintenance staff, gardiners, roadworkers, shopping centre staff and accountants. The week after could be everybody else. It wouldn’t be difficult to keep track of, we could just use a colour code. All the first group could have their place of work permanently painted purple, the second group could be yellow, and the third could be blue. Then, on our calendars, you simply state the colour who is having the week off. You’d see “Queen’s birthday – purple”, followed by “Queens birthday – yellow” etc.
The down side could be that your other family members are stuck working in the blue group, while your job is a yellow career. This could easily be solved by everyone always wearing a T-shirt that is the colour of their holiday industry. Then, when meeting a person for the first time, you can be sure to avoid getting romantically involved with anybody whose holidays don’t match your own.
Simple, yet brilliant. Keep me in mind when next electing a prime minister, eh?
