What is suitable Bank Holiday reading? Apart, of course, from the Motorists Atlas of Great Britain, the variable speed limit indicator on the M25 and the nutrition information listed on the side of a Ginsters’ Savoury Brunch Bar?

The idea of reading on a bank holiday will seem anathema to many, because the whole point of this elongated weekend is activity — getting out and about. Traditional, time-hallowed Olde English Bank Holiday activities — the Ceremonial Cursing of the SatNav at Clacket Lane, the Undressing and Presentation of the Strawberry Mini Milk at Junction 18, the Raising of the Children’s Blood Sugar Levels at the Leatherhead turn-off, the Wild Screaming of the Angelic Host just 3.3 miles from Home and, let us not forget, the final eventide ritual, the Curious Staining of the Booster Seat, all combine to make these days hallowed in our calendar.

It seems not just churlish, but an act of impiety towards our national gods to stop at home on any bank holiday. And when that bank holiday is inaugurating a whole half-term week, then the failure to get the roadster out of the garage and on to the A3 must seem like a very British sort of blasphemy.

But for those of us who’re inclined to fear that exposing children to new horizons of a bank holiday more often than not means imprisoning them for far too long in Skoda-world, help comes in the attractively shambling shape of Tom Hodgkinson. His The Idle Parent: Why Less Means More When Raising Kids is a very English kind of child-rearing manual.

In place of the authoritarian regimes that other authors insist we subject our children to, it lays out a plan for a baggy liberalism towards our offspring, in which parents play the role of benign and non-interfering monarchs, leaving our charges to amuse themselves for much of the day, while we lay on the sort of music and revels, at our own pace, that contribute to everyone’s general amusement.

Hodgkinson is lyrical, and persuasive, on the joy of unstructured play and I certainly buy his argument that parents freed of motorway-madness-induced stress are more likely to be karmically calming influences on their children. And while Hodgkinson argues, as passionately as any idler can, for inactivity, his suggestions lead to us having more time for our children. Instead of absenting ourselves from their real concerns, as we wrestle with routefinders, try to pacify them in the queue for Space Mountain, or wander aimlessly through the gift shop, we should really just set a slower pace. So that we can walk in step with them.

A country tour In keeping with that spirit of aboriginal English gentleness I’ve spent part of my bank holiday (or, more properly, Whitsuntide) reading a work of great beauty, and sadness. Old English Customs and Ceremonies by F.J. Drake-Carnell was published in October 1938, the month the Sudetenland was occupied, on the eve of Kristallnacht, and at the last hour before we knew world war was inevitable. The picture it paints of an England that existed when my own father was born is poignantly distant from the land of Girls Aloud and Cajun Squirrel-flavoured crisps we know today.

With more than 100 black and white photographs and simple unadorned prose, Drake-Carnell explains everything from the history of Whit Fairs to the reason why brewery apprentices were trussed up and rolled in barrels on their 21st birthday. From apple wassailing to horn dances, all the rich, living folklore of a people whose identity was inseparable from their community is beautifully anatomised. As bank holiday journeys go, I would wholeheartedly recommend a complete tour of the English countryside. Of the 1930s, that is. From the comfort of your own armchair.

Spread-betting on your spread Most of the seasonal customs Drake-Carnell records appear, like my Bank Holidays, to involve cakes and ale in some combination. Some of them in bizarre conjunction with penny-throwing or ancient religious, possibly even pagan, observance. But none of them combine food, money and cultish devotion like the contemporary craze that is bet dieting.

It was reported this weekend that slimmers are signing up for a website called StickK, on which they post their target weight and pledge to donate money to a cause they hate if they fail to meet their target. Apparently this provides dieters with the extra incentive necessary to shift the last stubborn pounds.

This novel form of spread-betting certainly has its attractions. And ever since the Earl of Sandwich first ordered meat to be shoved between bread and served to him at the faro table because he had not time to dine, there has been a productive fusion between food and gambling. But looking at my own waistline I suspect I am now in the position of a 3am pontoon player — who twisted when he should have stuck — totally bust and heading south faster than a swallow in the slipstream of an Air New Zealand Jumbo. If there was a bet worth placing on my diet, I’m afraid it really could only be an accumulator.

Michael Gove is the Conservative MP for Surrey Heath

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