Reading was nearly always my de facto leisure activity in the school (and university) holidays. The holidays have always represented a chance to escape deep into the pool of history and literature I have loved to soak myself in since childhood – and until recently only exceptional circumstances could change this.
Now, however, with three young children under the age of 7, I cannot count so readily on time to spare for my love of reading. Reading has to be squeezed in wherever possible; writing even more desperately so. As I type this, a 2 year old is trying to cover me with a blanket, while a 4 year olds is asking where she can find another biscuit. I break away from the screen to tell one to stop, the other that she can’t snack now as dinner will be ready soon. Back, now, to my screen.
As a tired parent of young children, I started early on to find that my capacity for sustained concentration on long sentences of text on page was substantially diminished. I would not – could not – turn to TV as a sort of substitute: I broke decisively with that medium as a vessel of entertainment way back in my early 20s. I still love movies – well, some – but TV I have for some time regarded as something like a cesspit in which I do not wish to spend any time. (As an aside, students I teach – who have often discovered this fact – question me with scrupulous zeal and disbelief when I reveal it; I do not know how successful are my attempts to convince them that life beyond TV is, in fact, rather worthwhile).
What medium, then, to seek when pages of text are too much to cope with after a long day, and the humdrum presentism of the TV screen seems too banal to contemplate? The answer, I have often found, lies in Art – and in my growing collection of Art books. It is a brilliantly relaxing activity to sit and take in great works of art, to glance across page after page of image and artistry, to be sucked into the worlds and scenes that great painters of the past have endeavoured to convey.
And, what’s more, this proves a very lovely opportunity for fun with toddlers (and older children too) – who love looking at the paintings, identifying what’s depicted, naming colours and characters they can spy. Earlier this evening my two year old flicked through 25 pages of Degas and 23 pages of Matisse (OK, not exactly an old master) with me and she delighted in much of what she saw, as did I. Not a bad way to relax after a day of work.
ad astra per mundum 