INSPIRED BY VIRGIL’S GEORGICS, which I have been reading in the excellent Loeb edition, I have written my first ever piece of Latin verse. It is:
Rastris adsiduis glaebas frango
Herba insecto arvaque iuvo
[With unrelenting mattock I break the clods
I harry the weeds and thus improve the soil.]
The mattock appears with great regularity in Latin and Greek texts on husbandry, from Hesiod to Virgil and Columella, and it is a strangely underused tool here in the UK where we prefer a combination of spade, fork and hoe. (more…)
We have made several improvements to the Idler Shop. Firstly we have cut down on waiting time. All items to the UK are now sent first class, and we will mail out twice a week. This means you should not have to wait more than seven days to receive your items. Orders to the rest of the world are sent air mail.
In addition, all items will now be sent gift-wrapped in hand-printed snail bags and we can add a personalised message for the recipient on Idler postcards. Just give us your instructions in the comments section of the order form. We also pack a letterpress anti-Twitter bookmark, designed and printed by Christian Brett, with every order.
What’s more, orders within the UK can be sent to multiple addresses.
The shop is groaning with books, t-shirts, hoodies and pamphlets, and you can have a look around here.
TO GLASGOW for a mini Scottish tour. I spoke at three events. The first was a conference about risk in childhood organized by Children in Scotland, a day which brought together various professionals involved in education and discussed how to resist the enclosures of capitalism and create situations which allow children to be more playful and adventurous. I felt apprehensive about condemning Calvin to an audience comprised of hard-working Scottish teachers, but they seemed to take it in good heart. The second event was set up by Idler web master Neil Scott. Neil put me on stage with Robert Wringham, editor of The New Escapologist magazine. Rob has recently quit his job and sold all his possessions. The talk took place at the Glasgow Social Centre, a new venue for community activists. We chatted about what is wrong with the world and how to improve things in our own lives, and then held a rousing singsong. The following night, I gave a talk organized by PHD student Andrew Wilbur at the university’s Hetherington Research Club. We had a great time philosophizing and making merry till late. Thanks very much to Children in Scotland, Neil and Andrew. TH
Robert Wringham and Tom Hodgkinson at the Glasgow Social Centre
Outside the Research Club, a Few Ales Down
USING A VERY SIMPLE recipe from Jocasta Innes’s excellent The Country Kitchen, I made eight pots of hedgerow jam. The first step was to collect the hedgerow fruits. Arthur and I went out with a basket and filled it with sloes, elderberries and blackberries. At home we got out a huge pan and threw the berries into it with a few apple quarters and covered it in water. After an hour or so of gentle simmering in order to soften the fruit and extract the juices, we strained the fruit through a sieve and collected the juice. (more…)
At the Idler we like to point out the dangers of conventional employment. According to the UN, over two million people every year die from work-related causes. That’s more than from drugs and alcohol combined. Now we read that 24 workers at France Telecom have killed themselves in the last nineteen months. Commentators blame the corporation’s new target-driven strategy. The deaths remind us of the spate of postal worker massacre-suicides in the US over the last two decades, often blamed on one lone nutter, but in actual fact caused by the hyper-stressful working conditions. How long will it be before a UK worker cracks up and shoots his co-workers before turning the gun on himself? Click here to read the France Telcom story in the Daily Telegraph and always remember: work kills.
I will be talking at the upcoming Festival of Interdependence, organized by the New Economics Foundation as part of their Bigger Picture project. It takes place from 9.30am till 7.30pm on Saturday 24 October at the Bargehouse on London’s South Bank. Other speakers include Idler contributors Oliver James, Jay Griffiths, David Boyle and Andrew Simms, not to mention such luminaries as Bianca Jagger, Rosie Boycott and Colin Tudge. TH
MONDAY: TO 23 ROMILLY STREET for an evening at the Book Club Boutique. The alliterative organizers, Salena Saliva and Rachel Rayner, had invited the Idler to put on an evening of short talks and music. The night takes place in a cosy basement bar and is lively to the point of affable rowdiness. I introduced the evening with a ukulele singalong to “I Fought The Law”, first performed by the Bobby Fuller Four. Dan Kieran, David Bramwell, Will Hodgkinson and Dominic Frisby all read short extracts from their contributions to the latest Idler. David Bramwell kicked over my glass of Old Speckled Hen but was otherwise well behaved. Will was joined on stage by Sam Lee, who sang an old folk song very beautifully indeed. The evening was crowned by a reading of “I am the Indigene” from Penny Rimbaud which was unfortunately spoiled somewhat by a certain drunken poet who heckled and mumbled throughout the performance in spectacularly discourteous fashion. Thanks though to Salena and Rachel and to the Idler readers and everyone else who came along to what was an excellent night: stimulating, challenging, convivial.
TUESDAY: TO LICHFIELD, for a talk organized by Sarah Henshaw of the very excellent Book Barge bookshop. The enterprising Sarah set up this business a few months ago and has created a superb independent bookshop which very much reflects her own good taste: every book is carefully chosen and there is none of the gaudy commercialism which you see in a Waterstone, with barely a Dan Brown to be seen. Alongside the new books, she has a very good selection of second hand goodies: old Penguins and Pelicans and beautiful old hardbacks. There is also a deck-chair, and the shop will sometimes rock gently as a wave passes by. It is a truly literary bookshop that manages completely to avoid being pretentious.
As Lichfield or course was Dr Johnson’s birthplace, and as September 14th was the tercentenary of his birth, it seemed natural to discuss Johnson’s key role in the germination of the Idler magazine: it was from his series of essays of that name – scandalously underestimated by his biographers – that I was inspired to start my own 20th century Idler. Dr Johnson was comfortingly lazy as well as productive. The sad thing is that he spent his life castigating himself when there was no need. He was a religious man and I blame the Protestant religion: had Johnson been born three hundred years previously, he would have been a pre-Reformation Christian and would have lived a far less guilt-burdened life as a result.
Reading one of the new biographies on my way home, I was reminded of Johnson’s constant money worries and also of his famous line: “No one but a block-head ever wrote except for money.” Today it is a constant source of surprise to me why so many people waste their time splurging out worthless blogs which probably no one will read and which certainly no one will ever pay for. Therefore I update his quip and assert: “No one but a blog-head ever wrote except for money.”
Thanks to Sarah for organizing a very enjoyable evening and please do visit her shop if you are in or near Lichfield: the website is here.
"I do nothing and then I do something. But it's taken years of investigating idleness in all its forms to be able to achieve this. My discipline is borne out of concerted study of idleness."