A Week Of Free Stuff - Mostly!

One of the perks of getting older is the opportunity to get things for free, or at least cheaper than before. I confess I have not yet had much chance to take advantage of concessionary prices - I recently made my first visit to the cinema in over twenty years and was somewhat disappointed to find that the concessionary price was the same as the normal price - but I have had a free eye test recently[1], and my 60+ Oystercard has been taking a caning recently.

Ok, so the Oystercard isn't free, but it was only £20 and expires in 2024 (when I get my Freedom Pass, assuming a future Mayor of London doesn't withdraw it) - that's six years at 27 pence per month - and it has paid for itself over and again since I got it. Take last week for instance, when I travelled up to London more times than if I had still been working! And on four of the days I travelled, the event that I was going to cost me nothing.

On the Saturday I went to see Polish prog-rock band Riverside at The Electric Ballroom in Camden. My plan was to walk from Liverpool Street to Camden - at just under four miles, that is a gentle stroll - but heavy rain put the kibosh on that idea, although popping my head above ground at Kings Cross tube, I saw that the rain had eased sufficiently to allow me to walk the last mile or so. I rather liked the venue, and as I've got older I've found myself liking venues where the audience stands rather than sits as it is easier to get to the loo during the performance, although bizarrely I find the need less when standing than sitting, which I think is psychological, not physical. Riverside were - as expected - brilliant, and support act Mechanism were better than expected.

Riverside at The Electric Ballroom

 Monday and it was off to Ealing to pick up a djembe drum that my wife had bought on eBay, and then on Tuesday it was a trip to Greenwich to the Up The Creek comedy club to see a recording of Angela Barnes' BBC radio show, You Can't Take It With You. Since the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) was extended to Lewisham, getting to Greenwich from our home north of the river has become much easier, and the DLR gives you the chance to get a driver's eye view of your journey. The show was in part a cathartic experience for Angela Barnes following her father's death, but principally just good old-fashioned observational comedy. The series is being broadcast in the New Year.

On Wednesday it was another BBC radio recording, at Old Broadcasting House (OBH) in Portland Place. Val and I go to plenty of BBC radio shows at New Broadcasting House, but this was our first visit to OBH, which is next door. The programme we went to see was World Book Club, which goes out on the World Service and in this episode featured one of our favourite writers, Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher series, a set of books so successful that apparently one sells every fourteen seconds, worldwide with total sales exceeding 100 million. Val and I met Lee at a book signing a couple of years ago when he was promoting Night School, the 21st Reacher novel, but at World Book Club he was reading from, and speaking about, Killing Floor, which was the first in the series. The programme airs on New Year's Day.

Meeting Lee Child at Waterstone's in 2016

Thursday saw me take a trip to Wembley Stadium to see England play the USA in a friendly. I've not been to Wembley since it was rebuilt in 2007, in fact the last time I was there - as far as I recall - was for a Genesis concert in 1987. I used to go to Wembley for England games regularly until an uncomfortable experience at a match against the Republic of Ireland put me off. I probably wouldn't have gone to this game had it not been for my football club, Romford FC, being given a number of complementary tickets. Had the Football Association known in advance that Wayne Rooney would be brought out of retirement for a swan-song appearance, I wonder if they would have been so generous in handing out freebies; before Rooney's inclusion in the squad was announced they probably felt it prudent to 'paper' the stadium to avoid row upon row of empty seats. The new stadium is impressive, safe, modern and clean - which the old one wasn't - but it lacks the charm that the old arena had; it's a bit bland. My ticket warned that tier five - where I was seated - was not suitable for vertigo suffers due to the height and steep aspect; fortunately, this warning turned out to be a bit overdone, as, despite my aversion to heights, I had no issues. One thing that has not changed since Wembley was rebuilt, however, is the time it takes to get back to Wembley Park tube station. If I were a regular visitor, I would definitely be looking at alternative means of getting home.

The final freebie of the week was another BBC radio programme, of The Now Show this time, which was recorded on Friday lunchtime at The Comedy Store in Leicester Square, and which was broadcast that same evening, but is still available to listen to on the BBC Radio iPlayer.

Gary Numan at The Royal Albert Hall

My 60+ Oystercard probably saved me about £60 in fares that week - and continues to save me money, as Val and I were at The Royal Albert Hall to see Gary Numan this week - and of the shows and events we've been to this last week and a bit only that show and the Riverside gig cost me money. A caveat I'd add is that of course even the free shows involved some expenditure (food, drinks, a programme at the football, and t-shirts at the gigs - I'm a sucker for tour t-shirts), but if nothing else this week or so has once again proven, having seen three shows and a football match that cost me nothing, it's possible to travel around the capital and be entertained for free, or at least pretty damn close to free.

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[1] Not much of a concession, as it seems most opticians offer free eye tests with vouchers in newspapers, or to anyone who buys a pair of glasses from them.

The Theory and Practice of Boredom

"Mum, I'm bored!" How many times did  I utter those words as a child? How many times during the long summer holidays, or on Sunday afternoons when the weather prevented me from having a kick-about in the garden, and there was nothing on TV worth watching? I have no idea, but it was often.  That sort of generalised boredom - as opposed to specific boredom, which we'll come to shortly - ought to be far less common today, both among adults and children. In my youth there were fewer diversions, today, what with a multitude of TV channels, streaming services, video games, and social media, there are far fewer reasons to be bored; frankly, one ought to always be able to find something to do (and I'm discounting household chores and the like).

Specific boredom is another thing altogether. Being bored by one's job is something that has to be endured; being bored by a particular TV programme, or by some hobby or another can be dealt with by switching to some more engaging activity. Work - boring or not - has to be tolerated. Many times in my working life I had to do tedious, repetitive jobs, the sorts that are alright for the first few hours - the whole morning sometimes - but become stupefying after a while. I spent a long time checking payments - comparing written instructions with what had been input into the computer system - which was a task that after a while became so mind-numbing, that as the day progressed, trips to the coffee machine became increasingly regular, just as a means of getting away from the desk.

Boredom at work can be detrimental to performance; mistakes start creeping in. I recall vividly spending hours checking payments and at some point having no recollection of the last few items I had checked. Clearly, then was a good time to take a break. That was at least one reason why I always enjoyed jobs with plenty of variety, less opportunity to lose concentration and make an error. Sometimes, of course, a repetitive task, performed over and over again, can enable the mind to wander without any unfortunate consequence.

Generalised boredom - which, as I've said is something we all probably experience less these days - need not actually be a bad thing, although perhaps it is better to characterise this form of boredom as something else, by which I mean freeing the mind to simply wander, to daydream. We all lead increasingly busy lives, whether it is work or running a house, keeping up with our social lives - in real life or online - being busy, being engaged, we seem to be constantly on the go, our minds ever active.

The poet W H Davies, wrote:

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

This poem is an encouragement to do nothing, to let the mind wander, to think not of something specific, but simply to pause and reflect. Doing so will often allow me to reach insights, solve problems, and be creative, without actively realising it. One thing I love to do is go for walks, preferably somewhere away from the hustle and bustle of the city, but even there walking frees my mind to take flights of fancy. One thing that eliminating boredom does is similarly reduce our capacity to daydream; walking allows me to do just that, and apart from the benefit of the physical exercise, allows my mind to order my thoughts and make decisions, or solve problems, even if I am not conscious of my doing so.

Most of us will have experienced the frustration of not being able to solve that last clue in the crossword, or of desperately trying to remember someone's name, only to find that the harder we think about it, the more elusive the answer becomes. Yet, by switching off that part of the brain, letting the mind wander, the answer will pop into one's head unbidden.  Many times during my years at work I would be faced with a problem that needed solving, and many times the harder I thought about that problem, the more difficult it became to pin down an answer, yet the solution to many of those problems came to me when I was not actively thinking about them, when I was walking to work from the station, or waiting for a train. The solutions came to me when I simply stood and stared.

To counter the stress we all encounter in our daily lives, many people are turning to mindfulness and meditation, which are not necessarily the same thing as submitting to the sort of generalised boredom that I have described, however generalised boredom, or allowing oneself the freedom to simply stand and stare works for me. A danger of this, and a trap that I find myself falling into is overthinking, but that stems from my actively thinking about something rather than engaging in the sort of freewheeling daydreaming that characterises what, for want of a better term, I'm going to continue calling generalised boredom. And overthinking is only one step removed from full-scale worrying, and we don't want to go there!

As a child, I hated being bored (I'm sure my Mum hated it too), but now I enjoy it and I embrace it; I have some of my best ideas when I'm bored. Taking the time to relish being bored enables one to daydream, to imagine, to be creative. Without boredom, our lives are poorer.