You got it..... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crrq8epk7vjo Prime Minister François Bayrou has put the cat among the pigeons in promising to cut two of France's national holidays in order to rescue the country's finances. Predictably enough, his proposal on Tuesday to axe the Easter Monday and 8 May holidays triggered howls of protest from the left and the populist right – with his own centrists and the conservative right expressing at best guarded support. In a country with such a strong tradition of worker protest, the sudden removal of two statutory days off was never going to be an easy sell. Essentially, men and women would be made to work two extra days a year for no increase in salary. The gain in productivity would help pull the country out of its ever-deepening hole of debt. The French are indeed very attached to their jours fériés. The month of May is awaited with glee every year, not just because it heralds spring – but also because of the succession of long weekends that regularly occur. If 1 May (Workers' Day) and 8 May, marking the end of World War Two, fall on a Tuesday or Thursday, then the weekends become four-day treats because the Monday and the Friday will automatically be taken as holiday too. On top of that there is Ascension (always a Thursday) plus Easter Monday and Whit Monday (or Pentecost). If the Church calendar obliges, an early Easter can combine with 1 or 8 May to provide not just a pont or bridge - meaning a four-day weekend spanning a Monday or Friday, but a veritable five or six-day viaduc (viaduct). November is another feast of feasts, with All Saints' on the first of the month and Armistice on the 11th offering relief from autumn blues. And on top of that, there are the famous "RTT" days, which many get in return for working more than the legal 35 hours a week. But before we lapse into humorous self-satisfaction about "those incredibly lazy French and their God-given right to endless downtime", we need to bear in mind a couple of other considerations. First, far from the popular image, the French actually have fewer national holidays than the European average. France has 11, like Germany and the US. Slovakia has the most, with 15, and England, Wales, and the Netherlands have the fewest, with 8. Ireland and Denmark have 10.
Watford once played an FA Cup tie against a club whose name included the name of a former Watford player. Which club and which player?
