Do you ever wonder how people didn't die of boredom in the olden days

[AthenaisdeRochechouart]

Before telly and iPads and Netflix and access to unlimited books/music via Amazon?

What did they do to stop going stark staring mad? Could you cope long term without the above?

I'm bored shitless with all that stuff.

I saw a painting the other day called 'Afternoon Tea' which showed a clearly rich woman sitting staring into the distance next to a table laden with sandwiches and cakes.

I had the same thought as you - she looked deeply bored and I suspect days were filled with things just like afternoon tea to break it up.

What those dim and distant far off days of no recall 1995?

One year after we signed up with compuserve. Only a few years before we got our ISDN connection to stop me screaming at my mother every time she dared use the phone.

Lol. People worked, had hobbies, learnt new skills, cooked, met with their friends, had conversations. It was a better world then. What a sad thread.

I suspect for women who did not have to work, life was boring at times. The film A Brief Encounter captures this.

Netflix only started streaming in 2007. So all adults nowadays remember a time before Netflix. And I’ve always had access to unlimited books: it’s called The Library.

*I'd love it.

I don't watch much tv and I'm at my happiest on a cold, miserable night, lying on the sofa with a good book, the radio playing, curtains drawn and lamps lit.

Heaven.*

This is so me,too!

Op you can't be that bothered

You are barely engaging on the thread

My nan said it could take her mum 4 hours to do the family wash by hand alone

And everything had to be cooked by scratch and bought daily

She also had 13 children

If she clearly wasn’t in the bedroom producing children she was looking after them

I would also like to know what the OP classifies as the olden days.

We didn't have a tv till the mid-60s, when I was 9. I read voraciously, went to the library to change books 2 or 3 times a week. We listened to the radio, played cards, dominoes and board games, went for long walks at weekends.

I don't remember being bored, tbh.

To be fair there were plenty of other things to die of before they had to resort to boredom

I'm with morningtoncrescent62 I grew up with 3 channels on a small black and white TV too. I also loved pocket money on Friday when I would buy the Beano and a load of sweets (for 5p!).

Don't get me wrong, I did have fun times "playing out", going for walks and days out, or at friends' houses, and I did read a lot. Sometimes we played board games. But I do vividly remember feeling pretty bored and lonely some of the time too, especially at the age before I became old enough to get into sleepovers and shopping etc with friends.

I guess that's from a child's perspective. I don't think my parents were particularly bored pre-technology.

LakieLady me too. I'm the same age as you are.

I grew up with 3 tv channels. We didn't watch tv that much tbh, Songs of Praise on a Sunday and Thinggummyjig. We read books, played board games, helped around the house, played with friends, helped in the garden, built dams in the stream, walked a lot, made up our own games a lot of the time, visited the library, I used to lose myself in Jinny at Finmory books especially. It's wasn't a hardship to live without social media, streaming boxsets etc.

Access to books via Amazon? There were libraries... Loads of them.

Well there were music halls and dance hall.
Then cinemas, the film would usually change twice a week. As a child during the war my mum went with her sisters to the local cinema only 2 streets away.
Roller rinks
Whist drives
Radio
Social clubs
Bingo

Years ago people used to play a lot of cards and board games. I'm crap at both so I would have had to just sit there and listen to the wireless.

“In the olden days”? How old are you, OP? I can actually remember the dim and distant past before iPads, Netflix, and Amazon. Shocking, isn’t it?

Honestly, it seems that some children and young adults really struggle to entertain themselves without screens. I consider that a real problem given the wealth of and easy access to technology. But I assure you, life pre-iPad/Netflix/Amazon was anything but boring. I am not old enough to remember a time without television, but I can imagine that even without a TV people managed to find all sorts of interesting things to do. Fancy that!

This is hysterical! What, exactly, are the 'olden days' OP?
Before telly and iPads and Netflix and access to unlimited books/music via Amazon?

Access to unlimited books... hmm let me think - oh yes! it's called a library! Or a bookshop.

Music... that would the radio.

I was a lot less bored in my 60s and 70s childhood than I am now with the crap that's on TV. I went out exploring on my bike. I played with other children. My father made stilts for us all. We had pogo sticks (You might need to look those up on the interweb....) We played recorders as a family. My parents painted. My father played guitar. We went to evening classes.

Bless. You're obviously very young and ignorant

Sex, hence the bigger families.

I don't look back through rose-tinted spectacles, but we had more freedom; bomb-sites were wonderful adventure playgrounds, as vandalism wasn't possible when Hitler had already done his worst (but playing out on the streets on Sunday was not allowed, as it was "common") and I was a voracious reader, local libraries hadn't been closed to save money, plus learning to cook and sew with my Mum, and draw and play board games with my dad.
Playing out with mates was allowed as long as you were back for tea; far from having mobile phones with trackers, my house was unusual in having a landline telephone....
We didn't have TV, on the pretext "not until you've passed your 11+" - actually, they couldn't afford a set, and were mildly taken aback when I passed.....and they rented one........
I did indeed feel bored sometimes, but it was wiser not to say so, as DM could always find a worthwhile chore to occupy me, so better to find some amusement. It sounds incredibly twee now, but children would write stories for fun. But the Tony Hancock sketch about Sundays rings all too true...

olden days? it's not that long ago.
Don't envy anything about those days as for most people it meant no central heating, no double glazing, no dishwasher, no microwave, no freezer, no fridge, no dryers, no car, no foreign holidays, no super vacuum cleaners and very few quick dry materials. It meant getting up early to clear out dead fire remains and lighting a new one. It meant ice on the inside of windows in winter. It meant no shopping malls and no big supermarkets.
Shopping took an age going from butcher to fish shop to greengrocer and then to the baker. It took a day to do the washing and days to dry it if there was no sunshine. Childcare was limited and considered women's responsibility.
So by the time you'd shopped, cleaned, washed the clothes, prepared every meal from scrap, hand washed all the dishes and looked after the kids, there was no time to be bored ~ at least not bored because of lack of activity, just bored by the routine sand tedium of it all.
Not the good old days! The day of rest ~Sunday~ Church, limited TV in black and white, jigsaws, books, board games.

I was born in 1978 and my dd(7) thinks that was the "olden days"

I would class it as post war and I bet they had better sex lives than us without all of the distractions of modern life.

I recently got internet banking as has resisted so long. I think I'm quite an old fashioned soul really!
My kids run rings around me technology wise but I have surprised myself and my family by ordering an Amazon dot this week and have had loads of fun with Alexa.

Life was much simpler to me before the introduction of technology. I had a lovely childhood, playing out a lot, reading a lot and making up all manner of games.

Now, children rely heavily on screens to provide entertainment. Just this morning my dd had a huge tantrum as we suggested a trip to Chester zoo and she wanted to stay in. It made me sad that she is so bloody dependent on her iPad so we have taken it away for a few days and she ended up going out with her dad and is now colouring in. I feel ashamed that she is seemingly addicted to an iPad.

I would never die of boredom. I hate the word "bored" as there is always something that needs doing or something to do to entertain us, sometimes I think the simplest things in life are the best.

My grandfather lived in a mining village where he ran the night school. There was lots of self improvement going on in the evenings - woodwork, languages, beekeeping, politics, all sorts. And that's without mentioning the brass band and the amateur operatics. And if you didn't fancy that there was always the pub.