Collecting

Most of us enjoy collecting something at some time. One of the advantages of collecting is that it does not depend on weather. On fine days you can gather your materials, whether these are stamps, coins, butterflies or bus numbers. When rain falls and the wind howls, you can settle in comfort at home to sort out and catalog your discoveries.

These days, there is almost no end to the possibilities for collecting; and the more unusual your interest, the more fun it is finding things for it. Quite often, too, a collection started when you are young is a lifelong interest.

Some collecting hobbies develop into careers. The girl who collects wild flowers may one day become a botanist; the boy whose interest lies in stones and shells and pebbles may carry it on into a professional post as a geologist.

But you don’t have to collect with any serious aim in view. Collecting for the fun of it is just as worth while. You will find yourself slipping into the local library to find out more about your hobby, or browsing through internet for information that may help you.

How do you collect? First think about it for a while, perhaps when you are walking to school or lying in the bath or if you have an extra half hour in bed in the morning. Once you have decided what you want to concentrate on, it is useful to get a pencil and notebook to jot down your finds. If you are collecting stamps you will need an album; if its flowers you will need a book to mount them in. collecting boxes with glass lids to display your specimen can be bought new, or they can some times be picked up much more cheaply in small second-hand shops.

Next step is finding information. You can go to your local library or search the internet for forums, books, and any source of information. If you have any questions ask from social sites like (yahoo. answers or ask.com) there sure is someone who can answer your questions or redirect you to sites for more information.

Sometimes there is an association or society dealing with your interest. Write and explain that you would like some help and they will be glad to set you on the right track. Finally, don’t feel that, because you are collecting something that nobody else has thought of, you are odd. Someone has always to be the first in the field and there is no reason why it shouldn’t be you.

I will post suggestions that you might like to consider in my future posts. 

Till then happy collecting!

What can I do

"What can I do?" is a question we ask outright when we are very young, to the despair of parents and other adults. Surrounded by toys , perhaps, with the sandpit waiting for us in the garden and the garden itself willing to be turned into the wild west or Sherwood Forest, we nevertheless are struck by a sudden bewilderment: What on earth shall we do next? As we grow older, we learn to keep the question to ourselves: but it's still there, stabbing at us in the middle of summer holidays or slow weekends. One of the prime aims of this blog is to provide as many answers to that question as possible.

We have taken the whole field of leisure and spare time, then, and have tried to break it down it into as many activities and hobbies and pastimes as we can : so that a first basic possible use of this blog is to look through the posts which you get an interest, when you are at a complete loss for something to do next, and so to expose yourself to wide range of suggestions. Some of these, at any particular moment, may not seem very practical : the middle of a dull Saturday may not seem the time to launch out as an archaeologist, for example. But though suggestions for ways of spending your leisure may seem  to fall into those that can be adopted at once, at any moment, and those who can't we hope that one of the effects of this blog will help to rethink the possibilities.

Hope you enjoy the blog and make full use of it to spend your leisure time entertainingly.

Remember, any time is leisure time!