An Escapologist’s Diary: Part 70. Belgique.
We took an 8-hour train journey from Scotland to Belgium last week. I wanted to go on Eurostar* and to see THE ATOMIUM.
(*I’d somehow never been on this famous train, yet I longed to go on it when they were still drilling the hole)
For years, I thought the Atomium was a sculpture but, of course, it’s a building. You can go inside it.
Each of the little pods holds a visitor attraction: there’s a restaurant, a contemporary art gallery, an exhibition about the 1958 World’s Fair for which the Atomium was built, and so on.
One of the pods held a scale model of the Atomium. I was in a silly mood, high on life, so I gave it a kiss.
(I have a cold now, but I’m sure that’s an unrelated coincidence.)
Much like in Naples, we saw a lot of rain during this trip, but we’d have got just as wet if we’d stayed at home in Glasgow. Besides, when you travel by train you can take an umbrella along without worrying that it will be confiscated when it doesn’t fit into your little travel bag.
And in Glasgow we wouldn’t have seen the six art museums we visited in Belgium, enriching me to the very core. The older I get, the more I thirst for art. I was desperate to see art during the pandemic. I’m keen to see more of the world, to see more art and to hear more languages, before the next disaster forces us all to stay at home again. The pandemic happened after a year of voluntarily not travelling in order to save money or emissions or something, so I saw shit all for three years. I have learned my lesson.
I won’t say too much more about the trip because my travel entries to this diary are boring. All you need to know, dear imaginary shareholder, is that we saw four cities (Brussels, Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp) in four days (or in three days actually, since the fourth was spent in Brussels where we began) and that it was great, great, great.
Travel. It cannot be beat. Also, I saw THE ATOMIUM. With mine eyes. We went up it in a lift!
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Help me to fund more micro-adventures buy buying my books, I’m Out and The Good Life for Wage Slaves.
An Escapologist’s Diary: Part 69. 2022 Review.
Here we are again, thank goodness. Another annual report to my imaginary shareholders.
The year found me feeling far happier than in recent years. 2020‘s lockdowns, 2021‘s covid problems and house move, years of catching up after the visa struggle are all behind us now and I find myself on the other side of a recovery process. I felt extremely creative this year and hungry for action. Next year, all being well, will be even more gorgeous.
Here goes. Read the rest of this entry »
An Escapologist’s Diary: Part 68. Reading Massive Books.
I just finished reading Stephen King’s It. Why??! Why did I do it?
Well, it was Halloween.
It’s also been on my bucket list for a long time. I liked Stephen King’s books as a teen, though whenever I revisit him as an adult I’m usually a bit underwhelmed. Still, I didn’t want to die without having read It. I think I wanted to honor something my younger self would have wanted.
As a teen, I did a strange thing with It. I saved it. I knew it was the special “Spine Kingler,” up there with Misery and The Shining but purportedly epic, and I was enjoying the experience of looking forward to it. How lower middle-class is that? It’s like saving the juiciest sausage on your plate til last.
This turned out to be a mistake because I’d probably have really enjoyed It when I was 17. As an adult? Not so much.
There’s a good book in It but it’s swamped by hundreds (hundreds!) of pages of inessential, indigestible crap. It was a slog. And there was no “Camino de Santiago”-style epiphany to found in the long distance struggle.
It took me a month to kill it off. I kept thinking of the three or four short novels I could have been reading instead. Urgh. With four short novels, even if you don’t love them all, there’s something to be found in the diversity of experience.
The It paperback I read is 1,166 pages long. I have no problem with long books but this one didn’t warrant its girth. I didn’t savor the experience like a final sausage. It was an ordeal. But I wanted to slay that dragon because it felt like too much of a shame not to read It while I’m here on Earth.
There’s a lesson here about bucket lists, isn’t there?
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After the It ordeal, I’m glad to have slain the dragon, but my overwhelming feeling now is one of malnutrition. It’s time for a superfood salad: a strict diet of Fitzcarraldo Editions for a few weeks.
I’m half-joking, but I do have three unread ones on the shelf and they will contain multitudes.
Indeed, I just started on Moyra Davey’s Index Cards and it’s already a breathe of fresh air simply by virtue of being something else.
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Random bookish thought:
There’s a similarity between travel and reading: knowing that you’ll probably never be here again.
You might re-read the same book or make a return trip but the chances are against. There’s always another book, another place to go.
One book leads to another, seldom back.
Given my experience with It, I wonder if I’ll ever do the Great American Roadtrip for example. It would be a shame not to, but for the investment of money and time I could probably go to eight short novel destinations in Europe.
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An Escapologist’s Diary: Part 67. Napoli
The “what I did on my holidays” entries to this diary are never the best ones. I think that’s because I write them from a mild sense of obligation; since there’s effort involved in travel, I might as well get something (a post!) out of it. Not a great motivation for writing really. Or maybe it’s because I think the eventfulness of a travel experience will translate to a good entry, but it doesn’t. As someone against eventful writing, I should know this.
I’ve always tried, however, to relate these entries back to Escapological lessons beyond the simple “free movement” theme of travel: the attitudes inspired by travel that might be more generally helpful in life, the ways another society can look and how we might emulate that ideal. I think I’m starting from that point of view this time so maybe my Naples entry will be better than, say, this slightly empty one about Berlin.
So we went to Naples. We stayed in the Spanish Quarter, which is part of the crumbly historic side of town. There’s a fancier side of town up on the mountain, which has lovely tree-lined streets and feels more like Paris or Rome, but we had decided to stay in the thick of life. Travel guides to Naples tend to start with “don’t be afraid of Naples’ reputation for crime,” which people also say about Glasgow, which is where I live. So I wasn’t afraid at all.
An Escapologist’s Diary: Part 66. Idle Mornings, Modern Classics
Now that the short work contract is over, my mornings are back to being the most idle portion of the day.
I’m usually up by 10 because that’s when the postman inevitably knocks. I don’t mind being seen in my tatty old dressing gown but I prefer not to be startled out of bed by a knocking door and to be compos mentis enough to say “good morning” instead of “bleurgh.”
I have some other rules too: that the bed is made and any breakfast (or previous-day) washing up is done by noon. Why? I’m not sure. It just feels like the least I should be capable of.
The rest of the morning is spent watching YouTube videos like these ones or reading light novels or playing records.
I usually glance over the Guardian‘s horrible front page for a gist of how the world looks, but I only ever read one or two stories. It shouldn’t feel like much more than looking out of the window.
After years of not having a proper job and being able to call the shots each morning, I’m still consciously grateful for these bone idle mornings, to live in accordance with my natural rhythms and to not have to catch a bleary-eyed bus to anywhere.
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I’d been meaning to describe the shape of my mornings to this Diary for a while and was finally prompted by a moment from the end of The Great Gatsby.
Gatsby’s father shows the narrator a book from Gatsby’s childhood. It’s a copy of Hopalong Cassidy, in which a young Gatsby has jotted his daily rituals and resolutions on the flyleaf beneath the word SCHEDULE:
Rise from bed 6.00 A.M.
Dumbbell exercise and wall-scaling 6.15-6.30
Study electricity, etc 7.15-8.15
Work 8.30-4.30 P.M.
Baseball and sports 4.30-5.00
Practice elocution, poise and how to attain it 5.00-6.00
Study needed inventions 7.00-9.00GENERAL RESOLVES
No wasting time at Shafters or [a name, indecipherable]
No more smokeing or chewing
Bath every other day
Read one improving book or magazine per week
Save $5.00 [crossed out] $3.00 per week
Be better to parents
I think this is very charming and easily the best part of the novel.
Gatsby, we know, is a “self-made man” who willed himself from rags to riches; this artifact reveals that he was but a child when he decided to break his class destiny.
It’s easy to find this sort of thing a bit square, a bit nerdy, the secretive devotions of a self-policing goody-two-shoes who takes life too seriously. But I think it shows great passion.
I used to be a bit like Young Gatsby, the SCHEDULE being the sort of tool I’d concoct of my own volition so that I wouldn’t end up doing just what I was expected to do. I wanted to take life by the horns! But to be an existential matador, you probably need to develop these dorky techniques in self-discipline.
At almost 40, I’m still like this to an extent but I’ve calmed down a bit. Today, for example, has almost dwindled to nothing, with barely anything to show for it, and I’ve come to see this as an achievement in its own right.
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My reading The Great Gatsby this week was part of a hole-patching exercise in my reading experience.
Many people read Gatsby in school but the school I went to preferred us to read self-consciously working-class literature instead of these twentieth-century icons that might have been a useful cultural grounding for later in life. I can’t help thinking that if we’d read The Great Gatsby and Nineteen-Eighty-Four and Slaughterhouse 5 and Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird like so many other children did, we’d have felt less isolated from culture in our teenage years and would generally understood more of what people were talking about.
(The working-class books we read at school were not working-class classics either. We did not read Love on the Dole or Hangover Square or Down and Out in Paris and London or The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists or even anything by Dickens. Instead, we read (yes, I remember everything) some miserable books called Twopence to Cross the Mersey, Across the Barricades, The Driftway, and a supposedly-humorous play called The Rebels of Gas Street. We didn’t enjoy or understand any of these books; we didn’t relate to them at all. This is a shame because I think they were chosen to be relatable, which shows how our teachers thought of us. Seriously, why not give us Day of the Triffids or Treasure Island or something kids might actually get something out of?)
Now, embarrassingly late, I’m reading these basic modern classics like a dufus.
The Great Gatsby looked good to begin with but I found it unfocussed and ultimately not about very much. The first of three acts is about the mystery of this unknowable man (a “Mr. Nobody from Nowhere”), the second (and best) is about the history of a great love triangle, and the third is about a random accident that results in the end of Gatsby’s life. The end doesn’t feel (to me) like a well-planned tragedy or an irony or anything. It just feels like F Scott ran out of time or met his wordcount or something. Maybe I’m being unfair?
To Kill a Mockingbird is a lovely book though. I was surprised by how little of it is about the famous trial. I was also surprised by how joyfully messy and unconventional the structure is; it’s not an obvious classic at all, though I really enjoyed it and it’s probably perfect for kids. It’s only right that Atticus Finch is seen as one of the great memorable characters and I find myself vowing, Gatsby-like, to be more like Atticus Finch in my own life and less like Saul Goodman.
GENERAL RESOLVES
Be kind and give more of yourself to Good.
No more cutting corners!
An Escapologist’s Diary: Part 65. WFH Presenteeism is Delicious.
God help me, I’ve accepted a work contract. It’s just a short one (six weeks) and it’s a work-from-home position.
The contract presses my old librarian skills back into service, which has so far been very enjoyable and nostalgic. Plus, the money I’m making should compensate precisely for the overspend on buying and decorating our new flat. So why not?
Now, as a writer I always “work from home” in that my writing happens entirely at our dining table. But I don’t really think of it as “work” (i.e. employment) because it’s something I just want to do. But what I’m doing now is what people more normally mean when they talk about “Working From Home,” so I’m finally getting an experience of Pandemic-era WFH.
What I wanted to mention today is the unique flavour of WFH Presenteeism. It’s delicious.
Presenteeism, lest we forget, is when you have nothing to do at your job but you have to sit there and make a show of it because you’re on the clock. Presenteeism corrodes the soul and helps the world not a jot.
When I worked in an office, I’d often brood angrily about some culmination of micro-tasks I couldn’t attend to because I was instead being paid to sit in an office no mater what.
In these moments, I wasn’t even particularly angry about separation from my big non-work projects or from bathing in the sunshine or travelling the world. No, it was things like not being able to reach the post office to collect a package before it closed. Or having a kitchen sink full of dirty dishes. Or not having time to shave that morning because there there was a train to catch. If only I could just work from home, I’d think, I could do these things. But instead I just had to sit there and fume.
Working from home and doing those things wouldn’t have been any skin off the company’s nose. So what if I spent five minutes of company time shaving? Or ten minutes washing the dishes? It’s not like that’s any money worth caring about, and any net gain to a worker’s mental clarity and general wellbeing would probably benefit the whole firm. And I wasn’t doing anything for them by being pointlessly present anyway. I was just sitting in an office because That’s What People Do.
In the WFH era, I’ll work for an hour or two and then take a break. Instead of that break being in the company rec-room where I’d have to make chit-chat with other time-wasting and life-cynical employees, I can get those little things done. It’s lovely.
I’m not supposed to leave my “station” and I should theoretically be ready to receive a Zoom call at any moment, so I’m still tethered in the same kinky way of most employment. But I can take out the bins, receive packages from couriers, do my exercises, play a record.
If I really had nothing to do for a few hours, I could probably put my feet up and watch some Netflix. It’s not bad.
This has been a voice in favour of WFH. (And for balance, here’s one against). Are you still working from home, dear reader? If so, what do you think?
For further insight into workplace survival, try my book The Good Life for Wage Slaves out now in paperback.
An Escapologist’s Diary : Part 64. 2021 Review.
Here follows the annual report for my imaginary shareholders in the year of 2021. Or, as I prefer to call it, the year of the ring-tailed lemur.
The report, you’ll notice, is over a week late. This is because my partner and I were hit by the dreaded Omicron at the eleventh hour and have been resting ever since. We’re doing fine but it’s surprisingly hard-going considering the claims of it being a “Covid Lite.” Look after yourself, readers. Get boosted pronto.
An Escapologist’s Diary: Part 63. 2020 Review.
Ah God. 2020. What a year. All that handwashing.
Was this year worse than 2016? Well, yes, but I have a feeling that 2020 was when we began to reap what was sown in 2016. Ask me how. (Please don’t).
So here goes. The annual statement for my imaginary shareholders. For 2020. Urgh.
Happy Year of the Coconut Crab, everyone! https://t.co/4L6W3sZ4VG pic.twitter.com/WkPjILXpU0
— Robert Wringham (@rubberwringham) January 9, 2020
An Escapologist’s Diary: Part 62. Hole.
Escape Towers is on the top floor of a very old building, and water drips into our spare room whenever there’s serious rain. We reported the problem to the landlord some time ago, but no repairs were forthcoming. Since it was only our spare room and wasn’t a constant problem, we didn’t put any pressure on him to get it fixed. Bohemia!
Read the rest of this entry »
An Escapologist’s Diary: Part 61. Escape Coronavirus?
Depressed by scenes of maskless Soho revelers seemingly rain-dancing for a second wave, my mind drifts in the direction of escape. I can’t help it. I’m an escape artist.
Unfortunately, my would-be escape is prevented by iron-clad reasons to stay put on Covid Island, but maybe you could act on this escape plan if you wanted to.
While the air bridges are open (act fast!), I would bugger off to Copenhagen for six months and wait the rest of the crisis out.
Denmark has suffered 600 Covid deaths to the UK’s shameful 60,000. Relatively normal life continues there if you don’t count today’s racist fish incident.
I like Copenhagen quite a bit, so I’d take a short rolling lease on a small apartment. I’d do the right thing by voluntarily quarantining my potentially asymptomatic ass for fourteen days, but after that, I’d spend 5.5 months looking at museums, walking, cycling, drooling over the urban planning solutions, drinking coffee and beer, reading and writing.
Maybe I’d even take the train to Billund to see Legoland. Come winter, I’d become acquainted with hygge. By then, one hopes, the Brits would have sorted themselves out and I could come home. If not, maybe I’d beg Denmark for asylum.
There’s probably something similar you can do if you live in America. Escape to somewhere in the Caribbean maybe? Japan?
Please send me a postcard if you do this.
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Happier news in creative life. I’ve committed (emotionally, not contractually) to an idea for my next book after abandoning with a heavy heart the one I was writing before the Pandemic hit.
The new book will not be directly Escapological so I will shut up about it here and plop any more thoughts I want to communicate about it on my personal blog. I’m excited about it though, and I can’t wait to get started in August if not a little sooner. Much of the rest of July will be spent on a couple of other creative projects, not least helping to midwife The Good Life for Wage Slaves (pre-order, please!) into existence.
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We’ve set up a small bird feeder in the hopes of attracting some feathered fools friends. This is something I do periodically it seems. The feeder we found is a little plastic house-shaped seed tray with suction cups for fixing it to the window. The idea is to attract smaller, prettier birds, but so far we’ve only drawn magpies, wood pigeons, and a crow.
Being large birds, this fearsome crew tend not to use the feeder itself and make do with any seeds or mealworm that have fallen onto the ledge. This means we generally only see their heads peeking over the window frame, apparently checking to see if we’re looking at them.
The name we’ve given to our crow is Corvid-19 (well, obviously). The magpies are my favourite though because they make a lot of noise, adding something natural and woodsy to the soundtrack of everyday life. And if we ever tire of their noisy visits, we can at least have some nostalgic fun by shouting, “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie! Out, Out, Out!”
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Lockdown is easing here in Scotland, though I’m glad our government has been more cautious than its counterpart in London. On Friday night, unless someone tells us we’ve misunderstood the rules, we’re going to visit some friends in their house. This will be the first time in three months we’ve been in anyone’s home other than our own. It’s going to be strange to see our friends’ faces without their constantly glitching. I might do some Max Headroom-type shtick just to make everyone feel more comfortable.
