Is It Just Me? Read Online Free PDF

musical genre of ‘cheese’ becomes formally recognised.) In fact, announcing what my hobbies are, whether socially, at interviews or on CVs, has always caused more anxiety than it should have in my life. So MDRC (My Dear Reader Chum, lest you forget), together we embrace our second subject and begin another chapter. Are you with tea or some equally reassuring beverage? My current choice is the drinking chocolate sachet. Just add some boiling water and a-yummy-yum-yum – chocolate in liquid form. In fact I might just replenish. Excuse me, as I sashay up to my sachet. * whistles from kitchen whilst sashaying so you don’t get lonely *
    I’m back, and Mr Mug is replenished (occasionally I find it a bit o’ fun to preface an object with a title: please forgive, and back to Miss Book). It’s time for a bracing discussion on the world of hobbies.
    You might be thinking – really? What can
possibly
be said about hobbies? Can they really be included in the list of life’s perils where we might come a cropper and feel all at sea? I am afraid I firmly believe they can.
    One of the very
worst
questions you can ask an adult – over and above, ‘When are you going to do something about your hair?’ and ‘In a typical week, what do you eat?’ – is ‘What are your hobbies?’
What are your hobbies?
It should be an easy one. You should be able to spring gratefully forth and say: ‘What are my hobbies? Oh, I’m so glad you asked. I’m actually taking my grade 8 bassoon exam at the weekend; it’s been terribly hard to fit it in around all the rock climbing, and it’s going to be a nightmare getting it and the potter’s wheel into the back of the Volvo, but I must cram it all in before I head off with the choir on a chapel tour of Dieppe. Honestly, I’m a slave to my hobbies. Well, when you’re as thrilled by life as I am, who wouldn’t be?’ At this point, you would shriek with laughter, your flailing arms displacing a beautifully alphabetised archive of graphic novels and a bag of snorkelling equipment.
    But, no. Who among us – and
please
say this isn’t just me – when asked that question, doesn’t simply shrug, stare at their shoes and mumble ‘Uh – cinema?’ Only then they remember that they haven’t actually been to the cinema for eight months, and even then they got the wrong time for the film so just wandered into Nando’s and queued there for half an hour before shuffling home with a chicken wing to watch telly. And, no, telly doesn’t count as a hobby, any more than ‘sleeping’ or ‘washing’ or ‘sitting quietly on cushions’ (unless you claim that ‘sitting quietly on cushions’ is meditation, in which case you’re very sneaky indeed).
    There are some people born with certain passions, which they’ve happily and confidently carried forwards into adulthood. I envy them because for me, the question of hobbies is a troubling one. As a child, it was easy. Aged ten, you could unashamedly reel off a list of much-loved recreational activities, all of which you enjoyed regularly, and many of which involved some kind of natty uniform and an elaborate badge system. Cubs, Rainbows, gymnastics, roller-skating, kiddie disco, ballet, swimming, trampolining or, in my case, an unwavering passion for the Brownies (hello, Brown Owl, if you’re reading this). If you were a bit more left field, so much the better. You’d have hobbies that marked you out as an ‘imaginative’ child. These might include: playing horses, being a medieval knight in a turret, playing with trains,
being
a train, climbing trees,
being
a tree, hosting elaborate tea-parties for one’s stuffed animals (hands up, I was all about that), or putting on matching C&A tracksuits with your friends, pretending to be an army and going to war – which I assure you I never did. (I did.) If the imaginative side of things wasn’t for you, you could be one of the sticker collectors. That was a highly regarded and specialised hobby, aged