Leisure in the Analogue Age

These prompts do tend towards repetition from time to time and I have been answering them for the best part of seven months now. I actually like that because it gives me the challenge of thinking of a new way of answering similar questions. So today I am going back over four decades to look at the way that I spent my leisure time before computers and smartphones took over our lives.

As a child, teenager and young adult I was used to activities that involved friends. Whether that be Scouting, parties or drinking (sometimes all three were very much linked especially in Venture Scouts!!) we were focused on having fun and deepening our ties as people. Conversations flowed, different groups of people talked together and we discussed pretty much everything under the sun. Now, I know that this still happens with my children and their friends, but if you drift out of the conversation you can immediately focus on the screen in your hands. When I was younger, if you drifted out of a conversation you often carried on listening to it in case there was a chance for you to rejoin. If you were tired of conversation or, in your teenage years, a bit worse for drink you could have a proper break sitting on your own or walking outside for some fresh air until someone came to look for you.

When reading, you would be completely focused on the book in your hand. You wouldn’t be wondering how many people had read your latest blog post or Instagram post because those things only existed in science fiction. Instead of going to the phone if the book became hard going you would plough on. That didn’t mean that you finished every book, or that you didn’t get distracted, far from it. What it did mean was that you allowed your mind to drift to other things or to reflect on why the book wasn’t really grabbing you. I would often have three or four books on the go at the same time, which probably reflected my butterfly mind, and as a result I would find something to interest me. Should all of the books fall short it would be on to music.

Music in the pre Spotify age was a much deeper experience. You only had the records or tapes in your collection to work with, so you would listen to certain singles and certain albums time after time until you knew them perfectly. With a choice of a few hundred songs you would find them become an integral part of your life. They are songs you can listen to now and they bring back memories of people and places in a way few other things can. It’s inconceivable to me that you would be able to bring those visual memories to mind nowadays. No way could you remember and picture your surroundings the first time you heard a song on Spotify! Music has never been more accessible or more disposable because it doesn’t cost anything. Back in the days when you spent your pocket money on your records they meant so much more and you connected with them so much more readily. Obviously, artists become an integral part of young people’s lives, as the passionate crowds at recent concerts I have been to prove. Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter and The Last Dinner Party all have absolutely passionate fan bases but I think that passion is far harder to come by.

Television was the central technology of my childhood and it was a live experience only. If you missed it, you missed it for ever (at least until video tapes and DVDs) so you concentrated on each programme more if you really liked it. If you didn’t enjoy it you had, at most, two other channels to choose from but with closedowns being common on the BBC and with few programmes, if any, starting before 9am, it was often a case of one channel or switching off. With no phone to double screen on your focus was only on the programme or the people you were with so you knew much more quickly whether you wanted to carry on with the programme or turn it off.

The most important part of your leisure time back in my younger days was boredom. That was what encouraged you to try something else or just sit quietly and allow your mind to wander. It was essential for you to experience boredom and Sundays were the perfect time to do that until the early 1990s when the shops were allowed to open. Sundays just stretched out endlessly unless you dreaded going back to school on the Monday, in which case they sped by. I credit my boring Sundays with giving me an imagination that I still value and use.

So, will I occasionally go back to a 70s and 80s style Sunday? Well, I often think I should and I intend to a bit more this year. My phone will go onto airplane mode and I will see if I can rediscover the joys and drawbacks of analogue life once again. Will that be possible? Who knows, but I will try it and write about it, so watch this space!