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Features Editor: Ed Cumming
18 VIEWPoints features@varsity.co.uk
Friday October 5 2007
varsity.co.uk/features
An Idler Life... Continued from p17
according to Hodgkinson began
with the Industrial Revolution
and has been getting worse
since. The message is not “don’t
work”, but rather to use your
time better, and spend more
time doing the things you want
to do, rather than those you
feel obliged to. And one of the
other tenets of the philosophy
is that great works are often
achieved after long periods of
inactivity, or “thinking time”.
Hodgkinson calls these moments
“paroxysms of diligence”,
but it’s a way of working familiar
to many.
Eventually the magazine
spawned the books “Crap
Towns” and “Crap Jobs”, as
well as Tom’s manifestos for
better living, “How To Be Free”
and “How To Be Idle”. The latter
book advised, among other
things; more conversation,
drinking, smoking, slower
eating, slower sex, gardening,
lie-ins and, most importantly,
forgetting the idea that you
need to be rich to enjoy a rich
and productive life.
But he began down a path
that rings far too true for
many of us. On leaving school
he read English at Jesus,
where he divided his days
“reading books, playing in
bands, editing magazines and
watching great lectures”.
So it came as a bit of a shock
to leave Cambridge and find
that the whole world suddenly
revolved around the need to
get a job, to earn money for
things you don’t really need.
It’s something he still feels
particularly strongly about.
“Education isn’t an investment
in the hope that it will
get you a good (i.e. highly paid)
job at the end. Jobs are crap.
Students are assuming that
because a consulting job starts
on £25k, it is necessarily a good
thing. You will be humiliated,
and then promoted to a position
where you can humiliate
others. And that’s your life.”
Surely some money is important,
I suggest, for paying
for things And if nothing else
for the security to enjoy the
pleasurable life he advocates
so strongly. His response is
quick and, after a while, obviously
true:
“Just reduce your outgoings
a bit. It’s simple. We grow our
own vegetables, which is not
only cheaper but nicer, too, and
we stopped buying newspapers
and magazines, because we
realised that we were probably
spending a thousand pounds a
year on them.”
The magazine itself is actually
in its third incarnation
having been originally founded
by Samuel Johnson, a man
famous for his affection for
the good life, and one of Hodgkison’s
“Idle Idols”, who said,
in one of the pithy one-liners
he seems to have spent his
life specialising in, that “the
happiest part of a man’s life is
what he passes lying awake in
bed in the morning.” Many an
arts student will know what he
means, and scientists will wish
that they did.
After Johnson’s death the
Tom Hodgkinson, inheritor of the idling tradition
magazine was abandoned until
the late 19th century, when it
was taken up by Jerome K. Jerome,
author of one of the seminal
works of Idler literature,
Three Men In a Boat, and another
confirmed man of leisure.
Unfortunately it folded - it has
never been a wildly profitable
venture - until Hodgkinson
picked up the baton again.
“What I find depressing is
that some quite good people
have been saying what I’m
saying in books and essays for
thousands of years and it just
seems to have gotten worse.
I don’t put much faith in the
political system because it’s a
question of how are you going
to run capitalism, not how are
we going to develop a different
system to capitalism.”
He considers himself an
anarchist - despite the laidback
nature of the Idler, there
is a strong streak of protest in
“Where’s your
free spirit How
are you going to
make anything
worthwhile The
whole point of
University is to
cause trouble””
much of his writing, although
the enemies are not the sweatshop
or the despotic regime,
but our own “englightened”
Western, work-obsessed culture.
He’s quick to interrogate
me about the University, wondering
if the fires of student
protest are still burning. I tell
him that protest and radicalism
are now side-issues, taken
up by those with too much time
or too little soap. His response
is indignant:
“Where is your free spirit
How are you going to create
anything worthwhile The
point of University is to make
trouble.” It is a point well,
if often, made, but one of the
more attractive things about
Hodgkinson is that he has followed
his own advice - he and
his family moved out of London
to an old farmhouse in Devon,
where he is currently writing a
book about Idle Parenting.
Not to let his alma mater
down, he’s planning a trip to
Cambridge in Lent term to give
an “anti-careers fair”, where
“interested (and interesting, he
adds) students can come and
learn more about the development
of a freer life.”
“Listen to ‘Anarchy in the
UK’”, he urges, “Read ‘The
Revolution of Everyday Life’
by Raoul Vaneigem, learn the
ukulele, bake your own bread,
reject the supermarkets, cut
up your credit cards, go fishing,
write more, read more.
Take back your time”. Something
for everybody there, you
would think.
Statistic of the week
Elephant Crime Prevention
Profile of the Week
You’ve put it online, we’ve taken it off
Polly
Aspinall
3rd Year Architect, New Hall
College
Friend count:
565
Status:
Keen for Steve
Elephant
Iraq
Specialist skills:
Roller-blading, ice skating, spaghetti
bolognese, blowjobs.
Favourite place:
Zoo
Wants babies
with:
Owen Wilson
Botswana has a big problem,
and the problem is big elephants.
Elephants are very big.
So big, in fact, that they can
eat up to 250kg of food a day,
which is the equivalent of you
or me eating 250 mixed kebabs
from Gardi’s, assuming that
they each weighed 1 kilogram,
which they don’t.
But still, it gives you an idea.
The real problem, however, is
not so much that elephants
eat a lot, but that there are too
many of them. According to my
good friend Festus Gontembanye
Mogae, Botswana now has
close to 75,000 of the pachyderm
pests, and they are becoming a
real nuisance. 75,000 elephants
each eating 250kg of food means
that they collectively chomp
through 18,750,000 kg every
day. The situation is bad enough
that the Setswana government
has offered to give 1000 elephants
to any nation for free, as
long as they can provide transport.
The obvious progression is
to send them to Baghdad, where
they would sort out sectarian
violence in about ten minutes.
“Well Ahmed, I would kill you
for being a Sunni/American,
but there’s this motherf******
elephant out on my lawn, so if
you don’t mind, I’m going to deal
with that first.”
The US would also have no
trouble sending them over - an
elephant’s not much bigger
than a tank, and they’ve got
loads of them over there. But
once Baghdad is sorted, why
not the world They could be
used to wander around potential
nuclear research sites in Korea,
or sent to disrupt the Spice Girls
reunion gig.
Once again, you heard it here
first.
Adrian Dangerhands
Most recent wall
post:
What’s with all the new friends
called Steve : S (Stephen
Begley)
Embarrassing
photo:
Crimefighter