Smart-Arsed Urbanites

It was supposed to be a clean break from their humdrum existence in a dingy Manchester flat. But all Max Scratchmann and his partner, Chancery, did when they moved to the Orkney Islands was replace one vision of hell with another.

This is very funny. Scratchmann escaped badly and was forced to live with the consequences.

Chucking It All: How Downshifting To A Windswept Scottish Island Did Absolutely Nothing to Improve My Life was supposed to be a light-hearted warning to “smart-arsed urbanites”, tempted by the idea of escaping the rat race, who thought that starting a slower, rustic life somewhere like Provence, Umbria or the Outer Hebrides would somehow find them inner harmony.

but:

the writer’s satirical travelogue about six years among the islanders – whom he describes as “staid, emotionally repressed drunks, stuck in the 1950s” – has so enraged inhabitants of the Scottish archipelago that it has been shelved by his publishers, after threats of legal action.

Whoops.

It’s a reminder, I suppose, to do your research before leaping blindly into an escape. Or at least to visualise it realistically. I mean, what was he expecting? If social life is important to you, a remote island might not be the place to go.

But it’s also a reminder not to be a dick about your new roomies. Not everyone has resolved to escape their own “dingy Manchester flat,” or their equivalent of it.

Still, an adventure is an adventure is an adventure. Scratchmann at least has a story to tell. Even if it had to be pulled from print.

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