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You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/16/victoria-coren-wants-to-have-fun
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| This girl just wants to have fun | This girl just wants to have fun |
| (4 months later) | |
| In shock news, a study finds that driving a car is "no longer fun". Indeed, motorists are reporting utter misery at the wheel. | In shock news, a study finds that driving a car is "no longer fun". Indeed, motorists are reporting utter misery at the wheel. |
| This is the kind of report that one expects to scan through and find it was commissioned by Virgin Trains, or Duresta Sofas, or Deathwish Bikes Inc. But no: it's from the RAC. They are not, one would think, especially motivated to put people off driving. So it must be true. | This is the kind of report that one expects to scan through and find it was commissioned by Virgin Trains, or Duresta Sofas, or Deathwish Bikes Inc. But no: it's from the RAC. They are not, one would think, especially motivated to put people off driving. So it must be true. |
| Their annual Report on Motoring has identified a 25-year low in drivers' contentment. Before you assume this means that we are, at least, happier on the roads than we were in 1988: they've only been doing the report for 25 years. So drivers are at their most miserable ever, basically. | Their annual Report on Motoring has identified a 25-year low in drivers' contentment. Before you assume this means that we are, at least, happier on the roads than we were in 1988: they've only been doing the report for 25 years. So drivers are at their most miserable ever, basically. |
| To be honest, I can't remember a time when driving was ever much fun anyway. The idea of driving for pleasure, motoring about on a Sunday morning and seeing the sights, seems as ancient a hobby as taking snuff and witch-drowning. Who's still doing it, apart from Jeremy Clarkson and Chris Evans? | To be honest, I can't remember a time when driving was ever much fun anyway. The idea of driving for pleasure, motoring about on a Sunday morning and seeing the sights, seems as ancient a hobby as taking snuff and witch-drowning. Who's still doing it, apart from Jeremy Clarkson and Chris Evans? |
| Nevertheless, I'm not surprised that people think it's grown particularly funless lately. There's too much traffic, petrol is too expensive and there's too much guilt associated with the pollutant idea of driving at all, all of which ideas conflict with each other to give any driver a headache. As any responsible motoring enthusiast will tell you, the only way to make a modern road trip pleasurable is to get drunk first. | Nevertheless, I'm not surprised that people think it's grown particularly funless lately. There's too much traffic, petrol is too expensive and there's too much guilt associated with the pollutant idea of driving at all, all of which ideas conflict with each other to give any driver a headache. As any responsible motoring enthusiast will tell you, the only way to make a modern road trip pleasurable is to get drunk first. |
| Is it just driving, though? I think it's time for a gloomy look at all the hobbies that are less fun than they used to be. | Is it just driving, though? I think it's time for a gloomy look at all the hobbies that are less fun than they used to be. |
| Watching television | Watching television |
| This formerly relaxing pastime, requiring the hobbyist simply to lie on a sofa while people monkeyed about on whichever of the three channels she'd chosen, has become a relentless demand for manual labour. Ceaselessly instructed to phone, text, tweet, vote, press the red button and apply to take part, the exhausted TV viewer is soon getting back up off the sofa and going into work, in hope of a rest. | This formerly relaxing pastime, requiring the hobbyist simply to lie on a sofa while people monkeyed about on whichever of the three channels she'd chosen, has become a relentless demand for manual labour. Ceaselessly instructed to phone, text, tweet, vote, press the red button and apply to take part, the exhausted TV viewer is soon getting back up off the sofa and going into work, in hope of a rest. |
| Gardening | Gardening |
| Ah, how we once enjoyed a gentle prune and a mow of the lawn on a Sunday afternoon, merely to commune with nature and think one's own thoughts. No longer! Now, we hurry out stressfully to do our bit for the environment, worrying constantly about whether we are providing enough run-off, conserving enough water, promoting enough bee-feeding and growing enough vegetables to see us through the impending apocalypse. Nothing takes the edge off a hobby like impending apocalypse. | Ah, how we once enjoyed a gentle prune and a mow of the lawn on a Sunday afternoon, merely to commune with nature and think one's own thoughts. No longer! Now, we hurry out stressfully to do our bit for the environment, worrying constantly about whether we are providing enough run-off, conserving enough water, promoting enough bee-feeding and growing enough vegetables to see us through the impending apocalypse. Nothing takes the edge off a hobby like impending apocalypse. |
| Smoking | Smoking |
| Standing in the road, in the rain, while passers-by shoot you disapproving glares and cough pointedly? That's not how Lauren Bacall did it. Truth is, it's hard to feel jolly about anything you've fished out of a cardboard box with a picture of a lung on it. Many smoking enthusiasts now derive less fun from the act itself than from a rousing game of Health Warning Top Trumps, in which SMOKERS DIE YOUNGER beats SMOKING IS HIGHLY ADDICTIVE, DON'T START but loses to SMOKING CAN CAUSE A SLOW AND PAINFUL DEATH. | Standing in the road, in the rain, while passers-by shoot you disapproving glares and cough pointedly? That's not how Lauren Bacall did it. Truth is, it's hard to feel jolly about anything you've fished out of a cardboard box with a picture of a lung on it. Many smoking enthusiasts now derive less fun from the act itself than from a rousing game of Health Warning Top Trumps, in which SMOKERS DIE YOUNGER beats SMOKING IS HIGHLY ADDICTIVE, DON'T START but loses to SMOKING CAN CAUSE A SLOW AND PAINFUL DEATH. |
| Rail travel | Rail travel |
| Every train journey should offer sleeping compartments, a restaurant car and an interesting murder. Somehow, we've lost all that and gained small plastic cartons of long-life milk from the buffet. Small plastic cartons of long-life milk from the buffet genuinely might be the most depressing thing in the world. | Every train journey should offer sleeping compartments, a restaurant car and an interesting murder. Somehow, we've lost all that and gained small plastic cartons of long-life milk from the buffet. Small plastic cartons of long-life milk from the buffet genuinely might be the most depressing thing in the world. |
| Being ill | Being ill |
| What happened to rest cures in Bath and the Swiss Alps? Now you just take a Lemsip Max and google the possibility that you've got something terminal. (See under "smoking"). Even if you can justify staying at home for the day, that's not the fun it used to be (see under "watching television"). | What happened to rest cures in Bath and the Swiss Alps? Now you just take a Lemsip Max and google the possibility that you've got something terminal. (See under "smoking"). Even if you can justify staying at home for the day, that's not the fun it used to be (see under "watching television"). |
| Sex | Sex |
| Sex, like holidays in Bognor Regis, was ruined by finding out what else you could be doing. Time was, you were great in bed as long as you had basic personal hygiene and looked pleased afterwards. (Thinking back to the compliments I received in my younger days, even those weren't mandatory.) Now, even if you have every lock in place to protect your computer from internet porn, there's no escape from the terrible gift of knowledge it has brought. The stress is crippling. Really, people do that? While wearing that? So many of them at once? They can keep their balance? And what's that guy doing? | Sex, like holidays in Bognor Regis, was ruined by finding out what else you could be doing. Time was, you were great in bed as long as you had basic personal hygiene and looked pleased afterwards. (Thinking back to the compliments I received in my younger days, even those weren't mandatory.) Now, even if you have every lock in place to protect your computer from internet porn, there's no escape from the terrible gift of knowledge it has brought. The stress is crippling. Really, people do that? While wearing that? So many of them at once? They can keep their balance? And what's that guy doing? |
| Still, to cheer ourselves up, we should surely reflect on a few things that are more fun than they used to be… | Still, to cheer ourselves up, we should surely reflect on a few things that are more fun than they used to be… |
| Summer | Summer |
| Does it ever seem as though, when you were a child, summers were endlessly sunny and warm? Long, golden days picnicking in the grass? Well, great news: now that British summers are permanently damp and grey, we can say goodbye for ever to sunburn, insect bites and feeling fat in shorts. | Does it ever seem as though, when you were a child, summers were endlessly sunny and warm? Long, golden days picnicking in the grass? Well, great news: now that British summers are permanently damp and grey, we can say goodbye for ever to sunburn, insect bites and feeling fat in shorts. |
| Furniture shopping | Furniture shopping |
| No more schlepping round overpriced department stores with a tape measure: wonderful eBay has arrived to inject a spirit of exciting mystery into every furniture purchase. Will it be repro? Will it have woodworm? Will it come from Sally Bercow's grace-and-favour Westminster home? Never before in human history have we been able to buy, at discount prices, the very chair on which the Speaker of the House of Commons may have been told he should probably sit down before hearing another piece of awkward news. | No more schlepping round overpriced department stores with a tape measure: wonderful eBay has arrived to inject a spirit of exciting mystery into every furniture purchase. Will it be repro? Will it have woodworm? Will it come from Sally Bercow's grace-and-favour Westminster home? Never before in human history have we been able to buy, at discount prices, the very chair on which the Speaker of the House of Commons may have been told he should probably sit down before hearing another piece of awkward news. |
| Ageing | Ageing |
| No longer need we retire to the shadows for a gloomy, blanketed crumble into wrinkled invisibility, thanks to all manner of modern beauty treatments, injectibles and extreme invasive surgery. Hurrah! Ageing has never been less daunting or more intriguing. The only thing you have to resist, as you get older, is thinking that things aren't as fun as they used to be. | No longer need we retire to the shadows for a gloomy, blanketed crumble into wrinkled invisibility, thanks to all manner of modern beauty treatments, injectibles and extreme invasive surgery. Hurrah! Ageing has never been less daunting or more intriguing. The only thing you have to resist, as you get older, is thinking that things aren't as fun as they used to be. |
| www.victoriacoren.com | www.victoriacoren.com |
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