Bank Holiday Blues

Here in UK we have this thing called a Bank Holiday. There's one in May, and another in August. They were originally days when banks and most other businesses were shut -- now banks are probably the only businesses that are shut! Most everything else is open, and usually doing a roaring trade. Supermarkets, garden centres, outlet centres -- you name it, they're heaving with people. The highways are clogged with people heading for or returning from popular resorts. And the weather generally sucks. All in all, a good reason to stay home. If we do get any fine weather, then there's always gardening to do. But this year -- well, it generally sucked...
Anyway, it's a three-day weekend. And yesterday we went to Llandudno (that's in Wales, people) to attend a Mind, Body, Spirit Fair. We have a stall for our cat charity, and I do Tarot readings. I don't make a charge, but ask for donations to the charity. One thing that always strikes me is the number of people with problems who come to readers to find solutions (which we can't give!) they could easily sort out for themselves. Once they would have confided in a friend, a family member, a pastor. Now they ask a stranger. I think it's seriously sad. An example -- a middle-aged woman, seriously overweight, wanted to know how to change her life. Her husband of twenty years (father of her five children) was suspected of having an affair. Should she divorce him? Where would that leave her and the kids?
The card layout was clear -- she needed to make some decisions, some of which would be painful. I told her what the cards said. That was what she was paying for. (If I'd been advising her (I wasn't), I'd have told her to loose weight, get her hair cut and styled, and regain her self-respect. She was a doormat.)
Why do some women let themselves be walked on? This is the 21st century. Do we still cling to the mindset of the nineteenth? (Typified by a Gaelic saying which translates as 'better a lobster than no husband.')
So that was why my Bank Holiday made me blue...