“… an audience of about 500 mostly 20 & 30-somethings were listening with careful amusement as a dapper young man talked about toast. … he was clicking through a series of photographs of toast slices, ranging from the entirely burnt to the effectively untoasted, in order to demonstrate what he called “the confusing, non-regulated series of toaster settings on the market.” His manner of weary, slightly apologetic pedantry seemed to be going down exceptionally well with the audience …”
I read this article while on an early morning train to Dublin. Apart from being a great morning read, it made good sense and touched on a subject I am all too familiar with. I have no bones about what is boring, lets say, knitting! But boring is good.
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| A man walks down the street... |
Across from me, a woman dressed completely in blue, faces a copy of the Times, a laptop and is holding two mobile phones in front of her. Opposite her is a young man dressed in a Burton suit, who is tapping manically at his laptop. There is an invisible chap, a few seats back, who hasn’t stopped talking since sitting on the train. It’s all too much for this time of the morning so I pull out my needles and choose blissed out knitting.
Why do we find such repose from the mundane? How can a conference on Boring triumph over a conference on Interesting, which, had been dropped due to lack of interest? Personally, I can only describe boring as coming in from the cold, eating a big bowl of hot, buttery pandy & having a good knit while watching re-runs of Murder She Wrote. It’s comforting. Nothing will happen, that's out of the ordinary but that’s good. Modern living can be draining. The constant pursuit of happiness is depressing. While sitting and knitting, you can be pretty damned sure, nothing much will happen. Apart from a dropped stitch, the worst case scenario: The phone unexpectantly rings. You forget which line you were on!
For further reading (and a bit of a laugh) try this for Boring!
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