How to spend a Bank Holiday in lockdown?

The lifeline of making — and breaking — the furlough routine

The Early May Bank Holiday got me thinking. How to spend this so-called bonus day off work, when I already have no work and all the bonus days? Hardly much of a change. Since starting furlough leave at the beginning of April, my life has felt like a seamless string of Bank Holidays. So how to make this official Bank Holiday feel any different?

Bank Holidays carry a unique essence — a deliciously sneaky day that laughs in the face of routine. They are somehow even better because they always take us by surprise, despite their uncomplicated and reliable annual occurrence. It’s the way that a Bank Holiday has the habit of breaking up the routine, shaking out the monotony of normal weekly patterns. And unlike annual leave that is savoured and reserved for specific events or trips away, the blessed Bank Holiday is a gift of 24 hours, promising slow mornings and cooked breakfasts, extra hours sloping around in slippers and get-togethers with family and friends.

But what about Bank Holidays in a global pandemic? They are just about the only things left in the calendar, after all. Yet all the added benefits of the usual Bank Holiday have been negated by our state of lockdown limbo. Slow mornings with no need to commute? Been doing that for the last 8 weeks. Extra hours pottering in slippers? Only shoes I wear these days anyway. And as for social get-togethers — forget it. While Zoom might cover some of the distance separating us from loved ones, the pixelated heads and ever-looming 40-minute cut-off doesn’t quite have the same laid-back feeling of Bank Holiday celebrations of yesteryear.

While most people across the country can still mark lockdown Bank Holidays as a day away from work or virtual schooling, blissfully free from Zoom meetings and online learning, the furloughed population don’t even have these commitments to walk away from. So the idea of a Bank Holiday for me, on furlough, is fairly redundant. A distant concept, much like the notion of the ‘weekend’ for the aristocratic classes in the past — just another day of gentle, unstructured existence.

Well, in my defence my existence hasn’t been completely gentle and unstructured during my furlough leave. I am a creature of habit and thrive on routine and a sense of purpose — furlough was understandably quite a daunting prospect. No commitments, no deadlines, no excuse to be up or out of the house.

To stop myself falling into an abyss of slow self-loathing and deflation, I — like many others — have attempted to keep some semblance of a routine, allowing this to slip on weekends so that they feel, well, like weekends. Granted, it’s a very indulgent routine, but it’s a routine nonetheless. At least I feel I have created a framework for my life, built on the ruins of my former structure bulldozed so suddenly by the arrival of furlough.

So here’s how the weekdays go: start with a run, then settle down to a choice of admin, creative writing, arts research, creating illustrations or sorting out the junk in my bedroom — a task that only happens when I have the physical and mental strength to confront the hoarding fanaticism of my younger self. Break for morning coffee with my new situational colleague — my retired mother — then resume activity. After a (relaxed) lunch-hour, the afternoon hails yet more of the above activities, but usually at a slower pace and with more cups of tea. We alternate who cooks dinner, finding creative ways to mask the slight muskiness of green split peas unearthed at the back of the store-cupboard with an expiry date somewhere in the early 2010s. Evening entertainment is usually streamed, ranging from recorded theatre productions to episodes of light-hearted escapism to recommended films.

And then the true test of lockdown discipline: Monday to Wednesday soft drinks only. Roll on Thursday — the beginning of the end of my lockdown-excuse-of-a-week! Stretching sobriety until Thursday gives me something to propel the week forwards and distinguish the days, creating a hard(ly)-earned sense of achievement that I’ve lasted three whole days without alcohol. Not that I’m foaming at the mouth by Thursday evening or anything. But a mere three days without a tipple sets off that first drink of the week oh so well. The sober space at the start of the week resets the headspace like moving the sliding upper part of an old-fashioned typewriter; by the time you are reaching the end of the line, the anticipation for that little ping! makes the result all the more satisfying. So too with alcohol it seems. Somehow, by stopping for a few days the evening drink still feels luxurious. If you no longer get that little buzzy lift from your favourite drink, or feel you’re drinking too much, maybe try the 3:4 sobriety diet. Works a treat and makes that first drink on a Thursday evening taste very rewarding indeed.

We digress.

My furloughed stay-at-home weekends are probably much like everyone’s at the moment — slower pace, more time outside, cooking, reading, watching. All of these I could easily do on weekdays if I allowed myself to; but I am determined to stay synchronised with the rest of the world. I need to feel some shape to each seven-day block, even with the working week a distant bittersweet memory.

So that’s life on furlough, folks. Honestly, most of my days are like a Bank Holiday but with a timetable. How then to make an official Bank Holiday any different?

Turns out it is possible to differentiate a Bank Holiday in a sea of Bank Holiday-like days. The method is simple: slow down even further, do whatever you want to, and go the extra mile to indulge. Here’s a taste of how I reached the nirvana of relaxation, a few weeks ago for the Early May Bank Holiday.

Instead of getting up at 6.45am to my alarm, I got up at 7.15am, no alarm. Not exactly a lie in, but it was a natural awakening to the day. Going out for my morning jog there was a sense of freedom — I didn’t even track my run which, for me, is like denying its existence. Today was going to be undictated by clocks or bleeps. And on my Bank Holiday run I even stopped for a moment in a quiet spot by the river, not because I needed a break, but merely because I could. Inhaling nature, exhaling time.

After a slow breakfast over a crossword, the morning was spent baking, mother and daughter side-by-side. Not that the fruitcake recipe particularly merited two chefs, but it was a way of doing something different, together; an unnecessary shared indulgence.

How to transform lunch into a Bank Holiday lunch? Answer: eat it outside in the late spring sunshine and wash it down with a shandy. Wild.

The hot hazy afternoon was a warm Bank Holiday hug from the natural world, helping to melt our day into a pool of pure relaxation. I grabbed my book, reclined a chair to the angle that soon guarantees the transition from reading to snoozing, and dozed off after about half an hour.

I was roused from my afternoon slumber by a tinkle of chinaware, hailing the arrival of teatime — a non-meal exclusive to days of extreme laziness and indulgence. Time for the much-anticipated serving of the morning’s bake, accompanied by a pot of tea. Yes, a pot. We even went to the trouble of making a proper loose-leaf brew. An unnecessary and inefficient luxury.

Shortly after, afternoon tipped into early evening, and tea morphed into something a little stronger. In the same way that the teapot transformed a humble 4pm cuppa into a Bank Holiday afternoon tea, I decided the seldom-used novelty jam-jar cocktail glasses were the appropriate way to elevate an evening tipple into a swanky aperitif. It’s amazing what slightly excessive kitchenware can do to shake up the normal.

Dinner was a barbeque — is there any other option for a sunny summer Bank Holiday? Turns out Negronis aren’t particularly helpful when trying to achieve gastronomic excellence, so after a few beverages our chicken wings were perhaps a little on the singed side. But this was a small price to pay for a special and — crucially — out-of-the-ordinary evening in lockdown. Turns out it’s amazing what a daytime snooze and some underused crockery can do, how little it takes to give a day a little more sparkle.

Having been fairly neutral in the run-up to the Early May Bank Holiday — frankly just another day in lockdown — I was pleasantly surprised at how special it felt. Rather than falling into the sludge of timeless days, it was a truly memorable Bank Holiday.

And I think the Bank Holiday gave me more than just a pleasant 24 hours. It showed me what total relaxation is. It revealed how critical it is to differentiate the days and weeks, and to stubbornly celebrate special occasions even when there doesn’t seem much to celebrate, with the current world so confused and uncertain. But during these times it’s more important than ever to bring celebration into our homes.

Lockdown has taught me how to relax, but also how to not relax. Both lessons are equally important in my current life: they allow me to shape time into weeks, differentiating how I spend time on weekdays and at the weekend. I have become an expert in invented distinctions between times and types of days. Without this, furloughed life could have thrown me into a sinking pit of idleness, the lack of purpose and motivation pulling me under. But learning how to build — and transgress — a routine has been a lifeline, a loose tug keeping me in step with the world. Bank Holidays in lockdown have revealed there are always ways to give a special glow to a day. All you need is a little imagination and determination to indulge.

And so, as we are about to sink into another May Bank Holiday, I am actually looking forward to it. This sense of anticipation is refreshing — with so many events and dates cancelled over the last few months, the Bank Holiday Monday is the first thing to look forward to in far too long. And given that this is a Bank Holiday Monday, I might even contravene my start-the-week sobriety and enjoy a Pimms or two. So if you are looking for me on Monday afternoon, you know where to find me — dozing on a deckchair in the garden, book in one hand, and a Pimms in the other. Join me in cheers from afar, and raise a glass to the lockdown Bank Holiday.

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