In praise of … Dull hobbies
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Version 0 of 1. “The British are well known for being eccentric, and this calendar is a celebration of that,” says Leland Carlson of the Dull Men’s Club (motto: “Celebrate the ordinary”). The club’s newly released calendar features men who collect traffic cones and milk bottles, and others who photograph hedges and postboxes. All heroically dull, though even they are outstripped – metaphorically speaking, thank God – by Kevin Beresford, president of the UK Roundabout Appreciation Society. It’s easy to mock such nerdish pursuits; to see collecting mania as a pathological obsession, a way of bringing order to a messy world. But a collection of traffic cones will never let you down. Such hobbyists, Carlson says, are the essence of Britishness: understated, self-reliant, relentless. Too often, though, their contribution is overlooked. When it phased out car tax discs this week, did the government give any thought to the nation’s velologists, the men – we assume they are all men – who collect them? Of course it didn’t. Another small part of British life sacrificed on the altar of so-called progress. No wonder support for Ukip is spiralling. |