Blog Minx

I just had a friend visiting, an old and close friend who I met over 10 years ago when we were just starting university/college and lived together in a madcap, very budget student hostel. Picture a campus version of Alcatraz, with nice people but gloomy cells for rooms, bolted-down furniture and overcooked mystery slop for dinner served by warty wenches.

In those fun if un-nutritional days, we had little money but would still manage to splurge on at least one CD a week, plus a few bottles of something for the weekend, and we’d go to the movies and shop for clothes. The magic of student loans, overdrafts and the ‘worry about it later’ mentality.

These days we are the same but different. She’s a home-owner and very eco-conscious. I spend on travel and save when I’m home, and this year I’ve become generally more finance-conscious. So neither of us was particularly keen to spend money on the stuff we used to buy, but we came to an impasse: it was a rainy winter’s day and we could not think of something free to do.

In the end, we went window-shopping and out to lunch. It was fun, but I was annoyed with myself; could I not create my own entertainment? I thought back to what I’d do when I was a kid having friends over for slumber parties:

• Cooked. We would always bake something from a kids’ cookbook. Something five-star, like pancakes.
• Written/painted. We’d write plays, or just get out the crayons and make a mess.
• Make up games. We used to record pretend radio shows, before video blogging was even a twinkle in my eye.
• Dress up. It was the ’80s – there was always something stupid to wear.
• Play games. Twister, Operation, Monopoly… hours of hilarity and sulking when my Boot landed on someone’s Park Lane hotel.

See, I typed that out in no time at all. Does the fact that I can’t entertain myself for free anymore relate to having grown up, or is it just that we’re more of a consumer culture now? Or both?