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It’s time we all rediscovered the joy of dawdling.
In a world where we’re encouraged to be ever more productive – messaging only likely to be ramped up now we know a population of 150,000 will be needed by 2040 if current economic circumstances don’t change – we seem to have abandoned the practice.
Either we’ve forgotten how to do it thanks to the pinging boxes permanently affixed to our hands (my highly scientific study from my café writing spot has logged six scrolling strollers in just 30 seconds) or we frown upon dawdling for fear of being badged lazy.
But why does dawdling have to be so negative? As former art gallery director Sasha Gibb eloquently puts it, taking time to just be – and having the right spaces to do that in – has important links to health, wellbeing, and inclusion.
She is behind an initiative to get 10,000 islanders to have their say on the look and feel of the island’s spaces, and is also working with government on finding out if our ‘Percentage for Art’ policy is really working for us.
One thing to cure the dawdle deficit and inspire some of those public space conversations is Durrell’s Tortoise Trail (map supplement, P49), for which Bailiwick Express is delighted to be media partner.
The aim of the trail is to raise funds for a new reptile enclosure, while raising awareness of the astonishing global and local work of Jersey Zoo, whose Operations Director gives us a rundown of some of the challenges the organisation faces.
It’s an initiative founder Gerald Durrell would no doubt welcome, having famously said that “greeting the natural world with curiosity and delight” was the cure for “that modern disease called boredom”.
Once your legs and feet are tired from tortoise exploration, you’ll find plenty of other cures for boredom in the pages of this magazine.
Perhaps the best example of that is our cover feature, which tells the story of the business of taking on the world’s toughest row through one local duo who completed it this year, Team DragonFish, and four mums who are currently preparing for it, Intrepid232.
“Intrepid” could equally be applied to the wonderful team who produced the feature –from our journalist and drone pilot who followed an intense training session from a rib on an overcast and drizzly day, to our photographer, who went full scuba, snapping the action from the water.
Enjoy exploring Connect.
