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?

Christ some of you are tetchy buggers!

I got to thinking about this whilst watching Versailles (inspiration for my name change).

And that led me to think about the Austen novels. How much embroidery can a women do?

Well OP I for one frequently wonder this and I'm neither naive to historical realities or from a privileged background.

My mum frequently relays being bored shi*less during her youth and early years raising a family..

Those time-consuming chores like washing, shopping, cooking, cleaning are interminably boring for most. It's why the wealthy contract them out.

I can tell you categorically that being a teen in the 1980s in the North was not.improving in any way. My library by and large had shit books which I nevertheless read. I couldn't afford CDs and the rentals from said linrary were rubbish: Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats, anyone??

However I do think earlt childhood boredom is character- forming.

My grandparents lived in a tied cottage and didn't have electricity until 1977. No labour saving devices meant they worked from the time they got up until almost the time they went to bed. The little free time they had they listened to the wireless, read the paper, or the People's Friend for granny. They didn't have hobbies because there was no time for them. I'm sure they would have loved to be bored.

This was incredibly unusual, though. And if they would have loved to have been bored, they could have got electricity installed, surely?

Before the internet and multi-channel tv, often household chores took longer (no washer dryer, or microwave etc). As others have observed. But not always as much longer as you might expect. Before tumble driers or automatic washing machines, you didn't wash clothes as often ("sponging" dirty marks featured large) for example.

As I am 47 I survived quite well. I've always had TV of course, but can remember the internet beginning to play a role in my life in my early 30s. Before my early 30s no Netflix, Amazon, etc. But I had a great social life, read books, lots of gardening, travelled and worked.

Austen: clothes took longer to get into and out of, and you got changed more times a day.
Managing the staff.
Planning the week's menus inc dinners occassionally
Planning then attending the family social life
Riding
Pets
Visiting poor people
Church. And church again.
Visiting other families and being bored stiff there

I love the internet though. As a middle aged adult I manage to scrape together the willpower to self regulate.

If I was a kid now I suspect I'd be hopelessly addicted, holed up in a darkened room with my screen 24/7, scoffing junk food and wasting my life. I bet my parents would've left me to it too as they were not very hands on.

One of my kids is potentially similar; I have to be very firm with her.

Wow! I grew up in the 'olden days' i.e. pre-tech. We made our own fun - cycling, walking, watching plane, fishing, board games, reading real books, talking about stuff, playing cricket, going round the tube endlessly watching people, painting, sewing, listening to pirate radio, dancing, table tennis, lawn tennis, riding horses, etc. etc.

People watching was the most fun. I bet Jane Austen & co spent a lot of time doing this too.

Um the Internet only became a thing twenty years ago or so.

Telly, a generation before that.

So why everyone had leapt to Victorian hovels and Georgian drawing rooms I have no idea.

My dad had no telly. In fact I was at school with two kids who didn't have a telly. 1970s.

Just today I was thinking about how badly we wrecked our house when we were kids. Board games and reading only go so far. We used to play with incense, candles and matches! Plus science experiments... in the bathroom.

My OP should have been more specific. When I said "olden days" I didn't mean the 1960s and 70s - that's when I was growing up! Though this thread has provided a nice trip down memory lane for me 😁

Emoji fail!

My Nan, born 1911, went cleaning, for better off relatives, from the age of eight. My Great-grandfather delivered meat, horse drawn and my Nan's Brother would help with the horse/washing down.

Sundays, would be Sunday School/Church, Grave visiting and helping with cooking/cleaning. It gave my Nan a hatred of religion and burial. They baked and sewed etc.

You were glad to get to bed earlier, it was cold and dark, most of the year.

My Nan went through some very hard times and she taught her children to darn/embroider etc and she would take in washing/ironing/mending and her and her children would spend their evening doing that. My Uncles said it set them up for going into the Army/RAF.

I was taught card games, all of my friends in the 70's could play cribbage etc. All the Women took an interest in doing "the pools". It wasn't all good, but people were much more involved in each other's lives.

Plenty of sex.

I’m with you, OP. About the proper olden days, I mean. I’ve often thought how dull it must have been to be a Jane Austen lady.

You couldn’t just zone out in front of the telly each evening, could you? No, you had to make sparkling conversation NIGHT AFTER NIGHT. Christ. Expensive books and no libraries, too.

Poor old Fanny Price (Mansfield Park) had to endure endless tea drinking and running errands for aunt Norris, and even had to be in her cousins’ crap (yet also racy) amateur dramatics.

Also you had to be ‘accomplished’ ie sew fecking samplers and practise playing the piano and singing to entertain visitors.

No wonder they were all avid to get to Bath, Brighton, Harrogate etc. At least there was booze at the ‘assemblies’ and the chance to cop off with men in britches.

Even further back (I’m thinking 1600s), even before the puritans cancelled all fun for 20 years, entertainment in pubs was bleeding shove ha’penny and nine men’s morris or cards, and even that was only an option if you were a man and had a horse. Also the booze would have been crap. Manky ale and ‘porter’.

So yes, OP, I am certain that life was very boring in times gone by!

Being on this thread is boring. Good luck.

There was a BBC programme going through the decades. As said, just trying to stay alive took up all of their time. Malnurishment/dehydration/exhaustion, would completely change how our brains worked, so we wouldn't be operating as we do today, so wouldn't be bored.

As for the better off Women, it probably wasn't just compassion and religion that spurred them on to do charitable works.

Sometimes I wonder how people don't die of boredom these days what with all this telly and iPads and Netflix.

Have you ever read or watched Emma? That's the sort of mischief bored women got to.

I think people talked to each other more than they do now. I think they talked more between age groups too.

In Austen times people didn’t live long enough to get bored. They did a lot of reading, playing their own music, board games and cards etc. And they had a LOT of kids to look after. Theatre and music halls were popular too.

I'm a bit late to this thread AthenaisdeRochechouart but I get you.

I know the lives of the working class would be bloody horrible, which no doubt kept them busy and knackered and most likely ill - they are my ancestors - but what did the middle classes do? There's only so much reading, playing card games or embroidery someone can do. How the fuck did they get through every evening without wanting to die of boredom?

I bet they did want to die of boredom.

From the 1960s (is that classed as olden days?):

Gathering wood/coal/peat to make the fire
Keeping the fire lit
Gathering ingredients for cooking
Killing/keeping animals for food
Tending the land
Cooking
Cleaning
Washing by hand
Making and repairing clothes and bedding
Visiting/entertaining
Childcare/elder care
Cards
Jigsaws
Parkour games
Reading
Listening to the radio/gramophone
Storytelling
Knitting/sewing/chrochet/darning
Painting
Creative writing
Letter writing
Household maintenance
Self education
Has anyone mentioned sex?

Honestly the list goes on...

Florence Nightingale was so bored with her monotonous middle class life she became a nurse.

Thank you Nettletheelf and AuditBird for getting it 😊