Do Hobbies Maketh the Man or Woman?
In a draughty house in rural Scotland perched on the side of a loch overlooking a nuclear submarine base, a friend asked me about my hobbies. I had a brief moment of deja vu, flashbacks to a time long ago when I was a child talking to my dad. I was about five, my brother had not yet been born, and he was trying to get me interested in toy trains. To be honest, I hadn’t thought much about hobbies since then and her innocent question had abruptly shaken out of my mid-evening mellowness and into a full-on existential crisis.
What were my hobbies? The question was reverberating in my brain. I panicked. I couldn’t think of any. Did I need them? Why didn’t I have them? What did everyone else do? What had I been thinking, or not, all these years?
My response was totally automatic as I reeled off all the things I do in my busy life, like work, see friends, go to the theatre, the opera, movies, the gym, openings, parties, restaurants, travel…and, possibly, the odd bit of shopping. It seemed I had activities, not hobbies, and suddenly I felt the vast and yawning emptiness of my sad, superficial life.
My friend had a bunch of hobbies, learned when she went to British boarding school as a child. She also ran a business and had recently relocated to a house outside of Glasgow in the countryside where she cooks, entertains constantly, and is personally taming her four-acre wood, creating Gertrude Jekyll-style gardens with bluebell meadows, picnic spots, and a secret forest area with a natural 19-century plunge pool by a babbling brook that she unearthed, presumably with her bare hands. After cutting down dead trees and lugging the trunks into her greenhouse where she is drying the wood, she intends to chisel them into furniture for her garden. She paints the flowers from her garden and picks samples, which she microwaves in order to preserve their colour, before pressing them in between the pages of her botanical diary.
An old school friend who had also recently visited her made her own face cream with the petals of roses that she picked. I buy my rosewater from the local pharmacy, and would have it delivered if I could, and my rose petal cream, presumably crushed from the last Damascus rose, from a specialty store. Unlike her, I go to the movies and even watch TV on occasion, further cementing the horror of my reality of not only being a failure, but a consumer.
I tried to answer her question, muffling the rising hysteria, but was seriously unable to think of anything I wanted to do. I can’t see myself taking up painting. I am unlikely to be Claude Monet creating the waterlilies at Giverny. I can’t imagine dragging my easel to the banks of the Thames to draw eccentric Londoners while curious tourists watch. Or pressing flowers into the pages of my recently published book (Dispatches from the Kabul Cafe now that you ask) from my garden, which is in any case a minimalist terrace that consists of two aloes in pots. Despite my love of Christmas carols and the current trendiness of joining a choir, it’s something else that I cannot see myself doing. I don’t play cards or backgammon or make jewellery, although I did once want to be a cat-burglar. Who doesn’t like an all black leotard and a black bag with SWAG marked on it? The knitting fad has also passed. I thought of starting a charity, but there are so many, or a secret supper club, but Michelin-starred chefs have beaten me to it.
Look close to home, think small, be passionate, my friend advised in her wise and solid way, when we discussed starting a business or taking up hobbies. I am passionate about coffee, and finding good cappuccinos or flat whites remains a challenge in London, which made me think I could start a bad/good coffee blog — a trendy twist on the interpretation of a hobby? Otherwise, what does the modern girl do? I don’t even drink enough to drown my sorrows in a bottle or two of Tempranillo.
In a state of total anxiety, I WhatsApp’d a friend to see if he fits hobbies into his very full and busy life, which includes being an Oxford University don by day and an excellent writer. He asked if movies count, and if going to the Venice Film Festival could be included. The panic started to subside, and for a nano-second I ceased stuffing mini Red Velvet cupcakes at a furious rate into my mouth as a comfort food reflex. With one last bite, I reckoned I must be in reasonably good company despite not knowing if I’ll ever find even one hobby, let alone remodel my life.
Heidi Kingstone is an expat journalist and the author of the book “Dispatches from the Kabul Cafe”. Amazon. Kobo
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