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Crewe workshop and "sheds". In the late 1940s I paid ten-shillings-and-sixpence (Now 52p) to visit this then state-of-the-art industrial experience in the sedulous pursuit of rail locomotive numbers |
What exactly is a hobby? The dictionary takes us part of the way - “a leisure activity or pastime engaged in for interest or recreation” - but for me it’s “pastime” that nails it. Something that helps “pass time”; that keeps boredom at bay.
Have I ever had a hobby? Writing, for instance. I first “wrote” (ie, compiled words that didn’t need to be compiled) aged ten, fashioning a short story on my mother’s typewriter. In my early twenties, post RAF national service, I wrote a “national service” novel. In my early thirties, living in the USA, I wrote a “USA novel”. In retirement, I consciously decided to take writing seriously, writing four novels, lots of short stories, even some verse.
But did writing qualify? As a journalist I wrote for a living. Novels seemed to be an expansion of journalism.
Learning French. Between the mid-seventies and 2017 I took weekly individual lessons. But in 1990 we bought a house in France. Impossible to imagine without speaking French. Thus, a necessary skill.
Singing? It’s part of my soul, an art form latent for many years, now fully expressed. I don’t sing to pass time.
The answer is yes, I have had a hobby. For two years, while still a schoolboy, I trainspotted. Regularly, with a mate, we went from Bradford to Leeds and wandered the railway “sheds” in Armley, writing down locomotive numbers. Travelled in a hired bus to Lancashire and Cheshire with other trainspotters for guided tours of “sheds” at Old Trafford and Crewe.
In my sere and yellowed years I can hardly believe I did it. The uselessness. The lack of any aesthetic. And yet, briefly, it had obsessive attractions. It didn’t seem as if I was passing time; a hobby, nevertheless.
It must have meant something to you. What? What was the attraction that you describe as obsessive? What might seem useless to an adult could well be exciting to a young boy. "Trainspotting" sounds much more actively interesting than, say, stamp collecting. But still, collecting stamps is a delight for so many.
ReplyDeleteColette: My trainspotting era occurred 73 years ago and lasted two years. I think it's fair to say I've grown up since then. In fact trainspotting wasn't my only obsession then: I was moving towards the peak of adolescence, my hormones had turned into porridge, and I despaired of being thought impossibly ugly and of dying sexually alone and unfulfilled. I was also terrified of the skin that forms on the top of milk that has warmed, and of the consistency - in stews - of onions. There was more, but you get the idea. The fact was I read too much and I thought too much; I was ordered to bed far too early in the evening and spent wakeful hours in the company of an imaginary circle of larger-than-life acquaintances: one good (called John) one bad (called Roger). Much much later I was able to harness the power of imagination and turn its qualities into written fiction.
DeleteMost people who write fiction - even the lovey-dovey soppy stuff - turn out to have lived miserable lives. It's the price one pays for looking at a blank monitor and saying, though clenched teeth, "I can fill this space with words."
Writing is an unhealthy occupation. But if it's all you can do...
Anything that "passes the time for interest or recreation". I suppose that might be everything one does which does not involve the essentials of life, shelter and sustenance. (And maybe ensuring your genes continue). Once ancient man had provided himself with those he might take a sideturn from chipping out a stone axe, esstial for for killing food, to make pictures of that potential food on his cave wall. He might also have interested himself by drawing outlines of his hands there..
ReplyDeleteAnything to pass the time between birth and death could be defined as a "hobby".
I suppose my life's "hobby" has been motorcycling, but that was also a means to an end to travel to follow my other "hobbies" of topography and archaeology.. Also it led to interest in the mechanics of the things I actually rode. Which led to buying and restoring such things to their former glories. I can ride very little these days, but am still enjoying working on my motorcycles.
One of the best novels I have read on our mutually "enjoyed" National Sevice is "Ginger You're Barmy" by David Lodge, still readily available, see: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ginger-Youre-Barmy-David-Lodge/dp/0099554135
Avus: You'll notice I started this post on a note of dissatisfaction. For me, the dictionary definition of "hobby" was, at best, incomplete. I amplified this dissatisfaction by showing that three major long-standing activities that have figured in my life (Writing fiction, learning French, taking singing lessons) didn't qualify as hobbies because none was adopted as a pastime. I didn't take them up to fill large leisure-time holes in my waking day: all were skills I felt I needed to improve and the first two (writing, French) had practical application.
DeleteSinging was slightly different; through most of my life I have had an instinctive love of music and a desire to know more about it. Despite abortive attempts to make music on the trumpet, the recorder, and the mouth organ, I could only satisfy this desire by listening to others play music. Thus there was always a "gap".The decision to take lessons came out of the blue and very late in life. It seemed inexplicable at the time but as the lessons progressed I realised they were feeding something much more profound than a pastime. That I was, as it were, a musician manqué now struggling to make up for lost time.
Here's how I see you and motorcycles. We are both of an age when people rode motorcycle because they couldn't afford cars and they needed to get from A to B. Transportation is a basic need and not something adopted "for interest and recreation", even though the bike might also be used for leisure trips. Certainly that was my motive. And in buying and using motorbikes it was inevitable that one became interested in bikes as an abstract concept; Make A was deemed better than Make B, Make C was technically more interesting than Make D.
One repaired bikes because one could (ie, they are simpler than cars) and because home repairs saved money. One also modified bikes so that they better suited one's needs.
Up to this point the motorbike doesn't qualify as a hobby. Hobbies are, by their nature, optional and the bike owner will always need transportation. However, when the bike owner is able to buy a car and does so, the role of the bike becomes blurred. When it comes to mere transportation the car is preferable: more carrying capacity, more than one passenger (especially children) can be carried and in greater comfort, the weather is less of a discouragement. Thus the bike becomes more of an option than a necessity. It moves closer to being a hobby.
Home repairs. Even though one may have the means to pay for bike repairs one may continue to self-repair them. For many reasons, some quite specious. But if repair becomes a fascination almost equal to the sensations of riding a bike and - it does happen! - repairs are pursued before they are strictly necessary, repair also becomes closer to a hobby than a need.
Avus - part two: I didn't enjoy National Service because I don't favour communal life, I abhorred the regulated existence (even though I could see why it was necessary) and - or so I thought - it discouraged intellectual freedom.
DeleteBut I'm immensely grateful for what it did to me, almost to the point of regarding the two years as well spent. Being immersed in the theory and practice of electronics opened up a previously locked door on science and, especially, the way science is expressed through mathematics. An interest that has grown and grown throughout life and has had important implications on the journalism I've pursued.
And here's an irony. Many of the two-dozen instructors I encountered during the eight-month course were National Service like me.And they taught me well. Think of the circularity there. Perhaps my overall attitude towards NS could be described as ambivalent
I've read most of David Lodge's novels, can't immediately recall Ginger. Someone who actually bought Out Of Arizona compared it favourably with David Lodge and I was moderately pleased by that. Many people wrote "National Service" novels because the experience was so different from that from earning a living by normal means.As in my case "different" didn't necessarily mean "literarturely good"
Avus - part three. The second "from" should be "of". Tell the truth, the sentence should be re-written
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