Nat Locke: As an early adopter of Threads, here is what I love about the wholesome new universe

For once in my life, I’m now officially an early adopter.

Yes, I jumped on that whole Threads thing on the first day, mainly because I was on holidays and had nothing better to do with my time. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, what do you do with all your spare time?

Threads, for the uninitiated, is the new rival for Twitter, and therefore yet another black hole for my time and attention to be sucked into.

What I did notice in the early days of Threads, though, was that it was just about the most wholesome place in the universe.

The pendulum had swung dramatically from the Twitter cesspit of trolling and vile hatred to a meadow filled with sunshine and daisies and cute forest animals — metaphorically and, occasionally, literally.

People were posing utterly meaningless questions, simply as a way of engaging with other users. It was all so . . . nice.

I’m sure this is just a short-lived honeymoon period and the negativity and hatred will start to seep through soon enough, but I thought I’d share one of the hot topics of conversation (if you can call it that) because it’s pertinent to today.

Namely, the notion of Sunday rituals and traditions, and whether or not you have any. I told you it was wholesome.

An Olympian mentioned he loves to rewatch Ted Lasso on Sundays. Lots of people talked about luxuriating in bed, watching TV, and drinking coffee. All at the same time, I might add. And that sounds nice and all, but I have a very strict policy about televisions in the bedroom. That arrangement is for hotel rooms only and, if I’m honest, it’s purely because I have no self-control and would literally lie there all day and night watching anything and everything on Netflix. So I don’t.

I don’t drink coffee in bed, either, mainly because if I have to get up to make myself a cup of coffee, it’s closer just to plop onto the couch with it, rather than go all the way back up the hallway to the bedroom, you know what I mean?

So there’s no languishing in bed — well, not while I’m awake, anyway.

I’m very much in favour of a proper sleep-in because I like to throw my sleep patterns out the day before I go back to getting up at 4am for work. But I refuse to languish in bed if I’m awake. A girl’s got to have standards, you know.

I’ve always considered Sunday as my day without any pressure to be anywhere or do anything in particular. I’m wrong, of course.

Normally I’m doing a mountain of laundry or grocery shopping or finally unloading the dishwasher, only to load it up again almost immediately. It’s all terribly mundane.

The dog needs walking — several times, in fact — so the first order of business is to stroll around the dog park, rain, hail or shine.

The dedication of a dog owner knows no bounds, especially if you own what can be considered a working breed (it’s a technical distinction in my case, but still accurate). The only saving grace is that a coffee outlet has now opened AT the dog park, so my Sunday mornings are somewhat saved.

The rest of my Sunday involves slowly drinking the aforementioned coffee while staring into space from my couch.

Occasionally I’ll turn the TV on, but I won’t really pay attention to it.

Then I mentally note everything that I should have done the day before and estimate what I’ll actually be able to achieve today.

Then I halve that amount and hope for the best. A couple of hours of food prep? Probably not. An assault on the ironing pile? Oh, good heavens no. Let’s be realistic here. But a brief foray to the shops to buy enough food to get me through the rest of the day and to ensure I have breakfast for Monday morning? Yes, I think I can manage that.

You have to be aware of what your capabilities are. And for some reason, my capabilities are considerably lessened on a Sunday. I’m way more productive on a Wednesday afternoon, so why not just leave all the hard stuff until then?

Of course, that would have been a lot to unload on Threads during the first week.

So I just liked a few strangers’ posts and went back to looking at pictures of other people’s dogs. And dammit, I might watch some Ted Lasso, too. Wholesomeness for the win.