New Escapologist : July 2020 😷
Escape From Covid Island
Earlier this month, I found myself a bit depressed by scenes of maskless Soho revellers seemingly rain-dancing for a second wave of Coronavirus. I found my mind drifting in the direction of escape. This is the way of the Escapologist.
Unfortunately, my would-be escape is prevented by iron-clad reasons to stay where I am for now: right here on Covid Island. But maybe you, dear reader, could act on this escape plan if you wanted to.
While the air bridges are open (act fast!), I'd do a runner to Copenhagen. I'd stay there for six months and wait the rest of the crisis out.
Denmark has suffered 600 Covid deaths to the UK’s shameful 60,000. Relatively normal life continues there if you don’t count the recent racist fish incident.
I like Copenhagen quite a lot, so I’d take a short rolling lease on a small apartment there. I’d do the right thing by voluntarily quarantining my potentially asymptomatic ass for fourteen days, but then I’d spend five and a half lovely months looking at museums, walking, cycling, drooling over the clever urban planning solutions, drinking coffee and beer, reading and writing.
Maybe I’d even take the train to Billund to see Legoland and then, come winter, I’d become acquainted with hygge. By then, one would hope, the Brits would have sorted themselves out and I could come home. If not, maybe I’d beg Denmark for asylum.
There’s probably something similar you can do if you live in America. Escape to somewhere in the Caribbean maybe? Japan?
Please send me a postcard if you actually do this! Or indeed something like it. We'll make you the New Escapologist Unemployee of the Month.
Robert Wringham
New Escapologist
Traction
Last week, I read Dreaming of Bablylon by Richard Brautigan. It’s wonderful, the only downer being that I’m running out of Richard Brautigan books to read. I suppose I’ll just have to read them all again.
Anyway, this popped out at me on p74:
I hadn’t had a day like this since that car ran over me a couple of years ago and broke both my legs. I got a nice settlement out of that. Even though I was in traction for three months, it beat working for a living and, oh! what times I had, dreaming of Babylon there in the hospital.
I can relate to that. Thirteen years ago, after my first ever day in an office job, I was hit by a black Hackney cab, breaking my left arm in two places. Worse luck!
I had three weeks off and then I had to go back to work with my arm dangling in a sling, still fuzzy-minded from the pain medication.
Still, those three weeks spent "dreaming of Babylon" (i.e. daydreaming) and getting paid for it were not so bad. I wouldn’t have chosen it (unless, unconsciously, I did choose it) but it was three weeks of peace and quiet while barely off the white-collar starting blocks.
Speaking of offices and how to reduce the time one spends in them, I’ve got a new book coming out. Please buy it. Your price of admission will keep me on the lam for precious moments longer as well as equipping you to survive until your escape.
A Slender Man
Masks are mandatory in the UK now. Don't let this chap catch you without one or he'll eat your soul. It's me under there, by the way.
Backwater Topic
This article is not in favour of releasing office monkeys into the wild, but it contains this nicely odd moment:
As weeks become months and offices remain closed, many are predicting their permanent decline. Buildings that for decades have defined urban geography, diurnal rhythms and the meaning of work may never hum in the same way to the sounds of keyboards and fluorescent lighting.
Aw, I’m sorry. But allow me to speak for the more imaginative half of society when I say: Yaaaaaaaaaaay!
The effects of working from home have been little studied, partly because remote working was pretty rare until this spring. […] “It’s always been a pretty backwater topic,” says [economics professor] Nick Bloom.
Hey! Backwater topic indeed. Welcome to the backwater, I guess. Come on in, the water’s lovely.
The article also draws our attention to a website called The Sound of Colleagues, which offers lonely homeworkers a “playlist of workplace sounds, including keyboards, printers, chatter and coffee machines.”
What a smashing idea. Why not install a flickering fluorescent tube above your kitchen table too? Just to make sure you don’t go sane or off-edge. Or how about setting up an alarm bell to blast your eardrums at unpredictable moments, so that you don’t miss out on the fun of the fire drill? When it sounds, remember to go outside and stand in the rain for ten minutes for maximum authenticity.
Or, hey, why not go and drive your car around in a circle for forty-five minutes at 8am to simulate the commute?! If we all do it, our mornings will return to a state of genuinely pointless gridlock in no time!
A Borrible's One Occupation
I’m reading The Borribles. Well, strictly speaking, I’m reading The Borribles Go For Broke. The sequel. And soon I will no doubt read Across the Dark Metropolis, the third in the trilogy.
As you can probably detect (or indeed tell from the rather vivid cover art above), it’s a Young Adult fantasy series, but it’s so brilliantly violent and full of swearing that it could surely never be made into a family movie. As such, it willfully removes itself from becoming an annoying pop-cultural phenomenon that anyone with an imagination of their own is sick and tired of practically from the moment of its conception. Oh yes.
The titular Borribles are erstwhile London children who escaped their parents and schools and become quasi-feral in the meantime. Though they still resemble children, some of them are hundreds of years old and the tops of their ears have grown into points. I suppose they’re elves – but for people who don’t like elves.
I often wonder if the Borribles inspired City Hobgoblins by The Fall, which came out just a couple of years after the first book. Fall lyrics are quite intensely researched though, and nobody has yet connected the song to the Borribles. If the odds are defied and a film version is ever made though, I hope this song makes an appearance.
The Borribles don’t care for authority or money or possessions, preferring instead to live for the moment and on their wits. They’re Escapologists of a particular sort. I’ve known a few Borribles.
Ever on the lookout for quotations to share with you in this newsletter–liberating or inspiring quotes relating to work or comfort or independence or submission–I had a few marked out, but it’s hard to do better than this Borrible song. Here you go.
Who’d be a hurrying, scurrying slave,
Off to an office or bound for a bank;
Who’d be a servant from cradle to grave,
Counting his wages and trying to save;
Who’d be a manager, full of his rank,
Or the head of the board at a big corporation?
Ask us the question, we’ll tell you to stuff it,
Good steady jobs would make all of us snuff it–
Freedom’s a Borrible’s one occupation!Our kind of liberty’s fit for a king;
London’s our palace, we reign there supreme.
Broad way and narrow way, what shall we sing–
Alleys as tangled as knotted-up string,
River than winds through the smoke like a dream;
What shall we sing in our own celebration–
Ragged-arsed renegades, never respectable,
Under your noses, but rarely detectable–
Freedom’s a Borrible’s one occupation!
Ahem. I hope I was able to adequately carry the tune. Either way, you get the idea. Borribles! Highly recommended for Escapological types with sympathies toward fantasy but an aversion to elves.
Write Your Own Manifesto
Life has no intrinsic meaning (but meaning is precious) so make some yourself.
This is from Ego’s manifesto. Everyone should write their own manifesto. Just base it on what they’ve learned in life so far. If you don’t write it all down somewhere, you’ll only forget it like a silly goldfish.
You could do worse than build your manifesto on top of the life audit (an exercise for figuring out what you really want in life) I discuss in the “Preparation” chapter of Escape Everything!
Ego again:
For people living in the UK: We do not need to work as much as we do if we do not wish to. We do not need to have a new car, a large house, an amazon echo, a gym membership, a new sofa (they are free second hand, this country is amazingly rich).
Every time we pay more for more comfort or enjoyment we are making a trade-off: freedom for stuff.
Last Chance to Pre-Order
The Good Life for Wage Slaves is being published on August 1st. That's next week!
This means it's your last chance ever to pre-order it. You'll be able to order it for the rest of your life, but you will literally never be able to pre-order it again after next week. Why miss out on this spectacular opportunity? Why be a latecomer when you can get in on the ground floor and be a winner from Day One and forever?
Heckler: But Robert, you told us to shun the hot new thing and be patient.
Me: Quiet, you. I'm promoting my book. And if I do it here, I won't have to go on TV or anything horrible like that.
Heckler: They wouldn't have the likes of you on TV.
Me: Quiet, madam, please!
Available as a deluxe paperback and multiformat e-book.
Addendum for Paulette Wilson
I read with sadness and anger this morning of the death of Paulette Wilson at 64. I followed Paulette's activism quite closely from 2017 and I can't help but wonder if she'd still be with us today had she not been harassed into a life of high anxiety. Rest in peace, Paulette.
To everybody else, please object to the Hostile Environment wherever you see it in practice. At the least, please listen to and believe people when they describe their experiences of it.
—RW
www.newescapologist.co.uk