Adam Green: Break phone habit, get hooked on crochet

Adam Green

We're almost all guilty of a modern-day sin.

You know the one, a spare moment pops into your life, an ad break, a gap in the emails, the kid just got subbed off and really you don't mind what the score is so you reach into your pocket, and there is old faithful.

Your relief in times of boredom, planner, assistant, recipe book, camera and more all wrapped into one convenient sleek, shiny package.

Your connection to a world of crushing candy and passing levels, cat videos and old schoolmates you want to check up on - just how HAS Jeanette got on in life?

More and more we rely on our devices, cellphones, iPads and more to take care of the downtime, and along with this, so too do our regular hobbies and pastimes take a back seat.

I discussed this with my co-host Megan this week, and she decided to do something about it. A new hobby to keep the hands and mind entertained that wasn't reaching into the internet for thumbs-ups from people we knew in the 90s.

Crochet was the end result, a combination of hobby with a supposedly usable result, perhaps a blanket, depending on skill level and time for a mouse, a small child, or more!

But that's just one of the things we could choose to entertain us from the years BI - Before Internet.

At one stage home dry-cleaning was in. It involved the simple act of washing one's clothes in straight gasoline. Needless to say this was a short-lived craze, as a few accidents meant it was quickly figured out this was best left to the professionals.

Stuffing tobacco into your nostril was considered both a hobby and to have medicinal properties at one stage. That was the stage before people figured out, as with most tobacco-related hobbies, it was not very conducive to good health.

In Elizabethan England, the teeth of the queen were at one stage rotten through, thus, it was logical for followers of her majesty to make their teeth as horrible as possible and emulate royalty.

So you see? Crotchet is a safe option, but maybe we don't need another option at all. Now if you'll excuse me, I just got a new cat video notification . . .

• Don't miss Adam Green and Sarah van der Kley on The Hits Hawke's Bay from 6am to 9am, Monday to Friday.