Leisure has been defined as a quality of experience or as free time. (1)

Free time is time spent away from business, work, job hunting, domestic chores and education. It also excludes time spent on necessary activities such as eating and sleeping. From a research perspective, this approach has the advantages of being quantifiable and comparable over time and place.Leisure as experience usually emphasizes dimensions of perceived freedom and choice. It is done for "its own sake", for the quality of experience and involvement.(1) Other classic definitions include Thorsten Veblen's (1899) of "nonproductive consumption of time." (2) Different disciplines have definitions reflecting their common issues: for example, sociology on social forces and contexts and psychology as mental and emotional states and conditions.

Recreation differs from leisure in that it is purposeful activity that includes the experience of leisure in activity contexts..

The distinction between leisure and unavoidable activities is not a rigidly defined one, e.g. people sometimes do work-oriented tasks for pleasure as well as for long-term utility. A distinction may also be drawn between free time and leisure. For example, Situationist International maintains that free time is illusory and rarely fully "free"; economic and social forces appropriate free time from the individual and sell it back to them as the commodity known as "leisure". Certainly most people's leisure activities are not a completely free choice, and may be constrained by social pressures, e.g. people may be coerced into spending time gardening by the need to keep up with the standard of neighbouring gardens or go to a party to because of social pressures..

Leisure is the debut studio album by the English rock band Blur. The album was released on 26 August 1991 in the United Kingdom via Food Records, and peaked at number 7 in the UK Albums Chart. It was released in the US a month later with a different track listing. The album was certified Gold in the UK. The US version of Leisure was frontloaded with Blur's three UK singles, and the song "Sing" was replaced by "I Know", previously an A-side with "She's So High" (see track listings for exact changes). The Canadian version has the same track listing as the UK version.

Overview

In 2007, lead singer Damon Albarn referred to Leisure as "awful" and one of two bad records he had made, along with Blur's The Great Escape (1995).

"Sing" was included on the Trainspotting soundtrack in 1996. The original version, "Sing (To Me)", was recorded as a demo in late 1989 under the band's former name, Seymour, and can be heard on the ultra-rare promo-only single which was released over a decade later in February 2000 and on the first of 4-disc set with rare stuff in Blur 21 box set.

"Leisure" is a poem by Welsh poet W. H. Davies, appearing originally in his Songs Of Joy and Others, published in 1911 by A. C. Fifield and then in Davies' first anthology Collected Poems, by the same publisher in 1916.

Structure

The poem is written as a set of seven rhyming couplets.

Summary

Although it was to become Davies' best known poem, curiously it was not included in any of the five Georgian Poetry anthologies published by Edward Marsh between 1912 and 1922. Thirty two of Davies' other poems were.

It warns that "the hectic pace of modern life has a detrimental effect on the human spirit." Modern man has no time to spend free time in the lap of nature.

Appraisal

In his 1963 Critical Biography of Davies, Richard Stonesifer traces the origins of the poem back to the sonnet "The World Is Too Much with Us" by William Wordsworth, saying:

"But he went to school with Wordsworth's sonnet "The world is too much with us", and echoes from that sonnet resound throughout his work as from few other poems. Philosophically, no other single poem can be said to form the basis of so much of his poetry. The celebrated opening of his wise little poem "Leisure" has its origins here."