REGIONAL CORRESPONDENTS

Parisians adore May, the month of les ponts

M AY 26, 2013

Helen Hickey is a British freelance journalist living 40 floors up in New York City's Upper East Side with her hubby, cat and four children who miss everything Malaysian, even those dodgy traffic cops.
PARIS, May 26 Off with the beret hats, hello dark sunglasses and spiffy sandals. Parisians are smiling (its official): spring is in full swing and their much beloved month of May est arriv! This dreamy month is truly blessed with bank holidays offering the winter and desk weary a chance to escape for an extended weekend away, or le petit weekend as the French have so daintily named them. Not much can stop Parisians in their vigorous pursuit of one; not even a recession, which France quietly slipped into in mid-May. This is because they are not considered a luxury, but a necessity, a series of rehearsals in preparation for the biggie Augusts month-long summer vacation just around the corner. May holds the dubious crown of the month of les ponts (bridges in French). It alludes to the artful way French workers take days off between a given bank holiday and the preceding or following weekends, resulting in rather handsome ptit weekends without impacting too much on their annual holiday allowance. There are four public holidays in May: La Fte du Travail, May 1, Labour Day, workers day off; Armistice Day WWII, celebrating the end of World War II in Europe, May 8; LAscension, May 9 and La Pentecte, May 20. The latter two are connected with Frances Catholic heritage. Even by Malaysian standards having witnessed the birth of Malaysia Day and Thaipusam as public holidays during our posting there thats a pretty impressive number.

May kicks off the start of the silly season of endless holidays in France. Pictures by Helen HickeyBetter

still, two fall midweek making rich pickings for the pont aficionados who have the chance of engineering a five-day not-so-ptit weekend, and I suspect causing havoc on the work front. My husband bucked the trend and worked for all four. Sweet. If it hadnt been for the birdsong and my childrens chatter among the gently bobbing boughs of our gardens horse-chestnut trees, now heavily laden with their lantern-shaped blossoms, it would have been very lonesome on our ghostly street of houses, sealed with their imposing window shutters. Its not quite as bad as August my French doctor offered on a recent visit, when apparently Paris truly empties. But dont expect your children to be doing much work in May. What I had taken to be a mischievous comment has proven correct: theres more lethargy than learning in the lessons and the kids are becoming more fractious by the day.

This month, street sellers dotted around the open-air markets of Paris sell the delicately scented May flower called Lily of the Valley. To

be fair, Frances President Franois Hollande has been busy. He should be commended for staying on task, not on holiday, and passing the same-sex marriage Bill 344 this month, joining 13 other enlightened countries who have done the same. Pulling off such a feat in this deeply traditional and predominantly Catholic country was both courageous and astonishing. Theres been mass rightwing street protests over the past months, and in very macabre turn of events, a well-known French historian shot himself at the altar of the Notre Dame Cathedral in a desperate bid to summon up opposition to same-sex marriage in France. Theres been some whingeing in the press recently about these heavyweight bank holidays: should they be scrapped given Frances economic woes?

Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris: A well-known rightwing historian shot himself at its 850-year old altar as a rant against the recent signing (May 17) of Frances same-sex marriage legislation.According to a recent study by the French National

Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies Insee, getting rid of bank holidays would allow France to save more money. The study showed that the reduction of total workdays in 2013 (two fewer than in 2012) claimed a 0.1 per cent loss in yearly Gross Domestic Product. Perhaps its not such a bad idea, particularly given Frances return to the dark doldrums of recession for the third time in four years. The Portuguese government has just cancelled four

national bank holidays for the next five years, claiming the country cannot afford to take time off while it wrestles with its austerity programme. France currently ranks fifth on the scale of European countries in terms of the number of annual bank holidays along with Spain, the United Kingdom and Sweden. But given President Hollandes haemorrhaging approval ratings currently the lowest of any modern French leader with more than two-thirds of the population giving Hollande the thumbs down hell be in no rush to rock those ptit weekends, so interwoven into the fabric of the French way of life. And as I listen to my friends alluring accounts of their adventures west in La Bretagne (Brittany), arguably the top destination for les ponts month the sailing, the invigorating salt air on breezy coastal walks or grazing ondejeuners of a crisp vin blanc and fresh moules (mussels) I say: Vive le ptit weekend! * This is the personal opinion of the columnist.