Actually, I'm not talking about yoga either ... :-)
May is the month of the ponts. Well, no, let's take a step back first: May is the month of the public holiday. Four of them, to be precise: the Fête du Travail (Labour Day), Victoire 1945 (Victory in Europe Day), Ascension and Lundi de Lundi de Pentecôte. Depending on the date of Easter it usually works out at about one a week. That's not half bad in itself.
But when a public holiday happens to fall on a Thursday or a Tuesday, the French like to faire le pont, or bridge the gap, by taking off Friday or Monday as well. In fact it's become so common to faire le pont that even if the holiday falls on a Wednesday people will be still ponting all over the place. Many small enterprises and commerces - and even schools and public services - shut down altogether on pont days so that you have to keep a weather (oops - sorry. I'm not really obsessed with the weather, honest) eye on the calendar if you've got Things To Do. I made the mistake of not doing that last Monday and found half the places I needed to go closed, and the other half teeming with ponting families determined to spend their buckshee day off in a queue ....
There is a kind of trade off though. When a public holiday falls on a Saturday or Sunday, so be it. There's no compensatory day as there is, for example, in the UK - so when last Christmas and New Year's Day both fell on Sunday, workers here got no time off at all. And let's face it, who wouldn't prefer time off in May to mid-winter?
Next Monday will be another pont, as will Friday of the following week. So that's three four day weekends, followed by the three day Pentecôte (Ascension) weekend at the end of the month. Now if we could only have some half decent weather ...........
