Jigsaws, bikes, cooking: Things we should reclaim from childhood

THERE are some sweet pursuits where you step out of your head and focus on hands and heart. Here’s the some stuff we grown-ups should be stealing back from childhood.

Supplied Editorial Sunflower cocktail from The Grounds of Alexandria. Picture: Supplied for Sydney Taste drinks on m

HAVING once been vomited on by a nervous flyer, I’m cautious of who I sit next to on aeroplanes. In movies everyone seems to meet the love of their life while I’m always seated next to the nutbags and food-spillers and the weak-bladdered which I appreciate is not a nice way to speak about your kids.

Recently I was flying solo and, sure enough, my designated seat was a row BEHIND a Bradley Cooper lookalike. On one side I had a teen troughing down a family-size bag of chips and using the arm rest as a serviette; on the other was a middle-aged woman who was either nervous or coming down off crack. Where’s a plastic poncho when you need it?

Marion — really, when will I learn not to ask? — assured me she was fine then pulled out a colouring book and proceeded to turn a pair of butterfly wings into a cacophony of colour. For goodness sake, I thought, wiping salt from my left forearm. Next she’ll be asking me to open the straw on her box of apple juice.

But I became mesmerised — by the pencil movements, by the evolving image, by a yearning to wrest the pencil from her and enjoy a little scribble of my own.

Lo and behold, colouring books for adults are top of the bestseller lists. “I think it is really relaxing, to do something analog, to unplug,” says Scottish illustrator Johanna Basford who’s making a motza out of doodlers. The girl is talking to my soul. Saturated in software and discombobulated by everything digital, I want to regress. Not to banana custard and play dough, but to sweet childhood pursuits where you step out of your head and focus on hands and heart. Here’s the other stuff we grown-ups should be stealing back from childhood.

Bike riding.

All those years on training wheels, the scraped knees, the kissing behind the bike sheds and then we chuck it in the moment we become proficient. Why? Well, cars obviously, but there’s something enduringly glorious about pedal power. Forget ploughing up hills in neck to knee Lycra and instead cycle to the beach for wine, ahem, a milkshake. Downside: helmets.

Jigsaws

My mate William is a university lecturer and thus enjoys an erudite and highly demanding (taxpayer-funded) life giving lectures at international conferences. As respite from the business class travel, wine-fuelled dinners and obligatory golf, he does jigsaws. Not of puppies or dolphins or nauseating scenes of lederhosen-parading Austrians, but Renaissance paintings. He says it’s meditative and rewarding which I suppose it is when you’re piecing together the breasts of a Botticelli nude. “The satisfaction is deeper than doing it as a child,” he emails, poolside, from somewhere in Asia. Downside: missing pieces.

Really, what’s more chilled out than a good jigsaw?

Map Reading

I have an old Reader’s Digest atlas back from the days when Beijing was Peking and Sri Lanka was called Ceylon. It’s a lovely thing that smells like damp coats; the maps sketched in a shades of jade, mustard and steeped tea. Poring over it, as I plan a forthcoming trip to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, is a delicious antidote to sat-navs and Google maps. Show anyone who’s lived in England a map of the London Underground and watch as they dissolve into a misty-eyed reverie. Downside: unmarked one-way streets.

Board games

Last weekend I pulled out my late grandfather’s Scrabble complete with wooden letters and played it with the kids. Old board = old rules so they were banned from the newly-accepted “twerking” and “lolz” because those words are just ridic. Steer clear of Operation with its nerve-jangling buzz but victory in Monopoly, Yahtzee or Battleships will prove more satisfying than checking Facebook for the 376th time. Downside: losing.

Cooking

Now referred to in my house as “reheating Jamie”, cooking no longer soothes me the way it did in childhood. Conveyor-belt catering will do that to you but it’s worth going back to old favourites. Scones with jam and cream can be knocked out in 20 minutes and anything with ginger or cinnamon is like a balm to the sapping overstimulation of modern life. Forget scented candles and bake. Downside: burnt cakes.

Poetry

Nowhere are words distilled more perfectly than in poetry. The more brittle life gets, the more I take succour from its lyricism and humour. To steal from Emily Dickinson: “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” Revisit Ogden Nash and T. S Eliot. Next time you walk past a library, go to the poetry section, open a book and read what is in front of you. Downside: Long boring poems.

Gardening

Plant sunflowers. They’ll make you happier than you’ll know. Downside: they die.

Dance

Why limit yourself to weddings and Wiggles concerts. Do it. On your own or with someone you love. Downside: Celine Dion.

Being Alone

A friend’s 14-year-old son has just spent 24 hours alone in the wild with nothing for entertainment. He told me he listened to the rain and it was beautiful. Remember when you were a kid and the whole world seemed to happen inside your head? Downside: none.

There you go — childhood redux: dress ups and picking your nose are optional.

Angela Mollard is looking for simple joys in childhood pleasures.