I'm bored ...

Do you ever have those moments where you open your mouth and it's like you're channelling your mother? 'I'm borrrred ...' is in the universal lexicon of whines guaranteed to grate any parent's nerves, along with 'are we there yet?' Perhaps you can think of a few others? When the little one started whining about being bored and having nothing to do yesterday, I found myself saying 'only boring people get bored', just like my mother (and presumably hers before), used to say.

I don't know about you, but I don't have the chance to be bored these days. I don't have time to do everything I want - boredom seems luxurious somehow. Some things are boring right now (waiting for news on the book, not knowing if we're settling here or not). That kind of boredom has become like toothache - an incessant background discomfort beyond my control. All you can do is ignore it, make the best of where you are and try to get on with something new. I think some boredom - especially for kids - is vital. How are you going to learn to entertain yourself or use your imagination otherwise. It's like the 'right' kind of stress gets you going (as opposed to the soul-sapping beyond your control sort).

Perhaps you've also seen how small children are more interested in playing with the box than the toy inside? In fact, when we were really hard up in Spain while the pilot was training, our daughter had very few toys - her favourite really was a cardboard box. It was a babywalker, castle, hideout - the photos have gone down in family history as a Monty Python style 'Eee when I was a kid we were so poor ...' joke. She loved it though. When I picked the three year old up from playgroup yesterday, the kids were all outside playing in the sun, fascinated by a pile of timber one of the parents had brought in and completely ignoring the toys around them. Between them they had built a 'ship' complete with mast, oars and seats. Maybe we should just let children get on with it a bit more - their days are so full. Perhaps boredom is good for you.

I had a 'Swallows and Amazons' type childhood. Mr Titchmarsh's competition has made me think about how I grew up in comparison to our children. Admittedly we lived in a remote Devon village but at my daughter's age I used to cycle for miles - complete freedom. There were no computer games, no constant kids' TV. In the playroom we had my Dad's sideboard sized record player from the 60's and all their old records (including Joey Dee from today's videoclip), and I remember stacking up 45's on the turntable as we played. If my days had been filled with activities I honestly don't know if I'd have started writing so young. Perhaps this is why I'm quite 'hands off' as a parent - they spend too much time watching TV like all kids now, but there is still nothing better than overhearing them and their friends making up a story, or just watching them paddling in the river with the dogs.

TODAY'S PROMPT: Do you think boredom can be good for you? I read recently how periods of 'ennui and nerve restlessness (lead to) spiritual development'. This makes sense somehow - fallow periods between bursts of creativity. Today, if you're feeling bored with things beyond your control (work, books, the recession ... insert your current bugbear here), why not think about how you can get moving. Frozen creativity is soul-sapping. There is always something we can do. For those of you with books ready to go, why not take a look at Authonomy. You can upload a sample of your work, and people get to vote on whether it should be published. A friend recommended this at the weekend, and one of the Mums at school has just landed a contract with Harper Collins - so, you never know ...