Don't resist the urge to do nothing

EASTER is a great time for a spiritual awakening. And it can leave you feeling very smug.

Krygsman

DO you know what I did during the Easter break? Nothing. I know this is confronting to on-the-go sort of people, but the fact is that I stayed at home for five consecutive days and I did nothing. I went nowhere. And I spoke to hardly anyone.

I want the world to know that I had absolutely no noteworthy sporting, social or cultural experience over Easter and I refuse to feel guilty about it.

Do you know what everyone at my work and in my street was doing while I was at home doing nothing over Easter? They were doing something.

And when I say something I mean they were doing something really interesting and really exciting. They were away, up the coast or down the coast. Or they went interstate. Some went overseas. To Thailand, on Jetstar; for Easter. Can you imagine that?

Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "This Bernard Salt is such a bore."

Bore? Me? Au contraire.

Let me tell you I did plenty in those five days. I cleaned the gutters. I mowed the lawns. I even cleaned the windows with proper window-cleaning stuff. And I went to Bunnings to get light globes. That was about as exciting as my Easter got.

But progressively during those five days I had what can be described only as a spiritual awakening, a kind of revelation if you like. I realised towards the end of the break that with all of the jobs I was doing I was beginning to feel -- how can I put this? -- smug. Yes, smug is exactly the word for how I felt.

Here I was doing all this work while others were whooping it up with Jetstar in Thailand. Perhaps I'm deluding myself, but I don't think I am.

When all those dilettante holiday-makers got back from their holidays I know in my heart that they would have been mightily confronted by the pristine orderliness of my lawn and they would have immediately compared it with the shabbiness of their lawn. And they would have felt ashamed.

Remember: every time a neighbour fails to keep up with another neighbour a garden gnome quietly dies somewhere. But the Easter holiday-maker's anguish doesn't end with the great lawn comparison. No, no, no.

Perhaps not immediately but eventually these people will also spot the cleanliness of my windows and mentally compare them with the smudginess of their windows.

And while they can't possibly get up there to see, I have every confidence that by mid-May Easter holiday-makers will intuitively know that my gutters are unclogged and are just waiting for the next downpour to whisk water away efficiently. Be off my property, damned excess water, and dareth ye never to return.

As you can see, such has been my revelation that I slip all too easily into biblical language.

But it's too late to repent, Easter holiday-makers. You can't possibly hope to achieve an elevated state of suburban enlightenment with the odd weekend clean-up.

Who are you kidding?

The next long weekend isn't until Queen's birthday in June. Easter holiday-makers will just have to live with the decisions and the choices that they made to have a good time in April.

I'm sorry, Easter holiday-makers, but that's the awful truth.

Sadly, I suspect that my way of thinking -- there is value in doing nothing other than pottering around and maintaining the suburban home -- is thinking from the 20th century.

The 21st century will be filled with more Easter holiday-maker types who see long weekends as experiential rather than as maintenance opportunities. And while that may well be so, that doesn't stop me taking inordinate pleasure from my clipped lawns, my clean windows and my unclogged gutters.

Bernard Salt is a KPMG Partner.

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