A story about boredom
Humdy and the Afternoon With Nothing In It
It is raining, there is nothing to do, and Humdy has said so forty times. A story about boredom, and the good thing hiding inside it.
3 minutes to read aloud · 😵💫 Wobbly
Watch it read aloud · 3 min
"I'm SO bored," said Humdy.
It was the fortieth time. Somebody was counting.
It was raining. The good sort of raining, where it is not going to stop. There was an entire afternoon in front of Humdy with nothing at all in it, which Humdy had decided was the worst thing that had ever happened to anybody.
"I'm bored. There's nothing to do. I'm bored. I'm so bored I'm going to die of it."
Doodle, who was making something out of a box, did not look up.
"Good," said Doodle.
Humdy was outraged. "Good?"
"Bored is the bit before the idea," said Doodle. "It feels rubbish because your head is looking for something and hasn't found it yet. If you fill it up with something easy, the idea never turns up." Doodle held up the box, which had become, alarmingly, a sort of submarine. "Where do you think this came from?"
Humdy flopped onto the floor and was bored for eleven more minutes. It was agony.
Then Humdy noticed a bit of string.
Then Humdy noticed that the bit of string could be tied to a chair leg.
Then, without ever quite deciding to, Humdy built a tripwire alarm system across the entire hallway, which took two hours and worked properly and caught Zippy at speed, twice.
Later, Doodle asked what Humdy had done all afternoon.
Humdy thought about it. "The best thing I've ever made," said Humdy, surprised.
Here is the thing about Humdy, and it is the reason Humdy is worth knowing. The fluffs who turn nothing-to-do into the best adventures in Candyfloss Land are always the ones who have been bored the longest. Humdy is the expert. Humdy has done more staring at ceilings than anybody.
Humdy still says I'm bored about a hundred times a day.
But now Humdy knows what it means. It means the idea is coming, and it is nearly here, and the only thing to do is wait five more minutes and see what turns up.
