3. Reading and writing

We're not talking about ploughing through Sartre or attempting to write a blockbuster novel, but mellow dipping into some reading treats and scribbling down whatever pops into your head.

  • Read about something you know nothing about. Browsing magazines in a newsagents can reveal whole new worlds, from body-building to train-spotting. (And they say people who self-harm have problems...)
  • Open the dictionary in random places and learn new words.
  • If kids can watch the Finding Nemo video a zillion times, it's perfectly reasonable for us to lose ourselves in our favourite novel again. And again.
  • Spend a few hours gazing through catalogues of your favourite retail fantasy. Ours include stationery (little more satisfying in life than a slow browse through the Viking catalogue) and cabin baggage.
  • Buy a gorgeous journal, like the ones Paperchase sells, hand-made in Nepal. Write down absolutely anything - how you feel right now, your Fantasy Frisbee team, the first and last lines of a novel (it doesn't have to be a blockbuster, nor have anything between the first and last lines....)
  • Dip into really easy, funny books. We'd recommend:
    • The Puffin Book of Nonsense Verse edited by Quentin Blake
    • 101 Unuseless Japanese Inventions - Kenji Kawakami
    • Really Important Stuff My Kids Have Taught Me - Cynthia Copeland Lewis

Websites

  • Amazon
  • The Big Read
  • One of the next best things to exotic travel - essential and, particularly fabulously, inessential travel gear: Magellans