Children’s author Lauren Child on the joys of boredom

The children’s laureate on the inspiring (and surprising) sights you see gazing out of the window

THE LIST

Reading

Via my ears… several audio novels a week, all crime of varying degrees of gruesome.

Watching

The Bridge and Friday Night Dinner.

Loving

This American Life on National Public Radio.

Hating

Summer work parties. They always strike when I am desperately trying to finish a book… They are generally stressful occasions where eating is near impossible – as soon as you manage to stuff a morsel in your mouth, someone importantly elegant will come and say hello.

I AM CURRENTLY working on an illustrated version of Mary Poppins – I have done almost 70 pictures so far. PL Travers came up with some fascinating ideas, my favourite being that before the age of one we have the ability to speak to animals, and after one, we forget. Of course there is no way to prove this isn’t true. The Mary Poppins deadline is so squashing that, in order to finish on time, I am having to stay up well into the night and sometimes into the morning. I am so tired that I can barely think and my brain is surviving on coffee and chocolate shortbreads. I keep myself alert by listening to crime fiction. There’s something about that genre that keeps me riveted, and I find myself drawing gurgling babies and carousel horses while listening to vivid descriptions of brutal murder and rotting bodies.

LAST MONTH I went with my eightyear-old daughter, Tuesday, to Judith Kerr’s 95th birthday party. It was in a huge room at the Savoy but was still so crammed with people it was hard to get through the door. My daughter tends to give people very hard stares when she feels overwhelmed, and I was beginning to sense I had made a dreadful error in bringing her, though she’d very much wanted to come. Judith was one of the first people my daughter met after I adopted her from Mongolia six years ago. I remember a lunch where they sat side by side. Judith, then a mere 89, was having instructions grunted at her by Tuesday, who was pointing at bits of chicken she wanted removed from the bone. I was struck by the way Judith understood her perfectly – they’ve been friends ever since.

Fifteen minutes into the Savoy party we located our elegant host and our spirits were greatly lifted. After some chatting, Tuesday said, ‘I want to go off with those boys,’ referring to my publisher’s sons, aged 16 and 13. Much later in the evening my publisher got a text saying, ‘Your boys and Tuesday Child are in Simpson’s bar running a tab…’

IN MY ROLE AS children’s laureate I have been talking about the need for idle time. Time spent not being busy, time spent not using a phone or laptop, but instead sitting with your thoughts, no matter how boring. Like most people who do what I do, the big question is always, ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ I used to think they came from memories and observations, conversations overheard and chats with friends and strangers, but after spending time thinking about it, I realise these things are just the threads of the idea; the idea itself comes from time spent thinking, or even not thinking, perhaps just staring into space.

Staring into space is necessary in my job and I believe it is important for us all. We cannot solve problems, invent or create if we don’t allow ourselves time to drift and let thoughts collide. Looking out of a window can be a very good place to mind drift, and, of course, there is the bonus of seeing something you might never have noticed had you not been gazing through the glass.

The other day my eye was caught by a man in crisp yellow shorts on a spanking-new, bright-yellow bicycle, holding in his hand a bright-yellow scooter. He looked perfect – magazine-shoot perfect – until the scooter became horribly caught in the spokes of his bike, the wheel buckled and he found himself trapped in a tangle of yellow. If I found myself in that position, I know I would desperately hope no one had seen. But, horribly, it’s my job to notice things like this, and now I’m telling you.

I find myself drawing gurgling babies and carousel horses while listening to vivid descriptions of brutal murder