Benefits of Boredom

They say that necessity is the mother of invention. Well, I would add that boredom is too.

In Lapland in January I was in total darkness, every day, from the hours of 2.30 pm to 10.30 am With no telly or radio. Thank God for the Kindle and books. Now I don’t know about you but the sight of one’s middle- aged spouse in thermal leggings must be the biggest passion- killer of all time. It didn’t seem to deter the happy- slappy honeymoon couple in the adjoining wooden cabin however. God, it was a strain keeping a straight face when nodding to them politely over breakfast. 

In this Arctic white-out wilderness you could enjoy the spills of reindeer and husky dog rides and the potential thrilling threat  of bears and wolves in forests where also lurk the indigenous wolverines. I quite fancy being jumped on by Hugh Jackman, but not by these vicious bear – like animals who can slash- kill ten reindeer in a couple of hours. You don’t get excitement like that walking around Basingstoke.

Laplanders must be a hardy race, too busy trying to survive to have time to be bored.

I think back to all that schlepping to music lessons, tumble tots, kids' parties and swimming lessons (the absolute pits that, struggling with wet baby and praying for no ‘accidents’).I did it for my two boys and think, why did I bother?

 Because I didn’t want them to be bored?

So what? Go stare at the wall then, and you’ll soon find something else to do.

When I was small I used to amuse myself watching ants crawling into holes in my garden in South Wales. When I’d had enough of reading, climbing trees etc and there was, as Dylan Thomas would have said, LLareggub (read it backwards) to do I’d go off in search of my younger brother and beat him up instead.

We had a great collection of Arther Mee’s The Children’s Encyclopaedia, all ten volumes bound in blue and gold.

In there I saw the best depiction of boredom ever, Walter Richard Sickert, Ennui c.1914. Here it is-

Don’t they look utterly, utterly bored?

I’m convinced that some of the stuff in those editions caused me long- lasting psychological damage. Forget Bride of Chucky. If you ever want to send your child screaming back to the child psychologist show him the blood dripping out of the digit- less fingers of the thumb-sucking Conrad, punished by the giant scissors of the roving tailor. 

Snip! Snap! Snip! the scissors go;

    And Conrad cries out "Oh! Oh! Oh!"

    Snip! Snap! Snip! They go so fast,

    That both his thumbs are off at last.

Or how about poor Kaspar, who once healthy and strong, refuses to eat his soup and wastes away and dies.

He scarcely weighs a sugar-plum;

    He's like a little bit of thread,

    And, on the fifth day, he was--dead!

The author Hoffman was a psychiatrist and father....

Years after reading that I used to lie in bed thinking my body was expanding and contracting like the boy in the soup story.

Funny how childhood memories linger in the psyche. I never did suck my thumb...

Bored now. 

Think I’ll have some lunch. What’s on my diet planner for today? 

Ah yes, soup!