Roundabout
Workers' Playtime
By KATHARINE WHITEHORN
SINCE I have almost no weekends myself, it has For what, when you come down to it, is a weekend? More than a quarter of one's time in which to develop a split personality h choix: to indulge a craving for the rough life, expressing yourself with oil stoves and no hot water; or for a grander one—witness the horse fantasy of the prosperous middle classes. Even those who have no weekend retreat of their own are apt to lie upon the lawns of their more rural or affluent friends and meditate on the passing of the age of leisure : leisure being the one quality which weekends exist to re-create.
One might think that two days off a week sug- gests that we are now living in an age of leisure; but even so, most people do their best to fill the time with something else. One man's sloth is an- other man's assault course, and some people's ways of spending their weekends are exhausting even to read about; it is interesting to note that the more satisfying leisure occupations have a great tendency to take on the quality of work. Papering walls—writing letters—cooking—mak- ing clothes—planting rose-trees—these are all forms of work, but with an essential difference: you are working for yourself. Only people on piece rates (or freelances) can escape the feeling that in working hours they are always working for someone else. But at the end of a weekend the grass is cut, the boat is painted, the muscles ate in working order. One has the feeling that one is getting something out of it.
Anyone can own up without shame to wanting a sun-tan or a bookshelf or a tidy garden; but most people are much more hesitant about admitting they want to get something out of it for the mind although, backed into a corner about it. they admit that half the time they go to good films, read books or slog their way through those Sunday papers the pages of which practi- cally outnumber their readers for the sake of im- proving their minds. This is partly because no one in Britain can even think the word culture without feeling an ass, but more because the implication of doing anything deliberately to improve the mind is that, you do not genuinely enjoy it, and therefore (it is presumed) do not really appreciate it.
But there is, all the same, a fallacy in this idea of compulsory enjoyment. The same 'fallacy is behind the whole idea of leisure, whose two main characteristics, it would probably be admitted, arc that you are not in a hurry and therefore can take things more slowly; and that you are sup- posed to enjoy them. But in human experience the things you set out to do, as work, are often the ones you really enjoy; but the things which you feel under an obligation to enjoy are often doomed from the start: witness the traditional if not inevitable boredom of honey- moons, and the frequency with which It is the long-awaited treat which is a flop and the un- expected occasion that comes off.
Even the absence of pressure that is supposed to make one's more leisurely occupations enjoy- able is, I would have said, questionable: Parkin- son's law applies just as much in the kitchen and garden as it does in an office. I admit my view on this is coloured by the fact that I not only get along all right without leisure but find that, when it comes my way by mistake, the results are disastrous. A journey to another country loses half its charm immediately it be- comes My Holiday : when 1 am unemployed I do not spend my time keeping the house clean, the food superb and a beautiful thought bubbling constantly on the hob; 1 trail round the house without make-up feeling awful, it takes me all day to write a letter, the house is as grubby as ever and I do not think at all. Under pressure everything gets done (more or less) and there is quite simply eight times as much in each day as there is when I have leisure. I once knew a man who took a job as a fire-watcher in Vancouver in order to have time to think out the meaning of the universe; and when he came back we naturally asked him what the meaning of the universe was. Shamefacedly he explained that by the time he had got the water in, and chopped the wood, and made dinner, and darned his socks, he hadn't really had time to think about it. It seems unlikely that the chores were really so pressing : the trouble was presumably that nothing but the chores was putting any pressure on him at all.
It is a commonplace (especially at weekends) to deplore the rush and struggle of modern life : but it is quite possible that a lot of people react much better to the rush than they do to its placid opposite. Possibly in an age when leisure really was a going concern, people did evolve a way of life in which they treated with the seriousness of real work those cultural projects to the upkeep of which their audience-participation was (we are told) so necessary—though 1 doubt if the architects and sculptors and writers them- selves had more leisure than they do now. I find it hard to believe that a man of energy did not behave like a man of energy in any age; and the fearsome programmes that some of their brighter spirits were apt to outline for study and self- improvement—even Jane Austen heroines had reading lists a yard and half long—suggest that they were keen to put the pressure on even then.
In suggesting that leisure is overrated and that work is both pleasanter and more widespread than one might think, I must not omit to pay tribute to a third state which has always caused the mass of mankind immense satisfaction. I refer to the condition of being bone idle, which has just about everything to recommend it except that you cannot keep it up. Utter inactivity, brought on by sun, wine or exhaustion, is in a class by itself. Indeed, the most serious indict- ment of leisure that I can think of is that you never get quite exhausted enough to enjoy idle- ness to the full.
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