Tony Porter Ponders: As Easter Weekend is my last scheduled day off until Christmas I had a cunning plan.

I thought I would have a little break from writing my column and asked ChatGPT to do it instead, erm, here is what it came up with, in less than two seconds.

PORTER PONDERS: The Lost Art of Doing Nowt

By Tony Porter, Wigan Today

There's a certain poetry to sitting on your backside doing absolutely nowt. Not scrolling, not tidying, not replying to a message you've been ignoring for three days. Just… being. And yet, somewhere between the rush to be "productive" and the tyranny of to-do lists, we've managed to convince ourselves that stillness is laziness, and laziness is a sin.

Now I’m not saying we should all pack in our jobs and become professional loafers – tempting though that sounds some Mondays. But I do think we’ve forgotten the value of idleness. When was the last time you stared out of the window and let your thoughts meander like the canal near Worsley Mesnes? I tried it the other day. I lasted four minutes before instinctively reaching for my phone. I ended up watching a lad build a miniature pizza oven out of bricks the size of Smarties. Fascinating, but probably not what the soul truly needed.

Back in the day, "doing nowt" was practically a sport. My grandad used to sit on the bench outside the bookies, newspaper folded under one arm, and just… observe. He wasn’t killing time. He was soaking it up. He knew which neighbours walked their dogs when, which cars had dodgy exhausts, and who always wore the same jacket, rain or shine. That kind of slow noticing – it takes practice. And patience. And, crucially, time without distraction.

Now it feels like we fill every gap. Podcasts in the shower, audiobooks on dog walks, news alerts pinging mid-brew. We're cramming every crack in the day with something that’s meant to inform or entertain or motivate us. But sometimes I wonder: what if those gaps are the most important bit?

Wigan, in all its stubborn, muddy brilliance, teaches us something here. It’s not a place obsessed with shine or speed. It values the everyday. The rhythm of things. The proper pace of a pie cooling on a windowsill, or a good natter with someone you bump into outside Poundland. Maybe we ought to reclaim a bit of that – and defend our right to be gloriously, unapologetically idle now and then.

So here’s my modest proposal: this Sunday afternoon, find a spot. A bench, a garden chair, a patch of grass near Haigh Hall. Sit yourself down. No phone. No agenda. Watch the world. Let your thoughts wander. Don’t call it mindfulness or meditation – call it what it is: doing nowt. And take pride in it.

You might be surprised what comes to you when you stop chasing it.

Until next week,

Tony

I fear it accessed my phone, because at the time I tried AI for the first time ever, I had not published my ‘Wigan Walks’ videos I shot the week before along Whelly Loop line and, erm, the canal. Spooky, this is what I asked for.

‘Write a 500 word newspaper column by Tony Porter in Wigan Today Porter Ponders.’

Numbers wise it fell short, I don’t think it currently poses any threat to real journalists, of which I am not one.