Post by JustinofOz on Jan 26, 2005 4:39:15 GMT -2
It sneaked up on me again.
Just when I was getting over the bedlam wrought upon my miserable life by the Christmas festivities, Australia Day was upon me and I had to find out about it only when I went to the shop and found so few folk out and about.
Public holidays in the middle of the week have never been the norm. In fact, I can't ever remember a public holiday that was not contrived to fall either on a Friday or a Monday. Thus it has always been so that we have enjoyed so many "Long Weekends" throughout the year.
I, with no knowledge of the inner workings of the powers that be who set out these public holidays, could never work out just how they managed to get them to fall exactly on the right day of the week so as to add to the normal two-day weekend, they must be the real mathematical geniuses that we sometimes hear of.
But it seems that even these old and reliable, time-honoured establishments can and do, at times, manage to slip up and a day will fall out of harmony with the desires of we mere mortals. And so it is that I am sitting here in front of this computer pondering how I happened to miss the fact that today is Australia Day.
Of course, there is always a bone of contention. The Aboriginal folk, our first Australians, who have been here for more than forty thousand years, have proclaimed today to be Invasion Day, and are suitably celebrating this bemoaned fact.
Well, as it is Oz Day, I had better get myself back to the bottle shop before they shut, which they do early on public holidays, and get myself a little something with which I can suitably either celebrate or bemoan this Day. (It depends upon who I meet in the park on the way back home).
Of course there are differences of opinion as to just what we should celebrate or bemoan in out respective countries. Scotland, for instance, insists that Robbie Byrnes was reason enough for a celebration, and the Deuchlanders are bemoaning the grevious crimes committed by Hitler and Co.
Just when I was getting over the bedlam wrought upon my miserable life by the Christmas festivities, Australia Day was upon me and I had to find out about it only when I went to the shop and found so few folk out and about.
Public holidays in the middle of the week have never been the norm. In fact, I can't ever remember a public holiday that was not contrived to fall either on a Friday or a Monday. Thus it has always been so that we have enjoyed so many "Long Weekends" throughout the year.
I, with no knowledge of the inner workings of the powers that be who set out these public holidays, could never work out just how they managed to get them to fall exactly on the right day of the week so as to add to the normal two-day weekend, they must be the real mathematical geniuses that we sometimes hear of.
But it seems that even these old and reliable, time-honoured establishments can and do, at times, manage to slip up and a day will fall out of harmony with the desires of we mere mortals. And so it is that I am sitting here in front of this computer pondering how I happened to miss the fact that today is Australia Day.
Of course, there is always a bone of contention. The Aboriginal folk, our first Australians, who have been here for more than forty thousand years, have proclaimed today to be Invasion Day, and are suitably celebrating this bemoaned fact.
Well, as it is Oz Day, I had better get myself back to the bottle shop before they shut, which they do early on public holidays, and get myself a little something with which I can suitably either celebrate or bemoan this Day. (It depends upon who I meet in the park on the way back home).
Of course there are differences of opinion as to just what we should celebrate or bemoan in out respective countries. Scotland, for instance, insists that Robbie Byrnes was reason enough for a celebration, and the Deuchlanders are bemoaning the grevious crimes committed by Hitler and Co.
