Hooray! - another Bank Holiday to enjoy this weekend.

Here in Great Britain we may not have as many Bank Holidays as our continental cousins, but we do pretty well don't we? Certainly we do far better for holidays - in the sense of time off work - than did our forebears.

It really is just one or two generations ago that the only holidays folk enjoyed were holy days. For many, days off work were limited to Sundays, Easter Day, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, Good Friday, St. George's Day, Michaelmas, and the like. Our word 'holiday' in fact comes from those two words, 'holy day'.

In a real sense then our holidays still are holy days. So we should give thanks for them. Indeed every day is a holy day for, as the psalmist wrote some 3,000 years ago: "This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it".

Have a happy holy day - and remember to thank God!

The Rev. Mike Vockins, Hon. curate of Cradley with Mathon and Storridge and rural dean of Ledbury.