Viva Boredom!

I’m aware that I haven’t posted for a short while. However, things are very different in my new house. My wife and I are caring for an 89 year old lady (Wife’s gran) who has recently broke her hip and had a stroke. She also has dementia.

Rather than put her in a ‘home’ we felt it was better for her to receive care from her family in her own surroundings.

Of course, it’s hard and rather tiring. Still, it is rewarding and she is happier that she isn’t alone.

It does mean however that our own free time is somewhat limited. Hence the lack of blogging recently.

Today, I was reading the paper and was struck by something. Not literally of course, I have no wounds. The Condem government is proposing more changes to Sunday trading in order to ‘stimulate’ the economy. Given that people have less money to spend (with fuel, food and heating costs being so expensive), quite what people will be able to buy is beyond me. However, I digress. Sunday in Britain used to be a national day of boredom. One couldn’t pop out to the shops or pub as everything was shut. This posed a challenge in my childhood. We used to go for ‘days out’ in a British made car, which invariably meant parking by a motorway waiting for the radiator to cool down.

Sundays were so universally dull that Morrisey wrote ‘Everyday is like Sunday’. These days, everyday is much like another.

It seems that modern British society has become ‘boredom averse’. I feel that this is a great pity. Boredom breeds creativity. Of course chronic boredom leads to riots, sort of. I think a hint of boredom is just the ticket. It can lead to writing silly verse, or playing cards, Monopoly or attempting to teach the cat to use the toilet.

The modern answer to boredom is to go out and spend money you haven’t got on stuff you don’t particularly need.

How does that build character?

Bonzo the prophetic dog

Huge fan of Vivian Stanshall that I am, one is oft apt to read through some of his lyrics, and by crickey I think the Bonzo Dog band summed me up with their ditty “I’m bored“.

Indeed, it has recently been noted that I lack passion, zeal, enthusiasm for anything much. Whilst I point out that I do enjoy a good play or hacking jacket by and large they are right. I think almost 20 years in psychiatry has dulled the senses somewhat.

A young lady telephoned me today seeing if one would be interested in a job working with eating disordered clients. I think she too felt the full force on my apathy.

“Well darling, it’s an impossible job as most of them die anyway” was my reply. Also the money was abysmal. The private sector hasn’t got a clue when it comes to wages.

Brown Study

I do get terrible attacks of brown study. Whereby one is almost overwhelmed by a feeling of impenetrable ennui. It is not melancholy but instead a feeling of deflation and boredom that sits atop my head at times.

The radio in my car drives me to misery. The conversations with colleagues bore me to tears. The posturing and intellectualising proffered by those around me fill me with a sense of under-whelming.

I go to the gym and am bored.

Maybe I’ll cheer up once I get to play with a kaleidoscope.