I am sixty years old and I have never had a hobby before. Well, there was this one thing you’d call a hobby and I couldn’t disagree, but I never called it that because I realise now that I regard the word as pejorative. <\/p>\n
That’s not in the way that I still remain convinced that “bucolic” is a serious illness. I believe I know what the word “hobby” means, but to me it is somehow bound up with not taking something seriously. With playing at something. Something that doesn’t matter. Writing is a hobby for many people, of course it is, but for me it’s a life. I don’t need you to think my writing is good, I need you to not see any writing as something trivial to fit in between the crossword and Sudoku. <\/p>\n
There was that one time, true. It was back in the late 1980s or possibly early 1990s, when I took a couple of lessons flying helicopters. That remains a unrequited passion, but I simply could not afford the cost at the time. Nor now, really, as we’re talking so much that I cannot find a helicopter school that will tell me the price for a real flying course. They just want to sell you what they call trial lessons which they then describe instead as an experience that gets you a certificate. I don’t want a certificate. Why would I want a certificate? I was given one once for having visited the Grand Canyon and I felt it was possible that I’d remember being there without a piece of paper telling me, and I also felt it was just about possible that to get recognition you should do more than pay and turn up.<\/p>\n
Anyway, purported trial lessons are now around \u00a3250 for half an hour and I know real lessons are less because for those you only pay for rotor time, the time that the helicopter’s rotors are turning. Much of the time at first is classroom-based which sounds boring but is at least cheaper.<\/p>\n
Okay, there’s also the fact now that as well as having to up my bank balance in order to fly helicopters, I’d have to significantly lower my flying weight. <\/p>\n
If I do that now, and when I did it back then, I don’t see how you could call this anything other than a hobby. I’m not planning to be a pilot for a living, I wasn’t especially planning to fly anyone anywhere, I wanted it for the utter joy of it. To fly is human, to hover is divine.<\/p>\n
That, though, was the sole thing in my entire life where I had something I enjoyed doing and I was not able to make it part of my work. I’ve considered that fortunate — not lucky, never lucky, because it doesn’t happen by chance — but it does also mean that I have nothing, I do nothing, that isn’t work. <\/p>\n
Except that since about March I’ve been learning to play piano.<\/p>\n
It’s the same as helicopters in that there is no possibility I’ll play at Symphony Hall, plus I don’t actually have any interest in playing professionally. One of the first things my teacher asked me was why I wanted to learn, whether I was looking to play some favourite tunes by memory, or do the whole sight-reading thing. I do not comprehend why anyone would want to learn to play piano but not actually learn to play piano. Someone who would want to play at playing piano. I only want it because piano is the best instrument and I want the joy of playing it for myself, but I take it as seriously as if it were a job.<\/p>\n
After a little while, incidentally, the second thing my piano teacher asked me was whether I might consider the triangle instead. So I’m not any good on piano — though compared to how I was at the start, I’m amazing — and I didn’t fly for long enough to become any good. <\/p>\n
They are hobbies. No question.<\/p>\n
I need to get over my problem with that word. And now I need to get over how I appear to have told you that I’m 60, boring and too fat for even military aircraft.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am sixty years old and I have never had a hobby before. Well, there was this one thing you’d … Continue reading