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  1. Politics
30 August 2013

Chronic boredom is like the dull itch of a pair of Seventies school trousers

Nicholas Lezard's "Down and Out" column.

By Nicholas Lezard

I have been suffering lately from something very like boredom. “Only boring people are bored,” runs the tiresome mantra, delivered by those tiresome people who consider life to be a glorious cycle of song and a medley of extemporanea. (For those who are unfamiliar with the lines, from Dorothy Parker, they continue: “And love is a thing that can never go wrong;/And I am Marie of Romania.” I do not quote these lines in the main body of my piece because, for once, love for me is not going wrong, touch wood.)

It is the kind of boredom that is actually more like the flu, in that it seems to be caused not by anything visible, but everything you do becomes imbued by suffering. I remember Vyvyan the punk in The Young Ones staggering around, smashing himself in the head with his own cricket bat in an attempt to relieve the tedium.

“Bored, bored, BORED,” Vyvyan would say, in time to the clouts to his own brains. It felt like that – everything was boring. Eating toast was boring. Being on a train was boring. Or perhaps not so much boring as mildly unpleasant, like wearing an itchy suit. (Note to younger readers: it was, until around the late Seventies, the rule for formal wear of whatever kind – whether it was a business, dinner, or school suit – to be made of a material that afforded the wearer the continual sensation of active discomfort, especially about the legs. To feel mildly pleased, or even neutral, about putting on a pair of trousers was considered to be unmanly, disgraceful and effete.)

Things on the horizon weren’t looking any better because the Beloved was going off to see her sister in Durham and I was to be left alone for a few days. Cohabitation has proved to be a delight, with the really rather counterintuitive side effect that the longer we stay together at a stretch, the more affectionate we are with each other, which is hell for other people – but nuts to them. Left to my own devices, though, I rediscover the fundamental meaninglessness of the universe, and plumping up the pillows as I retire to bed on my own becomes a terrifyingly lonely act, like the mysteriously ageing astronaut eating his solitary meals in silence towards the end of 2001.

How strange it is that men are in two horribly conflicted states of mind when it comes to this kind of thing! Those friends of mine who are married and parents would love to come out for a drink but find themselves prisoners in their own home. Do they like it, deep down, or do they chafe, as if wearing vintage trousers? The other day Martin Rowson, the rather wonderful cartoonist, discovered that all his immediate family members had scattered to various corners of the globe, and rather than potter around his house on his own, he came down to the Hovel, bearing gifts.

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That was fun and he declared the Beloved THE BEST PERSON EVER (his caps) because she told him how she had been rude to Toby Young without even knowing who he was. (It was a conversation about musical education and he really should have thought twice before engaging with the B on the subject. But then these days poor Toby should think twice before saying anything. I wonder, sometimes, if he has had some kind of accident, which would account in some way for his increasing nuttiness.)

In the end, I found the perfect cure for my boredom: a game of cricket. Playing, not watching. It seems that Vyvyan was on the right lines all along. I have not done this for a couple of years and feared great rustiness, which would lead to some kind of terrible accident with the ball. It’s jolly hard, you know, and some of those people can really whack it. But the whole business of playing, the state of mild alertness you have to maintain on the field, the banter of one’s teammates, the play of the summer sun on the clouds, the trees, and even the picturesque sheep in the next field, put one in a state of something approaching bliss.

It was heaven and even the visiting American, who admittedly spent half the afternoon asleep, declared himself charmed, if baffled. (But not as baffled as the elderly Englishwoman a few feet away. “Why are they moving?” she would ask. “Is he the only one allowed to wear a hat?”) So that was all fine, until I got back and foolishly decided, for reasons that escape me, to check my bank balance. Any emotion I had vanished and was replaced by fear. That was bad. I don’t like the fear. I prefer the boredom.

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