I do not want a hobby

I NEED a hobby. Everyone says.

It’s because I spend all my time tending the garden – and I hate gardening.

And I spend it mending the house – and I hate do-it-yourself (I prefer a get-someone-to-do-it-for-you world).

And because gardening and house-fixing don’t appeal to me I huff while I’m doing them. This has been interpreted by my family as a deep and abiding dissatisfaction with life.

“You need a hobby,” they say. “Why don’t you go to TAFE and learn about car engines? That’d be useful.”

See what they’re up to? They don’t really care whether I’m content with my lot. They want their cars fixed on the cheap.

I mean, they never suggest I should make the Sydney Harbour Bridge out of matchsticks, or that I collect china plates with Princess Di hand-painted on them.

Which is a relief, I must say.

I’m only a very short distance from the days when my sole occupation will be weaving baskets while I sit in the sun with a rug wrapped round me knees trying to remember what my name is. I have no plans to reach that stage earlier than is absolutely necessary.

Indeed, if everyone is so sure I don’t have a life, why are they trying to find me a hobby? Hobbies are what people do when they don’t have a life!

Great Scott, I live a rich and fulfilling life, marred only by gardening and fixing the house!

I walk the dog. To the pub, mostly. I stand on The Esplanade and watch the boats. I argue with blokes (in the pub) about the merits of giving an Oscar to Denzel Washington. And about how he’s got the same name as an American president.

I try to corner Jake into buying his round when his turn comes – and that’s a hobby that could occupy a man’s life even if he lived to be 120!

No offence to those people who do have hobbies. I’m sure there are places in heaven for people who build populations of concrete gnomes in their back gardens, or who turn bits of wood into peanut bowls, but I don’t want any part of it.

And if going to heaven means I have to talk to them I’d rather go to hell. Unless I get to explain to them in good, short, Anglo-Saxon words of one syllable exactly why I’m not interested in the technical difficulties of getting a gnome’s nose to not slump it it’s made of two of cement and four of sand.

I can’t help feeling that having a hobby is a bit like withdrawing from life: shutting the doors on contact with living people. Unless the hobby is line dancing, of course. But even then it’s questionable about the living people.

My case rests. Hobbies are unhealthy. Avoid them. If you find an unusually large number of bus tickets gathering on your bedside table, or you’re keeping bits of broken plates instead of throwing them in the bin where they belong, and they start forming themselves into shapes like miniature castles or sailing ships – run for the pub.

Me and the other guys will drag you back to reality.

Of a kind.