WE’RE busy doing nothing… but it could be a lifesaver.

Keeping busy keeps us happy, says US research, even if the tasks are unnecessary or pointless. Humans are actually programmed to do things rather than lie around all day in a state of catatonic idleness.

Except for teenagers, of course, who we are now told positively need to lie in bed for most of the day. But for the rest of us, busy is better.

Like the lovely old lady I overheard in the supermarket queue. It had been raining the day before, she told her friend and she couldn’t go out to do the garden. “So I set to and gave the outside toilet a really good turnout. It didn’t really need it and I hardly ever use it, but it put the day in nicely.”

Exactly. It might have seemed a pointless exercise, but it absolutely wasn’t because it made that nice old lady feel a lot better. As well as having a shiny loo.

My mother in her later years stopped deliveries of milk and papers.

Instead, going to the shops to buy them every day gave her a reason to get out, maybe meet neighbours, have a chat. At the very least, to have a little exercise.

Her friend dusted, polished and vacuumed her tiny house every day so it was always like a new pin. That wasn’t just keeping busy, that was reflecting pride and self respect.

I used to laugh and think they were both a little crackers to do work they didn’t need to. But now I see that I was wrong and they were absolutely right. For those of us with not enough hours in the day, idleness seems such a blissful, unattainable luxury.

Until you’ve got it and are left with whole days, weeks, months to fill.

We all know how easy it is to be idle. The longer you do nothing, the easier it is. And the harder it is to get off your bum and into action again.

Especially hard if you’re recovering from an illness – so have a perfect excuse. Or if you can’t find a job. Or if you’re young and lonely or old and redundant. So easy to slump into even greater idleness and feel even more miserable.

Serious depression can strike at any time, of course, like any other unpredictable illness and be a challenge to shift.

But as for lesser ills… We’re not even talking hard work – admirable though that is – just a little more busy-ness now and then. A few more turned out loos, polished surfaces or walks to the corner.

As the song says – we’d like to be unhappy, but we never can find the time.

SUDDENLY the pavement beneath our feet has sprouted advertisements. Every few yards in the centre of Darlington, ads suggest we try for an apprenticeship.

Presumably, they are down there on the pavements because they are aimed at slouching teenagers.

Newly-placed, the adverts are hideous, a new form of litter in among the fag ends, chewing gum and general dirt and dinginess of our streets.

And that’s before the rain attacks them, when they will start disintegrating, be unreadable and become just another grey splodgy mess on the pavement.

The ads are placed by the NECC – can that really be the North East Chamber of Commerce?

Surely they would have known better.

POLICE are confident that the more widespread introduction of Sarah’s Law – allowing parents to check if someone with access to their children is a sex offender – will not lead to vigilante attacks.

Perhaps they have forgotten that incident a few years ago when a screaming mob surrounded a doctor’s house demanding justice.

With the typical, cabbage-like intelligence of your average angry mob, they didn’t know the difference between paedophile and paediatrician.

MANY congratulations to Jackie Cobell, 56, holder of the record for the slowest cross Channel swim. It took her nearly 29 hours to swim from Dover to Calais after strong currents meant she swam 64 miles not 21. But she did it. She didn’t give up.

Five years ago, she weighed 20st and took up swimming again to lose weight. It didn’t work (it doesn’t), but at least she was fit. A gastric band finally helped her lose the weight and she did the swim, raising £2,000 for charity at the same time.

A terrific achievement – and a great inspiration to all other 20st 50-somethings.

IN “a continuing drive to improve Quality of Service”, Royal Mail has changed the last collection from our village post box from 5pm to 4.45pm.

A quarter of an hour less in which to post letters. How has this improved the Quality of Service? And who writes such drivel?

Timed to perfection

BRILLIANT Emma Thompson, 51, above, successful actress for 30 years, Oscar winner, happily married mother of a ten-year-old, adoptive mother of a 23-year-old Rwandan, certainly seems to have it all. But no. Having it all is, she says, “a revolting concept”. Instead, she says: “Sometimes you’ll have some things and sometimes you’ll have other things.”

Exactly. Of course women can have it all – just not all at the same time.

Backchat

Dear Sharon,
LIKE you, I was an avid reader of school stories when I was a child. Even though that was in the Fifties, most of the local library’s stock seemed to date from before the war.

I particularly enjoyed The Chalet School series by Elinor Brent-Dyer and the Dimsie books by Dorita Fairlie Bruce, as well as Enid Blyton school stories. No one in my world went to a boarding school, which might as well have been on another planet, but that didn’t matter one bit and didn’t spoil my pleasure in the stories.

I didn’t know what the Remove was either, but what confused me was lacrosse. Everyone in these school stories played lacrosse and I had no idea what sort of game this was. We didn’t do much more than rounders and French cricket in Burton Street Primary.

When I went to teacher training college in Leeds, I had the chance to play lacrosse and was very excited. I wasn’t much good, but I really thought I’d arrived.

There was a fashion in children’s literature when everything had to be relevant to a child’s life. Based on my experience, I always thought that was a very narrow approach, as was proved by the great success of Harry Potter.

Maggie Sanders, by email Dear Sharon,
My younger brother, when aged about nine, took a clock to pieces because he was bored. The clock was a very expensive one that had been a wedding present to my parents.

Once he had all the pieces on the kitchen table, he had no idea how to put them back together again and my mother had to gather them all up in a pillowcase and pay a lot of money to get them re-assembled.

From then on she was quite happy for Robert to watch as much television as he liked.

Diane Smith, Darlington