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 see the OP is more specific now, I do think the olden days would have been boring, when you go round National Trust houses they look big and cold with rows and rows of boring looking books and the rich must have either just read books or embroidered or sat around the dinner table, men maybe playing cards later. it was very sexist in olden day I think

The poor people probably didn't have much leisure time and would have not known what that was as theirs was a life of toil and wondering where the next meal was coming from. In olden days there only seemed to be rich or poor whereas nowadays there is a lot of in-between

Obviously I am only guessing all of this.

I am glad to have been born in the late 50's and to have lived through lots of change but feel fortunate not to have experienced the real olden days which looked either very hard or very boring.

My mum sat on the sofa chain smoking with a massive ash tray, fingers in her ears as a defence to the record player reading a 3 inch thick novel.

"I think people went to church because they were bored, something to do and people to see and an excuse not to do anything for an hour."

Only partly. Some people really believed and for others it was a social obligation. Non attenders were social pariahs to a certain extent when 95% of the population were regular attenders.

My nana used to sweep every floor with a brush as no hoover

Do the laundry by hand

Etc etc

It’s only been one generation between that and now.

And they had telly

It's not so much about no TV or internet etc, but people didn't go anywhere. They just hung about their town or village day in day out. That would have driven me beserk.

Is this real?

People used their imagination.

One of these days at the beach we threw a shell like small ball because we didn't have any.

OTOH, I can see what boredom does to my mother and it's a case of the devil finds work for idle fingers.
Or cleaning.

I was born in the 1940s which I'm sure most would describe as the 'olden days'. I can never remember being bored. We had a black and white 9 inch tv with one channel, listened to the wireless, visited the library every week, played out from dawn until dusk, made our own entertainment - my parents would have been bemused at being expected to provide entertainment for their children 24/7. When we got our first car we would go for drives in the countryside, visiting family and friends etc.

I think it's far more boring today when people don't even seem capable of walking down the street without a mobile stuck under their nose, far more boring than the old days of the rare treat of going out for a meal with parents for a birthday and sitting and chatting, rather than children being plugged into an ipad to keep them quiet. It's far more boring that people are losing the use of speech, preferring to text for everything. The most boring thing of all is people filling social media with every minute of their lives, 99.9% of which is irrelevant.

Are never bored noe OP despite internet etc..what a lot of it is a waste of time, and frittering time away makes you feel worse than boredom in the old days

When were "the olden days" ?

I am taking my 8yo ds2 to do Tudor reenactment next week.
He will play with sticks and he is going to bloody love it.

I get bored in these modern times too sometimes.

I hate watching TV, am not on social media and although I do enjoy MN there is a limit to how much time I want to spend on it.

I like reading, and read about one novel a week. But on Sunday, for example, I was terribly bored. It was raining, none of my friends were about ( I don't have children), I was too tired from a bike ride the previous day to do anything physical and nothing interested me.

I think people will always be bored.

What an ignorant question

@liver10 - what an ignorant reply. I'm finding this thread interesting so off you go.

And I used to love playing "two balls" as well! I showed DD once and she was less than impressed ...

I grew up in the 70s and 80s. The only thing we had from your list was a TV. We didn't need today's technology and didn't miss it or get bored because it didn't exist. We did ther things like listen t music, socialise wth actual people not screens. Being a child/teen back then involved a lot more social interaction, in my mind that's s much better than iPads and Netflix.

And I used to love playing "two balls" as well! I showed DD once and she was less than impressed …

I never progressed to three balls, although a couple of my friends did.
I tried so bloody hard, but it was not to be.
That's now my plan for this afternoon. Practise, practise, practise.

‘Ten girls, full stop’, that version of two balls played against a wall? It seems to have been confined to the north west because nobody who grew up outside that area ever knows what I’m talking about. A bit like little girls’ formation morris dancing with ‘shakers’ (like cheerleaders).

If only the poor bored women of days of yore (I don’t mean the 20th century, before anybody else jumps in to tell me about pressing flowers, riding their bikes and going to the library) could have had the same fun. Their honour would probably have been besmirched and they’d have had to go to a nunnery or something.

Nettle that ten girls thing rings a bell but I don't remember the rest...

We used to chant:
"Matthew, Mark, Luke and John
Next door neighbour carry on
Next door neighbour's got the flu
So now I'll pass it on to you"
And handover to the next person. There were some others but I don't remember them - definitely some kind of alphabetical thing.

Sorry for the derail OP. Sadly for the ladies of the Jane Austen era, two balls had not yet been thought of (AFAIK).

I can tell from the lyrics that it is the same tune. The simple pleasures!

During the times of Austen, I'm not sure there actually were the 'middle class' as such, wasn't it just that you were either a very poor family, or a very rich family? With no middle ground.

So therefore you were either dirt poor and hard-working (and busy), or rich and able to pay for entertainment such as theatre trips, dinner parties, day trips (erm... I'm not sure where they went for daytrips, but Austen novels often involve a picnic), piano, books, horses, etc.

I was only saying to my DD, a couple of days ago, that I have never been bored.
As a child (born 1967), I lived in a very quiet village with few other children of my age, so I had to entertain myself, my parents would never dream of entertaining me and TV was only on in the evening for the news!
Like others on here, I read a colossal amount (mostly books, but I would get the Beano delivered on a Friday!), I would play the recorder, I would take my dog to the field and play with him for hours. I had imaginary horses and would 'groom' and 'exercise' them, I taught myself to type using an ancient manual typewriter and a Pittman's instruction manual. I built many a den, I would teach myself the names of all the wildflowers and to recognise all the birds. I would build tents in the garden, play with my tortoise and rabbit and clean them out regularly, and I had a tiny patch of the garden allocated to me where I grew sweet peas and stocks!
I played Word Search games, Patience/Clock Patience and Solitaire, washed my dad's car, helped mum peg the washing out, rode my bike and went for walks, picked blackberries in the autumn, chalked hop-scotch on the drive and played that for hours. I played tennis up against the wall, coloured in those books that are now trendy again as stress relieving colouring, wrote stories and poems, played marbles, played on the stilts that my dad made me, played on my roller skates, and even played Monopoly on my own!
I was always happy with my own company and I can, hand on heart, never recall being bored.
Ha! Reading that back, I realise what a great childhood I had!!

I think people often made the things we buy. I remember my brothers building all sorts of electronic things that our children can order from amazon. My dad made all our small animal cages and runs. We would never have dreamed of getting our bikes serviced at a bike shop. My mum made the tent I used all through my teenage years.

And we took a broken microwave to the tip recently, and dp said wistfully “When I was ds’s age I would have taken that apart to get the magnetron out”

Before the internet and Netflix I used to do more stuff. I socialised more and worked on my hobbies more. I've never been bored, ever. If the internet disappeared tomorrow and never came back I still wouldn't be bored. After a month or so I'd probably be glad it had gone.

The best thing about modern living is not the internet. The best thing is not having to go to church.

They built magnificent churches in every settlement and had lots of sex.