LAURA CARTLEDGE: You are never too old for a bit of child’s play
Not the most inventive name, I know, but as soon as I saw him, I thought ‘he wants to be technicolour’ – I could just tell.
Those who know me won’t be surprised to learn I am flirting with the ‘adult colouring book’ trend.
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Hide AdThe use of the word ‘adult’ there is as essential as it is risky.
It is a way of making it an acceptable hobby for those who may not have picked up a crayon or felt-tip in a decade or two or more.
But let me assure you, it isn’t meant in the red light kind of way.
Instead, subject matters range from the royals – with ‘Colour in Kate’ among the titles – to comic book classics and iconic cityscapes.
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Hide AdMy first venture, as you can probably tell, has a nature theme to it.
Only with a bit of a rainbow twist now. If you think the badger is bad – you should see psychedelic squirrel.
I did try to resist it.
I do still have a collection of crochet coasters that need to be made into a blanket.
But I’d begun to lose count of the number of times I had walked up to the shelves of books, flicked through the options and left again.
The reality of being a home-owner played a big part, too.
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I do.
Not much time, mind, but I am grabbing snippets when I can.
When the football is on, when I’ve productively reshuffled as many of the remaining boxes as I can – to the point I am really just moving them from one slowly-decreasing pile to another.
It has already got to the point where I am using colouring as a reward.
I have the kind of conversations in my head that you hear exasperated parents having with their child.
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Hide Ad‘If I just do the laundry/ clear that room/ tackle that paperwork – then I can colour.
Life is, after all, about the simple pleasures.
A drive to the seafront to watch the sunset after a day cleaning waterbutts, for example.
Making a long walk less of a chore by pretending it is an eight-mile hunt for blackberries instead.
It has taken a bit of readjustment, some may call it growing up, but it is certainly true that a bit of hard work makes the playing more fun.
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Hide AdAs for the colouring, it feels nice to finally be able to adopt a trend.
I wouldn’t go as far as saying it makes me trendy – it is a rebooted pasttime, not witchcraft.
But the statistics seem to show people are spellbound by the whole phenomenon.
The colouring books are dominating the top ten list for online retailer Amazon.
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Hide AdAnd it is global, too, with the titles accounting for 60 per cent of Brazil’s non-fiction list.
A lot has been said about the benefits they have for stress relief too, which just goes to show, once again, that being childish can be a good thing.