AT THIS time of year, bank holidays are like buses; you wait ages and then three come along in a rush.

As we don't observe Candlemas and Shrove Tuesday as holidays any more, it's been a long haul since new year, a dozen weeks, but in the next nine we've got three bank holiday Mondays.

Then there's another long haul through June, July and up to August's final Monday, followed by a four-month wait for Christmas.

No wonder days off go to our heads and we act like lemmings at holiday weekends, aiming for almost anywhere that isn't home, then moaning because we get stuck in traffic jams caused by all the other lemmings.

I say "we" but I have to say this household gave up bank holiday outings years ago in favour of using odd bits of lieu time and holiday entitlement to enable us to have days out or long weekends at quieter times.

So what do we do when the rest of the world is heading for the stately homes, beaches or amusement parks? Nothing. At least, that's what I'd like to do and often plan to do, where "nothing" means "nothing I don't want to do".

Doing nothing could be finishing the day's paper before I leave the breakfast table, tackling the sort of gardening which doesn't involve a spade, wellies or too much energy, or finding there's a film on TV old enough to have a beginning, a middle and a (preferably happy) end. I suppose "pottering" best describes the way I'm busy doing nothing.

If I had the courage, I'd add "selfishness" to my holiday weekend pursuits but women aren't built that way - or if they are, it gets commented on. I can still hear the tones of an eavesdropped comment years ago: "She gets a head of celery and keeps the heart for herself." The speaker, a woman herself of course, implied that all seven deadly sins would have been less reprehensible.

At bank holiday weekends, I'd leave the manky banana in the fruit bowl for someone else, take the last chocolate in the box and sit and read while someone else made the beds and decided what we'd have for dinner.

Yes, sadly, we have to eat and wash up and keep the bath clean even if it's an official holiday, but at least in our house it's a co-operative effort in the interests of everyone having some time to do the nothing of their choice.

That way, it doesn't matter if the weather forecast is right, wrong, good or bad. If I can't do nothing outdoors, I'll stay in and do it there.

Naturally, it doesn't work out like that. Last Easter, for instance, we had a household emergency to cope with and spent a happy weekend drying out various bits of Chez Cave and putting our plumbing insurance to the test (successfully).

I have a nasty suspicion that this Easter weekend will be fine, calm and mild, just the sort of weather we've been trying to combine with our free time since the new year gales punched a hole in one panel of the carport roof and cracked a couple of others.

The polycarbonate sheets lie waiting and have done for weeks. It's got to the point where we daren't even plan aloud because the clerk of the weather sniggers and scuppers the scheme. Much more than a light breeze and those large corrugated sheets are a working model of wind resistance.

But give the clerk a holiday weekend to ruin and, far from doing nothing, he'll ensure we're up the ladders with the corrugated stuff and the specially-capped screws, working our socks off.

Happy Easter!