BUSY DOING NOTHING

I have been given a day off!

It is a Bank Holiday and it has been decreed that before the restart of work tomorrow, and after all the recent running about in a heightened state of anxiousness that it seems only the likes of myself are truly capable of, I should have a day with no responsibilities, no worries, nowhere to go and nothing to do.

I can even stay in my pyjamas all day if I choose…

So, the problem now becomes what to do with this rare and precious gem? How do I not to go to bed tonight feeling that I’ve blown it, wasted my one opportunity and generally just had a bit of a squib of a free day?

I thought to myself that maybe I should pick a film to watch and tottered hopefully over to the shelves and stood there pondering. The problem with “yours to own forever on video” and its shinier, later offspring, is that when you do actually “own it forever” somehow sitting down and actually watching the film suddenly becomes slightly less appealing. Most of my video collection was all watched shortly after I bought it, full of joy at the simple glee of having “found a bargain” or “getting it cheap” and the release of endorphins that this usually causes have since faded leaving just another box sitting on a shelf.

I run my eyes across the row and, admittedly there’s a lot of very good films and TV shows in there, any one of which would be vastly entertaining in itself, but, if I pick this one, well it means I can’t be watching that one…

So much choice that it becomes impossible to choose.

I might decide that an old Humphrey Bogart film is just the ticket for a New Year Bank Holiday Monday, but ten minutes in, I might find myself really wishing I’d picked something more modern, or a western, or more science-fiction based, or just something a little more “action packed” or maybe even just a sitcom.

My usual default position if in doubt seems to always be “Quatermass”, but I watched most of those in the run-up to Christmas so even they seem overly familiar and a bit too recently viewed today, and there’s the same problem with Baz and Nige in the 1930s “Sherlock Holmes” film series, all too perfect for curling up in front of on a chilly midwinter day, which is precisely why we did that back in November.

Sometimes my eyes run along the shelf and I really don’t fancy watching any of them, which tends to mean that I go out and buy a new one, and then, having sat down excitedly that afternoon and watched it, it joins the rest on that shelf full of now unloved delights and is as frequently dismissed as all the rest, the shiny excitement of its newness so quickly faded.

“Thank heavens for rentals!” we tend to think, “Otherwise we’d be bankrupt!”

Of course the trouble with online film rental is that you might not be in the mood for the one they send you that particular day (particularly true with “The Wire” we found – sometimes you really didn’t fancy the bleakness of it at the end of a hard day…) or the vagaries of  the postal system and a clutch of Bank Holidays might delay the delivery beyond when it might be reasonably useful.

If I give up on the film option, there remains a pile of books in my “unread” pile alongside my mental list of those I’d quite like to read again, but which to choose…?

Same problem.

I could maybe dig out the paints and canvasses, but that would mean a good hour clearing various surfaces and tidying things away and digging out the art equipment and by then the desire may well have faded, as well as the troubling issue of what to actually paint. Perhaps I could sit at the computer typing? Although I’ll be doing enough sitting at the computer back at work tomorrow, so that should probably be avoided on a day off. I was bought a model kit at Christmas 2009, maybe I could make a start on that? The same “surfaces” problem arises there, though...

I fear the day will flitter away like so many others, and I will slouch on the sofa (albeit decadently in my PJs!) and go into the kitchen to make occasional cups of tea, or wash the dishes, or seek out more leftovers. I shall also probably watch too much pointless TV (even though I have a choice of exciting films I could be watching) and quite possibly get sucked in to watching a film that I already “own forever” and no doubt rejected earlier, just because it happens to be on, and at some point this evening I will leap to my feet and wonder what I did with my day off, and how did I manage to waste it, and then, in a couple of days, I’ll be wondering why I never seem to have any free time these days.

Anyway, must dash.

Stuff to do…