Vikki Graves misses out on World Turtle Day, but just as she thinks it’s safe to venture out again, World Electronics Week hoves into view…

Originally I had planned to start writing this on World Turtle Day, but circumstances got the better of me and I bypassed not only the celebration of heroes in a half-shell but National Escargot Day too. And now here I am, deadline looming large, at the start of National Family Week.

Vikki is the author of 10 articles including 'That Was The Week That Was' from June's Leither

Zoom In

Not heard of National Family Week? Neither had I – this year’s the first one. The week promises a celebration of, yep, you guessed it, “your family”. What a concept; positive, hopeful, with mass market appeal by the bucket-load. And a perfect way to attract a diverse range of businesses and D-list celebrities looking for a bit of free advertising – so perfect it could have been thought up by a PR company. Guess what? It was. Recently it seems like every day and every week is ‘National This’ or ‘World Appreciation’ that. This month we had only two days to recover between British Sandwich Week and National Vegetarian Week, which finished the day before National Family Week began. Is it just me, or is all this just a sophisticated PR exercise? Surely to be a vegetarian you are required to behave like one for more than one week a year; and probably also for more than one week at a time. And I would be willing to bet that sandwiches appear in the lunch-boxes of the majority of Brits daily rather than annually. Some of us even eat vegetarian sandwiches, which is probably why the two national weeks cannot happen at the same time. And the days and weeks just keep on coming. While you’ve got your diary out, why not make a note of National Running Day, National Electronics Week and National Badger Day, all coming up soon.

At first I thought I was the only National Week cynic, but there are others. Whilst idly googling creative names for other potential weeks, I stumbled upon a blog on an ethical website attacking National Watercress Week as pointless. Now, although I was thrilled to find a kindred spirit, I don’t think watercress is the worst offender – at least it is seasonal and thus has a ‘week’. Ok, a few weeks, but still.

The problem is that watercress is a plant; it grows in the ground and then we eat it. The family, on the other hand, is a social and moral institution which makes us feel warm inside. It’s marketing gold. Hence why family favourites from across the land, from Gordon Brown, to Richard and Judy, to Miss England 2008 are jumping on the bandwagon. Even celebrity saucepan endorser, sorry, chef, Antony Worrall Thompson is getting in on the act by choosing us a family recipe. Ain’t that sweet? And if all this wasn’t enough, on completion of this piece, I popped out to the shops and was greeted with a poster of a smiley, dark-haired beauty wielding a glass of branded fruit drink. Diaries out again folks, it’s National Mango Week.