Have you noticed how often adults – particularly of the earnest, nagging variety who work in the public sector – are behaving like children? I don’t mean acting childishly, but literally behaving like children.
Last week delegates to the NUS women’s conference were using ‘jazz-hands’ instead of clapping – in case it should trigger an anxiety attack. I can think of five-year-olds who would squirm at that spectacle. Meanwhile, Brown University in America recently debated sexual assault on campus. A serious topic, but the authorities deemed it necessary to create a ‘safe space’ full of play-doh, bubbles, calming music and colouring books.
Yes, colouring books. But perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. As the New York Times reported at the weekend, an ‘adult’ colouring book called Secret Garden – 96 pages of twee black-and-white ink drawings of flowers, trees and birds – has sold 1.4 million copies. The author is 31-year-old Johanna Basford from Aberdeenshire, who confesses that at first ‘I was worried that colouring for adults was silly’.
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