The Idler

Latin Tea Towels

For all those who wanted to see a picture of those Latin tea towels, here we are:

Beauty and utility, elegantly combined

Shop News: Smash the System and Latin Tea Towels

The Idler’s printer, MPG Biddles, has just delivered two pallet-loads of the third edition of Idler 42: Smash the System. One load went to our distributor, Central Books, and the other to Idler HQ. This is the third edition of the book, which has now sold over 3,000 copies. To get your copy, order directly from us by clicking here, or buy it from your local independent bookshop.

Also new in this week are our wonderful Latin tea towels. These are designed by Mrs Barbara McSweeney, who got in touch after reading a piece by me in the Daily Telegraph about the joys of learning Latin in the old way, that is, learning the grammar by heart. Mrs McSweeney’s tea towels pack in a huge amount of grammar: all four declensions of nouns, the four conjugations of verbs and the principal parts, plus adjectives and adverbs. The tea towels were a huge hit at this year’s Port Eliot Festival. Join the Latin revolution now and click here to buy your tea towel for only five pounds.

Recommended Reads: Thrift, Jeeves and Worms

I’d recommend Your Money Or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez, available in Penguin, to anyone who is contemplating quitting the day job. It’s an excellent and very practical primer on how to get out of debt, save money and enjoy your everyday life. In particular it does a very useful service in demonstrating how your job, far from supplying you with a living, in fact represents your biggest outlay, and should be abandoned at once. First you must consider the huge tax cost. Then you need to add up all your job-related costs, ie, the expenses which would vanish if you were working from home, and these are: clothes, meals, after-work drinks, coffees, commuting, entertainment, little treats after a ‘bad day’, expensive holidays and gadgets, job-related illness and so on. It’s the best work on creative thrift that I’ve read.

I have been bingeing on the great P. G. Wodehouse and would like to offer the following quote for the day from Carry On, Jeeves (1925). Bertie Wooster is describing the character of the supremely idle Rockmeteller Todd, an American pal, and I offer it as an inspiration to anyone who yearns to cast off the shackles of the nine to five:

‘[H]e had told me himself more than once that he never got up before twelve, and seldom earlier than one. Constitutionally the laziest young devil in America, he had hit on a walk in life which enabled him to go the limit in that direction. He was a poet. At least, he wrote poems when he did anything; but most of the time, as far as I can make out, he spent in a sort of trance. He told me once that he could sit on a fence, watching a worm and wondering what on earth it was up to for hours at a stretch.’

And if anyone is interested in finding out what the worms are up to, they could do worse than read Charles Darwin’s excellent study of 1881, The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms with Observations on their Habits (Faber), the result of Darwin’s close study of the humble earthworm. TH

Tom to Brighton: Now Postponed till Summer

The gig that Tom was to play in Brighton has been moved to the summer. We will have a new date presently. Watch this space.

Country Diary 99

I HAVE BEEN disappointed by the beans. They ailed and died. Brown spots appeared on the leaves and on the pods, and the plants then withered. Our green-fingered friends Andy and Leanne of the Loop project stayed with us last week for two nights, and they removed the worst hit specimens, and indentified the disease as halo blight. They also dug over the potato patch and the broad beans patch. Then they sowed what was the broad bean patch with nine different kinds of winter lettuce and greens. A week later and every seed has germinated. (more…)

Idler’s Academy Timetable

We have just finalized the timetable for this weekend’s outing of The Idler’s Academy, at the Curiouser Festival near Totnes. Alas, Mr Ben Moor has had to cancel, but we are pleased to announce that we will be joined by Mr Robin Harford, the renowned forager, who will be leading a wild food ramble around the festival site. In between lessons, the tuck shop will be open, and you will be able to join us for informal chats and ukulele sessions. See you there. TH

The Idler’s Academy of Philosophy, Husbandry and Merriment
Autumn term
Timetable

FRIDAY
4pm: Headmaster’s Address.
Tom Hodgkinson introduces the Idler’s Academy and outlines its aims and methods.
5pm: Music with Princes in the Tower.
Learn about medieval music and merriment with Michael Tyack and Will Summers.

SATURDAY
11am: Foraging class with Mr Hartford.
Wild food expert Robin Harford leads a foraging expedition around the site.
2pm: Needlework with Mr Cogdell.
Learn the basics of sewing with Savile Row tailor Frederick Cogdell.
4pm: Latin with the headmaster.
Learn some basic Latin grammar and a little bit about Virgil.
6pm: History with Mr De Abaitua.
Learn about the strange camping cults of the past with author Matthew De Abaitua.
7.30pm: Music with the Headmaster.
Ukulele class and singalong with Tom Hodgkinson.

SUNDAY:
Noon: Sunday Sermon with the Headmaster.
2pm: First steps in beekeeping with Miss Hull.
Victoria Hull on our wondrous honey-makers.
3pm: Music: kids’ ukulele lesson with the Headmaster.
4pm: Close.