I had lunch last week at The Scandinavian Kitchen in London http://www.scandikitchen.co.uk/ with a man I came across on Twitter. His name is James Ward and he has become fascinated by ‘boring’ things. His interests and activities include The Stationery Club where people meet to discuss their stationery; a project he calls The London Twirl in which he photographs and documents Cadbury’s Twirl’s making a note of how the shopkeeper has displayed them whilst compiling a league table of prices (apparently you would be amazed at the price variations); and Bonving – if you want to know what that is you had better look him up.

In 2010 James was looking forward to a conference called Interesting 2010. When it was cancelled he Tweeted that there should be a Boring 2010. So many people responded that he has made it an annual event and discovered that if you take a bit of time and trouble to focus, then seemingly mundane things can be extraordinarily fascinating, funny, entertaining and unexpected.

Speakers at Boring included a man who has kept a ‘sneeze diary’ all of his life, noting down the time, place, power rating of the sneeze, and what he was doing when he sneezed; a car park spotter; and a milk connoisseur. James, despite being a DVD Distribution Manager, is an avid reader of The Grocer magazine and is taking a keen interest in a new range of burgers which can be cooked in a toaster.

Looks like boring is the new interesting.