Marrow Hill - or having time to stand and stare!

In Jan Mark’s wonderful book of short stories “Nothing to be afraid of” there is the delightful tale entitled “Marrow Hill”. I read this book to eleven year olds on many occasions.  It was a personal favourite and one which year after year generated much amusement, a wealth of comments and perceptive understanding from the children. The Burton family are a happy, busy, boisterous and slightly madcap family who are always “doing things”. Mother and dad are always busy, doing things in the garden, taking the children out on exciting trips, or rushing here there and everywhere. The four children are forever involved in wild escapades, gleeful pranks and bizarre behaviour. The writer of the story watches the Burton children from his bedroom window each time he visits his auntie and he is fascinated by their continual talking, their non-stop games and their apparent ability to exist in what seems to be a chaotic, never stopping whirl of activity, noise and ever increasing excitement and catastrophe.

The madcap Burton family

One day the writer notices that the eldest of the Burton children each afternoon sneaks off from the garden and disappears. Intrigued, the writer decides to see where he goes. The Burton boy walks to some distant allotments and disappears behind an old hut. Following, the writer peeps round the side of the hut and the Burton boy is sitting silently on the earth by a mound of marrows which are growing there. The two boys greet each other and they sit together. The Burton boy pats one of the marrows and says “This is old man Grimshaw”. The writer is confused and even more so when the Burton boy pats another marrow and says “They’re my friends, this is Adelaide Bulk”. He continues giving names to each of the marrows growing there – Laurel and Hardy, Hamish McBagpipe, Henry the Eighth......... . The writer asks if the Burton boy grew the marrows – “Oh no,” he replies, “I just come up here to see them each day”.  The writer is even more confused and says to the Burton boy “Don’t you find them a bit boring as friends......I mean they can’t play football or talk” . The Burton boy looks at the writer and says “Oh no they’re not boring and I know they can’t play football or cricket and they can’t talk”. Slightly exasperated  the writer says, “Well, why do you come here each day and just sit with them, what do they do?”  A blissful smile spread across the Burton boy’s face, and looking at the writer, he said quietly, “Do? What do they do? They don’t do anything”.

I am often reminded of this tale as I watch young families living, what increasingly seems to me, to be an increasingly frenetic life style, just like the Burton family constantly “doing”. In the UK there is daily discussion and comment from all interested parties and every politician about the problems facing young families in the modern world – the fact that both parents increasingly have to work to make ends meet, how the cost of buying a house is too often beyond young parents and so on. There is no denying the problems and pressures that young families face but I often wonder if there is also a self imposed anxiety to “do things”. When I visit my grandchildren they are continually off to “do things” – swimming lessons, music lessons, football training, guides, brownies, after school clubs, birthday parties, “playdates” (what a truly awful Americanism!), school camps, tennis coaching, gymnastics.........the list seems increasingly endless. No opportunity it seems is turned down in the quest for constant occupation, involvement and improvement! I am, of course, delighted that they are so involved and that their parents care enough to arrange and do all these wonderful things – it must be good. But at the same time I often reflect when is the time to, in the words of the poem by WH Davies, “stand and stare”:

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?—

No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

And I wonder what will these children grow up into?  They have existed from their earliest days in a world continually amused, entertained, inspired and exposed to one high octane activity after another. All very laudable, and I’m sure good – but does the inner being need something else? When you have spent your whole childhood enjoying this exposure to non-stop activity and high input involvement I increasingly ask myself what then? What do you next move on to – where do you get your next thrill? I can remember many years ago listening to my son and his university friends talking about places they had visited. They had a large map of the world on the wall of their flat and marked on the map were all the places that various of them had visited. One of my son’s friends turned and said, “I need to visit Australia before I’m 20”. I can remember reflecting that at the same age my furthest visit to anywhere had been about 20 miles down the road from where I had grown up. The world, of course has changed – but I ask the same question – when you have done it all, what then – where do you get your kicks?

Marrows don't DO anything.  But for the oldest Burton boy
that was their appeal - it gave him time to stand and stare

And at the same time, I see that it is not only the children who have this continual entertainment and involvement organised for them. Increasingly, it seems to me, parents are also keen to keep busy – or rather to ensure that they are personally “fulfilled” by continuing interests and pursuits. Again, surely this is a good thing – I’m sure it is – but as I get older I have the nagging suspicion that for many it is a reflection of a deep rooted anxiety not to face what they see as boring and unnecessary - the reality of everyday life. Much of everyday life is, by its very nature, tedious, boring and invariably hard work and every so often there appears in my inbox some humorous joke or item reflecting on the futility of much of this. Recently, this one popped up and whilst I can sympathise completely with the sentiments the hidden message is one of do what you enjoy not what you have to do. It offers a hedonistic world of lotus eating rather than the world of reality.

Dust if you must, but wouldn't it be better
To paint a picture, or write a letter,
Bake a cake, or plant a seed;
Ponder the difference between want and need?
Dust if you must, but there's not much time,
With rivers to swim, and mountains to climb;
Music to hear, and books to read;
Friends to cherish, and life to lead.
Dust if you must, but the world's out there
With the sun in your eyes, and the wind in your hair;
A flutter of snow, a shower of rain,
This day will not come around again.
Dust if you must, but bear in mind,
Old age will come and it's not kind.
And when you go (and go you must)
You, yourself, will make more dust.

Look on the shelves at the newsagents, read the colour supplements on the newspapers and you won’t have to spend much time before you find articles and advice about how to lead  a more “fulfilling life” – go to the gym, take up cycling, be a “masterchef”, do a  “makeover” on you or your house. Indeed the TV scheduling seems full of such pursuits – all aimed at subliminally passing on the same message “don’t be bothered with the tedious and everyday – fulfil your ambitions, do your thing, live the dream”.

And it is not just the big things of life – we are bombarded with  gadgets and technology to help us to be constantly entertained and distracted from the mundane and ordinary. If I go for a walk through my local country park I pass scores of people with their headphones plugged into their ears – oblivious to the sounds of silence or the birds. On Sunday my wife and I went for a walk through the park. At one point there is a small “sensory garden” - a quiet place filled with plants. We sat and enjoyed the view and the sun for a few minutes. On the next bench to us sat a young couple with a baby in a push chair – both adults had earphones in and were listening, I assume, to music. It all seemed a bit bizarre to me, to be intentionally eliminating one of one’s senses in a sensory garden!  Smartphones, tablet computers, streaming of music and programmes and the like ensure that every waking minute can be filled with exactly what we want when we want it, where we want it – and consequently our  basic humanity is, in a small way, diminished. We are becoming like the lotus eaters of Greek mythology or the Eloi of HG Wells’ “Time Machine” - childlike, lacking curiosity, drive or personal discipline for our every desire is instantly gratified.  And as I write this sentence I look out onto my street. Two young mums are just passing my house, both pushing push chairs with young children sitting in them. The two mums aren’t talking to each other as they walk, they aren’t communication with their children – they are both gazing at their smartphones and appear to be sending text messages as they walk. Much more exciting than engaging in real, everyday, mundane, ordinary life or interacting with their children!

Blaise Pascal

To return to my tale of “Marrow Hill”. One of the recurring themes of any discussions that I had with the children after I had read the story to them was an acknowledgement by many of children that they understood exactly where the Burton boy was coming from. They well understood that he just wanted a bit of space to be himself, to not be continually organised by others and to have a bit of quiet time – time to stand and stare, to do “nothing”. And, taking this a stage further, it was virtually always the more able children who made this point – they saw that there was more to life than simply enjoying oneself and continually “doing”. As I write this I am reminded of the observation by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhaur who commented a century and a half ago that “I have for a long time been of the opinion that the quantity of noise and business that anyone can comfortably endure is in inverse proportion to his mental powers!”  What would he say today?  

More seriously, however, I firmly believe that a balance has to be struck. Of course, people want to follow their interests and ambitions. Of course, children will benefit from exposure to a wide variety of experiences and opportunities. But there are other things that are equally and perhaps more important than the hedonistic fulfilment of one’s own dreams or the treadmill of non-stop experiences that permeate the lives of many. These are the things that a new smartphone, a year’s gym membership, music lessons, swimming lessons, “playdates” and the rest cannot provide. The gym, the smartphone, the "playdate" and the rest of the trivia, laudable and desirable though much of it might be, are things which are at best simply entertainments or  distractions from the everyday business of living. And yet, it seems to me, these are increasingly the most important things of life for many.

Michel de Montaigne

As Davies said in his poem – we need to the time to “stand and stare” and in doing that we confront and accept our humanity.  We need to know that doing the dusting, rather than walking away from it, is a small and tedious but important part of life. It is what makes us human – not doing the dusting – but being able to recognise what is important. Being so busy and involved, being entertained and distracted by what we want rather than what we need, never having the time, or worse, never having the desire to stand and stare, never having the time, the opportunity or desire to reflect upon ourselves and our lives, never being comfortable with one’s own silence, solitude and company, ensures that we never confront the realities of ourselves, our life and humanity. And that is not just bad for us as individuals but for humanity as a whole. Personally, I'm with two French philosophers on this one, both of whom pointed out the issues that they recognised in their time. In the sixteenth century Michel de Montaigne noted that  "Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self". And a century later French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal said: “All mankind's miseries derive from not being able to sit alone in a quiet room!”  Whatever these two gentlemen would say if they were able to witness today's world is anyone's guess but I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that both these observations are true and relevant to our modern world.