Get Out!
Thereâs a lovely quit in The Furnished Room (1961) by the late London Bohemian Laura del Rivo:
ââŠyour progress here has not altogether given satisfactionââ
Beckett cut in, âAlright. We both know that Iâm inefficient, habitually late, and completely uninterested in the work that poverty forces me to do. Having agreed this, letâs end the matter without a long and boring discussion.â
Mr Glegg stared at him, his mouth dead-fish open. Then he banged his fist on the desk. âGet out!â
Beckett went.
Shortly after storming out, our hero notices some glittering shards of glass on the floor near the Tube. He zones out on it for a moment and feels happy.
The only place, I think, to get a copy of The Furnished Room now is the wonderful Five Leaves radical Bookshop in Nottingham. So, you know. Do that.
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Admire the Application
I mentioned this narrow boat couple a little while ago. They escaped expensive London in favour of a life of on the canals.
Since then, Iâve become pleasantly hooked on their videos. A lot of the joy comes from the beautiful b-roll and drone footage of frosty fields and ducks-a-dabbling, but Iâm also increasingly impressed at the resilience and practical-mindedness of the couple themselves. The episode where they have to rescue a dropped water cap from the canal could have been banal but is riveting.
Sometimes, with escape-to-the-country-type stories, the joy comes from watching silly urbanites floundering and out of their depth. But thatâs not true for this pair. They go about things in a very sensible, practical way; always learning but always putting those lessons to good use. Less exciting that the âretrievalâ video linked to above is one where Andrew has to fish a carrier bag out of the engine prop: not exciting viewing but a very good case in point.
What all of this should remind us of, once again, is that escape is possible. If you find ways to apply yourself. Yes, escape can be a game and escape can be fun. Above all, it can be a great romance. But admire the application. Admire the seriousness of mssion.
You could dip into any of their videos at all, but hereâs their latest episode, posted just yesterday, about the joys of spring on the canal.
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An Escapologistâs Diary: Part 82. Signs of Progress.
Dear diary, not much has changed since my last entry. Iâve been ill for over two months.
Read the rest of this entry »
The End of the Workplace Necktie
From Dickon Edwardsâ diary from 2005:
Wednesday 22nd June â a historic date for some. The head of the UK Civil Service announces the wearing of ties as no longer mandatory for male employees. As long as theyâre still smart, office boys and men alike can now wear their shirts open-necked as they oil the cogs of government. Must be a relief for those suffering under the current heatwave in offices built before the invention of air conditioning.
It may just be the Civil Service, but I suspect the trickle-down effect for the world of work will be ineluctable. When a similar guideline was made with bowler hats in the past, the trademark headwear of the English businessman soon disappeared from the streets and onto the naughty head of Ms Minnelli in Cabaret.
Fascinating! That was just a few months before my first escape from office work.
When I went back to office work in 2017, I didnât like the âopen collarâ lack of formality (so it did indeed trickle down as Dickon expected, though at the time I saw it as Silicon Valley trend-setting). It was as if The Company had sidled up to me, straddled a chair backwards, and said âhi buddy, letâs rap.â
Weâre not friends, The Company, and we never will be. Our neckties were there to put distance between us. Well, thatâs how I felt until they were taken away.
So I continued to wear a beautiful tie to work most days, despite all of the justified ridicule. It worked too. It said âI am here formally.â It was a Big Fuck Off to the lot of it.
Dickon continues:
I personally welcome this news. Soon, when a man is seen in public wearing a tie, he will no longer be accused of having come straight from work. Tie-wearers will at last be deliberate tie-wearers. All ties will be nice ties, not ugly arrows of drudgery.
Nice.
And a final detail:
This apparently follows an industrial tribunal where a man claimed the forcing of ties upon male workers but not their female colleagues was tantamount to sexual discrimination. He won. The times are indeed a-slightly-changing.
It occurs to me there might be more pinpointable moments like this in the history of work: the day they invented modular office furniture, for example, or the very first building to have air conditioning and flourescent lighting instead of windows. Iâll try not to get carried away.
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The Rule Benders
Why is your boss a narcissist? asks the Guardian.
Iâve been wondering the same thing. But then Iâm my own boss. Ahem.
No, really. When I read the news this week that WHSmith are finally ditching their scruffy and expensive high street stores, some old memories of being their teenage employee came to the surface. In particular, I remembered one of the Bosses, Tim, and how awful he was. Heâd stride around self-importantly in his dismal black suit, lambasting his âteamâ of teenage students and retired old ladies. In the staff cloakroom one day, I found his cocaine, which explained at least some of his behaviour.
Once, he had me leafletting uselessly outside the shop because there was an unexplained error on my cash register â a single one in an audit roll of thousands of transactions â which he felt had eroded his trust in me to use such a complicated machine. I never found out what the error was.
I bet the inside of his car was filthy. Footwells filled with McDonalds cartons and scattered change.
Why was he such a narcissist? I asked myself. He was only the Assistant Manager of a WHSmith. What pride does he take in all this? I donât mean to say one canât take pride in the seamless running of a bookshop, but he wasnât the type.
Well, according to the study presented in the Guardian today its because of the bullshit they put in the job ads for managers.
In the study, Gay and his colleagues divided language used in job ads into two categories: phrases that might attract ârule-followersâ and phrases that might appeal to ârule-bendersâ. Postings seeking an applicant who is âgrounded and collaborativeâ, âthinks methodicallyâ and âcommunicates in a straightforward and accurate mannerâ went in the ârule-followerâ category. Phrases like âambitious and self-reliantâ, âthinks outside the boxâ and âcommunicates in a tactical and persuasive mannerâ were filed under ârule-benderâ.
Itâs the ârule-bendingâ-type language that goes into ads for managerial jobs. And itâs narcissists who are most likely to find that sort of language appealing and actually apply for them.
Tim at WHSmith was awful but far worse was his boss Richard â a creeping mustachioed pervert who once said he wished he could do to us what Americans were doing, as it was announced that morning, in Abu Ghraib â and Timâs equal Olwyn who died. When the news came around, one guy said âwell, I wouldnât have wished that on her.â And then there was Sally who was nice enough, but when I accidentally sold an embargoed copy of Shaggyâs âAngelâ on CD, she said that âShaggyâs peopleâ had been in touch and werenât happy.
Shaggyâs people indeed. What a bunch of rule-benders.
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Baudelaire
Baudelaire [elevated] idleness to the rank of a working method, of his very own method. We know that in many periods of his life he was not acquainted with, as it were, any worktable. It was by drifting that he fashioned and above all that he incessantly rearranged his verse.
Hooray, Baudelaire!
This comes from a piece of writing by Walter Benjamin, which was only recently translated into English. How can we only now be translating works â even minor ones â of Walter Benjamin? What a world.
Things we donât know may already be known. In other languages. Apparently the biggest sci-fi franchise of all time isnât my beloved Star Trek but some German thing. See also Fitzcaraldo Editions and Charco Press who, lately, have been bringing light to my reading not through new commisions but through translation.
Anyway, yes. Baudelaire. The idlerâs poet. Benjaminâs piece goes further.
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Our Plain Duty to Escape
A reader called Robin as us to consider this Ursula K. Leguin quote:
Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, donât we consider it his duty to escape? ⊠if we value the freedom of the mind and soul, if weâre partisans of liberty, then itâs our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can.
Right. This is why we, at New Escapologist, have come to separate âescapismâ and âEscapologyâ:
Itâs Escapology, not escapism. Escapism is when you briefly leave your cares behind by watching a film or building model aeroplanes. Escapology is a permanent effort to leave work and consumerism behind. Itâs the art and science of politely saying âno thank you,â and walking away into a self-made alternative.
Weâre not the only one to make the distinction. Escape, Escapism, Escapology by John Limon is a recent book that does the same. We reviewed it in Issue 14.
Without the opening note about fantasy being escapist, I agree with Ursula K. Leguinâs point. It is âour plain duty to escapeâ when cornered. We owe it to ourselves and to the principle of the thing. We owe it to others by way of example. When all life on Earth is extinguished and thereâs a final accounting of things, it would be nice if it could be said (though by whom?) âthey lived free.â I mean, that wonât happen now, itâs too late in the day, but one must try. Oneâs bean must be counted in the right column.
A related point that rolls around in my head is that while fantasy is said to be escapist (though of all the writers to say this, Le Guinâs work bulges with allegory and polemic) it isnât unreal. A fictional character or world might not occupy the same plain of reality as we do, but when weâre reading, weâre reading. Reading is a real event, happening materially in the material world. So if fantasy is not unreal, can it really be said to be escapist? One doesnât escape reality into the same reality, does one? Just a thought.
I think I prefer this Ursula quote, where she begins to separate escapism from Escapology:
As for the charge of escapism, what does âescapeâ mean? Escape from real life, responsibility, order, duty, piety, is what the charge implies. But nobody, except the most criminally irresponsible or pitifully incompetent, escapes to jail. The direction of escape is toward freedom. So what is âescapismâ an accusation of?
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I Already Knew I Would Leave
I was not like them. I very quickly realised where I was, and at the age of seven I already knew I would leave. I didnât know when, or where I would go. When people asked me, what do I want to be when I grow up? Iâd reply: a foreigner.
Isnât that great? Itâs from Waiting for a Hurricane by Margarita Garcia Robayo (a quickie novella in her Fish Soup collection).
The story is about characters stuck in a small Latin American town. They all want to escape and have different designs on how to do it. Some people look for green cards to America by marriage. Our protagonist becomes an air hostess, enjoying brief exits every day while simultaneously building the escape fund.
Seven though. Hah! When, dear reader, did you begin mentally packing your bags?
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Better Out Than In
Ever since Dear Jeremy quit his job at the Guardian, Iâve missed the useful window into the worklives of others.
Thankfully, Slate now brings us Good Job to fill that gap. People write in with their job complaints and their agony aunt responds. It makes me feel glad to no longer have a jay-oh-bee.
This week, a correspondant tells the world about their colleagueâs farting:
I have a co-worker who has terrible flatulence. He is an absolute misery to be around as a result.
He comes through our floor at least three or four times a day and afterward, the place stinks like a broken septic tank. The rub is that heâs also the head of our department and twice a week our team is required to meet with him to give updates on productivity and other things. These meetings usually are around an hour long, and by the time they are over Iâm nearly sick. My other colleagues are similarly at the end of their ropes.
Oh baby. I used to sit next to an office farter. It was all too much. I sympethise with the letter writer.
At the same time, Iâm not without sympathy for the farter. Someone wrote to New Escapologist once (hello!) to say that having to hold in your gas all day is something to hate about office jobs. So maybe the farter is also an Escapologist; maybe they want out too. And, as the wisdom goes, âbetter out than in.â
Sorry. Any future excerpts from this work advice column will be more Escapological and less, um, enterological.
That said, if youâre not too queasy for another worplace methane anecdote, hereâs a passage I cut from The Good Life for Wage Slaves on grounds of good taste:
A patronising and overfamiliar IT guy with too much testosterone sauntered into our department one day for his usual unwanted chit chat. He sniffed the air and said âwhoâs got something tasty for lunch? Something garlicky?â Nobody had anything out for lunch. Heâd smelled one of my farts. And liked it.
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Letter to the Editor: I Have Just Stepped Off the Hamster Wheel
To send a letter to the editor, simply write in. Youâll get a reply and weâll anonymise any blogged version.
Reader H writes:
Dear Robert,
In June 2016 your book saved me. I was burnt out after years of struggling as a single parent and working three jobs: cleaner, teaching assistant, and weekend shop assistant. As well as having ongoing counselling for a traumatic childhood.
I was trying so hard to make a life worth living. I ended up on antidepressants as my doctor suggested it was depression and not, as was the case, burn out. The antidepressants made me feel worse, unable to get up, washed, dressed. I felt I was at the very bottom of a deep black hole trying to claw my way out.
A friend forced me out of the house in Southampton and dropped me in the middle of Reading high street while he made sales calls in the area. Unable to face people, I found the nearest bookshop to hide in. The assistant asked what I was looking for?
âAnything about escaping life without hurting the people I love?â
Looking perplexed he led me to the âpositive mental attitudeâ books. I searched and searched until a title caught my eye. It was called Escape Everything!
I read your book over and over. I was in that bookshop for three hours and he left me be while I read it over and over. It was exactly what I felt⊠life had become one long struggle of trying to make ends meet. Nothing else.
I arrived home a different person. I came off the antidepressants, wrote up my escape plan and worked my bollocks off!
Fast forward through some incredibly hectic years. I have renovated many unloved properties (my passion), giving them back their dignity and mine. I have just stepped off the hamster wheel And have many creative ideas still to pursue!
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for dropping a ladder into that hole.
To this day it is my bible. I am free to live the life I want to live and life is bloody amazing!! 
Thank you.
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Foof. Itâs hard to know how to respond to this one other than to say thank you for taking the effort to tell me. Youâre welcome. And your new life sounds beautiful. Youâre the one who did it though: you planned and acted, which is what it all comes down to. Congratulations.
