I live in, quite conceivably, the dullest country in the world. The only thing that makes my work exciting is that I don’t press “Save” as often as I should. My hobbies include (and are mostly limited to) activities that involve sitting. I live in a neighbourhood where a bin facing the wrong direction passes for excitement. In other words, I’m bored. And boring. This is a condition known as “middle class”.
If you’re not English, the concept can be hard to grasp. Wikipedia has an article describing it, but this focuses on sociological aspects and in no way explains why anyone would want to attend a farmers’ market. I don’t think I can fully explain it in any other way than to invite you to read an edition of G2, the Guardian’s weekly magazine. If you have read it and enjoyed learning what is and is not acceptable when fighting on television and have an uncontrollable urge to turn your lounge (middle class for sitting room) into an Oxford common room (a sitting room for posh kids), then congratulations, you too are middle class.
There is nothing wrong with being middle class; in fact, it’s quite nice. There are plenty of cups of tea, with biscuits! And weekend breaks! By train though, to reduce our carbon footprints. But there are downsides. Such as having to pretend to enjoy music made by people we’d never meet in real life because they are living in Africa or poor. Some people are both and unfortunately do not make music. These people make us very uncomfortable and we do everything we can to help them, in the hopes that they too will one day make music. For example, every other year we commemorate Red Nose Day, a solemn day that we spend contemplating the less fortunate. But, by far, the worst part about middle class is the boredom.
There are many ways to deal with this boredom. One way is to pretend to not be middle class and start rioting, but this can quickly turn ugly if people with real complaints show up. (Luckily, no middle class people were injured during the making of these riots, they are all safely back at home having a nice cup of tea). Others may take up exciting hobbies, such as sky diving or paying the mortgage late. But why not just enjoy it? There are many wonderfully dull things to do, all from the comfort of your own Oxford-common-room-styled lounge. And they are all perfectly safe, when done in moderation, of course. They can even make you a great manager (at least I assume that’s the gist of that article, it was quite long and I got distracted thinking about corn half way through).
For example, you could read a bit about queuing, which is in itself a wonderful activity. Or about calendars. For example, did you know that calendar sales in the UK are fairly steady, despite the recession and the invention of the internet? Clearly, a tastefully shot picture of a kitten will still entertain the average Brit for a month, whereas the declining sales in the US show that Americans can now only be entertained by kittens that want to haz cheezburger. According to one of the makers of calendars “running such a business requires a great deal of forward planning,” so another interesting activity might be to write a letter to these people explaining the system of leap years, which should greatly reduce their time to market. And the internet is full of further suggestions, such as watching tv or sleeping.
But, I hear you object, what about the children?! Sitting around enjoying ourselves sleeping is all well and good, but my children get cranky when they are not outside knifing their friends or robbing the elderly of their drugs. Surely a twelve-year-old cannot sit still long enough to read about luggage carrousels? Of course they can, with the correct dosage of ritalin. Please consult your family doctor before experimenting with the dosage, or you might accidentally under-dose, which, if left unattended, could lead to art degrees.
Post a Comment