I DLER

the art of living · september – october 2018

JORDAN PETERSON
Tim Lott meets the
puritanical professor
ANTI SOCIAL
John Harris and Jaron
Lanier fight the power
ZEN AND THE
ART OF DOING
NOTHING
Master loafers of Japan
OUT TO LUNCH
Making the most of
midday meanders
PLUS
A trip to Zürich
Jonnie Bayfield’s musical adventures
Tweeds by Gustav Temple

no.62 £9.00
 ‘I get fed up with the
number of cookbooks that
promise quick and easy
meals, those that promise
a three-course dinner
that can be knocked up
in thirty minutes. Most
cooking, and certainly
most enjoyable cooking,
takes a little longer’

ROWLEY LEIGH

A LONG AND MESSY BUSINESS

THE DEFINITIVE COOKBOOK FROM

ROWLEY LEIGH
Published 4th October 2018
Available from all good bookshops and online
I DL E R
the art of living · september – october 2018

libertas per cultum

idle ltd.
no.62
Contents Idler No.62, September – October 2018

NOTES FROM THE COUCH FEATURES

Readers’ Letters 7 Interview: Jordan Peterson

Tim Lott takes on the Canadian
Idler’s Diary 11
confrontationalist who has split
How I Live the thinking world with his
Rob Kilner: Lunchtime loafer 16 ruggedly masculine views on life 45
Problems Interview: Jaron Lanier
with Virginia Ironside 20 Tom Hodgkinson and John Harris
present the tech reformer’s “Ten
Modern Toss 23, 35, 39
Arguments” against social media 57
Idler News
Japan’s Dr Johnson
Andrew Smart considers the ethics
Matthew Bilski examines the
and rights of AI sex workers 24
teachings of the 14th century
The Good Stuff idling monk that offer a balm
Annabel Sampson and Charlotte to the soul of the salarymen 69
Brook pack a flat bottle, some
Up your Harris
Land chocolate, pop tarts and
Gustav Temple salutes the
a range of ceramics into their
finest woven cloth on Earth,
picnic hamper 28
the fabulous, functional tweed 75
Slow Tech
Smart dumbphone 40
Poetry
with Andrew McMillan 38

2
 contents
IDLE PURSUITS
Art flâneur
Tim Richardson goes wild in
the country with Tacita Dean,
Edward Bawden and
Cedric Morris 79
Books
Cathleen Mair discovers life-
changing letters and some great
conversations with Nell Dunn 92
Small press
David Collard on the trials
and triumphs of today’s indie
publishers 97
Music
Jonnie Bayfield gets corporate
round the campfire 100
We meet folkies Lankum 105
Idle home
Alastair Hendy on how he
renovated his Hogarthian
Hastings retreat 111
Astronomy
Robert Katz strains to see
Andromeda and a flying horse
of the Autumn skies 116
Travel
Zürich is a haven for the world’s
wealthiest – which explains
the price of the beer 121
Gin
Geraldine Coates raises a well-iced
glass to the perfect Negroni 126
Recipe
Rowley Leigh reveals the secrets
of the hidden partridges 128
3
Gardening
Graham Burnett suggests a
scything solution to your lawn
problems 130
Beekeeping
Bill Anderson is finally ready for
a taste of this year’s honey 133
Snooker
Alex Johnson tries to bend a
few rules as well as his own
body round the table 136
Escape
Robert Wringham turns his
head away from The Hot
New Thing 138
Sheds
Alex Johnson on how to create
your own perfect outdoor haven 143
Eating out
Victoria Hull takes a trip to
Clerkenwell for a restaurant
revolution 146
Beer
Evil Gordon tries some ales
of the unexpected 150
Ukulele
Cameron Murray celebrates
the world’s best uke fests 153
Idler questionnaire
Film-maker Amma Asante on
where the lines of identity blur 156
 idler · 62

Idler is a bi-monthly published by Idle Ltd.,

Great Western Studios, 65 Alfred Road, London W2 5EU Tel: 0203 176 7907 idler.co.uk

Editor: Tom Hodgkinson Advertising:

Art Director: Alice Smith
Sub-editors: Cathi Unsworth,
Virginia Ironside
Typesetter: Christian Brett, Bracketpress
Programming Director: Victoria Hull
Marketing and editorial assistant:
Cathleen Mair
Poetry Editor: Clare Pollard
Advisor: James Pembroke
Lisa Martin at Portman Media on
020 3859 7093 or lisa@portmanmedia.com
Copyright ©Idle Ltd. 2018
All rights reserved.
Idle Limited Reg. No.5897340
To subscribe go to: idler.co.uk/join
Printed and bound in the UK by Mixam
i s s n 1351-5098

Cover illustration by Ellie Foreman-Peck

elliefp.co.uk twitter.com/EllieFP instagram.com/elliefp
Illustrations throughout the Idler (except where noted) by Alice Smith
alice-smith.co.uk twitter.com/asmithys instagram.com/aliceshole

Contributors: Rob Kilner, Virginia Ironside, Andrew Smart, Annabel Sampson, Charlotte
Brook, Andrew McMillan, Tim Lott, Harry Mount, John Harris, Matthew Bilski, Gustav
Temple, Tim Richardson, David Collard, Jonnie Bayfield, Alastair Hendy, Robert Katz,
Geraldine Coates, Rowley Leigh, Graham Burnett, Bill Anderson, Alex Johnson, Robert
Wringham, Evil Gordon, Cameron Murray

4
Idler No.62, September – October 2018

Letter from the Editor

Dear Idlers,
A couple of years ago the author Tim Lott told me about a Canadian
psychologist he’d discovered, and whose work he loved, called Jordan
Peterson. This man was liberal in outlook but was questioning the way
liberalism was turning into a new form of authoritarianism. I didn’t think
much of it at the time but then, lo and behold, Jordan P. appeared on
Channel 4 News earlier this year talking about lobsters and became a star.
His book Twelve Rules for Life went to number one in the UK and the US,
and he started filling bigger and venues with his live appearances.
Whatever you think of him, and I am not sure whether or not he is Idler-
friendly, as the rules seem to involve a lot of hard work, he has clearly made
a terrific impact. It is perhaps because he radiates certainty in a very
confusing world. Anyway, when Tim offered us an interview, we said “yes”,
and the conversation between the two can be found in this issue. I would
love to hear your views on the piece.
Elsewhere we present the transcript of a lovely evening we held with
Silicon Valley critic and spokesman for what we might call the “digital
Reformation” for indeed, Lanier is the new Luther, nailing (or gaffa taping)
his theses to the doors of the Googleplex.
And there is a reflective piece on the partly
forgotten tradition of idling in Japan.
Peace and love,
Tom x
Floyd]
[Photo: Chris

PS Please write to me at mail@idler.co.uk

5
 Photo: Victoria Hull

R.I .P. LUCY BI RLE Y

W e were shocked and saddened by the news that Lucy Birley had died.
Regular readers will know that she was the Idler’s fashion editor for a
year and produced really lovely pieces. She always supported our efforts
and was generous to a fault. She was an outstanding person – a true free
spirit, original, witty, stylish and always excellent company. She has left four
fantastic sons – our thoughts are with them. Thank you Lucy.

6
Readers’ Letters
Write to us at Great Western Studios, 65 Alfred Road, London W2 5EU
or email mail@idler.co.uk. Star letter wins an Idler tote bag
*** Star Letter ***
Tiptoe through
the vegans
Sir: In response to Stephen Gowie’s
hysterically worthy letter [Idler 61]:
q: How do you know if someone
is vegan?
a: They’ll fucking tell you!
As a non-meat eater myself, I
defend the right of all idlers to roast
pigs in the street.
Name and address withheld,
obviously
Sea shirkers
Sir: Did you know that Idler is a
nautical term? This was the name
for those members of a ship’s crew,
such as cooks and sail-makers, who
did not stand night watch because
of their work.
Christian Furr, by email
7
Plain sailing
Sir: We live on an old yacht in
Montenegro and we do day trips for
tourists around this stunning bay.
We abandoned perfectly
respectable and life-draining
professions to do this ten years ago,
in true idle fashion, with no plan.
Now we’re re-skilled, self-reliant,
debt-free, take responsibility for
everything we do, and are happy.
For this whole time, our beloved
Jack Russell has accompanied us,
and enjoyed all the highs (and
some terrifying lows), without
lifting a paw. He’s retired now,
from what we know not, but
spends his time reclining on deck,
reminiscing about all the hard years
of lying around on deck, now
behind him. Surely a contender
for an Idler award?
Tim Layton, Montenegro
montenegro4sail.com
 idler · 62

Sleeping Rabbits

This is Bacardi
(rabbits sleep with their eyes open!)
Owner: Kate Soothill

8
readers’ letters

Sleeping Dogs

This is Louis
(asleep on deck)
Owner: Tim Layton

9
 idler · 62
Mouse grouse
Sir: No matter how much I stared
at the cartoon by “Roystor” in Idler
61 (page 17) I could not get it to
make sense.
Two mice look at a sign that is
stuck in some cheese in a
mousetrap and reads “The taste of
this cheese will astound you!” One
rodent looks as though he wants to
say something but remains silent.
After a while, the penny dropped:
“Roystor” is in fact Royston and it
was my cartoon, cropped somewhat
awkwardly. I can reveal, therefore,
that the missing caption was
“Bloody clickbait.”
Does the Editor have a policy of
excluding such curse words from
the Idler now or was this intended
as a caption competition? I think
we should be told.
Royston Robertson, cartoonist,
by email
“Bloody clickbait.”
10
Ed: The Idler has no policy as far
as cuss words go, as we reckon our
readers are grown up. So we can
only plead indolence, slackness
and dumbness in our defence.
Apology
Sir: I was upset by the description
of the Financial Times as “the fat
cat’s newspaper” in the July–August
issue. As a long term subscriber to
both, this is not helpful to me. We
live in a world of mediocre stuff.
The FT is a fantastic media source
with high standards sadly lacking in
other publications – please do not
stoop so low. I think a correction is
in order in the next issue please.
Andrew Marran, by email
Idler’s diary
Ramblings around town
Send your stories to us at mail@idler.co.uk
Turn on, tune in, chill out
“Balmy, magical atmosphere,” said
that honourable friend to the Idler,
Michael Palin, of our first festival
at Fenton House in Hampstead.
We brought our three-legged
syllabus of philosophy, husbandry
and merriment to this gorgeous old
walled enclave in north London
11
and put on a weekend of dancing,
singing, music, weaving, calligraphy
and many talks and recitals. There
was anarchy from David Graeber,
sex from Rowan Pelling and a
fascinating talk on the latest
research into psychedelics from
Dr Robin Carhart-Harris of
Imperial College.
 idler · 62
“You need to do something about your
sedimentary lifestyle.”
Lie-in, live long
Those who loaf, live longer,
according to a new study. Lying in
bed for as long as possible at
weekends will help avoid an early
grave, said the Swedish scientists
who carried out the experiment.
The sample size was 28,000 which
is very respectable. “Sleep duration
is important for longevity,” said
Torbjörn Åkerstedt, first author of
the study, at the Stress Research
12
Institute, Stockholm University.
The researchers found that it is
OK to get behind on sleep during
the week as long you catch up at
the weekend. Sleep researcher
Stuart Peirson, based at the
University of Oxford said that
“sleep debt” needed to be “paid
off”. He said: “You can’t keep
burning the candle at both ends.
Well, you can, but you won’t
live as long.”
 idler’s diary
Beancounter berserkery
In June we read the story that a
Japanese worker was fined for
starting lunch three minutes early.
The 64-year-old, an employee of
the waterworks bureau in the
western city of Kobe, was fined and
reprimanded after he was found to
have left his desk three minutes
before the start of his designated
lunch break on 26 occasions over a
seven-month period. Senior
management calculated how much
time he had spent away from his
desk and docked him half a day’s
pay. The employee reportedly said
that he had left the office early to
buy lunch because he needed a
“change of pace”.
The case comes at a time
when Japanese companies and
bureaucracies are under fire for
overworking their staff. The
government was forced to act
following a public outcry over
the death of Matsuri Takahashi,
a 24-year-old employee of the
advertising giant Dentsu, who
killed herself in 2015 after being
forced to work more than 100
hours overtime a month, including
at weekends.
No writes
Writers live in increasing poverty.
Their incomes have fallen by 50%
since 2005, according to a survey
by the Authors’ Licensing and
Collecting Society. The ALCS
13
also says that professional writers
now earn an average of £10,500
per annum – £7,000 less than
the minimum reasonable income,
as worked out by the Joseph
Rowntree Foundation.
Furthermore, they reckon that in
2005, 40% of professional writers
earned their income solely from
writing but that in 2017, that figure
had fallen to 13.7%, with writers
turning to finding work in the
academic gig economy and doing
Airbnb to make ends meet. At the
same time, executives at ad sales
monopolies Google and Facebook
are earning squillions. And
according to Linkedin, IT guys in
the US now earn an average of
$104,700. Truly, the geeks have
inherited the earth.
Shafted
We read the very sad news that
21 workers were killed in one
South African company’s gold
and platinum mines in the first six
months of the year. The company,
Sibanye-Stillwater, said this level
was “unprecedented”. Surely their
safety record should be getting
better, not worse? Compare the
average of seven per year that have
been killed by terrorist acts in the
UK over the last 17 years. Work is
truly dangerous. So is skiing: as
many as ten people are killed in
skiing accidents and avalanches in
the Alps each year. The Idler steers
 idler · 62
clear of both dangerous jobs and
dangerous sports.
Big bubbles, no troubles
We see that footballer’s wife and
pop star Frankie Bridge is a fan of
idling. The Daily Mail reproduced
her Instagram pictures of her
reading The Book of Idle Pleasures
by Dan Kieran and Tom
Hodgkinson in the bath – or as the
Mail said: “NAKED!”. Nice to see
that the word is getting out there.
Thank you Frankie!
Less is more
The New York Times reports that a
company in New Zealand which
deals with trusts and wills and
suchlike has had great success
with a four-day-week. Perpetual
14
Guardian asked its employees to do
a 32-hour week for the same pay as
a 40-hour week – and found that
they were more efficient. Yes, more
work got done. Mother-of-two
Tammy Barker, a client manager at
the firm, said she spent her day off
doing admin and shopping, leaving
more time for idling at the
weekend. The boss focussed on
what his staff did, rather than the
hours they put in. “Because there
was a focus on our productivity, I
made a point of doing one thing at
a time, and turning myself back to
it when I felt I was drifting off,”
said Ms Barker. “At the end of each
day, I felt I had got a lot more
done.” We at the Idler predict that
the four-day-week will be seen as
normal in ten or 20 years’ time.
 idler’s diary
Dislike
We see that Facebook, after
busily destroying magazines and
newspapers for the last ten years,
has launched its own real-life
magazine, Grow, aimed at getting
entrepreneurs to spend their
marketing dollars on the dodgy
spying platform. Weirdly, Facebook
deny that Grow is actually a
magazine, despite it being a bound
collection of words and images
printed on paper. “Grow by
Facebook is a business marketing
programme that shares thought
leadership content directly with
our clients through an annual
event as well as print and online
marketing channels,” Leila
15
Woodington, Facebook’s head of
business marketing in northern
Europe, told The Times. Glad that’s
cleared that one up, then.
First draughts
Finally, fans of cartoonists Modern
Toss will be thrilled to learn that
they have launched their own range
of beer. The charmingly named
Horse Piss, a lager, and Ditch
Scooper, a pale ale, are available
direct from Toss themselves. Perfect
for autumn slumping. The beers
were made in association
with Sussex brewers Goldmark
Craft Beers and look mighty tasty.
Get a case for the summer barbie.
moderntoss.com
How I live
Rob Kilner
Lunch-time loafer
Rob is a Leeds office worker who becomes a flâneur for an hour a day
M y day job is in a stockbroker’s
call centre and involves a lot
of listening, talking, pressing
buttons and concentrating. So it’s
good to get outside at lunchtime.
Lunchtime brings freedom.
In Sweden some workers have
volunteered to be chipped, like a
pet. “I want to be part of the
future,” said one. The implants
mean they can open doors, use the
photocopier, and buy smoothies
without the need for a key fob or
swipe card. Tech experts call this
“Augmented Humanity”.
I decided to augment my
humanity by going out to lunch.
I call it #workerslunchtime. In
the early days of my lunch-hour
excursions, I would walk for
half-an-hour before turning back,
to see how far I could get. I plotted
a circular lunchtime range on a
map, which revealed an area the
size of a small country (the
16
Polynesian Island nation of Tuvalu)
at my disposal.
And the lunch hours add up.
Twelve months of them equate to
around two weeks of free time.
Don’t be sheepish: Rob makes friends at the Meanwood Valley Urban Farm
Running, cycling and driving
clearly extend the boundaries.
One day I made it to York by train,
before having to sprint to jump
on the return journey to Leeds.
I gatecrashed a canoe training
session down at Leeds Docks
one lunchtime, and taking an
extra hour had a trot around the
excellent and ancient Middleton
Park on a horse and came back
to work smelling like a stable –
but rejuvenated.
One of the most memorable
lunchtimes was a walk as part of the
Terminalia Festival, an annual
psychogeographic shindig. Artist
Phill Harding led a group silently
around the city centre, at speed,
based on his real-life algorithm
17
 idler · 62
(straight on for two roads, left one,
right one, repeat), which meant
that even he didn’t know where
we were going, or would end up.
It was strangely meditative, and felt
like being inside a piece of music.
Some days I go out looking for
animals. Leeds was, historically, a
market town. The tracks and roads
were used for centuries by horse-
drawn carts and carriages, and
pigs and cattle would be driven in
from local farms to be sold on the
Headrow, our main thoroughfare,
or at various markets. Animals
were everywhere.
These days it is harder to spot
fauna. But not impossible, by any
means. On my lunchtime rambles
I have spotted a man carrying a
bearded dragon, a woman with a
cat on a lead and a bloke taking his
ferret for a walk – all within 10
minutes of the office.
There’s Meanwood Valley Urban
Farm which is just three miles from
the office, and houses pigs, sheep,
cows, horses, llamas and a fine café,
The Barn, that does exceptional
coffee and a hearty full English.
There’s even wildlife, if you know
where to look.
One lunchtime I went looking
for rabbits and found a family of
healthy looking foxes in an
abandoned churchyard. Within
cycling distance there are also
peregrines, deer, rabbits, marsh
harriers and buzzards, in wasteland,
18
woods and parks. At the right time
of year, you might even see salmon
or sea trout leaping downriver at
Knostrop Weir.
The beauty of lunchtime is its
compactness: it is sandwiched
between two thick morning and
afternoon slabs. It’s an efficient use
of time. I joined the Bingo Hall and
spent 30 minutes playing bingo one
lunch, just because my grandad
used to work there when it was
Pilkington’s Glass and I wanted to
see what it looked like now. I spent
three minutes on a sunbed in an
Amusement Arcade to see if I felt
like I was on a beach (I didn’t),
took piano lessons in a stranger’s
basement at the fabulous Basement
Arts Project, a contemporary gallery
in a terraced, brick family house.
In my lunch hour I have also test
driven a Tesla, listened to drunk
Karaoke, seen a pagan wedding,
listened to a choir, had my
fortune told by a gypsy, joined
unprofessional philosophers in the
pub, played chess and table tennis,
been on guided tours, talks and
lectures, visited libraries and
exhibitions, dined with the Chinese
Elderly Associations, or at a Langar
– communal kitchen – at the Sikh
Temple. Take off your shoes and
make a donation.
Recently I’ve attempted to bring
adventure to my morning
commute. I decided that it would
be nice to travel to work by the
 how i live · rob kilner

Leeds-Liverpool canal, but I towards the Dales, avoiding

capsised in Kirkstall – four miles
west of the centre, and once
painted by Turner – in a beginner’s
inflatable kayak.
More successful was a recent,
intra-week mini-break with a couple
of pals. Taking advantage of the
heatwave, we set off from work on a
Tuesday evening with our sleeping
and bivvy bags. After cycling
tarmac where possible, we replaced
lost fluids in a country pub, then
slept out under the stars among
heather and bracken until the sun
came up, making it back in time to
clock in.
@workerslunchtime on Instagram, and
@wkrslunchtime on Twitter. Hashtag
#workerslunchtime to share your stories

Off the map: Rob sets off for another adventure far from the madding crowd

19
Problems
Virginia Ironside
Our agony aunt tells it straight. Send your issues to us at mail@idler.co.uk
Reality check
I’ve been with a counsellor for a
year now and we are trying to
uncover what she calls the “real”
me. I find this very difficult and I’m
getting depressed about my failure
to find any centre to my personality.
She says we just have to keep
working at it. My partner is very
dismissive and says I’m wasting my
money (£60 a week) but I keep
feeling I’m on the brink of
something and that now I’ve put in
so much time it would be stupid to
stop. My counsellor agrees. My
problem is that I still feel depressed
even though on the surface I
apparently function perfectly well.
She says this is a “coping
mechanism”.
Caroline, by email
Y our original letter is too long
to print but I do feel very
strongly that you should either try to
find another counsellor or stop
altogether. There is no such thing
as a “real” anyone. We are all
20
multi-faceted personalities – at
least, that’s how I see it. I think
that rather than looking for a
non-existent “real you” you should
regard yourself as consisting of the
cast of a giant opera. There’s the
bad you, the scheming you, the you
in the chorus, the sad you, the sick
you, the kind you, the loving you,
the loyal you, the disloyal you –
I could go on forever.
To disregard your functioning
ability as merely a “coping
mechanism”, as if it’s some
fraudulent veneer over a seething
pit of turbulent feelings, is total
tosh. The functioning you is just
as real as any of the other bits.
Saying that you must continue
because you’re so near your goal
of discovering this holy grail of the
real you, is honestly the behaviour
of an addict. “I’ve gambled so
much money away, I must surely
win next time” is how the gambler’s
mind works – and you’re being
encouraged to think like that by
your counsellor who may or may
 problems · viginia ironside
not be financially motivated.
If you can’t cope without a
counsellor, at least find one who is
more mature than one who believes
this extremely simplistic approach
to the “self” – or, as I prefer to think
of it – selves.
Leaky friend
I have been friends with Anna for
years now, but I feel really betrayed
because it turns out that she has
been talking about me behind my
back. Not only that, but I told her
about some problem between my
husband and me in confidence and
it now turns out she’s been telling
everyone about it. Should I
confront her? Or just drop her like
a hot potato? The problem is that
we have so many friends in
common and I am fond of her
– which actually makes this
treachery so much harder to bear.
Fi, Clapham, London
T his is a very difficult one. As
far as talking behind your back
goes, don’t most people talk about
each other behind their backs? Of
course we hate to think about it,
but I’m sure people have long
conversations about you and me
and everyone else in the world. We
talk about our friends partly
because it’s just fascinating, but
partly in an effort to understand
them and hope other people can
shed light on their behaviour.
21
Sometimes – and this might be
the case with your friend – it can be
that someone breaks a confidence
out of compassion for you. For
instance, let’s say a person has told
you in confidence that she’s just
lost a large amount of money. A
mutual friend rings you and says
that this other friend has behaved
uncharacteristically moodily and
meanly. I think it’s certainly fair to
break your promise and reveal that
actually she’s just been dealt a
dreadful blow, and to ask the friend
to be more compassionate. Perhaps
don’t actually give the details of her
distress, but defend her.
I think you should have it out
with your friend so she knows she’s
been found out. But if you want to
keep in contact with her, remember
that nothing you tell her will be in
confidence. She is incapable of
keeping a secret. That way,
although you limit the confiding
nature of the relationship, you can
still keep other bits.
Mid-life crisis
I’m going to be 40 this year and I
want to celebrate it (!) by giving my
friends dinner in a tiny local Greek
restaurant. Unfortunately, they
don’t have a big table for more than
ten people with three other smaller
ones for three each. My problem is
firstly: do I ask people to pay for
themselves? How do I decide who
 idler · 62
sits at the big table without making
those at the small tables feel
second-class citizens? And finally,
what do I say to the people I can’t
ask? I know they’ll be hurt if they
find out.
Stella, by email
T his is a terrible idea. You can’t
possibly expect people to pay.
The people at the small tables will
22
feel left out – but not as left out as
those not asked. Drop the idea and
if your home is too small, then find
a friend with a big enough room to
accommodate all your friends. Ask
them for drinks only – and pay for
the booze and nibbles – and put
NO PRESENTS on the invitation.
Be generous. And if you can’t afford
the booze, then hold a celebratory
tea, instead.
Modern Toss

23
Idler News
By Andrew Smart
Living dolls
What is the role and ethics of robots in the future of the sex industry?
S ocial robots will increasingly
collaborate, look after and help
humans with anything ranging
from healthcare to education.
Naturally, robots will also interact
with humans sexually. There are
many kinds of ethical questions for
social robots. How should we treat
them? Maybe more ominously for
superintelligent robots, how should
they treat us? Should social robots
have the same moral capacities that
humans do? The same applies to
sex robots – what kinds of moral,
ethical, cognitive and sexual
capacities should they have? Are
robot sex slaves OK to have?
Feminists have argued that sex
robots are merely an extension of
patriarchy, and the tech brothers’
solution to the threat of female
independence. Sex robots result
24
from a misogynistic impulse
about dehumanising women.
But proponents say that sex robots
can have a therapeutic use for
social misfits, or others with
disabilities who might otherwise
not be able to enjoy sex.
The idea of sex with robots
carries with it all the moral and
ethical problems that come with
social robots – in addition to
sexual ethics and morality. What
if an advanced but humanoid
malfunctioning sex robot rapes
a human?
Before we dive into the many
problematic and also potentially
amazing aspects of robot sex –
we start with a discussion about
biological sex. Why do we
reproduce sexually? Why do we
love sex so much?
 idler news · andrew smart
Sexual reproduction is the
dominant form of reproduction
for all creatures that are made of
multiple complex cells, i.e. cells
with a membrane and nucleus that
hold genetic information. At the
most basic level we are nothing but
multicellular organisms. But
reproduction is actually only a
small part of human sexuality –
most human sex happens without
the goal of having a baby.
Sexual reproduction does not
even necessarily imply sex between
individual males and females.
“Selfing” (not to be confused with
selfies) is when female and male
gametes (the cells that fuse during
sexual reproduction, sperm and
egg) are present in the same
organism – in other words some
creatures can fertilise themselves in
an extreme form of inbreeding.
A puzzle in biology has long
been: why sex? Why has sexual
reproduction become such a
successful strategy for life? Many
plants, fungi and single-cell
organisms reproduce asexually
– but these are relatively simple
creatures compared to humans,
apes, dogs and snakes. It seems that
for complex life forms like us,
sexual reproduction with random
mutations has allowed our DNA to
acquire information about what
kinds of traits are the most useful
for survival. For humans, our big
brains and ability to cooperate in
25
social groups are genetically
specified traits that have allowed
us to – for better or worse –
dominate the entire planet.
However, there are many
problems with this apparent
explanation of human sexual
reproduction in terms of evolution.
We are all familiar with the oft-used
but oft-misunderstood phrase
“survival of the fittest” – but how
do we define fitness? You might
say that fit organisms are those
organisms which more often survive
and reproduce. But as the
philosopher Karl Popper pointed
out, if we use this definition of
fitness – those who more often
survive and reproduce – in our
explanation we get, “Evolution
tends to produce higher forms
because those forms which more
often survive and reproduce more
often survive and reproduce.” In
other words, we get a meaningless
tautology, like “All tables are
tables”. So Popper proposed that
fitness is always relative to the
constantly changing conditions –
“What is fit here and now is what
survives here and now.”
Even if we restrict ourselves to
humans, the costs of pursuing
sexual reproduction are enormous.
Starting with puberty, humans
spend an inordinate amount of time
thinking about and trying to have
sex. According to Nietzsche: “The
degree and type of a person’s
 idler · 62
sexuality reaches up into the
furthermost peaks of their spirit.”
Can we update that to say:
“The degree and type of a
robot’s sexuality reaches up
into the furthermost peaks of
their spirit”?
Many animals who reproduce
sexually have sex for all kinds of
reasons – like maintaining social
relationships. In fact, among our
closest relatives, Bonobo sex seems
to be the social glue for the whole
group. Bonobos pretty much have
every kind of sex you can imagine
(and probably many kinds you
can’t). Bonobos have homosexual
sex, they masturbate each other
incessantly regardless of gender,
they have orgies. Bonobos solve
conflicts not through fighting but
through sex. Most Bonobo sex is
not for getting female Bonobos
pregnant – even though of course
that happens too.
The diversity of human sexuality
is also a puzzle for biologists. Why
are there all these different kinds of
sex when only one kind of sex leads
to offspring? One idea is that nature
has made us so obsessed with sex to
guarantee that at least some of us
will reproduce – like the fact that
men produce hundreds of billions
of sperm and ejaculate countless
times (per day sometimes), even
though it only takes one sperm
from one ejaculation to reproduce.
Women likewise produce far more
26
eggs than could ever become
children.
At least at first glance, sex with
robots will presumably not be for
reproduction. However, we should
not rule out the possibility that
some kind of artificial womb in a
sex robot will be able to carry and
birth a baby. The uses of sex robots
so far have primarily been for pure
pleasure and fantasy – for men.
Someone built a Scarlett Johansson
sex robot.
Recently the Foundation for
Responsible Robotics published
a document calling for a public
debate about sex robots. We
welcome the opportunity to
participate in this public
debate, as we feel sex with
robots is not only sexy, it is also
extremely important.
A report by the prestigious
scientific journal Nature awkwardly
tries to describe the current (lack
of) relationship between academic
research and robots and sex.
Naturally, robotics has a long and
prestigious history in the academy,
going back to the early days of
computers in the 1940s. Society
now seems in the early stages of a
robotics and AI revolution: self-
driving cars, personal in-home
assistants who can cater to your
every whim if you’re too lazy to get
up and turn off the lights or lock
the door. But these applications of
robotics are trivial compared to sex.
 idler news · andrew smart

It is widely known that the
majority of Internet traffic is
sex-related. And the majority of
this sex traffic is men looking for
porn. The robotics and AI industry,
as well as the academic robotics
world (the line between which is
increasingly being blurred) consists
of a majority of white men. If we
contemplate the future of sex and
robots, the technology will largely
cater to men because sex robots will
be designed for and by men.
What are the social implications
of widespread commercial adoption
of sex robots? What will the advent
of truly autonomous, difficult-to-
tell-from-human sex robots mean
for biological sexual relationships?
The myriad fetishes and sexual
interests, subcultures and identities
surrounding sex could be greatly
enhanced by sex robots – indeed,
sex with robots is already its own
fetish subculture. How will
sex technology becoming
more commonplace affect
our still-troubled gender and
sex relationships?

“I’m not sure vaping after sex is quite the same.”

27
The Good Stuff
Annabel Sampson and Charlotte Brook are consciously consuming
Pop idols: Charlotte Posner’s prints
If you have ever been mesmerised
by the spangled stage-gear of iconic
pop groups like The Jackson 5 and
the Spice Girls, then you’ll love
Charlotte Posner’s pop dolls.
Her distinctive catwalk sketches
of five hand-painted figures with a
socking-great headpiece are an
aesthetic mash-up and an utter
28
sensation. Charlotte claims that
“there are no limits to our
imagination”. We have no doubt.
Wear her dolls as a golden pendant
around your neck, have them as a
poster on your wall or tattooed on
your phone case. Much joy.
charlotteposner.com
 the good stuff
Art full: The Edition Shop
The Good Stuff very much likes
the ethos and eye of Sarah Borrett,
artist, writer and founder of The
Edition Shop. “When I first started
out as painter I became aware of
the frustration of selling through
a high street gallery,” she says.
“The commission was high and I
didn’t enjoy that the customer was
paying way more than I would
charge myself, and often for the
frame it came in, one that they
would want to change as soon as
they got home.”
The Edition Shop is her solution:
all works, originals and prints, are
£200 or less, they are always sold
unframed and she only takes 25%
commission.  The Edition Shop
currently represents 24 artists; the
pictures are invariably colourful,
cheerful and slightly offbeat. “The
work I choose, I admit, is very
29
personal!” she says. “I was slightly
obsessed with the Bloomsbury
group when I did my A-Levels –
I painted doors, lamps and chairs
for my exams in the tones of
Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant
– and when I see that colourist
element in an artist I usually jump
at them! And, I love something a
little quirky.”
The Good Stuff’s favourites
include Sarah Raphael Balme’s
droll Renaissance-style formal
portraits (La Signora And Her
Parrot; The Viscount And His
Cockerel), Imogen Guy’s rolling
Scottish landscapes and Emily
Maude’s jolly and slightly magical-
realist illustrations of everyday life
– floating lighthouses, chubby
cottages, blushing bachelors and
matriarchal cats. Glorious.
theeditionshop.co.uk
 idler · 62
Gone to pot: Karin Hossack’s bowls
A bunch of grapes could do worse
than live out their short shelf-life
reclining across a big wobbly bowl
made by potter Karin Hossack. The
“pedestal bowl” is the crockery
equivalent of a platform boot,
offering a heightened experience
and elevating the everyday (boot/
fruit) to something grander.
The American Karin majored
in Photography and minored in
Ceramics in Brooklyn, married
a British man and has lived in
London for 30 years; she is a
part-time librarian in her local
public library.
The Good Stuff found out that
her daughter is Izy Hossack of the
successful Top With Cinnamon
blog and cookbook. “By the time
30
Izy was 15, she had started her food
blog and was desperate for some
handmade pottery,” Karin recalls.
“She came to me and asked if I
could make some pots for her and
I thought, why not?” Previously a
“thrower”, Karin got into hand-
building, and refreshed her
memory of how to make glazes and
fire a kiln at Putney School of Art
and Design. Good news, realist
readers, Karin prioritises practicality
and fires all her scallop-edged
vessels to be dishwasher- and
oven-proof.  ”My pieces are not
too fussy. I let the edges and colour
do the talking,” she says. Pudding
is served.
Etsy.com/shop/kchossackpottery 
or @kchossack_pottery
 the good stuff
Earthly delights: Land chocolate
“The Internet is a strange place,”
says Phil Landers. Correct – but it
doesn’t lead all of us onto
confectionery forums where
chocolate-making chancers and
make-at-home hacks can help each
other to use an Indian spice grinder
and hairdryer to turn Honduran
cocoa beans into gourmet small-
batch chocolate gold. Phil takes us
back to 2012 when he was “a
no-good sugar addict, passing time
between long days in a BBC radio
production office by blasting
through any cheap sugar I could get
hold of.” He quit, made for the
tropics and found cacao and his
calling in Guatemala.
Back home, he persuaded choccy
supremo Paul A Young to give him
a job in his chocolatier’s. By night,
31
he was burning the midnight oil
“getting lost on chocolate forums”
and making bars in his kitchen to
take in to Young to critique in the
morning. Eventually he flew the
nest and Landers became Land (for
brevity, “because I soon realised I
hated calling it after my own name”
and to echo the importance of
where on planet Earth the beans
are grown). Phil rents a former
furniture workshop in Bethnal
Green for the production kitchen
and it has now been his full-time
job for a year and a half. The Malt
Dark is a favourite at Good Stuff
HQ but truthfully each one is so
delicious we’ll be turning oblong
by Christmas.
£5.50 for a bar; 
landchocolate.com
 idler · 62
Pup parade: Von Allen’s Heartfelt Dogs
Dogs are regularly imbued with
emotion – it’s all in the eyes.
Huddersfield’s Von Allen and her
needle-felted dogs have a lot of
character. They’re inspired by her
dog, Barney, and how his
personality adapts to charm his way
through various situations. It’s the
captions we really enjoy. Like
Conrad the dog, who “oblivious to
the traffic headed towards the
museum”, which is perfectly
encapsulated in his beady glass
eyes. Or, Sidney the dog, who was
“bemused” because “the letter was
32
signed ‘anonymous’ but he was sure
he recognised the handwriting”.
Trivial, everyday expressions we see
in humans are brought to life in
these quite masterly woollen
creatures in Burberry coats and
Dr. Martens boots or a salmon
pink dress and wicker basket.
Von Allen trained as a bookbinder
before discovering the art of
needle-felting – she now offers
classes for fellow enthusiasts.
Check the website for dates
and locations.
vonallen.co.uk
 the good stuff
Got the message: Memobottle
Down with single-use plastics.
Up with a glugging gadget that
ought to last forever. Welcome to
Memobottle, the water bottle
shaped like a notebook. It arrives on
British shores from Australia, where
childhood friends Jonathan Byrt
and Jesse Leeworthy, product
engineer and accountant
respectively, dreamt up the idea
and raised the funds to turn it into a
bona fide bottle business on
Kickstarter. “We designed it to
overcome two problems: single-use
water bottles; and round bottles’
inability to fit in our laptop bags
and backpacks,” Jesse
says. “Everything else you put in
there – computers, books, iPads,
wallets – is flat, so we decided to
33
redesign the water bottle so that it is
optimised for transport.” 
How smart, and having road-
tested the transport-optimised flat
flagon in A5 size (it can also comes
in A6 and shrimpy A7) we can
confirm it’s as convenient as it
sounds, though you might need to
ignore any initial self-consciousness
of sipping from such an avant-garde
vessel. As Jonathan told The Good
Stuff over the line from sunny
Melbourne: “It’s definitely a head
turner … Embrace the
attention.” And, through working
with Water.org, with every bottle
sold Memobottle gives one person
access to two months’ clean water.
£30 for A5; memobottle.com
 idler · 62
Crock of gold:
Emma Louise Payne ceramics
Emma Payne has done what
city-sick 30-year-olds yearn to do.
She’s flown back to the family nest
on a sprawling farm with goats,
ponies and hens in the sleepy
parish of Henley-on-Thames.
Previously, she’d been much further
afield, most recently in
Copenhagen, where she did her
MA in Ceramic Design.
The Good Stuff caught wind of
Emma’s ceramics before we were
acquainted, on the walls of a south
London kitchen near Brockwell
34
Park that were covered in her
bamboo-coloured tiles, which
reflected the meadowy, overgrown
garden outside. She also makes
pristine, sculptural plates and mugs
as well as the odd ceramic handrail
– an impressive technological
accomplishment, it has bubbles left
over from the baking that serve as a
tactile enhancement to lead you up
the stairs. No commission seems to
be too much for Emma – who is
also amazingly nice.
emmalouisepayne.com
 the good stuff

Modern Toss

35
Slow tech
Stylish dumbphone. Review by Tom Hodgkinson
A round five years ago I gave up
my smartphone and traded it
for a dumbphone. My dumbphone
would have been seen as quite a
status symbol in 1995. It is tiny and
features a calculator, two games
plus you can text on it. It cost £10
to buy and the tariff is something
like £18 per month. It never runs
out of battery and because I cannot
check emails on it or go on to the
world wide shopping web, I am
blessed with islands of stillness
and nothingness as I go about my
day. Getting rid of the smartphone
is an easy way to inject idleness
into your life.
However, it is possibly a little
unsophisticated and clunky. My
mother laughs at me when I bring
it out. So I was intrigued to meet
Marcia Caines at a conference
recently. She is in charge of
marketing for a German company
called Punkt who are in the
business of producing what we
might call slow tech. Their simple
phone, the MP01, was conceived
36
by British furniture designer Jasper
Morrison and is indeed a satisfying
object. It chirps like a bird when
you get a phone call - either the
cooing of a dove or the cuckooing
of a … erm … cuckoo. It has a
pretty good predictive text function
and the keys make a nice click
when you press them. Like my
old dumphone, it has a long
battery life. 
The founder of Punkt, Petter
Neby, is trying to free us, he says,
from the non-stop distraction of
smartphones. “It is important to
find time to disconnect and
rediscover the simple things. The
MP01 is a liberating device that
removes unnecessary distractions
and goes back to the essentials of
communication.”
At £175 the Punkt phone is
considerably pricier than my old
dumbphone but I support the
enterprise. Anyone who is helping
to break apart the Silicon Valley-
forg’d manacles must be praised.
section · author

37
Poem

paternus

by Andrew McMillan


it feels voyeuristic
seeing it here on the street
wind-tossed nest small down lingering
between the fingers of the twigs
seeming somehow dense but light
like a gathering of private
hair shorn off in preparation
for the letting go of someone

I am thinking of my mother
of my sister who is pregnant
for the second time of all
the empty rooms in the city
of patience of waiting for a birth
of these tiny eggs at my feet
of this being one less time the shell
will crack life will shudder out hungry

Andrew McMillan’s new collection is playtime, published by Jonathan Cape

38
Modern Toss
 idler · 62

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40
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 idler · 62
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 section · author
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libertas per cultum

43
idler · 62

44
Interview

Canadian idol
His 12 Rules of Life has dominated the bestseller lists all year, infuriating
as many people as it enlightens. Is he an alt-right bogeyman or a realist
with a steadfast grip on the complexities of life? Tim Lott tackles
the enigma that is Jordan Peterson

V ery few, if any, public intellectuals in living memory have made the
impact of Jordan Peterson. The Canadian psychology professor’s book,
12 Rules for Life has been at the top of the bestseller lists in most of the
Anglophone world since it was published in January.
His video lectures on the psychological meaning of the Bible have
captured huge audiences for such an esoteric subject, and his talks in front
of a class of 30-or-so bemused looking students wandering in and out of
a shabby classroom at the University of Toronto have been watched by
millions. Those lectures, on the meaning and structure of belief, are
similarly obscure.
So why is Jordan Peterson so famous? Or as some pundits would have it,
infamous, since he has become the scourge of the PC brigade, the anti-
Christ of social justice warriors and the hammer of feminism.
It’s hard to say. On one hand, he has certainly touched a nerve, by
challenging a fair number of liberal orthodoxies – although only to the
extent of stating baldly what would have been a consensus view 20 or even
ten years ago.
He believes women are fundamentally, biologically different in their
psychological make-up to men. He thinks the “rule of the white male patri-
archy” is a dangerous myth. He believes the universities have been infiltrated
by far-left ideologues so that most liberal arts teaching is corrupted. And
above all, he believes that what he calls the “masculine spirit” has been
allowed to decay into weakness and self-hatred. As a result he is seen as a
misogynist, anti-feminist, conservative demagogic member of the alt-right by
his opponents. This is very far from being the truth.

45
 idler · 62
Friend or foe to the idling classes?
J or d a n B Peterson is an unlikely
pin-up for millions of millennials.
A saturnine 56-year-old Canadian
professor of psychology at the University
of Toronto, he talks in a low, flat tone,
with little expression on his haunted,
hollow-cheeked face.
His references are deeply
unfashionable, with his thought rooted
in Bible studies. And his teachings – to
his many enemies – are trapped
somewhere in the 1950s.  Channel 4 News presenter Cathy
No, it’s not OK for men to be weak
and unmanly, he says. Women want
real men; strong men. Clever women
want their husbands to be even brighter
than them. And men are different
from women.
In a famous passage in his
international bestseller, 12 Rules for
Life, Peterson compares men to
lobsters. The alpha male lobsters live in
the best place in the sea, eat the best
seafood and get to mate with the most
attractive, healthiest female lobsters.
And so it is among humans. Work
hard, behave responsibly and don’t give
in to self-indulgence – booze, drugs or
self-help therapy – and you’ll be top
dog, or top lobster. Go the other way
– give into all those temptations – and
you’ll come tumbling down the
crustacean ladder, and end up in
self-induced misery and helplessness.
The same applies to bringing up
children, says Peterson. Thirty years of
child-centred rearing theory have
produced a generation of narcissistic
cry-babies, incapable of grappling with
the mammoth problems of grown-up
life. As he puts it, children “are much
46
more likely to go complexly astray if
they are not trained, disciplined and
properly encouraged”.
The funny thing is, this old-fashioned
instruction to millennials and their
lily-livered parents has gone down a
treat with the people he’s telling off.
Peterson’s lectures have become huge
YouTube hits. 
He rocketed to fame in Britain earlier
this year when he tore apart the badly
prepared, right-on questions from
Newman. The clip has now been
watched more than 10 million times on
YouTube.
Newman tried to take down Peterson
for his stance against transgender rights.
When Newman said his reaction was
offensive, Peterson said: “You’re
exercising your freedom of speech to
certainly risk offending me. And that’s
fine! I think more power to you, as far
as I’m concerned.”
Newman’s attack collapsed, she
admitting, “You have got me.”
So, is Peterson a prophet of
freedom or does he merely teach
servility? Surely he’s kryptonite to the
Idler philosophy?
He certainly hasn’t got any time for
hungover layabouts smoking their way
through the day in squalid man-caves.
But his thinking does align with the
high-minded side of idling life and the
Idler’s motto, Libertas per cultum
– Freedom through Culture. Only with
a trained, educated, disciplined mind
can you find the real freedom to enjoy a
fully-expanded, fully-lived, liberated
life. All the best idlers will agree.
– harry mount
 interview · jordan peterson

I discovered Jordan Peterson long before he became well known because

of my interest in story structure as teacher of creative writing. I started to
watch his lectures on the psychological meaning of great stories like
Pinocchio, The Lion King, Peter Pan and The Little Mermaid. It struck me not
only what a brilliant speaker he was, but also what an inspired teacher. His
ability to take complex ideas and simplify them into a digestible form was
truly remarkable. And his ideas were exciting – suggesting a universal human
nature (another reason the control-left hate him) that emerges in historical
patterns that are universal and ever changing, but stable over time.
All his arguments he backed up with facts and research. He was passionate
and certain in his conclusions. These conclusions added up to nothing less
than the rediscovery of the spirit of Western culture – of individualism,
freedom and free will. It is a message people have been very hungry for –
particularly young men, who, he says, are dying to hear his message of
personal responsibility. His answer to life is “pick up the heaviest weight you
can and carry it”. Life is not about getting what you want as soon as you can.
It is about shouldering responsibility for your life. This will give your life
meaning – and it’s meaning that is lacking in modern discourse.
Beyond this it is impossible to say in this brief space why Jordan Peterson
is so important. To understand you need to spend a few hours watching his
university teaching online. But beware – Peterson is addictive.
When I met him on this visit to London, it was just after his sold-out
appearance at the Hammersmith Apollo. It was the fourth time I had
interviewed him. He looked relaxed and fit, and apparently unaffected by all
the mud that has been slung at him. Meeting him is always a privilege,
partly because he has a unique ability to listen closely, a rare quality. I have
never sat with anyone who gave my questions such intense concentration
and consideration.
I started by asking him about how he felt appearing in front of an audience
of 5,000 at the Hammersmith Apollo, an event I had witnessed for myself the
previous night.

tim lott The last time I went to the Hammersmith Apollo was to see Bob
Marley and the Wailers and now it’s Jordan Peterson. It’s surreal beyond
belief. What is it doing to you? It must be hard to hold on to reality. For you,
it must be like being taken into the desert with Satan and being offered all
these treasures.
  From being a relatively obscure Toronto academic, you went to being the
toast of the town across the world. What’s it doing to you? Are you immune?

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 idler · 62

jordan peterson You’d never want to consider yourself immune to such

things. That’s the pathway to perdition. You should know the risks. There was
an article written by Carl Jung, called ‘The Relationship between the Ego
and the Unconscious’. It’s about the danger of letting yourself be possessed
by ownership of an archetype. You have to keep yourself separate from the
archetypes.
tl What archetype are you in danger of being possessed by?
jp It’s the same thing that elevates people who are in any sort of position of
untrammelled authority.

“The funny thing about the temptations

is that they’re not that useful to me.
What would I want?”

tl I’m just wondering why people are particularly attracted to you. You’ve
become this creature that’s called Jordan Peterson who, in a short amount of
time, has become really important. I could feel that last night. It’s not really
being noticed. The mainstream media don’t seem quite to know what to do
with it.
jp Everything the mainstream media looks at is political. This doesn’t work. It’s
not political. It doesn’t fit into that narrative.
tl Let me ask you this, since it appears you are fully aware of the temptations
that may lie in front of you …
jp The funny thing about the temptations is that they’re not that useful to me.
What would I want?
tl The temptations of the ego are enormous. The temptation of putting your-
self above other human beings, of putting yourself in a place where you’ll be
viewed as a guru figure. The temptation would be to elevate yourself.
jp Yes, but I also think it through. One of the things you can do if you’re tempt-
ed by – for instance – a relationship outside your marriage, you can fall prey
to the temptation or you can think it through. You can think through the
months and the years, not the days and the weeks, and you can ask yourself:
“Do I really want that much trouble?” Do you really want a ten-year divorce
with custody battles for your kids? Do you really want economic ruin? Do
you want to bring misery to that many people? Is that worth it? That de-
creases the glamour. So when I see a situation like this, I also think it through.
What is there of benefit to me in this? You asked me how I was dealing with
this. The answer to that is, fundamentally, by truncating my time. Mostly I

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 interview · jordan peterson

concentrate on today, the next hour. My schedule is so busy that that’s the
proper level of analysis. My daughter is working as my assistant. She tracks
things on a weekly and monthly basis. I travel with my wife. She figures out
what I’m doing next. I concentrate on what I’m doing now. Mostly I concen-
trate on today, the next hour. There’s no point in thinking far ahead now.
tl But it’s one of the things you prescribe – to aim at the future.

“YouTube is going to kill TV. Stone dead.

There’s nothing TV can do that YouTube
can’t do. There’s endless number of
things that YouTube can do
that television can’t do”

jp Sometimes you can’t. When things are changing, there’s no sense planning
for a future you can’t control. Sometimes you’re in a situation like that,
where the ground underneath your feet is moving sufficiently rapidly so your
prognostications are likely to be wrong. Or you can’t handle that much
complexity. I keep thinking this will peak and decline. We’re in uncharted
technological water here. The YouTube videos and podcasts are way more
significant than people think. YouTube is going to kill TV. Stone dead.
There’s nothing TV can do that YouTube can’t do. There’s endless number
of things that YouTube can do that television can’t do.
tl How would you sum up the importance of what you are doing?
jp I’m making a case for the restoral of the metaphysical substrate of Western
culture. I think that the idea that the collective element of a person’s identity
is paramount is wrong. It makes people ill. It reduces us to the tribal. The
Western idea that the individual is sovereign is correct. We can’t lose that.
tl I’ve struggled my whole life to try and work out how I should behave and
how to be good. You’re the only person who has really approached that.
jp That’s crucial. In the audience there are often rough guys. They’re happy to
come talk to me afterward. It’s a relief. They needed a reason.
tl It’s a tough argument to beat. Why should you be good? It’s a very subtle
argument to present. To reiterate, you think the people who are coming to
your talks, given that most people probably don’t have my good fortune to sit
around and watch Jordan Peterson videos, have penetrated these ideas?
jp I think casual browsers are relatively uncommon. Lots of people come and
say they’ve watched all the videos.

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 idler · 62

tl And conversations you have with them are pretty intelligent?

jp Yes. It’s almost never political. One variant of what people say is: “You’ve
helped me articulate things that I always knew to be true but didn’t know
how to say.”
tl That’s what myths are, isn’t it? Things you know you know, but don’t know
how to say. Represented in a visual or story form. The next stage is to put it
into a verbal form. That seems to be what you’ve managed to understand.
You’ve managed to take those myths, which is what we live by whether we
like it or not, and unpick them to put them in a linear, verbal form.
  We go and see The Lion King and we go and see Pinocchio and we know
that they affect us, but we don’t know why. This is how I came to you in the
first place, because I tell stories and I’m fascinated by why some things
engage you and some things do not.
jp It’s even interesting to consider what it means to be grabbed, and why you
would use that metaphor. It’s something that happens to you rather than
something that you do. It’s like an autonomous force. That’s what really
struck me, as a psychoanalyst, about Jung. He wrote that there are autono-
mous forces that work in the psyche. That’s a very strange claim.
tl I think we’re in an era now where we’re beginning to discover the uncon-
scious. A hundred years after Freud discovered the concept. I urge you to
write a book on story. I would love to see your work on it. You’ve touched on
story, and you’ve done the great story, the Bible
jp One of the things I’m going to do next is a series of lectures on Exodus.
tl Are you going to carry on right through to the New Testament?
jp We’ll see. It’s a long journey. I’d like to.
tl You must have a lot of people throwing offers at you.
jp I’m working on this online university. I think it’s destined for failure because
it’s so improbable. But I have very smart kids working on it and we’re not
putting lectures online with multiple-choice tests. We’re building the idea.
Whatever the Internet is, it’s not a university. It’s something completely
different. To utilise the computational technology that’s at hand for educa-
tion, means to rethink education from the bottom up.
tl The Idler magazine stands, in a sense, against the modern world, particu-
larly the Protestant work ethic, hence the idling. It’s a classical notion of life.
The purpose of life should be creative leisure. It’s all about getting yourself
away from your screen and using creative leisure, as opposed to the strictures
and soul-destroying elements of work. Isn’t there a contradiction there?
Your idea is that liberation comes through hard work. Aren’t most jobs just
a straightjacket that stop people from being themselves?

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 interview · jordan peterson

jp I would say beware of generalising past your own experience. You’re a

creative person. That’s not common. Creative people and non-creative
people are not the same. I’ve met creative and non-creative people in my
clinical practice. Creative people die without their creative enterprises. It’s
like they’re a tree and maybe they’re a bifurcated tree, and half of that is
creative impulse. If they’re in a straightjacket and they don’t pursue that
creative impulse, they get depressed and curl up and die. For conscientious
types, the conservative types, the straightjacket isn’t a straightjacket – it’s the
dutiful and proper thing to do next.
  The Idler issue is very interesting. Other things we might ask ourselves:
Imagine we had leisure time, what would we do with it? The romantic
notion would be that we would fill our time with creative enterprises. But
there’s an error there because of this trait. It’s not that common. You are actu-
ally extremely creative. You’re off the charts. The thing about creative people
is that they will work very hard at creative things. But if it’s not creative,
there’s no spark for them. I’ve seen very few people manage that.

“We’re beasts of burden, absolutely.

We want the freedom of a set of
severely constrained choices
under very few circumstances”

tl So is there something essentially slavish in human beings?

jp We’re beasts of burden, absolutely.
tl So we think we don’t want it, but we need it.
jp We want the freedom of a set of severely constrained choices under very few
circumstances. I’m not being cynical about it. I’ve watched people in my
clinical practice. People die without routine, and really fast. They just fall
apart. They don’t know when to sleep, they don’t know when to eat.
tl What you would say, in a way, about the Idler, is that it’s a nice idea but it’s
not really going to work for most people?
jp Routine works for conscientious people. Conservative types, that’s exactly
what they want to do. The motivation for that isn’t exactly obvious. We don’t
understand conscientiousness at all. There’s no animal model, there’s no
neuropsychological model, there’s no theoretical model.
tl You don’t get conscientious animals?
jp Well, maybe sled dogs. It’s conceivable, they’re bred for that. Because consci-
entiousness requires something like delay of gratification and sacrifice for

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 idler · 62

the future. That seems like a particularly human trait. We understand so

little about conscientious people, that we can’t duplicate it in the lab.
tl Tell me about your experience with depression. When did it start?
jp When I was about 13. There’s one depressive symptom known as psycho-
motor slowing, which makes it hard to move. That happened a lot. Thoughts
go the same way, it would be like they’re stuck. I’d go on a tangent and not
be able to go back, which made it difficult to lecture. There’s an element
of it that was akin to physical pain. It was like a dead tree was growing inside
of me, that was black, frozen. I was in pain. That was a visual image that
would occur quite regularly. I didn’t have the cognitive symptoms of depres-
sion, exactly; I never felt that my life was worthless and that the future had
no value. But I had overwhelming feelings of … it’s so hard to describe …
physical pain. I think it was part of an autoimmune disorder.
tl That would surprise me.
jp Well, I changed my diet and I’ve been off antidepressants for just over a year-
and-a-half.
tl It didn’t interfere with your mental faculties?
jp No, I wouldn’t say that. Even over the last two years, I’ve had a fair bit of
trouble with my mood even though I changed my diet and I’ve been off
antidepressents for over a year. I would estimate I’ve been running on about
25% of my normal capacity.
tl And that was because of depression?
jp That’s the simple explanation, yes. After I changed my diet, the symptoms
changed. It’s so complicated. I can’t talk about it intelligently because so
many things happened that I can’t put them together properly. I changed my
diet a year-and-a-half ago. What happened? The first week I quit snoring – I
was snoring a lot. By week two, I was waking up in the morning and being
awake, which was the first time that ever happened to me. I lost seven pounds
the first month. Then I lost seven pounds a month for seven months. My
cirrhosis went away. I had no autoimmune condition. That went away. I had
numb legs. That disappeared.
tl Did you ever become suicidal?
jp Not in any serious way. I had a vague sense that I wished things would just
go away. The funny thing was that I was never unhappy with my life. I knew
I had a good marriage, I had kids.
tl You said some very interesting things about Jung and depression. Jung
thought most neuroses had their roots in ethical misbehaviour, essentially.
That’s a disturbing thought for a depressive because I know when I’m
depressed, I just think I’m the worst person in the world. If you start to make

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 interview · jordan peterson

Jung’s statement that it’s essentially about ethical misbehaviour, that feeds
into a sense of sinfulness and self-hatred.
jp I think there are two problems there. One problem is to not take enough
responsibility for your actions, and another is to take too much. Depressives
tend towards that extreme. That’s where small moral transgressions can be
magnified to the point that they devour you entirely.

“Narcissists seem immune to their

transgressions but now and then they
collapse. Once they let the doubt in,
then look the hell out”

tl That’s what you said about being a Christian, that it’s an impossible burden
to bear because your responsibility seems to be crushing you. Do you agree
with Jung, and if you do, isn’t that seductive and dangerous for someone with
a depressive cast of mind?
jp The answer to both those questions is yes. My clinical observations have
shown that people make ethical mistakes. They lie to themselves, essentially.
That contributes greatly to their unnecessary suffering. Or they’ve been lied
to by other people and deceived seriously. So it doesn’t necessarily have to be
a moral transgression on your part, but it certainly can be. I do think as well
it is possible. Often when I’m counselling people who are depressed, partly
what I’m doing is lightening their moral burden. “You’re taking that too
seriously. You’re not parameterising that properly.”
tl That’s as if you’re suggesting there is a proper moral burden to bear.
jp Yes, it isn’t one that crushes you. It isn’t helpful to be crushed.
tl Isn’t it odd how people who do terrible things are often oblivious?
jp They’re sporadically crushed by them. You see that with narcissistic collapse.
Narcissists seem immune to their transgressions but now and then they
collapse and they’re at high risk of suicide. It’s very unlikely that they’ll let
the doubt in but once they let it in, then look the hell out. It’s like all the
doubts they didn’t have aggregate.
tl They can’t keep them at bay any more. That’s an extreme version of what
we’re perhaps doing all the time, which is lying to ourselves and being in
denial about the nature of reality and the nature of ourselves. That’s that writ
large in the psychopath. It’s something that’s perpetual in all of us, that we
have to fight against to speak the truth to ourselves. One thing I’ve started
doing since I’ve come across your work, when I’m writing an email or a

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 idler · 62

message to someone, is to ask myself whether I could defend what I’m saying
to them. There’s no end to how much more truthful you can get.
jp It’s an interesting thing to discover. We don’t know the upper limit to the
force of carefully constructed words.

“Avoidance and denial actually don’t seem

to work very well. Social psychologists
like to think so but they should stay the
hell out the clinical realm”

tl When should you lie?

jp Sometimes. Lies are nested within one another. Imagine that you can’t
figure out an utterance that doesn’t transgress against one moral absolute
here and another one there. If you lie to save someone’s feelings because you
think it would be more harmful not to. That’s often an easy way out.
Sometimes it’s a failure of imagination. Often you’re also in a situation where
you have to utter a white lie because a bunch of other things that you did
beforehand that put you in that situation.
tl Should you ever lie to yourself? There are those who say we can only get
through with denial.
jp There’s no shortage of psychologists who say that. In fact that’s the common
theory of social psychology as a discipline. It’s most cited paper ever written
by a social psychologist. It recommends the use of positive illusions as the
only possible defence against the horror of life. I just can’t see it as a coherent
argument because what you’re trying to contend with is reality and by
denying that reality, I can’t understand how you could foster adaptation.
tl Well, reality is terrible. It’s terrifying and it ends in death. You’re full of
uncertainty and you don’t know what’s going on.
jp What I’m suggesting is that they risk opening the door to that reality as much
as they can tolerate, to advance courageously despite that and to see what
happens. To test it step-by-step. My sense is that avoiding it makes it worse.
And not just a little bit worse, way worse. While we’re fundamentally demol-
ished existentially, to avoid that reality does nothing but magnify it. I believe
that to be the case. All the clinical literature seems to suggest that as well.
Avoidance and denial actually don’t seem to work very well. Social psycholo-
gists like to think so but they should stay the hell out the clinical realm.
They don’t have the expertise. In therapy, always what you do with people is
you take the big problem and you chop it into small pieces, and you try and

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confront and solve it. Confront and solve. Confront and solve. And that
works. Does that work in an ultimate sense? Well, your courageous stance in
the face of death is better than a cowardly stance in the face of death. Neither
of those might be good.

“The response to the call to adventure, the

proper response to the call to adventure,
is to go and have the adventure”

tl Well indeed, one might be absolutely terrifying. It certainly felt that way as
most of us discovered death around the age of 13. It hits you like a hurricane.
jp There’s something I wrote about in 12 Rules which I think might be right too,
which is that it’s conceivable that if you lived your life, you’d be able to let go
of it without regret. I wanted to have kids but I wouldn’t do it again. I already
did that. I think it’s easier for people to regret the things they haven’t done.
That’s the unlived life. I wrote about that in relationship to Socrates because
when Socrates was sentenced to death, he decided he would accept the
hemlock. Partly, the reason he decided he would accept it is because he
realised he’d actually lived his life and maybe the gods were offering him an
easy way out. So it’s possible that that if you exhaust yourself in your life, then
you’re done and it’s OK. But if you don’t exhaust yourself, you won’t know if
it’s true.
  One of the things I learned when I was a student was Biblical lectures,
with the Abraham story in particular. It’s not like it’s a bed of roses. He goes
from a secure environment to a tyrannical catastrophe. He risks his wife and
starvation. But it doesn’t matter because the response to the call to adven-
ture, the proper response to the call to adventure is to go and have the
adventure. Not to judge the adventure as a consequence of its outcome. You
are called to exhaust yourself in the service of life. If you’re in the process of
exhausting yourself, even if you’re miserable, you can say: “I’ve done what I
can do.”
tl It’s OK. It’s lack of peace that’s terrible. Grief is all right. But to be without
peace is hell.
jp That’s right. And I think people know that. If you tell people that, they know
it.

55
 TEN ARGUMENTS FOR DELETING
YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS
RIGHT NOW
1. You are losing your free will
2. Quitting social media is the most
finely-targeted way to resist the insanity
of our times
3. Social media is making you into an
arsehole
4. Social media is undermining truth
5. Social media is making what you say
meaningless
6. Social media is destroying your capacity
for empathy
7. Social media is making you unhappy
8. Social media doesn’t want you to have
economic dignity
9. Social media is making politics
impossible
10. Social media hates your soul
Interview: Jaron Lanier

Notes on a dumb religion

Tom Hodgkinson and John Harris quiz the unusual tech reformer at
an Idler event at the Marx Memorial Library in London and discuss
how Silicon Valley became the new priesthood

N o one, I think, would disagree if I called Jaron Lanier unusual. In

appearance, he looks like a musician in Star Wars’ Cantina. He has
an imposing physique, sports a goatee and long dreadlocks and wears black.
He is softly spoken and his utterances – as it was said of Dr Johnson – are so
articulate that he sounds like a second edition.
As well as being one of the most insistent voices we have warning of the
dangers of social media and big tech, Lanier is a brilliant musician and has
an enormous collection of weird instruments. His mother was a Holocaust
survivor. He lives in California and is a well known figure in Silicon Valley.
We met at an Idler event at the Marx Memorial Library in Clerkenwell.
Lanier was in London to promote his new book, Ten Arguments for Deleting
your Social Media Accounts Right Now. In this witty and intelligent polemic,
Lanier takes aim at various aspects of social media, including its business
model, which is ad sales.
It’s funny: I remember how for many graduates, in the 1990s, working in
ad sales would have been seen as the kiss of death and was only resorted to
for money. Now it has become cool to work in ad sales – for corporations that
produce nothing and spy on you. How things change.
Jaron reminds me of the young Renaissance monk Martin Luther. Luther
was appalled by the power of the church leaders and the way they extracted
money out of poor people while living in opulent splendour. The priests had
somehow got the idea out to the masses that they, and they alone, held the
keys to happiness and eternal life. In the same way, today’s digital priesthood
in California is convinced of its own superiority to the rest of the world, from
whom it extracts vast bucketloads of cash, and has also convinced itself that

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though obscenely wealthy, they are not interested in money. Not only that,
but they are now promising us eternal life.
In 1517, Luther wrote a document called The 95 Theses which argued that
the practice of indulgences – or selling access to heaven to poor people for
cash sums – was wrong. The story goes that he nailed these theses to the door
of the church. Most scholars reckon that didn’t actually happen, but it’s a
nice image.
Here is a sample:
Why does not the Pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of
the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St Peter with his own money
rather than with the money of poor believers?
In the same way, Jaron Lanier has nailed his Ten Arguments to the door
of Google. Well, he couldn’t possibly nail them on to the door, as it is made
of glass. Maybe he could Blu Tack them. But his aim is the same: to get the
digital priesthood off their perch and effect a revolution. Let’s just hope
the Digital Reformation turns out better than the original Reformation
which led to the banning of merry-making and fun stuff like Christmas in
the 17th century.
We were joined at the library by Guardian journalist John Harris, author
of a series of attacks on Amazon, Facebook and other Silicon Valley giants.
Jaron opened proceedings by playing a strange flute-like instrument.

jaron lanier That was a piece called ‘The Internationale’.

tom hodgkinson I bet Mark Zuckerberg can’t do that. Thanks so much. So let
us look at your theses, Jaron. Number one says: You are losing your free will.
jl What I propose is that, at the very least, free will has to involve some degree
of creativity and unpredictability in how you respond to the world. That your
future might be more than your past. That you might grow, you might
change, you might discover. Now, the thing that counters that is when your
reactions to the world are locked into a pattern that, by design, is making you
more predictable – for the benefit of someone else. This was a technique
developed by a branch of science called behaviourism, starting in the
19th century. The famous figures might be Ivan Pavlov and BF Skinner.
And, in that case, instead of attempting to train a horse by whispering in its
ear, or to teach a child by holding the child’s hand, you take a very nerdy
approach. You log very carefully everything the subject does, whether
human or animal, and then you very carefully use the data that you gather
about what the subject does to change something about the experience,
often with punishments or rewards, like electric shocks or candy. Then you

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work on algorithms of when you give these changes and experiences, with
what timing and so forth, until you find a formula that will cause behaviour
change, or behaviour pattern change, in a predictable manner. The scien-
tists, by the way, sometimes had a sort of perverse or cruel bent to them, and
achieved celebrity through their arrogance and creepiness. The thing is, in
order to find yourself being manipulated in this way, you have to be in a
rather special circumstance.
th You’d have to be behind a glass screen?

“The types of effects that are easiest

to bring about are to make people
cranky and paranoid and irritable,
and so very gradually, the whole society
has become more so”

jl Behind a glass screen – or in a special cult. There have been many examples
of near-universal surveillance: the Stasi achieved it in the former East
German state, the North Koreans achieve it now. But the coupling of
near-total surveillance with these behaviourist feedback techniques has
never been achieved before. This is something entirely new in the world and
distinct from any previous advertising, or policing, or statecraft. It’s impor-
tant to understand that it’s not generally dramatic. It is once in a while, when
an election is thrown, such as the Trump election. But, generally it’s very
slow-moving, a little like climate change, where someone says, “It’s just
another storm,” and there is no way to prove that any particular individual
has been changed. But the thing is, it has a cumulative effect, sort of
like compound interest. The types of effects that are easiest to bring about
are to make people cranky and paranoid and irritable, and so, very
gradually, the whole society has become more so. So, what I think is a very
reasonable thing to say is that, when you come under the influence of a
behaviourist regime, you’re losing your free will, because your actions
become predictable.
john harris I was very, very reluctant to go on Twitter. I just couldn’t under-
stand it. It made clever people sound trite at best, and stupid at worst. But
then I was told at work to go on it – it was a professional obligation, because
under your by-line they were going to run your Twitter handle. So, I did, and
I got addicted to it. Just lately I went on holiday for a week and found I’d lost

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the ability to read books. I mean, I sort of tried. There is now this mountain
of books around the so-called “tech lash”, and as you’ve said, Jaron is among
the most eloquent, and certainly the most witty. There was one I read, I
probably read 9% of it, but it was the right 9%. It was talking about Skinner’s
behaviourist psychology, and the notion of variable rewards. Now, one of
Skinner’s great insights, if you want to call it that, was that, initially, the rat
pulled the lever and got a food pellet, and that made the rat quite keen on
pulling the lever. The next experiment was to abandon the correlation
between pulling the lever and the food pellets, so they came out randomly.
And lo and behold, the rat became even more frenzied about getting the
food, because it didn’t know when it was going to get the food pellet, it just
pulled the lever like crazy. All of these addictive platforms do the same thing
– they all have this central facet of variable rewards. So, when you post on
Twitter, you might get six likes and four replies, or nine retweets, or it might
go viral and be the greatest thing that’s happened all day. I was getting
dopamine rushes, definitely. If something went viral, if I called Donald
Trump an idiot, or something similarly Oscar Wildean, it was going off the
scale, right?

“The system itself is inherently biased

to support the worst people and the
worst impulses in better people,
and make everything turn to shit”

th So, what we’re saying is, the medium is the message, in the sense that these
things control your behaviour. Did the inventors of this idea, and more
importantly perhaps the investors, know all this at the beginning?
jl There were many warnings in advance. We could mention EM Forster’s
short story from 1907, ‘The Machine Stops’, which approximately warns of
this. More technically, we could mention Norbert Wiener’s The Human Use
of Human Beings, written in the late 1940s. We could mention many others.
I had written a great many things in more modern idiom, starting around ’92,
warning about all this stuff, pretty precisely.
  I think back to the last century and the rise of fascist parties in Europe, and
I feel it’s unlikely they would have achieved the degree of evil they did had
they not leveraged what was then the new technology of the time: cinema,
mass-access to radio and then television. The Nazis pioneered television
broadcast. The analogy isn’t perfect, but at that time, the worst people were

60
 interview · jaron lanier

able to get the most mileage out of the latest media technology, when it was
the most novel and the most potent.
th The social media companies sold themselves by doing the opposite. They
said to people: “You now have the power to broadcast.”
jl So did the Nazis. The Fascia were these distributed groups, the same as the
Soviets. You know, everybody who centralises power in the worst way, always
sells some form of power-sharing with everybody. There’s no exception to
that. That early rhetoric of: “We’re all going to share,” is one of those things
that really bothered me because it was so similar of the early rhetoric of some
of the worst movements, and it really struck me that we might be falling into
the same old traps.
th Number two: Quitting social media is the most finely-targeted way to resist
the insanity of our times.

“The key thing is to create an island in

society, of people who are off it, in order
to have a space for conversation”

jl One of the things that often happens is people say: “We will use Facebook to
fix Facebook. We will start a campaign. We will use Facebook and Twitter
to undo Trump. We will use Facebook and Twitter to …” whatever it is. The
problem with that is that it always fails, because the system itself is inher-
ently biased to support the worst people and the worst impulses in better
people, and make everything turn to shit. So, working within that system to
try and effect change is absolutely hopeless. You start with the Arab Spring
and you get ISIS. You start with Black Lives Matter, and you get a resurge in
Ku Klux Klan, every single time.
th We’re on number three now: Social media is making you into an arsehole.
jl Asshole.
jl Ass.
jh Arse.
jl I think the American pronunciation is more, how shall I say it? Presidential.
jh I think they’re conceptually different. I think an arsehole has a slightly more
lovable quality than an asshole.
jl I would agree with you.
jl The wonderful writer on these things, Sherry Turkle, read my manuscript,
and she said, “This book is fantastic, but it just has too much tush,” because
there’s all these, sort of, ass-related things.

61
 idler · 62

th We’ll press on to number four: Social media is undermining truth.

jl Many people speak about the death of truth. It was the cover of Time maga-
zine. And, it’s quite an accurate complaint. The method of finding truth is
virality, which isn’t exactly the same thing as popularity. It’s an ability for
something to spread quickly. And, it’s overwhelmed everything. Whatever’s
the most viral gets amplified so that instead of just being linearly viral, it
becomes exponentially viral, because the platforms detecting them promote
it more and more, to drive engagement. For instance, Donald Trump’s social
media director talked about how, in his view, they would get hundreds or
thousands of times more exposure for a given spend on Facebook than
Clinton people did, by making their ads as irritable and outrageous as possi-
ble, because then the algorithms would multiply that, because what Facebook
needs to cultivate is virality. So, virality becomes truth. Another problem is
that the online world is completely filled with fake personages, in order to
make up numbers. It’s just like this enormous lie that some celebrity really
has all those followers. So the key thing is to create an island in society, of
people who are off it, in order to have a space for conversation and be free of
this rigid dogma machine.
th And the more people who do it, the less freaky you might feel, because it’s
quite difficult.
jh When the Cambridge Analytica thing happened, and there was a big
upsurge in “quit Facebook” stuff, a colleague of mine called Francesca Ryan,
who’s a journalist who happens to be disabled, canvassed the opinions of
disabled people who talked about how they use social media. And she found
that it’s a weapon against isolation – their lives are enriched.
jl That’s an excellent example of the real value of these things, and I don’t
dispute that. Facebook did not invent that, they just took control of it. But,
that’s good stuff, and we should keep that. The problem is the behind-the-
scenes manipulation machine, and those are two entirely different things.
th Number five: Social media is making what you say meaningless.
jl There’s no meaning outside context. If you took the iPhone that you love so
much, and you gave it to a Martian, the Martian would in fact see a lava
lamp. It would be this thing with patterns that are changing, and it gives off
heat, and they’d say, “What a beautiful lava lamp,” because they would not
be able to interpret it. In the social media world, because what you say might
be retweeted, might be altered, might be represented in a framework you
can’t know, you lose the sense of your own context, and therefore the sense
of your own meaning. And that’s another reason why everything goes so
haywire in online communication, because the only kind of communication

62
 interview · jaron lanier

that can get reliably through when there’s no context is the most bratty,
acidic, little tweet. Anything that’s a little more subtle will be destroyed.
jh Like most people, my favourite form of humour is sarcastic, right? And bleak.
And, you just can’t do that. Even the most, blank, banal examples prove to
be impossible on Twitter. If you write, “That was really clever, what David
Cameron said,” people will reply with, “No, it’s not!” For Heaven’s sake!
Imagine John Lennon saying, “We’re bigger than Jesus,” on Twitter.
jl Well, certain wealthy celebrities get to live the future in advance. I think
John Lennon was, in a sense, living a Twitter life in an earlier time. So, yeah,
it was a precedent, and he ended up getting killed. It’s not a pretty picture. I
want to say one thing about preserving the sense of cynicism, sarcasm, irony
– these things that are lost because of the loss of context. My opponents
say, “How did you become so pessimistic?” And, this really pisses me off,
because, to me, things have gotten better in the course of history precisely
because people weren’t satisfied and made things better. The reason to be
pessimistic is the rise of complacency.
th So, number six: Social media is destroying your capacity for empathy.
jl So, there’s a back history to this, which is, I’m afraid, it was me that brought
the term “empathy” into high-tech marketing, and it was connected with my
enthusiasm for virtual reality in the 1980s. This was the notion that by having
more and more dimensions to the ways we communicate, we might start
to try and understand each other better. Interestingly, the term “empathy”
was coined by psychologists in Germany, who were trying to imagine a state
of being in which you could place yourself into non-human circumstances
in the world, where you could feel what it would be like to be a leaf or a
mountain, in other words, to become an exotic avatar.
th Number seven: Social media is making you unhappy.
jl This is empirical. You use it, you get less happy. Facebook once bragged:
“Hey, we’ve proven that we’re making masses of people unhappy without
them knowing.” That was a published scientific paper. They were trying to
prove to the people who actually pay them – their customers – that they can
influence the population. It’s their macho display. Now, what is the mecha-
nism by which they make you unhappy? The addictive cycle is associated
with anhedonia [losing interest in life], so that’s a partial explanation. A fur-
ther explanation is that the manipulations are for the sake of a third party, not
for you, and it’s very unlikely that you’ll have interests in common with that
third party, so you’re probably doing things that aren’t in your own interests,
and inevitably that will make you unhappy. Occasionally somebody will get
happier using the tools, and I absolutely acknowledge that. I think the exam-

63
 idler · 62

ple you gave of the disabilities communities is an excellent counter-example.

But, statistically over-all, people actually become less happy. That’s been
measured and tested over, and over, and over again.
th Number eight: Social media doesn’t want you to have economic dignity.

“These companies which don’t

really do anything are the biggest
in the world – and in history”

jl Social media doesn’t want you to have economic dignity. If you talk to the
key executives and the top scientists in the big companies, like Google and
Facebook, they say: “The reason we’re grabbing all your data, in the long
term, is not to run our so-called ‘advertising scheme’,” – which I insist on
calling a “behaviour modification empire”. What really matters is: “We’re
gathering data to run our artificial intelligences that will inherit the Earth,
there will be super beings that will be so powerful, you’ll be able to upload
your consciousness to them and experience eternal life.” This is official
Google communication from their chief engineer, Ray Kurzweil. All right,
so, this AI thing is a little screwy economically, because what it’s saying is:
“We need your data in order to turn it around as an algorithm that then
will make you obsolete.” Now, here’s the issue. If this thing could really
make the people obsolete, why does it need the people’s data? So, you’re
saying: “We need to steal from you, but then we won’t need you and you’ll
be going on the dole, you’ll be on basic income or something, because only
we get paid, we’re the ones that matter, you don’t.” It’s dishonest, it’s cruel,
it’s stupid.
  The truth is that AI is very data-intensive and data doesn’t come from
angels or aliens, it comes from people. So, intrinsically, the more this model
moves along, the less economic dignity people have. And we see that in the
gradual rise of the geeky economy, which could be a better thing than it is,
but it’s been so influenced with the Silicon Valley idea that you let everybody
else take your risks for you, and you’re in the centre, benefiting. People self-
finance their YouTube movies, they self-finance their Uber careers, and you
don’t care what happens to them – you win either way, like a casino owner.
The business model of “everything’s free, but we’ll have manipulators from
the side” gradually has to make more and more stuff free, or make more and
more people’s jobs cheap. And this especially undermines the economic
dignity of other people, in order to solidify more and more power and wealth

64
 interview · jaron lanier

in Silicon Valley, to the point where these companies, that don’t really do
anything, are the biggest ones in the world and in history.
jh In the later developments of Marxism in the 20th century there are works
that take on a very prophetic ring. The Frankfurt School talk about the idea
of one’s existence being taken from you and objectively presented as a kind
of alien entity. That’s very resonant in the midst of all this, right? In Guy
Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle, there are whole swathes where he talks
about the tyranny of the gadget, and life as a social relation between people
mediated through images, which is his definition of the spectacle.
jl Marx was a brilliant critic, and the idea of alienation was, so far as I can tell,
new to the world, but he was a terrible inventor. The structures he proposed
to replace the things he so eloquently criticised were awful and have been

65
 idler · 62

repeatedly awful. After the revolution, he says, people will be able to lounge
about on beautiful sofas, beautiful lawns, and practice archery and read the
classics. There’s a complete lack of empathy for people who might have a
completely different culture. Das Kapital is a weirdly bourgeois book.
th Number nine: Social media is making politics impossible.
jl Do I have to say anything about that? Essentially, politics is driven mad
because the most cranky and ridiculous people are given the greatest
volume, and the stupidest, most unironic, “gotcha” communication is given
the greatest volume. Any consideration or serious conversation is destroyed.
People form themselves into competing packs and hate each other.
th So, we’ve come to number ten, which is the last one.
jl Oh, thank God. And Martin Luther had 85 of these fucking things.
th 95. They were a lot shorter – each one was only one or two lines.
jl According to historians, he used to write elaborate recollections of his faeces,
and was obsessed with them.
jh He was terribly constipated.
jl Yeah, and this horrible constipation – I guess he shared with Immanuel
Kant, right? I do not have a constipation issue, I’m very happy to report.
Yeah, anyway, please go ahead.
th Finally: Social media hates your soul.
jl There’s a whole metaphysics here that says: computers and people aren’t
all that different, the universe is information, the universe is a giant pro-
gramme, people and computers are just different sub-programmes, they’re
gradually building the bigger programme that will subsume everything, the
better soul. There’s this whole bizarre metaphysics and it actually has all
the trappings of traditional religion, and particularly the Catholic religion.
You can get an eternal life if you buy into the system, because you can
upload your brain. There are bizarre punishments for people who don’t
believe. Even if you think, well, I can use the tools without buying into the
pseudo-religion of the techies, the truth is you cannot, because it’s built-in.
If you try to get more hits or more followers, you have bought into their idea
of truth, that virality is truth. You’ve essentially undergone a transformation
of how you think about the world. One of Facebook’s new corporate slogans
is to make every life in the world meaningful, which, if you think about it, is
the most profoundly creepy thing a corporation could say. It’s a religious
mission. And there are many other examples of this, but the thing is, it is
turning into a religion that’s subsuming both modern atheism or agnosti-
cism, as well as traditional religions. And it’s vastly stupider than either. It’s
really a dumb religion.

66
IT WASN’T
SO LONG AGO
THAT HAVING
IMAGINARY
FRIENDS
WAS
CONSIDERED
A MENTAL
ILLNESS
bracketpress.co.uk
Feature

Zen and the art of idling

A country where death through overwork is a named phenomenon
desperately needs to learn how to slack off. Matthew Bilski prescribes
the advice of Japan’s Dr Johnson, a 14th century idling monk

J apan, through the eyes of international media, is not typically presented

as a society amenable to taking life slowly. Its government has repeatedly
attempted to enforce reduced working hours, for instance, imposing a legal
requirement for at least five days of paid leave a year. Yet many so-called
“salarymen” still struggle to take any holidays at all. Such government action
is partly in response to the rise of a phenomenon that is surely the cruel
antithesis of idling – karoushi – a word coined in Japan meaning “death
through overwork”. Despite the government’s best efforts, there are currently
around 200 such cases a year. It might be easy to conclude that this is no
country for idlers.
But Japan is a land of conflicting narratives. Look beneath the domineer-
ing skyscrapers curbing the coastline from Tokyo to Osaka, crammed at all
hours with city workers, and you’ll find a subculture of so-called “freeters” –
a portmanteau of free and Arbeiter, usually pertaining to unemployed or
underemployed workers in low-skilled, low-paid jobs, but significantly, jobs
that aren’t life-consuming. Their unbound creativity, fueled by a reluctance,
or inability, to become salarymen typifies a country rife with practitioners of
a pre-eminent idler movement. And theirs is no new phenomenon: it was
predicted by Japan’s grandfather of idling – the 14th century monk Kenko
(real name Urabe Kaneyoshi).
Not unlike Samuel Johnson, who needs no explanation as original author
of The Idler, Kenko produced a series of “Essays in Idleness” (Tsurezuregusa).
His is a timeless collection of 243 poetic reflections, philosophical musings
or mundane observations of daily life. Grumbling about modern fashions
“growing more and more debased”, or modernisation (from the perspective

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 idler · 62

of the 1330s) gradually making the world worse, he yearns for an earlier gold-
en era, marvelling at how “superb the phrasing used to be”. He is maddened
by the “deplorable corruption” of youngsters’ truncated speech; where it was
once proper to say “raise the carriage shafts” or “trim the lamp wick”, he
hears instead the appalling youth-speak of “raise it!” or “trim it!”
These “Essays in Idleness” are just as “naturally censorious” as Johnson’s:
Kenko’s latent pessimism hones his distinctive worldview: if “your opinions
do not differ in the least from [others], you might just as well be alone”.
Solitude was of little concern; he would proudly spend “whole days before
the inkstone, with nothing better to do, jotting down at random whatever
nonsensical thoughts enter the head”. Like Johnson, Kenko too draws on the
ancients to support his cause – Chinese literature in his case – arguing that
“the pleasantest of all diversions is to sit alone under the lamp, a book spread
out before you, and to make friends with people of a distant past you have
never known”.
Kenko wittily presents thoughts that sometimes read like observational
comedy: “If I fail to say what lies on my mind it gives me a feeling of flatu-

70
 feature · matthew bilski

lence; I shall therefore give my brush free rein”. The secrecy and assumed
irrelevance he attributed to his writing afforded considerable creative
licence: “Mine is a foolish diversion, but these pages are meant to be torn up,
and no one is likely to see them”. This helped him develop a meditative
stream-of-consciousness style (in Japanese, zuihitsu – “to follow the brush”)
that engenders an honest appraisal of daily events. It was respected at the
time for being more truthful than pure fictional narrative. This calligraphic
wandering drew him towards traditional Japanese aesthetics of beauty and
sadness found in impermanence, imperfections and perishability. “The most
precious thing in life is its uncertainty.”
We learn from Kenko that idling is by no means a new phenomenon,
but inherent to any era, as evidenced from timeless truths such as “all is
unreality. Nothing is worth discussing, worth desiring”. Such views were
probably forged from his Buddhist vocation, but unlike other monks of
his day, Kenko engaged with his surrounding world as a monastic flâneur.
He embraced what we today call mindfulness, reducing commentary of
perceived events into nihilistic scepticism: “Emptiness accommodates every-

71
 idler · 62

thing. I wonder if thoughts of all kinds intrude themselves at will on our

minds because what we call our minds are vacant. If our minds were occu-
pied, surely so many things would not enter them”.
Kenko had a cantankerous Diogenesian disregard for wealth or pursuit of
glory: “What a foolish thing it is to be governed by a desire for fame and
profit and to fret away one’s whole life without a moment of peace ….
Wealth, in fact, tends to attract calamities and disaster. Even if, after you die,
you leave enough gold to prop up the North Star, it will only prove a
nuisance to your heirs.” Yet his belief system does not strive for consistency;
his work is riddled with contradictions, at one time admiring, but later
rebuking those who chose to have no children, and likewise those who drink
– alcohol is both a pleasure and an ill.
But we might have got on well with Kenko by understanding the ideal
guest is modestly reticent, even on subjects about which they are knowledge-
able. We should strive to “be simple in [our] tastes, to avoid extravagance, to
own no possessions, to entertain no craving for worldly success”. Here he
liberates us from the bonds of hard work for money or status – “Wise men are

72
 feature · matthew bilski

rarely rich” – but also “What we mean by love of a glorious reputation is

delight in the approbation of others”. We should value restraint and under-
statement. In doing so, we might prove ourselves agreeable to Kenko, who
notes: “I could sit forever with a man, provided that what he said did not grate
on my ears, that he had charm and that he did not talk very much.”
Kenko’s work remains extremely influential in modern Japan, taught in
the classroom and inspiring modern writers, running counter to the reports
we read of Japanese industriousness, and its deadly repercussions. It seems
Kenko’s essays could go further in helping save the lives of poor unfortunates
who need to take life at a slower pace. We too have a lot to learn from this
idling medieval monk, not only in drawing on his immutable observations,
but also in realising that idling is a wide tradition rooted in far reaches and
distant eras of our global past.

73
 idler · 62

Chap Tweeds
thechap.co.uk

74
Fashion
Up your Harris
Gustav Temple dons the herringbone
W hat do James Bond, Dirty
Harry, Clyde Barrow and
Frank Bullitt all have in common
(apart from being some of the
coolest movie characters ever)?
They all wore tweed in their most
famous films.
Tweed may have acquired,
gradually and imperceptibly, the
image of a fusty old university don
– see Michael Caine in Educating
Rita – but this image of tweed can
be seen as a parallel universe to
tweed’s tenacious place as the fabric
of choice for men of action. Its
origins as the cloth for hacking
jackets, shooting breeks and fishing
gear adapted well to the bodies of
actors like Steve McQueen and
Warren Beatty, whose characters
found the flexibility of tweed just as
practical for driving around in Ford
Mustangs and robbing banks.
This was in the 1960s, before the
Great Tweed Depression, when
men such as John Mortimer and
Alan Bennett won – temporarily
75
– the battle to make tweed cosy,
sedate and fuddy-duddy.
But tweed has returned in a sports
car to win back the cool folk.
Suddenly people under the age of
50 are sporting Harris Tweed
hacking jackets (you can even buy
them in Primark) and (proper)
menswear companies have caught
up with the trend. Tweed is one of
those fabrics inextricably linked to
certain garments: you won’t find
tweed anoraks or cargo pants
(actually you probably can,
somewhere on the dark web). This
is precisely its appeal – the cut and
shape of a tweed jacket, despite
trendy labels taking it on, has not
suffered the indignity of an update.
Even newish manufacturers such as
Dashing Tweeds and Walker Slater
are not diverging very far from the
classic cuts of a tweed jacket; their
only innovations are things like
smartphone pockets. Tweed is back
and proves, once again, that all the
best menswear items have already
Jacket
by Walker Slater
walkerslater.com

76
 fashion · gustav temple

been invented and are swaggering about 1920s

unlikely to be replaced. Birmingham in a three-
Men are very piece tweed suit in
susceptible to role Peaky Blinders, they are
models in their given licence to don
wardrobe choices. the herringbone. All
As soon as they see it took was one TV series
dashing heartthrob and 200 years of industry
Cillian Murphy on the Outer Hebrides.
Overcoat, Autumn 2018 range
by Dashing Tweeds
dashingtweeds.co.uk

77
idler · 62

78
Art flâneur

The speech bubbles

of hermits
Tim Richardson wanders into the old Museum of Mankind and is
entranced by Tacita Dean; while Edward Bawden and Cedric Morris
offer further contemplation on England’s ancient mysteries

D o you remember the defunct

Museum of Mankind? This
sprawling cabinet of ethnological
curiosities – officially an offshoot of
the British Museum – was until
1997 housed with incongruous
magnificence in a big, yet curiously
nondescript neoclassical building
on Burlington Gardens in Mayfair,
directly behind the Royal Academy.
Its airy rooms were crammed with
tribal masks, shrunken heads,
magical fetishes and all the other
fun stuff you get to play with if you
are a member of a “primitive
society’”. Unlike the Pitt Rivers
Museum in Oxford, which still
feels like the freshly-opened lumber
room of some Victorian explorer of
the South Seas, and can therefore
get away with anything (anyone for
human-sacrifice study day, to be
held on the front lawn?), the
earnest MoM was the museological
embodiment of post-colonial guilt.
Nevertheless it always seemed
impossibly and transgressively
exotic in that gold-paved part of
town, nestled as it was between the
rarified boutiques of New Bond
Street and Savile Row. It was as if
Crocodile Dundee had somehow
descended upon London in
museum form.

Opposite, above: Burlington Gardens, unidentified wood-engraver. New Buildings of the

London University. Wood-engraving, 240×348 mm. Published by Illustrated London News,
May 1870. © Royal Academy of Arts, London

Opposite, below: Burlington Gardens Galleries in 2018. Image by David Chipperfield

Architects
79
 idler · 62
The MoM was also an ideal
flâneur-ing location. I for one never
had any idea what I was going in
there to see, what I was likely to see,
or indeed why I was going in there
to see it in the first place. I had no
real interest in anthropology – and
still don’t – but it was always high
on the list of things to do when in
London, not least because of this
element of surprise. If you have no
expectations, how can you possibly
be disappointed? Perhaps this is the
essence of flâneurism. The sheer
size and grandeur of the building,
in a part of town where shoes cost
£500, made it seem like a publicly-
funded folly that just had to be
celebrated and supported. Was it
the result of a bet made in a nearby
gentleman’s club, I wondered? The
museum was also attractive because
no one much ever seemed to be in
there. Which is perhaps why it was
eventually closed down.
After 20 years of uncertainty, the
building has just been reconceived
– by super-serious black-clad
architect David Chipperfield,
deliciously the opposite of his
circus namesake – as the new wing
of the Royal Academy. The RA had
acquired the building back in 2001
but then failed to secure Lottery
funding for its ambitious original
refurb plan. This entailed a 17-year
delay – which is quite a long time
for a sulk, if that’s what it was. Now
the RA wants us to refer to its new
80
back entrance as Burlington
Gardens and the exhibition spaces
within as the Gabrielle Jungels-
Winkler Galleries. Catchy! I
suppose the name is apposite in
a way, in that the old MoM was
all about winkling things out
of jungles.
Nevertheless, I think I am going
to carry on calling it the old
Museum of Mankind in the spirit
of the verbal curation of the
memory of a lost museum.
The first exhibition was
Landscape by Tacita Dean. This
was one of three shows by Dean
held simultaneously in major
London galleries, the others being
Portrait at the National Portrait
Gallery and Still Life at the
National Gallery. Never really a
member of the YBA generation,
Dean has proved to be the most
intellectually powerful artist to have
emerged from the 1980s and early
1990s scene. That may not sound
like much of a recommendation,
but her engagement with literature,
philosophy and aspects of the
culture beyond how much she
can sell her work for, has perhaps
led to this extraordinary triad of
exhibitions. It marks the
culmination of her career thus far
and an enviable coup for any
contemporary artist. Curators and
intellectuals love her because she
speaks their language as well as her
own, and frequently refers to
 art flaneur · tim richardson
fashionable writers such as WG
Sebald and JG Ballard. Did they
both have the same middle name?
[No – Literary Ed]
The RA’s Landscape show
consisted of three rooms. The first I
found most engaging: new work in
the form of chalk-on-blackboard or
spray-chalk and gouache drawings
of clouds (or were they seas, or
mountaintops?), each with an
evocative title such as One Dear
Son or Where England? Ethereal
and evanescent, they were beautiful
in the way of Ruskin’s early
drawings of clouds – spontaneous
yet anatomical. The hang was
equally inspired, with the framed
works seeming to float across the
walls. One of Dean’s artistic heroes
is Cy Twombly, and her habit of
scrawling barely legible sentences
and phrases – “O form”, “be
englished verily” – across the works
is a homage to the senior artist
without seeming derivative.
The second room included a
giant new work named
Quarantania, a vast rendition of a
red mountainside realised in
considerable detail and etched with
more phrases secreted into the
caves and crevices of the mountain,
like the speech-bubbles of so many
voluble hermits. This room also
included a case of Dean’s four-
leafed-clover collection, which she
has been assembling, updating and
exhibiting for more than 40 years.
81
The third room was a viewing
chamber for Dean’s new film
Antigone, a surreal and poetic
mash-up inspired partly by the fact
that her father, a High Court judge,
named her older sister Antigone
(just to round it off, her brother is
Ptolemy, the architect, who
designed the recently opened
galleries at Westminster Abbey).
Dean has a geeky interest in the
mechanics of film and I find it the
least interesting aspect of her work.
The show at the National Portrait
Gallery consisted of various
film-portraits of older artists such as
Merio Merz, which I will also pass
over here.
The most satisfying show of the
three was Still Life at the National
Gallery, even though it was the
most modest, consisting of just two
rooms, and contained the least
number of Dean’s own works. I
think the artist would have spent
more time on this as a curator than
on the other two exhibitions put
together. It is a rather obvious point
to make, though I don’t think
anyone else has yet made it, but it
appears that the first room was
conceived as Still and the second as
Life. Dean’s choice of works in the
first room was understated and
quietly exquisite, including four
studies that included bread and an
undated study of apples by the
disregarded William Henry Hunt.
These low-key works by lesser-
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82
section · author

83
 idler · 62
known artists are unlikely to see the
light of day in a gallery again, but in
this context, they sing. Philip
Guston’s Hat (1976) created a
moment of drama: a large dark
canvas with heavily scribed
horizontal lines creating a kind of
force-field above a pink hat.
The second room was indeed
more life-filled, replete with the
sound of birdsong from one of
Dean’s films, and implied
movement in the paintings. There
were many links between the works
chosen, some subtle – such as the
84
formal resemblance of Dean’s
filmed study of flints to the shapes
which could be discerned in the
paintings – and some not so,
including the dead hares which
were the subject of several works,
including a Sickert (thrillingly
dismal as ever) and one in a study
by John Craxton where, sprawled
across a table, the dead animal
had clearly been alive just hours
or minutes before the artist
pounced. Filled with the
implications of life and movement,
it was a quietly terrifying image,
 art flaneur · tim richardson

Previous spread:
Tacita Dean working on The Montafon Letter, Los Angeles, 2017.
Photo: Fredrik Nilsen Studio. Artwork: © Courtesy the artist; Glenstone Museum, Potomac,
Maryland; Frith Street Gallery, London and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris.

Opposite, above:
Tacita Dean, Antigone, 2018.
2 synchronised 35mm anamorphic colour films, optical sound, with a running time of exactly
one hour. Film still (detail). © Courtesy the artist, Frith Street Gallery, London and Marian
Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris.

Opposite, below
Tacita Dean, Antigone, 2018.
2 synchronised 35mm anamorphic colour films, optical sound, with a running time of exactly
one hour. Film still (detail). © Courtesy the artist, Frith Street Gallery, London and Marian
Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris.

Below
Tacita Dean, Majesty, 2006.
Gouache on photograph mounted on paper, 300 ×420cm. Tate, London, 2017 © Courtesy the
artist; Frith Street Gallery, London and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris

85
 idler · 62
perhaps especially so given the
date of the painting: 1944.
With regard to the flints, Dean
has written about how taken she
was with Henry Moore’s collection,
picked up from the fields around
his studio: “I can see how they were
talismanic to Moore, not in the
surrealist sense of gaining meaning
through relatedness to other found
objects but as a lone physicality
with a more practical intent.” She
describes such a stone, found and
removed as “a still life repositioned
indoors, or washed and removed
but in the landscape”. She means
that the flint somehow remains in
the landscape as well as of the
landscape, despite its physical
removal from it. In this way,
her work can be perceived in
the context of English quasi-
mystical landscape painting, where
places and the objects within them
are invested with mysterious
ancient powers.
There is an archaelogical
undertow to the exhibition which
speaks of the influence of Sebald
and through him the ultra-original
17th-century doctor and divine,
Thomas Browne, who has featured
in this column before. Several
curious paintings of 1814 by
Thomas Robert Guest of
archaeological finds set in the
landscapes in which they were
unearthed, seemed redolent of
Browne’s obsession with “grave
86
goods”, the subject of his cultural
commentary entitled Urne Buriall
(1658), ostensibly about Anglo-
Saxon artefacts found in Norfolk
but actually all about death. Dean’s
earlier writings indicate that she
knows all about Browne. And still
life is always partly about death.
Somehow it was no surprise to
find John Nash at the heart of the
exhibition, specifically the painting
Event on the Downs (1934), which
is usually described as surrealist
because of the inclusion of a
floating tree trunk and an oversized
tennis-ball. It seems to me that a
work such as this is simply English,
however, in that the artist can see
and feel invisible things in the local
landscape which speak loudly and
clearly to those who can listen. A
mid-century artist in Sussex did not
have to sign up to a manifesto
hatched in a Parisian cafe in order
to be able to think and work in this
way (Stanley Spencer of Berkshire
being another case in point).
Nash’s friend Edward Bawden is
the subject of a major retrospective
at Dulwich Picture Gallery, which
predictably proves enormously
entertaining, given the artist’s
singular wit and delight in
observation, even if it does not alter
one’s basic perception of the artist.
Right, Edward Bawden, Agave, 1970s,
watercolour, Private Collection, Photo:
Brian Dicks, © Estate of Edward Bawden
art flaneur · tim richardson

87
 idler · 62

Edward Bawden, Brighton Pier, 1958, Linocut on paper, Trustees of the Cecil Higgins Art
Gallery (The Higgins Bedford), © Estate of Edward Bawden

Bawden was one of a group of visitors. This exhibition reinforces

20th-century British artists – which
included Eric Ravilious and
Edward Ardizzone – whose work
encompassed commercial graphic-
design work (posters for London
Underground and Shell, catalogues
and Christmas cards for Fortnum
& Mason) as well as more “serious”
work, some of it undertaken as
official war artists posted to
foreign climes.
The war works undertaken by
Bawden in the Middle East and
Africa, many of them portraits of
Egyptian and other foreign soldiers,
are the least arresting and
accomplished element of his work
on display, even though they will
also be the least familiar to many
the existing understanding of
Bawden as a witty and very English
commentator on English life seen
through both a nostalgic lens, but
also with an eye to modernity and
its absurdities. His booklet entitled
Map of the European Air Routes
(1934) is typically charming, with
everyone depicted in the fold-out
craning their necks to look upward
at the propellor planes, while the
great Kew Gardens posters of the
1930s, commissioned by London
Underground, are arguably his
masterpieces when set in context
in this way.
Bawden’s range is displayed by
means of a good selection of his
watercolours, in which the style can

88
 art flaneur · tim richardson

Edward Bawden, London Back Garden, 1927, Copperplate engraving. Private Collection,
Photo: Mark Heathcote, © Estate of Edward Bawden

be said to be strongly influenced by illustrator and graphic gun-for-hire;

Nash. He had a particular affinity
with gardens, and with that, an
ability to depict relentless rainfall.
The final room contains examples
of his commercial work as a book
my favourite was a set of beer mats
commissioned by Gilbey’s gin
(1954), with the signs of the zodiac
amusingly personified.
English art of this period has

89
idler · 62

90
 art flaneur · tim richardson
been fashionable for some time,
after a period in the doldrums, and
is reflected in the most successful
exhibition yet to be staged at the
Garden Museum, which is situated
in a former church next to
Lambeth Palace on the South
Bank. The subject is Cedric Morris,
an artist who cut his teeth in Paris
in the 1920s before returning to
Suffolk and setting up an
unconventional art school at his
home at Benton End. Here such
luminaries as Maggi Hambling and
Lucian Freud learned their trade,
painting flowers in the garden just
as he did, while the cook Elizabeth
David, the illustrator Kathleen Hale
and the recently-deceased gardener
Beth Chatto were also disciples.
Morris lived in an openly gay
relationship with his fiery partner
“Lett” Haines, which can only have
added to the feeling that Bohemia
had come at last to East Anglia.
The Garden Museum’s
exhibition space is small, and the
tendency thus far has been to
overstuff it with ambitious and
over-designed exhibitions replete
Opposite: Floreat, 1933, Cedric Morris, Cyfarthea Castle Museum and Art Gallery
91
with videos and so on, but this one
seems perfectly weighted, consisting
simply of fine examples of Morris’s
work placed on the walls and
well-captioned. There were plenty
of Morris’s euphoric still-lives of
flowers in vases – especially the
irises which he loved above all, and
bred for show – but even more
interesting were such formal
compositions placed against a
landscape backdrop, or rather
juxtaposed with it. The centrepiece
of the exhibition was an
extraordinary 1959 work entitled
Heralding which consisted of
yellow and blue irises and purple
alliums in a blue-and-white vase,
set against a Suffolk landscape of
fields and streams. The vase seems
to be hovering in mid air, lending
the composition a transcendent
atmosphere and confirming that
Morris should not be described
merely as a provincial flower
painter but as an artist of
international stature who had early
on chosen flowers and gardens as
his life’s theme.
Books
Perfect bound
Cathleen Mair rounds up the latest restful reads for roustabouts
Letters to Change the World: From
Pankhurst to Orwell, Travis
Elborough (Ebury Press, £14.99)
Yet another excellent anthology
from prolific cultural historian
Travis Elborough, this time of
letters that fight the power from,
among others, abolitionist William
Wilberforce, suffragette Emmeline
Pankhurst, Nelson Mandela, writers
Doris Lessing and Albert Camus as
well as ordinary citizens. There is a
moving letter by Richard Oastler,
steward of the large Fixby estate
near Huddersfield in the 19th
century, on child labour. In a letter
to the Leeds Mercury in 1830, he
writes of the “miserable inhabitants
of a Yorkshire town [who] are this
very moment existing
in a state of slavery”.
His damning
indictment of the
factory system and
tireless campaigning
led to government
investigations into
92
working conditions, though The
Ten Hours Act was only passed in
1847. Elsewhere, you’ll find letters
from Leo Tolstoy to Gandhi, with
whom he began corresponding
towards the end of his life,
anarchist writer Emma Goldman
on birth control and George Orwell
on the dangers of totalitarianism.
In our clickbaity, 40-character
world hellbent on causing the most
offence to get the most retweets, it
is refreshing to read such
persuasively argued, well written
and passionate calls for making the
world a better place.
On Sheep: Diary of
a Swedish Shepherd,
Axel Linden
(Quercus Books, £9.99)
Doctoral student
Axel Linden moved
from Stockholm to
the countryside in
search of a simpler,
more eco-conscious
 books · cathleen mair
life. In the city, he frequented all
the right political meetings and
vegan restaurants, purchased fair
trade coffee and yet “the best thing
we could come up with when we
used to talk about making a
difference was to write an article or
start a Facebook-group”. So he
packed up his flat in the city, took
over a farm the countryside with his
wife and became a shepherd. On
Sheep, which is filled with sweet
illustrations, chronicles a year in his
life as a fledgeling sheep farmer.
Linden’s sheep have a surprising
amount of character: they sneak out
for strolls at night, escape constantly
and one sheep appears to be
suffering from depression. As
Linden tries to manage his flock, he
also finds himself confronting the
slaughterhouse, his first lambing
season and shearing. It’s not a very
exciting life – a new bale of silage is
big news – but it’s quietly endearing
and liberating. Leaving the city for
a rural idyll really is possible.
The Mystery of the Raddlesham
Mumps, Murray Lachlan Young
(Scotland Street Press, £12.99)
When BBC 6Music’s poet in
residence Murray Lachlan Young
previewed his new epic poem at the
Idler Festival in July, the audience
was left completely enraptured.
The 6,000 word ballad The Mystery
of The Raddlesham Mumps centres
on Crispin de Quincy de
93
Faversham-Clumps,
the young heir of a
stately home called
Raddlesham Mumps.
With only a rather
menacing butler
named Kenilworth for
company, Crispin
gradually discovers the
house is cursed: all the
previous lords of the manor met
with an untimely end, a fate which
appears to await him as well. The
Mystery is a wonderfully witty,
ghostly and entertaining read,
made all the better for artist Julie
Verhoeven’s ghoulish and haunting
gothic illustrations.
The Pebbles on the Beach, Clarence
Ellis (Faber & Faber, £9.99)
Since it was first published in 1954,
Clarence Ellis’s The Pebbles on the
Beach must have accompanied
countless British families on
holidays to the seaside. Robert
Macfarlane, who has written the
introduction to this beautiful new
edition, calls it the “stonebook of
his childhood” and lovingly
describes pebble-hunting trips to
the coast, “wandering
bent at the waist along
the beach, eyes peeled
for rough orbs of agate,
quartz prisms, purple
jasper and elusive
amber”, always with
Pebbles in tow. That
 idler · 62
feeling of youthful excitement
when polishing a dull pebble, in
the hope that it might prove to be
something special, is something
I’m sure many of us can relate to.
Now a whole new generation can
be introduced to this spirited,
accessible and comprehensive
guide to the idle pursuit of pebble
spotting. You’ll learn where pebbles
come from, how they form and,
most importantly, how to know
your onyx from your agate.
Give People Money,
Annie Lowrey (WH
Allen, £12.99)
Universal Basic
Income, a no-strings
attached cash hand-out
that could replace
means-assessed welfare
programmes, has
garnered high profile
support in recent years, from
Jeremy Corbyn to Mark
Zuckerberg, and trials are now
ongoing in Sweden, Finland, the
Netherlands and Ontario, Canada.
“It’s a new world with new
challenges. From technology to
Trump, it is a time of greater
uncertainty and change,” said
Ontario’s premier Kathleen Wynne
at the launch of the scheme.
Supporters like Wynne argue UBI
could alleviate poverty, encourage
creative freedom and liberate
people from dull, rote work. Silicon
94
Valley tech titans also see it as a
possible solution to a future with
little need for human labour:
“Universal income will be
necessary over time if AI takes over
most human jobs,” tweeted Elon
Musk recently. In Give People
Money, Annie Lowrey, an
economics writer and contributing
editor at The Atlantic, asks why and
how UBI might work by looking at
the policy’s history as well as
practical and philosophical
implications. She visits a village in
Kenya where nonprofit
GiveDirectly is using mobile
technology to provide
unconditional cash payments to
locals, she travels to South Korea to
attend the Basic Income Earth
Network conference and heads to
Silicon Valley to look at UBI pilots
in tech. It’s an engaging, well-
balanced and thought-provoking
analysis of a growing political
movement.
Talking to Women, Nell Dunn
(Silver Press, £10.99)
Born in Chelsea,
novelist and
screenwriter Nell Dunn
left her upper-class
roots behind and moved
to Battersea, south
London, in 1959 to work
in a sweet factory. It was
there that she met Kathy
Collier, also a factory
 books · cathleen mair
worker, who appears in Talking to
Women. First published in 1964, the
book went out of print soon after
and has now been reissued by
feminist publisher Silver Press,
which also brought us excellent
new editions of Audre Lorde’s
poetry and Leonora Carrington’s
short stories. The book comprises
nine in-depth interviews with
different women -- friends of
Dunn’s, including authors Edna
O’Brien and Ann Quinn, artist
Pauline Boty and Collier. Over
wine, the women discuss everything
from marriage to children, work to
sexuality, men to abortion. The
interviewees are clearly happy to
open up to Dunn: the candour, the
contradictions and the jokes make
the conversations feel very real and
relatable. There is also a timeless
quality to their chats, a sense that
these women could be sitting in
your kitchen right now, struggling,
hoping, raging, questioning and
wondering.
In Pursuit of Civility: Manners
and Civilization in Early Modern
England, Keith Thomas
(Yale UP, £25)
The renowned and stately historian
Keith Thomas has produced
another doorstop of a study on
early-modern England. In Pursuit
of Civility traces the development
of the concept “civility” and good
manners in England from the
95
Reformation to
the French
Revolution. These
notions emerged
across Europe in
the late 16th
century -- civiltà in
Italy, civilité and
politesse in France
-- as courtly
behaviour was adopted by the
upper and middle classes more
broadly. Manuals outlining good
behaviour, like A Lytell Booke of
Good Maners for Chyldren,
blossomed. Yet while we tend to
think of English good manners as
something to be proud of, their
roots lie in a heavily socially
stratified, ethnocentric view of
England’s place in the world.
Politeness, for example, which
related to dress, comportment and
aesthetic taste, required education
and wealth. In other words, the
lower classes could learn to be civil
but they could never learn to be
polite. Thomas also shows the
belief in a superior civility affected
relations with “uncivilised” or
“barbaric” peoples, legitimising
colonial conquest and slavery.
In fact, Thomas points out, this
distinction between “civilised”
and “uncivilised” states was only
abandoned in 1945, with the
founding of the United Nations.
Extensively researched, packed
with quotations and textual
 idler · 62
evidence, In Pursuit of Civility
adds substantial depth to our
understanding of the early
modern period.
Have You Eaten
Grandma?
Or, the Life-saving
Importance of Correct
Punctuation,
Grammar and Good
English, Gyles
Brandreth (Michael
Joseph)
The Idler has been
fighting for the cause of better
grammar for quite some time now
-- our annual Bad Grammar awards
have called out corporate giants
like Tesco and TFL on their
incorrect use of the English
language – so we welcome
grammar expert Gyles Brandreth’s
very amusing new tome with open
arms. In Have You Eaten
Grandma?, Brandreth riles against
the grammatical failings of our
times. From dangling clauses to
misplaced commas, from gerunds
to semi-colons, he explains where
we’ve been going wrong and how
to get it right. Good grammar is
important, not because it shows
how clever you are, but because it’s
central to clear communication, to
distinguishing misleading nonsense
from truth. Brandreth makes for
a rather entertaining guide in
getting to grips with it all.
96
Gardens and Gardening in Early
Modern England, Jill Francis
(Yale UP, £35)
While the lavish
gardens of the British
aristocracy are well
documented and
celebrated, those of
rural country gentry
are rarely explored.
This richly-illustrated
new volume offers a
glimpse into the more
ordinary gardens of early modern
England. Much more than just a
study of landscapes and art, it
delves into the act of gardening
and the role of gardeners. Who
was working in the gardens?
When did gardening become an
acceptable leisure activity, not just
a utilitarian pursuit? And what did
a flower garden say about a person’s
tastes and status? Historian Jill
Francis answers these questions
and more.
Small press
Fight the power
David Collard on how the little guys are fighting back against the
bully boys of the book world
A t the end of March this year,
Big Issue founder John Bird
launched the Independent
Bookshop Alliance. Today, around
130 indie booksellers have joined
forces as an army of Davids to take
on the Goliaths of high street
bookstores and the ghastly Amazon.
Simon Key, founder of Wood
Green’s Big Green Bookshop in
north London, started the ball
rolling when he blogged in January
about his plans to give independent
booksellers a louder voice. A few
months later, he was invited to
address the House of Lords about
some of the iniquitous publishing
practices that bedevil independent
bookshops (and, of course,
struggling authors). He wants to
see collective bargaining and the
chance for independent publishers
to have the same access to tax
breaks enjoyed by the big retailers.
One of the more contentious issues
is that of discounting. “Publishers
97
being bullied into giving ridiculous
discounts on books is so bad for the
industry,” says Key. “It’s bad for
the author, the publisher and
(of course) the shops that don’t
have the power or the wish to
demand this.”
How does such discount-bullying
work? Earlier this year Eloise
Williams, who co-runs the
independent Galley Beggar Press,
wrote a series of numbered tweets
which (with her kind permission)
I reproduce below. What she
describes is a lamentably
commonplace practice in
the industry.
1. A couple of years ago, WH Smith
decided that they liked a particular
book of ours: Francis Plug [by Paul
Ewen]. They bought several
hundred copies in at a very high
discount (I do not have precise
numbers, but we are looking at
approaching 60%, possibly more).
 idler · 62
2. In addition to the discount,
WH Smith asked for a “bonus” for
every book they sold. Again, no
exact figures to hand, but it was
something like 50–70 pence. This
was for a £7.99, £8.99 book. You do
the maths on what comes back to
the publisher/author.
3. And bear in mind that this is
standard practice.
4. Anyway, we thought we needed
to say yes. It was a bad deal – but
nothing that other publishers didn’t
contend with – and the extra
visibility for our author sounded
great. New audiences! New readers.
5. Stock was low, so we needed to
reprint. So we did, and sent the
books off.
6. What happened next? Nothing.
Certainly no sales. Several months
later – I think over a year – we
suddenly noticed that several
hundred returns for Francis Plug
had come through.
7. Our hypothesis was that they
hadn’t unpacked the books and
hadn’t put a single one on the
shelves – they simply sent the
whole lot back.
8. This – which the company
wouldn’t have had a moment’s
thought over – nearly bankrupted
us. We had to put out a special
appeal in our newsletter, and it is
only because of the huge generosity
of our readers that we survived.
9. We kicked up a stink. WH Smith
apologised. Reordered the stock.
98
Did exactly the same thing –
sent the books back, several
months later.
10. As publishers, you are supposed
to say nothing about this – but
enough is enough.
11. We are now worried that we will
get into trouble for this. But this
kind of practice is really bad for
literature: for publishers, for writers,
readers, and the amazing bookshops
that support us and work so hard.
12. Again: I don’t have the %s here
and they need to be confirmed. But
we have records of all this. If the
indies band together, the big
publishers started saying “no”, &
the Society of Authors started
considering what pressure
publishers are under, we might
be able to do something.
Thank you Eloise. And it’s not just
WH Smith, of course – the other
big chains are also at fault.
Discounted sales may appeal to the
customer but consider the feelings
of an established writer who sold
30,000 copies of her book for
children but just got £800. And
that’s before tax.
Of course, most booksellers are
not much interested in literature,
because what interests booksellers
is selling books and most books are
not literary. That’s not going to
change any time soon, but anything
we can do to give Jeff Bezos the
bum’s rush is surely a Good Thing.
 small press · david collard
This is supposed to be a feature
recommending new literary fiction
from Britain’s small presses, so
here’s a belated heads-up for three
outstanding novels published over
the past few months, any one of
which would make perfect summer
reading (especially if you avoid
beaches like the plague and prefer
sitting in the shade with a pitcher of
something local).
Murmur, Will Eaves
(CB editions, £8.99)
Drawing on events in
the life of Alan Turing,
Eaves’ latest novel was
praised in the Times
Literary Supplement as
“a pinnacle of fiction”
and is arguably his
best book to date,
although he sets himself
very high bars. The first part of
Murmur was shortlisted for last
year’s BBC National Short Story
Award. A dazzling exploration of
consciousness, memory and
intelligence, it’s a short novel but
vast in range and depth.
Lucia, Alex Pheby
(Galley Beggar Press,
£14.99) The deeply
troubled daughter of
James Joyce spent
much of her life alone
in a Northampton
mental institution.
99
Pheby’s previous novel, Playthings,
from the same publisher, was an
unnerving account of a real-life
case of madness in the 19th
century. Pheby is particularly adept
at immersing his reader in a state of
derangement. Lucia herself is a
spectral absence throughout while
those who cross her path are given
voices – doctors, lovers, her dentist,
asylum inmates and others. The
result is a heart-breaking challenge
to every principle of biography.
Now Legwarmers,
Pascal O’Loughlin
(Henningham Family
Press, £12.99) From its
title onward,
a pure and unalloyed
delight. O’Loughlin’s
prose, plain yet poetic,
is a perfect match for a
delightful coming-of-age novel set
on a bleak housing estate in
Ireland. Smoking, discos, Bowie,
troubles with girls, finding things
out the hard way … Familiar
territory, yes, but rarely done this
well. I’m not the kind of reader
who laughs out loud, but I laughed
silently to myself, and constantly.
You can buy all these books direct
from the publishers (or your local
independent bookseller):
cbeditions.com
galleybeggar.co.uk
henninghamfamilypress.co.uk
Music
Scouting for boys
Jonnie Bayfield gets queasy remembering his boyhood awakening
to the power of messages told in tunes
T he year is 2002 and I am
nested like a dull partridge
around an obligatory campfire at a
poorly-organised weekend camp for
boy scouts and the unusual adults
who choose to do this kind of thing
with their free time. As well as the
blazing heat of the petrol-aided fire,
I am warmed by an asbestos blanket
and my own puppy fat. I am
routinely required to eat molten
marshmallow from rotting twigs,
and sing songs that end in either
“My Lord” or “WallaWallaBing-
Bang”. What else could I be
referring to but the traumatic
symphony of my own, ecstatically
ordinary childhood?
I look away from the fire and
catch a glimpse of the fully-
functional, electrified building
that mockingly sits no more than
50 yards away, and houses food,
radiators and a VHS copy of Face/
Off. It was a sorry time, and surely
a sorrier sight.
100
Even then, hurtling into the
mudslide of puberty, I was old
enough to know better. Sitting
there, front melting, back freezing,
I understood empirically that
this was not the place to lose
my virginity, drink my stomach
lining onto the pavement or truly
confront the idea that a life of
disappointment and roast
potatoes lay ahead.
The only fun I could muster out
of this situation was that, come
dawn, I could detonate deodorant
cans in the tangerine embers. Even
then, once all the cans were gone
and the wind was scented, we
would be back in the hut tying
useless knots and stinking from
our armpits.
“Have you prepared a song,
Jonnie?” said the brown owl, or the
black panther, or Baloo, or
Churchill, or whatever colonial
mascot these charitable “adults”
had decided to adopt. I stood, shins
 music · jonnie bayfield
melting, before an audience of
shivering, Horlicks-sedated boys –
two of whom I had heard the
previous night paddling the
shallows of sexuality in the tent
next door. At least somebody was
getting something useful out of
the weekend.
Resting on my underdeveloped
laurels, I trotted out one of the four
participatory songs us boy scouts
had been taught. My angelic voice
rang out, alone and yet to break.
That song, gentle Idler, is what
brings this tangent of mine into
sharp, music related context …
A Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut
Kentucky Fried Chicken
and a Pizza Hut
McDonalds!
McDonalds!
Kentucky Fried Chicken
and a Pizza Hut
In time with these staccato words
my juvenile hands formed the peak
of the hut, then folded into the
flapping bingo wings of a
genetically modified chicken. In a
rush, boys and leaders alike joined
my plodding anthem.
With every verse came the
falsetto glissando:
“McDoooooonalds!
McDonooonalds!” as our collective
fingers painted those infamous
arches against the black air.
Though it may read like
101
something out William Golding’s
Lord Of The Flies, it was here that
the young, alienated me was first
indoctrinated by music.
In a pre-media past, the fireside
folk song was a simple way of idling
away endless time. Further back
than that, its function was a way
of spreading useful information,
cautionary tales, and, of course,
faith. The idea of learning, or
indoctrinating through song has
therefore been a facet of our
communication since the start.
I suppose, at its core, music begs
to daisy chain us to our own,
indelible past.
For me, the “Fast Food Song”
is exactly that shackle. It still
rattles around my head. Upon
seeing an advert for any of the
aforementioned food outlets, I am
instantly transported back to that
campfire, heat on shins, flapping
arms like a jumped-up pantry boy.
I want food, I want it fast!
And it is this very sensation that
is the core aim of indoctrination;
to influence to the point where
our actions appear to be solely
the result of our own free will.
Looking back through the gamut
of tunes forced upon my younger
self – from pious school songs still
inexplicably linked with
Christianity, to the pop fodder
of the mid-1990s – I suddenly
understand my true position as
a child of the consumer age.
 idler · 62
Drinking in whatever message the
powers-that-be determined was
the right message for the right time.
By way of trauma-processing, I
thought I would look deeper into
the roots of the “Fast Food Song”.
In 2003, my campfire song was
sold to the masses as a tangible
pop record, by a physical “artist”,
manufactured British pop trio the
Fast Food Rockers. Produced by Hit
Factory music moguls Stock, Aitken
and Waterman (aka Pete from Pop
Idol) the band were riding out a
resurgent wave of bubblegum pop,
rising back from the 1960s cemetery
with a vengeance (Mr Blobby had
already hit Number One in the
charts by repeating his own name
for three minutes and would later
evolve into a jabbering CGI
Crazy Frog).
Whatever you think about Ed
Sheeran or Taylor Swift’s sickly
sweet domination of the pop charts,
at least they sing audible words,
evoke resonant themes, and are not
classically-trained theatre actors in
pink fat suits.
But what of the Fast Food
Rockers’ own thirst for resonance?
Well, they were too tied up
endorsing sugar-based snacks to an
audience of soon-to-be obese
pre-teens. Made up of a trio of
former cruise ship singers, Martin
Rycroft, Lucy Meggitt and Ria
Scott, the Rockers claimed to have
met at a fast-food convention in
102
Folkestone. It’s hardly Bowie and
Iggy in West Berlin, but each to
their own. With 150,000 copies of
Fast Food Rockers’ debut “Fast
Food Song” cleared, it reached
Number Two in the UK charts, and
was a minor success worldwide.
They had their own mascot in the
form of a dog who was hot, and –
as if their canon couldn’t get any
more over-seasoned – the song was
taken from a gloriously titled debut
album, It’s Never Easy
Being Cheesy.
What I find truly impressive
about Fast Food Rockers, and
bubblegum pop in general, is the
deep well of cynicism required in
the creative process. To make music
solely for financial gain seems such
an incredibly long-winded way of
making money that I actually quite
respect SAW for stomaching their
own bile to the point where a
physical album was recorded, tours
booked and CDs sold.
Interestingly, as I looked deeper
into this curious sub-genre it
became clear that there was more
at work with these moguls than
meets the eye. They poached the
“Fast Food Song” straight out of the
mouths of kids. Making a hit out of
this campside fare was the same as
selling conkers in toy shops; it
doesn’t create a craze, just
commodifies one that already exists.
However the root of the song does
indeed hold some serious historical
 music · jonnie bayfield
beef, originating in ancient
Morocco as a traditional folk
round …
A ram sam sam, a ram sam sam
Guli guli guli guli guli ram
sam sam
A rafiq! a rafiq!
Roughly translated from Arabic,
it’s something to do with galloping
horses and safe travelling
companions. In the 1950s the song
was taken by immigrants to Israel,
where it spread fast through the
children of a burgeoning
metropolis, and then matured into
the clot of the consumer age.
While researching, I was
memory-whipped by another
version of the song we used
to sing …
A Ford Escort, A Ford Escort
Mini, Mini, Mini and a Ford Escort.
A Volvo! A Volvo!
It’s easy enough to plot a course
from Galloping Horses to guzzling
engines. Back then, they coveted
fast horses, and safe travel. Now, we
crave only cheap cheeseburgers and
cars built to imitate the female
bone structure. Beyond that, the
doors were left wide open to the rest
of the consumer minefield.
So, perhaps Stock, Aitken and
Waterman were on to something a
bit deeper than their pockets all
103
along? Maybe they understood the
unconscious and ancient art of song
can be just as insightful an artefact
of lost worlds as old bones and clay
pots. Could it well be that this lot,
and their cack-handed business of
cynical pop, are the true pathfinders
and legacy leavers?
In 2018, some radio stations refuse
to play the “Fast Food Song”,
showing progress the likes of which,
a decade ago, would have barely
even registered. However, as with
all traditional folk music, its core
function is to hold a mirror up. Sad
though it sounds, in our time,
maybe fast food, fast cars and quick
cash is all that will be looking back
at us?
Obviously pop music is not solely
to blame for all of this, though I
think Top Of The Pops has a lot
more to answer for than 1970s DJs.
As a footnote, and by way of
continuing the trend, I have
composed my own contemporary
version of Ram, Sam, Sam so that
you can indoctrinate your own
children in just the way I was.
Accompanying hand gestures are
open for interpretation.
A whataspp chat, a whatsapp chat
Twittytwittytwitty and a FaceTime call.
Aleeexa! Aleeeexa!
Twittytwittytwitty and a FaceTime call.
 idler · 62

Jonnie’s picks
Then …
George Harrison, All Things Must
Pass (Apple, 1970). Underrated
Beatle’s finest hour, full of love, riffs
and eastern mysticism.

Now…
Homeboy Sandman & Edan
#Neverusetheinternetagain (Stone’s
Throw) Inspired and original hip
hop that doesn’t talk exclusively
about picking up girls in clubs or
buying stuff.
CornerShop, When I was Born For
The 7th Time (Wiiija, 1997) The
indie starlets of the 1990s and “Brim
Full Of Asha” icons’ complex,
varied and sitar-greased masterwork.

Luke Howard Open Heart Story

(MercuryKX) As ambient as a three
watt bulb in downward dog.
Searing piano/orchestral work that’s
enough to silence a baby or your
own, whirring anxiety.

104
Music
Thank folk for that
Jonnie Bayfield meets the remarkable Irish band, Lankum,
whose mixture of folk, music hall and drone music charts its own
enigmatic and compulsive course
L ankum are a four-piece
traditional folk group from
Dublin who combine distinctive
four-part vocal harmonies with an
impressive and unfathomable
musical range. Their repertoire
spans humorous music hall ditties
and street songs, classic ballads
from the traveller tradition, Irish
and American dance tunes and
their own original material.
Their latest album, Between The
Earth & The Sky, was released in
2017 on Rough Trade to critical
acclaim. The band’s lead vocalist
Ian Lynch explained more of his
inspirations and philosophy to the
Idler, in an amiable interview that
took in the folk resurgence, Indiana
Jones and traumatic couplings he
has known.
jonnie bayfield: I wondered how
you guys have navigated the music
industry up until now, peddling
such brilliantly individual and
105
traditional work? I can almost hear
the industry mogul slamming his
fist on the table and spitting:
“Where’s the autotune? Where’s
the dropped beat?” or words to
that effect.
ian lynch: We have always
considered ourselves to be
operating outside and separate from
the “industry” as it were. For a long
time we were a purely DIY outfit
– we made our own albums,
organised our own gigs and tours,
did it all ourselves. We were never
concerned with doing it any other
way, so we never had to worry about
what industry types thought of our
music. I’m sure most of them hate
it though.
Of course, things changed when
we were approached by Rough
Trade. They’re definitely one of the
coolest labels around and they
really get what we’re doing. It’s
quite humbling when someone like
Geoff Travis believes in what you’re
 idler · 62
trying to do musically. They also
haven’t demanded any autotuning
or dropped beats just yet, so it’s all
good so far!
jb: Why is it you think the band
has grown so quickly in popularity,
and been accepted by a far more
mainstream audience than this
kind of work would perhaps ever
normally reach?  us it’s just a case of being true to the
il: I don’t know. There are
definitely a lot of people who are
into our music coming from
disparate musical backgrounds and
who wouldn’t necessarily be into
folk or traditional music. But there
are also a lot of folk heads coming
to our gigs who wouldn’t normally
106
be into the more kind of drone-
fuelled spacey stuff that we play.
I don’t know if either of these
people are mainstream at all, but it
seems like different people hear
different things in our music and
can come away from a gig with
completely different ideas about
Photo by BAidan Kelly Murphy ©2016
what it is they have just heard. For
disparate musical realities that exist
inside ourselves.
jb: It seems that you are some kind
of folk music Indiana Jones
character – uncovering lost songs,
and piecing together mysterious
ancient sounds from the annals of
history. Can you tell me a little bit
 music · jonnie bayfield

behind the process of how you are of us writes the beginnings of a song
finding and reworking some of that we all like, we’ll try to come up
these traditional Irish folk songs? with a suitable arrangement and
And can you also tell me if you start to work on it, i.e. argue over it
have ever entered a cave which for months and months, until we
holds the holy grail, bumped into finally have something we are
an immortal happy to let see
knight, then “Most of the the light of day. I
watched as traditional material did have a few
Julian Glover, experiences
consumed by comes from songs we similar to the one
avarice, slowly have heard from you describe, most
melts into a other singers in real of which involve
skeletal version me entering a
of Christopher life, which is veritable cave of
Lloyd from Back arguably the only lost treasure, i.e.
to the Future? way to truly ‘hear’ a small bar in
il: Indiana Jones. Donegal, before
Yeah, I like that! a song – sitting face my own face melts
If only those to face with the off after a weekend
pervy Nazi person singing it” of 24-hour
doctor types non-stop singing,
would stop trying to scupper my Guinness and whisky.
good work … I have spent a good jb: The atmosphere on Between The
many hours in various archives Earth and Sky is pretty magnificent.
poring over old manuscripts, Tell me about the process of
forgotten songbooks and scratchy recording and constructing
old recordings in search for the the album.
Holy Grail, but on our latest album il: Creating an effective
most of the traditional material atmosphere within which the songs
comes from songs we have head can live is a big part of what we do
from other singers in real life, musically and I am pretty happy
which is arguably the only way to with the job that we did on Between
truly “hear” a song – sitting face to The Earth and Sky. We recorded
face with the person singing it. about 16 songs in a great analogue
Nothing in my opinion can really studio (Analogue Catalogue), in
replicate this. With regards to Co Down in Northern Ireland.
arrangements, after we figure out a These were then mixed over the
song that we all want to do, or one course of six months down in

107
 idler · 62
Dublin. Although most of the
arrangements were straightened
out through playing at gigs for a
year or two beforehand, there was
also a good bit of extempore
composition for some of the
arrangements: the music in
“Déanta in Éireann” or the
ambient bit at the end of “Willow
Garden” for example. The post-
recording production also added
a lot to the general atmosphere,
with some drone tracks being
played into one end of an old
church and then recorded back
down at the other end of the
church. This was a technique
worked to ridiculous levels on
tracks like “Déanta”, which had
about ten tracks of just uilleann
108
pipe drone in the finished mix.
jb: I’m a big fan of The Dubliners,
and so if a member of The
Dubliners and a member of
Lankum had to settle down, and
raise a child, who may or may not
have been a surprise, then which
two band members would form the
most consistent and least
traumatising coupling?
 il: The Dubliners were definitely a
part of the musical wallpaper when
Photo by Brian Flanagan ©2015
I was growing up and I’m sure their
sound has seeped into a good bit of
what we do. I particularly love the
singing of Luke Kelly, but sadly it
seemed that he moved away from
the singing of the bigger ballads as
he was wont to do in his younger
days (check out the recording of
 music · jonnie bayfield
him singing “The Brown and the
Yellow Ale” unaccompanied on
Youtube for example) to singing
the more maybe populist songs that
The Dubliners would be better
known for.
I think bands like The Dubliners
may have been banned from some
of our members’ family households,
but I definitely have a big soft
spot for them. As for the least
traumatising coupling, I would
definitely have to say Cormac and
Barney McKenna, not least because
the first thing that popped into my
mind was an old faded photograph
of the two of them proudly holding
a little baby and beaming from their
twinkly eyes. Two true musicians, I
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think their amicable and easy-going
nature would be a credit to the both
of them and a boon to their
continuing relationship. I also
happen to know that Cormac loves
a good slow air played on the banjo.
jb: What’s next for Lankum?
il: We are currently working on
material for a new album, which
should be recorded by the end of
the year. I personally love writing
new songs and getting new stuff
together a lot more than playing
gigs and touring, so I’m really
enjoying it. We’re also working on
branching out and playing gigs
further afield than what we have
done so far, so it’s definitely an
exciting time to be us.
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109
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idler · 62

110
Idle home

Extreme vintage

Alastair Hendy has renovated a Tudor house in Hastings. Here he explains

the pros and cons of taking on such a vintage venue

111
 idler · 62
Where is your house?
Hastings Old Town, All Saints’
Street – just up from the
fishermens’ net huts.
When did you move there?
It’s a second home, as I live in
Shoreditch, London. I bought the
house in 2006, and then spent the
following five years restoring it.
Why did you decide to renovate it
in this Hogarthian fashion?
I’m driven by beauty and a
preoccupation with the unreal, and
often the dark and preternatural.
112
The theatre of space and how it can
be interpreted is a fascination – and
I have broken with the traditional
ideas of how a Tudor interior
should be “restored”. The work was
more an undoing, and a putting
back. Although it looks ancient, it is
in fact a contemporary take on the
past, and is totally modern.
Do you have a name for this style
– is it 18th century?
The house dates to 1580, and the
rear section is older, dating from
around 1400. The style I have
woven into the house does not
belong to any period – I have
reinvented and reinterpreted the
past to suit the bones of the house.
Some might say it’s modern rustic
– but then that’s a little trite.
Rawness and honesty with the
interior reflects the humble
character of the house.
It is fairly austere – what sort of
comments have you had?
People tend to love it and say they
want to move in, but then suggest
they’d like a few more comforts,
such as a TV. However, it has
everything from heating (and
113
underfloor heating in the kitchen),
lighting, baths etc, along with a hot
water shower outside. So it’s totally
functional as a modern home.
We’ve had some funny comments,
yes: one visitor, after viewing every
floor (of which there are four),
asked “When is the restoration
going to start?” Another instructed
her friend with: “It’s been ‘done-up’
but not ‘done-up’”. Generally
people are bowled over by it all and
are silenced as soon as they step
through the small door – the
ambience, the atmosphere and the
unworldliness of it all is quite
overpowering, for it’s like stepping
into a Grimm’s fairy tale. They love
all the attention to detail, and many
make repeat visits when the house
is open to the public, as it is on
certain days in the year. It’s an
escape from everything they’ve seen
and know, for it doesn’t follow the
conventions of a restored interior,
and neither does it follow the
current trends found in many
interiors. It’s a completely cathartic
breath of fresh air and “magical”,
many say.
114
What are your tips for anyone who
would like to recreate “the look”
so to speak?
Patience and determination is
required, and having a singular
vision. Attention to detail is all, as is
following a limited colour palette,
and then paying close attention to
textures. And don’t be tempted to
add clutter – where there are good
bones, keep them showing, nothing
else is needed. Above all, keep it
simple and follow what your home
tells you.
Alastair opens the house to the public
from time to time. Details are on the
website, aghendy.com
idle home · alastair hendy

115
Astronomy
Autumn almanac
Robert Katz looks out for a celestial equestrian traveller who heralds the
seasonal changes in the sky
T hroughout September and
October the majestic Great
Square of Pegasus is rising in the
east as the three bright stars of
summer, Vega, Altair and Deneb,
commonly known as the Summer
Triangle, flee towards the west. The
Square isn’t quite as prominent as
the triangle because the four stars
that make up the body of the
mythical winged horse aren’t very
bright. But it’s easy enough to find,
even from suburbia. But how many
stars can you see inside the Square?
If you can count around seven,
then your sky is pretty dark. I can’t
see any from my back garden.
Pegasus is an important
constellation. Once you know it
you can find other things you need
to see in the sky before you die. I
don’t know whether it matters or
not, but Pegasus flies through the
sky upside down; his head is to the
lower right of the Square. In
mythology, the hooves of the flying
horse are supposed to have dug out
116
the spring of Hippocrene whose
waters were said to inspire poets.
Keats refers to it in his ‘Ode to
a Nightingale’:
O for a beaker full of
the warm South!
Full of the true,
the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles
winking at the brim …
Unless your sky is very dark don’t
bother looking for the (quite poorly
marked) hooves. Instead look past
the horse’s belly to the left and up
a bit and you come to the
constellation of Andromeda. I
always think of Andromeda as two
stars away up the back leg of
Pegasus, but any star map will or
app will show you where she is.
And here, in a frankly dull and
confusing constellation in terms of
stars, you will find a small, faintly
glowing patch of light which is the
Andromeda galaxy. You can see it
 astronomy · robert katz
Core of the Andromeda galaxy, Robert Katz
from almost anywhere if you know
where to look, but against a dark sky
it is obviously not a star, it’s a
condensation of light.
The Andromeda galaxy is the only
galaxy you can see with your naked
eye from the northern hemisphere.
We can see our own galaxy, the
Milky Way, of course, but we’re in
it, or more accurately out on one of
its spiral arms. The one in
117
Andromeda is 2.5 million light years
away and hurtling towards us at
110km per second. In cosmic terms,
it’s really quite close. Even so, it
won’t collide with our Milky Way
galaxy for another four billion years.
So that’s all right.
Following Pegasus and
Andromeda to the east, and
reaching a very satisfactory height
above the horizon as the night
wears on, is the planet Uranus.
 idler · 62

I look out for it and its more distant
neighbour Neptune, every autumn
and winter because it moves so
slowly that it’s never far away from
the place it was the year before. It’s
worth trying to find it with a pair of
binoculars or small telescope, for
no other reason than its obscurity as
a planet: just so you can say you’ve
seen it.
But how do you pronounce
Uranus? Οὐρανός (Oúranós) is the
Greek name for the father of Saturn
and, unusually for a planet, we use
the Roman borrowing of the Greek
name rather than the Roman name
itself: Caelus. The Romans
pronounced Uranus Oo-rá-noos
very much like the Greek word but
with the accent on the penult.
Nearly everyone else, including
those who should know better – to
avoid speaking of an arse part – has
gone for Yóu-ra-nus, which is
barbaric. I’d settle for You-rá-noos,
but only just.
side, with his poles horizontal.
German born musician-
astronomer William Herschel
“discovered” him in 1871 using an
incredibly fine telescope he had
made himself (although the planet
had almost certainly been spotted
since antiquity but mistaken for a
star) and for many years the English
called Uranus Georgium Sidus,
George’s Star, in a thoroughly
Brexity way, in honour of our
barking mad king. The French
couldn’t stand that of course and
doggedly called the green gas giant
Herschel until the celebrated
German astronomer Johann Elert
Bode solved the Anglo-French spat
and came up with Uranus, which
maybe he really did intend to be
pronounced your anus.
O tempora, o mores.

If you can find Uranus in a small

telescope you will immediately
notice that it’s not a star, but a tiny
disc of (some say) greenish hue,
surprisingly bright against the
background of ordinary stars.
I think it’s rather lovely,
preposterously far away from the
Earth, a gas giant a bit smaller than
Saturn where nothing much ever
happens, apart from the fact that
Uranus rolls around the Sun on his

118
 Uranus through a telescope, Robert Katz

119
 In the swim: lounging at
the Seebad Utoquai on the
banks of Lake Zürich

120
Travel
Banker heaven
Tom Hodgkinson visits the Swiss financial centre Zürich, where the living is
easy but the ale is very expensive
T his year the tastemakers at
Monocle magazine chose
Zürich as host city for their annual
conference, and they invited me to
appear on a panel of entrepreneurs
discussing how to appeal to the grey
pound. What? I thought we were a
young and groovy publication? I’d
never considered myself an oldie
before, feeling 17 inside, but I
suppose I must face up to the fact
that I am now 50 and many of our
readers are oldies too.
Zürich is the archetypal ideal
tolerant European town, at least on
the surface. Rather than sweaty
Ubers, there are roomy, airy trams.
The streets are clean and there is a
multinational feel. Rooves are
charmingly pointy and medieval
looking. The streets gather around
Lake Zürich and on the day after
the conference, a Sunday, a load of
121
hungover delegates gathered at
one of the 25 swimming spots for
a dip in the lake.
Our spot was called Seebad
Utoquai and is a wooden structure
built in 1890. You lie on your towel
on the wooden floor and then
climb into the water for a quick
swim to the moored platforms
for more lounging. It feels
satisfyingly Edwardian.
Zürich had its Protestant
reformer in the shape of Huldrych
Zwingli (1484–1531), a young monk,
who, like Luther, reckoned that
Popish Christianity had completely
lost touch with Christ’s actual
teachings. On Saturday early
evening, I went to visit the
Grossmünster, the cathedral of
which Zwingli was pastor.
Originally built between 1090 and
1230, it is a fairly plain church, now
 idler · 62

Keep it cool: there are 25 swimming spots around the lake

122
 section · author

Keep it real: a bit of urban Zürich, just for a change

Promenading: the wooden decks are satisfyingly Edwardian, even if the fashions aren’t

123
 idler · 62
at least. It might have been more
lively had not Zwingli, in 1524,
stripped out all the paintings,
statuary and treasures from the
church, in one of the acts of
vandalism that characterised early
16th century Europe.
The Grossmünster does have one
fascinating feature from the old
days, which is a giant and faintly
comical statue of Charlemagne,
made in the 15th century. It sits on
the crypt like Jabba the Hut and
resembles the kind of figure you see
stuck on to fairground rides. Mostly
though, the paintings and stained
glass windows are modern.
Like many apparently buttoned-
up cultures, Zürich has an
underbelly and not only is there is a
red light district but there are also
several of those grotty cannabis
shops. It’s like Amsterdam, highly
tolerant and sophisticated but with
its seedy side. It is also packed with
bankers and is mind-bendingly
expensive – a beer will set you back
seven quid – but maybe that’s OK
in a city where primary school
teachers are paid €100,000 a year,
according to Tyler Brulé, founder
of Monocle.
Zürich is indeed banker heaven.
The finance sector supposedly
generates a third of the wealth and
account for a quarter of all jobs.
Zürich is an attractive place for the
rich as its upper tax rate is a mere
35% and VAT is only 8%.
124
My hotel was a trendy affair
called 25 Hours, presumably a
reference to the hectic pace of life
you are expected to keep up here.
Like all European hotels, they offer
cheeses and cold meats for breakfast
at the buffet. I don’t know why but
these lovingly displayed slices of
cheese always amuse me. They
seem to be so unbreakfasty.
On the first morning, I had
breakfast with the journalist and
tram fan Christian Wolmar, who
has written a book explaining why
driverless cars are an act of folly and
hubris and are never going to
happen. He was attacked on the
Monocle stage while presenting this
thesis by the deputy mayor of Paris,
who declared the idea “rubbish”.
The book is called On A Road to
Nowhere – what else?
The following morning, I ate my
cold cheese with William Skidelsky,
a former literary editor on the
Observer and author of a terrific
book on Roger Federer, who is
Swiss. Monocle, sensibly, are
expanding their operation into
Zürich, and have opened a café
with magazine kiosk and radio
station there. Check it out, but if
you want to drink a lot of beer, buy
it from the supermarket. It is
cheaper even than in the UK
thanks to Switzerland’s low tax
policy. Cheers!
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Gin
The It drink
Geraldine Coates offers a masterclass on mixing the perfect Negroni
T he Negroni is la dolce vita in a
glass, summoning up images of
all that is best about Italy and the
Italian way of life. This
combination of gin, Campari and
sweet vermouth is the perfect early
evening aperitivo, literally “an
opener of the palate”. There’s
scientific sense behind this as the
bitter taste of Campari on the
tongue increases digestive
secretions, cleanses the palate and
sharpens the appetite. Gin, with its
complex botanicals profile, has
much the same effect.
The Negroni is one of the very
few classic cocktails whose origin
can be dated to a specific time and
place. Imagine the scene: the Café
Casoni in Florence circa 1920,
patrons enjoying their Americanos,
a drink made with Campari, sweet
vermouth and soda water, named
thus because of pro-American
feelings after World War I.
However, one regular, Count
Camillo Negroni always asks his
bartender friend, Fosco Scarselli to
126
drop the soda water and put in gin.
Others soon began to request their
drinks “the Negroni way” and a
classic was born.
The bold Count was a glamorous
character who led an adventurous
life, reportedly including a spell as
a cowboy in the American Wild
West. The fame of his invention
spread throughout Italy and the
Negroni was the favourite drink
of the Italian Futurists, the avant-
garde literary and artistic
movement. It had other celebrity
fans with the great Orson Welles
paying a somewhat backhanded
compliment in a correspondence
of 1947: “The bitters are excellent
for your liver, the gin is bad for you.
They balance each other.”
Today, along with many other gin
cocktails from the Great Cocktail
Age of the 1920s, the Negroni has
become ultra-fashionable again.
As indeed has Campari itself, which
was invented by Gaspare Campari,
an apprentice maitre licoriste at the
Bass Bar in Turin, then a major
 gin · geraldine coates

centre for the production of dominates. Or you could really go

aperitifs. Aged only 14, he perfected for it and seek out higher-proof gins
a blend of over 60 different fruits, amongst the newer brands, even a
aromatic herbs, spices, peels and Navy Strength at 57% ABV. What
bitters. Gaspare named his drink you’re looking for is a gin with
Bitter all’uso d’Hollandia (a bitter enough punch to stand up to the
in the Dutch fashion), to capitalise assertive flavours of Campari.
on the popularity of Dutch cordials The Negroni could not be easier
and liqueurs at the time. Very to make. Combine equal measures
quickly, however, it was simply of gin, Campari and sweet, i.e. red,
called Campari and, from the 1840s vermouth in an iced old-fashioned
onwards, was sold widely under this glass. Stir gently. Add a hefty slice
name. The recipe remains secret of orange – it looks very pretty
but expert noses have identified against the deep ruby red of the
yarrow, wormwood, quinine, drink. Enjoy.
rhubarb, ginseng and orange peel
in the complex array of flavours.
When gin and Campari meet
each other in the Negroni, the
piney, camphor taste of juniper is
perfectly balanced by the sharper,
more assertive flavours of Campari.
Both are nicely rounded out by the
herbaceous sweetness of vermouth.
I tend to keep it simple by using
commonly-available sweet
vermouth like Cinzano or
Martini Rosso. Unquestionably
though, seeking out more exotic
vermouths like Punte e Mes or
Carpano Antica scores points for
the competitive drinker.
The choice of gin is crucial.
I prefer a nice, big juniper gin
and for my money Beefeater
London does the job perfectly.
Other good options are Tanqueray
London and indeed almost any
other London Dry where juniper

127
Recipe

Get the habit

Rowley Leigh contemplates the secret feast of Chartreuse of partridge

T he “Chartreuse” of partridge
has artful origins. A Lenten diet
of cabbage soup, the odd turnip and
shard of salt cod must have been
trying for even the most devout
monk, especially for those
Carthusians who found
themselves with a glut of
partridges that had
survived the winter.
It was more than
tempting – or so
the story goes
– to pop a
partridge
in among the cabbage as it cooked
and very possibly bury it under the
cabbage on the plate.
The story has some charm and
a degree of plausibility, even if it
raises a few questions, such as, how
were the partridges caught, and by
whom? Again, who were they
hiding the birds from – an
exceedingly gullible abbot or an
all-seeing God? Idlers, who like
monks, contemplate existence and
indulge in crafts such as cider-
making and bee-keeping, perhaps
need hide nothing from anybody
but I think they would appreciate
the playful nature of this recipe
and its unhurried preparation.

6 French (red-legged) partridges

2 Savoy cabbages
500g pancetta or other bacon,
in a slab
3 large carrots, roughly chopped
100g unsalted butter

128
 recipe · rowley leigh
Preheat the oven to 230ºc/210º
fan/Gas mark 8. Roast the seasoned
and well-buttered partridges in a
roasting tray in a hot oven for
eight-to-ten minutes. Leave to rest
for 15 minutes. Turn down the heat
to 200ºc/180º fan/Gas mark 6.
Carefully remove the dark green
leaves from the cabbages,
discarding any wilted or torn ones.
Wash them well and then blanch
them in plenty of boiling salted
water for two-to-three minutes.
Drain these leaves and then drop
them in a basin of very cold water.
Drain them again and then dry
them on some paper towels.
Colour the bacon in the roasting
tray. Cut the cabbage hearts into
quarters and when the bacon has
browned nicely, add them to the
bacon. Colour the cabbage well
and then add the carrots and
enough water to cover the carrots
but for the cabbages to be half
exposed. Place the tray back in the
slightly cooler oven and let braise
for one hour.
Take a deep, round, straight-sided
oven-proof dish and grease the
inside of the dish with butter.
Take the green outer leaves of the
cabbage, trimming the stalks as
much as possible while keeping
the leaves perfectly intact. Lay the
biggest and best leaf, outer side
down, on the bottom of the dish.
Line the dish with the rest of the
leaves, making sure they all overlap
129
and there are no gaps. Leave a good
overlap all the way around the sides
of the dish and reserve one big leaf
for the final assembly.
Remove the stalks from the
braised cabbage hearts and separate
the leaves a little. Place half across
the base. Place the partridges on
top. Slice the bacon thickly and
place over the birds. Cover with the
remainder of the cabbage and tamp
down the whole assembly very well.
Place the reserved leaf on top and
then bring up the overhanging
leaves so that the whole dish is
well enclosed.
Turn up the oven to 220ºc/
200º fan/Gas mark 7.
Cook the Chartreuse
for a further 30
minutes: it should
be very hot in the middle.
Turn the Chartreuse out on
to a large plate and take to the
table with some gravy and some
plain boiled potatoes.
A Long and Messy Business
(Unbound) by Rowley Leigh, a
collection of the great chef’s recipes
from his Financial Times column,
is out now.
Gardening
Don’t fear the reaper
Graham Burnett lost a lawnmower and found an ancient solution to a
modern gardening problem
O ne of my favourite
Permaculture principles states
that “the Problem is the Solution”.
In other words, it is often how we
look at a situation that determines
whether or not we can turn it to our
advantage. Sometimes a simple
change of perspective can help us
to see that what appears be a
challenge can in fact be a gift once
we employ a little lateral thinking.
A few weeks ago the tool shed at
the community wildlife garden
where I work part-time as Volunteer
Coordinator was broken into, and
our petrol lawnmower stolen. As
might be expected, our initial
reactions were about how we would
find the money to replace it, and,
more to the point, would we be
able to securely store it to prevent it
simply being pinched again?
Basically, we couldn’t do either
without simply wasting our time
and efforts. A complete strategic
rethink was in order. Hour-for-hour,
130
petrol-powered lawnmowers
produce 11 times as much pollution
as a new car, are net contributors to
atmospheric carbon and make a
bloody awful noise. So even with
modest use they aren’t really a good
advert for the environmentally-
friendly philosophies we want the
community garden to promote.
Bearing this in mind, we decided
to see our break-in as an
opportunity to go low-tech and old
school with our grass management
methods by looking into scything.
We invited our good friend and
local community orchard manager
Ron to come down to the garden
and give us a tutorial in the use of
[Illustration by Graham Burnett]
his Austrian scythe – and what a
revelation. This wonderful tool has
been hand manufactured at a small
factory in Rossleithen, Austria for
over 500 years, and consists of a
high-quality, forged-steel blade
attached to a curved wooden
“snath” or shaft, with handles
 gardening · graham burnett
adjustable to the user’s height and
build. Set up properly, this is a real
joy to use, much more pleasurable
than the smoke-generating, clunky
old mower ever was.
There is, of course, an art to both
wielding and maintaining a scythe.
Correct usage is more about
allowing the blade to glide in an arc
across the surface of the ground
with a gentle Tai Chi-like upper-
body swing motion, rather than
hacking at the grass and simply
exhausting yourself and your
enthusiasm. Scything is to do with
elegant efficiency rather than
mechanical force, and choosing the
right blade for the job.
These range from the basic
Austrian Grass Blade, for cutting
lawn grass and light weeds through
to a Ditch Blade, more suited to
tough grass and the coarse weeds
like the dock, thistle and nettles
that we often find ourselves dealing
with. Whatever your choice of
blade, the secret of good scything is
to keep it honed every few minutes
with a sharpening whetstone when
in use, as well as occasional
“peening”, which involves reforging
the cold steel blade by beating it
with a special hammer and small
anvil after around ten or so hours of
use to bring it back to a good point.
The basic techniques of scything
can be learned fairly quickly and
there are plenty of instructional
videos on Youtube if you can’t
131
afford a course (have a look at those
by Canadian scyther Peter Vido),
but as with any craft, improvement
comes with practice and lifetimes
can be spent achieving perfection.
Although the scythe is a
centuries-old technology, the art of
scything has been all but lost in the
British Isles. Simon Fairlie, editor
of The Land Magazine and the
leading importer of Austrian
Scythes into this country is
dedicated to reviving their use,
subscribing to Ivan Illich’s aim of
retooling society with convivial
tools that “allow men to achieve
purposes with energy fully under
their own control”.
Our first lesson with Ron back in
June taught us that using a scythe to
cut the very overgrown meadow
area at the community wildlife
garden is a lot more labour-
intensive and slower than the petrol
mower that was stolen; on the other
hand, in terms of control, it’s much
more wildlife-friendly. Hundreds of
tiny, thumbnail-sized frogs and
toads were jumping out of the grass
as we were cutting it, and we also
observed a good number of slow
worms. The slower pace of scything
work gives them a chance to escape
and seek shelter while the
unforgiving blades of the petrol
mower would have slaughtered
them by the score and we wouldn’t
even have been aware of what we
had done.
 idler · 62
We’ll be making our next cut to
the meadow in September as part of
our strategy of reducing fertility to
encourage the growth of more
wildflowers as well as developing
and improving our skills. We’ve still
got a lot to learn but scythes are
definitely the way forward.
Austrian scythes can be obtained
via Simon Fairley thescytheshop.
co.uk or via Permaculture
Magazine shop.permaculture.co.
uk/basic-scythe-set.html. Simon
also offers scything training courses.
132
For more information about the art
of scything see The Scythe Book by
David Tresemer and The Scything
Handbook by Ian Miller. To find
out about a course near you in the
UK, check out the Scythe
Association’s website:
scytheassociation.org/courses
Graham Burnett is a permaculture
activist and teacher, and the author of
Permaculture A Beginners Guide and
The Vegan Book of Permaculture. For
more information on courses and
publications see spiralseed.co.uk
Beekeeping
Sweets for my sweet
Bill Anderson employs all his wit – and muscles – to open
the magic box of this year’s harvest
N o matter how many times I’ve
tried to prepare myself for the
surprise, the weight of a full box of
honey as I lift it off the hive is a
perennial, visceral shock. I
intellectualise the number: 25
kilograms. I humanise it: an
eight-year-old child. But this
moment of harvest never fails to
beggar my imagination and
challenge my spine.
Along with the realisation that it’s
been a good year and you’ve maybe
got an eight-year-old currently
engaging your diaphragm with the
promise of an abundance of
sweetness, there is an almost
imperceptible component of your
burden which needs to be
addressed before you get to taste a
liquid, golden drop: the almost
weightless hundreds of
housekeeping bees who have no
intention of leaving the honey in
the box that’s beginning to quiver in
your arms.
133
This box is open both at the top
and at the bottom, from where
honey spilled by the disruption of
the harvest will be starting to drip
and attract bees and other insects
– we want fewer, not more, living
things inside the box, so with
enormous relief we’ll carefully put
it down on a nearby tray we’ve
made earlier to catch the drips and
exclude intruders. A simple wooden
frame the same size and thickness
as the hive box, bordering some
recycled estate agent’s “For Sale”
sign does the trick. If you haven’t
just bought a house, Correx is
correct, cheaper and available at
stationers – it’s lightweight and
easily stapled to the wooden frame.
For the top of the box, from
where we want the housekeeping
bees to leave, we use an identical
Correx tray which we modify to
make one-way exit. First, we’re
going to make a 10cm-tall paper
traffic cone, to help direct the
 idler · 62
traffic. Really. Take a piece of
paper, roll it into a cone shape, and
tape it lightly but securely. Make
incisions every 1.5cm around its
wide base so you can fold up tabs
for your cone to become self-
standing. Find a pen 9mm in
diameter and trim the pointed end
of your cone so the pen can snugly
fit into the hole you’ve just made.
Carefully untape and unravel
your paper cone – we’re going to
use it as a template to cut shapes
from aluminium fly screen from the
hardware shop. Cut out and form
four fly screen cones. Use a twist of
garden wire to hold them together.
Cut four holes in your top Correx
tray, each the size of the base of
your fly screen cones. Push them
through from underneath and glue
the tabs of the bases of the cones to
the Correx. Do all this first.
Immediately you’ve put your
harvested box on your drip tray,
place the fly screen cone tray on
top of it. Inside the box, the
housekeeping bees will begin to
notice two things: first, it’s getting
cold without heat rising up from
the now absent hive below; second,
and much more importantly, they
can’t smell their mum. The Queen
bee’s scent permeates the hive as a
constant reassurance that she’s
there. She’s mum to every
housekeeping bee, and she’s
alarmingly receding with every
second that goes by.
134
The housekeepers need to find
her and the only way out is through
your fly screen cones. Within five
minutes you will see the first,
bravest housekeeper crawl up and
out through your 9mm hole. She
may hesitate and try and get back
in but she’ll find it’s impossible –
all the bees can get out, none of
them can return: like a lobster pot
in reverse.
Because the housekeepers are
trying to reunite with their mum,
I call this fly screen tray “The
Madonna Escape”. And also
because it bears a passing
resemblance to the pointy top half
of the corset Jean Paul Gautier
designed for the female rock
goddess of the same name.
The hive the housekeepers have
been separated from is so close by
that, in a matter of minutes, they
will have picked up their mum’s
scent wafting out from its entrance.
The first bees to fly back will stand
on the landing board and add their
own lemongrass-like scent trail they
fan out from their abdomens like
traffic police indicating: “This way!
Over here!”
Soon all the housekeeping bees
will be back home in their cosy
hive, and your conscience, if not
your load of honey, lightened.
THE IDLER
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Snooker
Table dancing
Alex Johnson learns how your stance at the snooker table can affect
the way you play – and suggests some refinements to the rules
W hy am I not better at
snooker? I keep my head
fairly still while playing shots,
cultivate a decent stance (though
perhaps a little more Len Ganley
than Mark Williams), and never
drink more than two pints of
London Pride in a session. Maybe
some of that hilariously expensive
new chalk would help. Or better
still, a massive change in the rules.
It is not as if the rules were set in
stone. The “foul and a miss” ruling
is relatively recent as is the “shoot
out” version. The World
Professional Snooker and Billiards
Association even allows for a
simplified game – only six reds –
in its official rule book.
Most half-decent snooker players
can pot anything. Not as
consistently as the professionals,
obviously, but there’s no shot that
Kyren Wilson can pull off that I
couldn’t also make. In fact, I pot
some that the Warrior from
Kettering wouldn’t even attempt
136
because they’re so ludicrously
unlikely with a 2% success rate.
No, potting is not the problem.
Position is the problem.
This year, members of the
Wednesday Night Snooker Club on
their annual jaunt to Sheffield
watched Ding Junhui destroy
Anthony McGill in the first session
of their match in the world snooker
championships. The score of 8–0
doesn’t do justice to the size of the
annihilation – by the end of the
morning, McGill had scratched his
way up to 68 points, while Ding
had amassed 806. A major reason
was that his positional play was
inch-perfect, moving the white
around the table faultlessly in a
way that, frankly, I cannot.
My positional play isn’t bad, but
it’s certainly not flawless and there’s
nothing more annoying than
playing an almost ideal shot round
a couple of cushions and the full
length of the table to then find
yourself snookered by 2mm. To fall
 snooker · alex johnson
short of extreme excellence and
instead face total ruin seems unfair.
So what I’m proposing are some
very minor rule refinements.
Rule Change Number 1: five times
in a frame, you can move the cue
ball two inches in any direction. A
little extreme perhaps, but consider
the second serve in tennis. I’m not
asking to have two goes at the same
shot, just a recognition that while
pinpoint accuracy is the ultimate
goal, ballpark accuracy is not to be
sneezed at either.
Rule Change Number 1a is a
supplementary measure for those
who have made their peace with
overturning the most sacred rule of
snooker, viz, nobody touches the
balls unless you’re the one in the
white gloves. Here it is – you can
move any ball tight on the cushion
an inch away. OK, this does mean
that an excellent safety shot by your
opponent does not reap its just
rewards. But as we all know, playing
off the cushion is embarrassingly,
crushingly, hard. If Rory McIlroy
whacks his second shot into a lake
he is not then obliged to wade in
and slash at it while spectators look
on and wince. It could be the same
in snooker.
Rule Change Number 2: You can
pot another red after a red rather
than a colour. You would still only
score one point for it, but it would
help extend breaks a little for those
of us who are not blessed with
137
tremendous cue power. And then
there’s the scoring. In cricket, the
team with the most runs always
wins. In snooker, the person who
pots the most balls can easily be the
loser. You could string several nice
little breaks together using the
yellow and green, only to find your
opponent manages to down a few
colours at the end of the frame and
emerges sheepishly triumphant. I
ask you, is that fair? Is it? It is not.
Rule Change Number 3. Why do
some balls arbitrarily count for
more than others? In a football
match, a goal achieved by an
overhead kick outside the penalty
area is exactly as valuable as one
that accidentally bounces in off
the defender’s ear. One requires
deftness of touch, athletic precision,
and a mountain of chutzpah. The
other requires only a bruised ear.
So let’s make every ball only count
for one point. The person who pots
the most balls, wins the frame.
Everybody’s happy. Or if you’re
not happy with that, we could ease
up a little and retain the points for
colours during the main part of the
frame, but once the reds are all
down, the colours only count for
three points each.
I’m not asking for too much,
am I?
Alex Johnson’s latest book is Book
Towns, published by Frances Lincoln.
Escape
Hot under the collar
Robert Wringham drops some ice into his G&T, loosens his cravat and
pays no heed to the latest craze
P atience, at the risk of
sounding like an auntie, is a
virtue. It really is. Patience keeps
you sane when you’re waiting for a
bus and, more vitally, is the key to
escaping The Hot New Thing.
The Hot New Thing is a kind of
curse. It leaves you forever
dissatisfied, slurps the money from
your wallet, shatters your sense of
perspective, and wastes your time.
It is fuelled rather negatively by
what the kids on social media call
“FOMO,” the Fear of Missing Out.
It requires a lot of undignified
chasing and “keeping up”, two
things that are inherently anti-idle.
The Hot New Thing is also
anti-idle in that it requires you to
act! You have to tune in at a
particular time, get yourself down
to a certain place before it all runs
out, gobble it up before the world
moves on. Meanwhile, what we
might call The Good Old Stuff
doesn’t require anything of you at
all. It’ll just float into your lap when
138
you need it. You’ll be browsing the
shelves of a library or flipping
through the sale rack, and there it
will be.
The Hot New Thing is expensive,
not because it’s good but because
it’s hot. It’ll be cheaper later on
when it’s cooled down. In fact, it
will probably be free later because
the world won’t care about it
anymore, and supply-and-demand
will have relieved it of a price tag.
The Hot New Thing is rude. It
pushes the queue. There you are,
in your idler’s deckchair, minding
your own business and savouring a
lovely old Penguin, when suddenly
The Hot New Thing pops up and
demands attention. Well, I’m sorry
but it can wait. One is not obliged
to pick up the telephone just
because it’s ringing. Culture is not
a whack-a-mole, to be anticipated
in a state of urgent readiness and
then seized upon and savaged. Life
is not about rolling as much
claptrap through one’s system as
 escape · robert wringham
possible and getting it all safely into
the outbox.
Worship of The Hot New Thing
would have the world in a state of
perpetual dissatisfaction. Even as
it’s happening, what professed to be
The Hot New Thing is congealing
and The All-New Hot New Thing
is on its way. In the cinema, they
show trailers for movies due for
release in a month’s time or “next
summer” or “in the autumn,” and
you think “Jesus, I’ve only just sat
down to watch this one.” The film
industry wants you excited for
dinner before you’ve even had
your breakfast.
The cultural filter that comes
when you escape The Hot New
Thing is remarkable. When you
live perpetually five years behind
everyone else, only the finest things
reach you because history has
already had its way. This week I
watched two good movies –
Birdman and Nightcrawler –
because their reputation as films
worth watching has remained intact
for five years, not through
marketing but through evolution.
The most popular films of the same
year were called Transformers: Age
of Extinction, The Hobbit: The
Battle of the Five Armies, and
Maleficent. Who cares about any of
that lot now? And yet at the time,
they were The Hot New Thing. If
you’d gone to see Maleficent on its
opening weekend like a good little
139
consumer you’d have wasted your
time and money. You could have
been enjoying the very best of 2009
instead and, five years later,
watching Nightcrawler and
Birdman for 50p from a Glasgow
Cancer Research shop, bypassing
Maleficent, whatever that might
have been, entirely.
And that’s just the five-year filter.
I recently saw Network (1976) and
Some Like it Hot (1962) for the first
time. I read Patrick Hamilton’s
Hangover Square (1941) – as
recommended by John Newlands
in the Idler letter pages – and
Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying
(1936). These were joyful and surely
among the finer fruits of the 20th
century, and yet cost not a penny
thanks to the public library and a
little patience. Good things remain
fresh almost forever or are, better
yet, timeless. A Beano from five
years ago (10p on eBay or free in a
dentist’s waiting room) is basically
the same thing as this week’s Beano
(£2.75). Good things come (there’s
my auntie again) to those who wait.
Older books or films or records
are too often seen as landfill or
yesterday’s news. Worse still,
anything with a whiff of “classic”
about it might be consumed as
some sort of wholesome moral
roughage – that terrible feeling of
“I really should have read Of Mice
and Men by now.” Something old
and whose reputation has survived
 idler · 62

is not necessarily high-minded or Stuff in peace without being cast

highbrow though. Think of asunder in The Big Conversation.
Gremlins (1984) or Stephen King’s Nobody’s interested in your
first five books (1974-1979) or thoughts about a movie from six or
Sherlock Holmes (1887-1927). 60 years ago. Unless they are, of
Speaking of Holmes, I broke my course, in which case you’ve got a
ethic of patience in 2010 to watch friend worth keeping.
Sherlock on the BBC iPlayer. I The wise idler allows things to
didn’t care for it. Cumberbatch is age a little – to congeal and
acceptable as Shirley but at least marinate in time – before letting
half the enjoyment I take from them in. The wise idler is patient.
Holmes is the escape from modern
life, so a modernisation would need
to add something extraordinary to
make up for all those dreary skyline
shots of the Oligarchs’ London,
gherkins and all. The performance
of that guy who plays Moriarty was
almost as cringeworthy as everyone
pretending to like it. Today,
Sherlock, The Hot New Thing of
2010, is barely remembered and
nobody seems to like Cumberbatch
anymore at all. It never became Robert Wringham is an author of books
The Good Old Stuff. I should have including Escape Everything! and is
trusted my rule and waited. the writer of a very good blog.
You can enjoy The Good Old wringham.co.uk

140
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 idler · 62

Inside a Plankbridge shepherd's hut

[Photo: Plankbridge]

142
Sheds
Sheddy boys
Alex Johnson hears from an expert in the art of making a shed a home
B uilding a new shed is
exciting. We all love it when a
plan comes together. But the fun
doesn’t stop when the building
stops, because that’s when you
decide on your shed’s personality.
It’s time to think about the interior.
The possibilities are limitless,
whether you want a man-cave, a
she-shed, or something that’s
entirely unique and personal for
you. A shed is truly a me-space, so
as well as listening to your music as
loud as you like and wearing
whatever you want (or nothing at
all if that’s what you’d prefer), you
should also fit it out to your
personal taste.
One of my favourite
arrangements is the garden office
belonging to multimedia maker and
trainer Christian Payne
(documentally.com). He has a
marvellous set-up that includes a
hammock, a gramophone, a drinks
cabinet, and a Che Guevara poster.
I’ve seen others decked out like
beach huts and of course a cursory
143
glance at readerssheds.com reveals
everything from pub sheds and
Tardises to a Hobbit Chapel and
a pirate ship.
The key thing is that it should
be what you want, not what is
expected of you by others. Sonia
Walker’s Mini Manor, shortlisted
last year for the Cuprinol Shed of
the Year, was made by her husband
as a birthday present and so she has
ensured the interiors are relaxingly
elegant with traditional British
homewares and furniture including
a comfortable armchair,
grandfather clock and fireplace.
Shed decorating experts don’t
come any more expert than my
friend Sally Coulthard
(sallycoulthard.co.uk), the author
of the books Shed Décor and Shed
Chic and this autumn a new
step-by-step guide, How to Build a
Shed. Sally recently built herself
a writing shed next to her house.
At 8ft x 12ft it’s a lovely space, big
enough for a generous desk and a
long sofa. She argues that the same
 A birthday present: outside Sonia Walker's “Mini Manor”
[Photo: Cuprinol/Shed of the Year]
rules apply to your shed as they do
when you are decorating a house
interior – get the basics right, spend
money on the boring stuff, get
proper lighting and surround
yourself with things that means
something to you.
“You’ve got to satisfy all the
fundamentals that make a living
space comfortable,” she says. “The
shed has got to be warm, have good
ventilation, lots of natural light and
all the services you think you’ll
need. It’s also got to be big enough
to actually function as a useful
space – working or trying to do a
hobby in a cramped space is a
deeply frustrating experience,
and you need to give yourself
144
room to breathe.”
She advises spending money on
the things that you’ll touch or use
on a regular basis – door handles,
window catches, light switches and
so on. “It’s these things that will
really annoy you if they constantly
snag or don’t work properly. Also,
spend money on the hidden things
that make the shed comfortable,
like decent insulation, sound-
proofing if necessary, a good roof
covering, ventilation, double-glazed
doors and windows. This is all
practical, not-so-exciting stuff but
hugely important to your
experience of being in the shed.”
This list should also include bigger
items such as an appropriate sized
 Your shed could look like this: inside the “Mini Manor”
[Photo: Cuprinol/Shed of the Year]
wood burner. Sally got a small 3kW
wood burner for her shed and says
it’s super efficient.
In terms of lighting, Sally uses a
desk lamp and a standard lamp in
her shed because she wanted
relaxed, low-level light, and then
bought some outdoor festoon lights
for the summer evenings. The light
from the wood burner also provides
a pleasant feel.
“A great shed can be ruined with
poor lighting,” she quite rightly
says. “It’s worth spending a bit of
time making a lighting plan and
working out which kinds of
illumination you need. Do you
need task lighting for desk work or a
workbench? Would overhead spots
145
work better or wall mounted
directional lights? If you want to
relax in the shed, think about the
accent lighting, the table lamps,
the sparkly lights, the outdoor string
lights. Lighting often works best if
you can vary the heights of the light
source – mix up low, table-height
lighting (i.e. table lamps), with
wall lighting and then some kind
of overhead or task lighting.”
A final word of advice.
“Make sure you’ve got enough
plug sockets.”
Alex Johnson runs Shedworking
(shedworking.co.uk) and is a former
judge of Shed of the Year. He is the
author of A Book of Book Lists,
published by The British Library.
Eating out

Freshly laundered

Victoria Hull finds much to like about the Coin Laundry

in the heart of radical Clerkenwell

146
 eating out · victoria hull
J ust outside London’s City walls,
Clerkenwell has been a place for
free speech and radical activity ever
since the Peasants’ Revolt. In the
17th and 18th centuries, printing
presses were set up there and used
for pamphlets which savagely
attacked the government of the day.
Soap box speakers could preach
what they wanted without
prosecution. Today, it is home to
the Marx Memorial Library. We ran
The Clerkenwell Literary Festival
from 1998 to 2004 from an
underground venue in the sidings
of Farringdon Station – a warren of
courtyards and huge walk-in safes
built for the Hatton Garden
jewellers unloading their wares.
Our friends George and Howard,
who leased it from London
Underground, called it the Tardis
because you walked through an
inconspicuous door in a wall
alongside the station and there this
labyrinthian space lay below you.
The Tardis has now been gobbled
up by the new Farringdon Station
but other venues we used for the
festival still exist. Idler aficionados
will know that we love the Marx
library and The Three Kings pub
on Clerkenwell Green. Another
venue we used was an old pub
called the London Spa on Exmouth
Market. The London
pyschogeographer Iain Sinclair
spoke for us there in an upstairs
room. They have just asked us to
147
hold our Idler dinners with them.
So I go and have lunch and get
excited. The pub has now
transformed into a local for hip
Exmouth Market and it’s called
Coin Laundry, a name chosen by
its new owner for reasons I have
been unable to fathom. I have
courgette fritters like I’ve only ever
been served in Rome. They come
with “hung yoghurt” from Dorset.
Hung yoghurt turns out to be
yoghurt literally just hung in a
muslin bag – most of the whey and
water drips out leaving a thicker,
cheesy concoction like paneer or
Greek yoghurt. It goes well with
the fritters. I also have crab on toast
which was definitely crab on toast
– fresh. A Greek salad is spiced up
with lovage pesto and crispy soda
bread croutons.
The building that Coin Laundry
is located in has early 13th-century
origins as a place dispensing
“chalybeate” waters, the mineral
waters that places like Tunbridge
Wells and Hampstead became
famous for. In the 1660s it became a
public house under the name
London Spaw. A rhyme survives
from that time:
Now sweethearts with their
sweethearts go
To Islington or London Spaw,
Some go but just to drink the water,
Some for the ale which they like better.
 Coin Laundry interior
The name London Spa was used
until 2002, when it was turned into
a Caribbean restaurant. A few years
later it became Coin Laundry. The
owners have kept a wall of gorgeous
turquoise and amber tiles and
followed their colour scheme
through. Retro vinyl chairs and 19th
century tables give it cool and its
huge pub windows look out at Spa
Fields and trendy Exmouth Market.
Coin Laundry use local suppliers
for meat, fish and veg. Nothing
needs to be complicated if
ingredients are as good as this.
148
The milks and creams are from
the Estate Dairy, cheeses by The
Cheese Merchant, oils and olives
from Greg & Paulina on Broadway
Market and eggs are laid by free
range chickens at Rodley Court
Farm in Gloucestershire. The
menu specialises in light roasts,
which we’ll be trying at our Idler
Dinners and the good news for
editor Tom is that they have their
own lager and home brewed beers.
The good news for me is that they
have a great selection of classic and
more off beat wines.
 Living la vida local

Dates for our Autumn Idler Coin Laundry, 70 Exmouth

Dinners are confirmed:
Wed 26th September,
Tuesday 30th October, and
Tuesday 27th November
Lunch for two with one small plate
and two large plates and soft drinks
cost £27.
Market, London, ec1r 4qp
T: 020 7833 9000
coinlaundry.co.uk
E: hello@coinlaundry.co.uk
@coinlaundryem
Opening hours: Monday – Friday:
11am to 11pm, Saturday: 10am to
2am, Sunday: 11am to 11pm

149
Beer
Ales of the unexpected
Evil Gordon of BeerBods gets to grips with some daunting draughts
O ne of the main things I love
about beer is just how
accessible it is. Despite well-
meaning attempts to
overcomplicate this glorious
fermentation, beer remains an
affordable, egalitarian and simple
pleasure. Well, in the most part that
is. There are some beers that can be
a bit daunting, scary even.
For example, on my last birthday
I was bought a bottle of Imperial
Stout stout by a dear friend and
fellow beer enthusiast. The
beverage in question was by
Manchester’s Cloudwater Brew Co
who, in collaboration with the
Ardbeg Distillery had made a
limited edition beer. Since
Cloudwater emerged from a trading
estate in Piccadilly a few years ago
they’ve been making a lot of noise
in beery circles for their hyper-
seasonal, one-off and collaboration
brews. Then there’s Ardbeg, who
despite being owned by the same
people that make Louis Vuitton
bags, make the sort of heavily-
150
peated Islay whiskies that leave you
smelling of bonfires for days
afterwards. This collaboration was
no ordinary beer. Described as an
American-style imperial stout, it
had been aged in whisky barrels for
12 months. It was no lightweight,
that’s for sure and weighed in at a
whopping 11.5% alcohol by volume.
It even came in a rather large
750ml bottle. I was grateful for the
present, I knew it would be quite
special. But I was also a little bit
intimidated by the beer. I wasn’t
going to risk opening it on my own
that’s for sure.
Yes, I was intimidated by a beer.
We’re living in rather great times for
beer, dear reader. There are over
2000 small and independent
breweries in UK right now and the
range of beers out there is just
incredible. But that doesn’t mean
that it’s all good beer. Some of it is
wonderful, some of it is terrible and
some of it …Well, some of it is a bit
challenging. Let’s try some of these
together.
 beer · evil gordon
Duchesse de Bourgogne
The first type of beer on
my list of challenging
ales are sours. Now there
was a time when a sour-
tasting beer meant that
it was simply off and
that some sort of
bacteria had crept
into the bottle or cask
and had its way with
the sugars in the wort.
But not all sour beers
are bad beers. In fact,
there is an increasing
trend to make wild or
spontaneously-fermented beers.
What’s even more surprising is that
this is not a new thing. Sour beers
such as lambics or Flanders red ales
date back hundreds of years. They
are aged in barrels, tasted and
blended. They might well be a bit
funky but they are often sought-
after for their complex flavours and
similarities to wine. In fact, if you
know a wine geek that doesn’t like
beer, then this is a good place to
get them started.
Probably the most notorious sour
beer is the Duchesse de Bourgogne,
a Flanders red ale by Brouwerij
Verhaeghe from Belgium. This
beer takes over 18 months to make,
having first been aged in oak barrels
before being blended with younger
versions of itself. Named after the
Duchess Mary of Burgundy, this
beer is sour yet fruity and if I am
151
being honest, I find it almost
undrinkable! But there are those
that genuinely love it even if they
couldn’t drink a lot of it. And by a
lot, they mean more than one
bottle. A week. If you want a real
challenge, try this beer. I dare you.
Modus Operandi
If you want to experience some of
the complexity of sour beers but
want something a bit more
accessible, then head over to The
Wild Beer Co on the outskirts of
Bath. Amongst the Somerset
countryside and in a place better
known for its cider than beer,
they’ve been ageing, blending and
using different wild yeasts to make
beer since 2012. Their flagship beer,
Modus Operandi, takes three
months to make. It is a study
in patience and the
unpredictability
of wild yeast with
the result being
a dark, almost wine-
like beer with hints of
berries and cherries.
Yup, it’s still lip-
puckeringly sour but
it’s worth a go.
Try it with your
Sunday dinner instead
of red wine, maybe
even serve it in the
same type of glass
because, you know, it
is quite classy.
The Cowboy Rex Attitude
After sour, the next challenge is If this is all a bit to easy
smoked beers. I’ve seen 40-a for you, then try Rex
day-unfiltered Gitane-smokers look Attitude by antipodean
aghast when they’ve tried a sensations the Yeastie
Rauchbier by Bamberg’s Boys. This is possibly the
Schlenkerla brewpub. Just how world’s first heavily-
smoky is it? Let’s just say that last peated single malt ale
time I tried, one my wife was and it is definitely very
convinced I’d taken up smoking. smoky. Drinking this
At the tender age of 42. beer has been described
Historically, the smoke comes as “like tonguing your
from the way in which the malts are grandad”. We had a
dried over an open flame. Prior to bottle at BeerBods HQ,
the introduction of kiln drying shared it out amongst us and no
malts in the 18th century, all our one could finish what little of it
beers would have probably tasted a they had. You have been warned.
bit smoky. I see your Shoreditch
hipster trend for smoked beers Cloudwater Ardbeg BA
and tell you that there is nothing Imperial Stout
new here. And what about that
So how do you prepare yourself Cloudwater Ardbeg BA
for this acquired taste? Well, you Imperial Stout? How
can start with something that did that turn out? I am
combines the sort of nuances of a pleased to report that it
smoked beer with, say, the was gorgeous. Despite
refreshing elements of a good lager. my trepidation, the
Step forward The Cowboy by Evil strength of the beer was
Twin Brewing. Because the founder enough to handle the
of Evil Twin, Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergso, peaty notes from the
doesn’t actually have a brewery, this whisky barrels. I shared it with close
smoked pilsner is brewed by Two friends, quite early one evening as
Roads Brewing in Connecticut. I ending with an 11% beer is rarely a
don’t know what beer a cowboy good idea. Would I drink it again?
would drink but I am guessing that Yes, in fact I was left wondering
the Marlboro Man would like this. what I was worried about.

152
 ukulele · cameron murray

Ukulele

A fest above the rest

Cameron Murray on the crowning achievement of the Third Wave of Uke

W e’re living in the “Third

Wave” of ukulele popularity.
The first began after the uke was a
surprise hit at the Panama–Pacific
International Exposition in San
Francisco in 1915. The plucky little
instrument became a staple of the
Jazz Age in America in the 1920s
and 1930s, and George Formby
and Tessie O’Shea ensured its
popularity in Britain and the
Commonwealth, particularly
during the dark days of World
War II.
In the 1950s, the “Second Wave”
hit when Italian inventor and
luthier Mario Maccaferri debuted
the first plastic ukulele and
promptly sold nine million of them.
Maccaferri’s assault on the music
industry coincided with the advent
of television, which further fuelled
uke hysteria. But it all came to a
grinding halt in the swinging
1960s, when the popularity of the
guitar skyrocketed.
It was in the early 1990s that the
ukulele made its current comeback,
with people like American
publisher Jim Beloff leading the
charge with his easy-to-follow
songbooks and the Internet making

153
 idler · 62
it possible for fans to connect on a
global scale.
One thing the Third Wave has
that the others didn’t is the ukulele
festival. The first uke fest I ever
attended was the Ukulele Hall Of
Fame Museum Expo in 2003.
Fittingly, it was held in the city of
Providence, Rhode Island in the
US, and many of the performers I
met there became good friends.
But there was more to it than
people simply getting up on stage
and bashing out a few songs. My
most vivid memories include being
mistaken for George Formby’s
grandson (long story) and hunting
down a famous hot dog van in the
wee hours with my newfound pals.
The camaraderie was incredible.
“From those early expos grew a
small number of festivals, and from
those festivals ukulele clubs soon
began to flourish,” says American
roots musician Lil’ Rev. “This took
about 20 years! It’s important to put
things in perspective, with
YouTube, Jake [Shimabukuro] and
so many others blazing a trail these
days. There was an advance guard
in this third ukulele wave.
“Why it is happening now is
because people are looking for the
truth. The ukulele is organic,
user-friendly, it exudes a lot of love,
it brings people together.”
There are now major uke festivals
all over the world, including many
in the UK. This summer will see a
154
veritable united nations of players
performing at the Ukulele Festival
of Scotland, the Ukulele Festival of
Wales and England’s Grand
Northern Ukulele Festival, which
organiser Mary Agnes Krell
describes as “mad, fun, friendly,
joyous, surprising, and worth every
moment you are able to give it.”
“Festivals for me are like summer
camp for musicians,” says Canadian
blues player Manitoba Hal. “Most
of the year, I only hear about what
my peers are doing – our paths
seldom cross. But at a uke festival, I
get a chance to hang out with them
and share war stories. We get to play
together and share that passion with
the audience. I also love spending
time with an audience up-close,
maybe even eating with them.”
I can’t think of any other music
scene that’s so inclusive that the
superstars actually hang out with
the punters after their gig. It’d be a
bit like watching Eric Clapton play
a show at Glastonbury, then him
popping around to your house for
dinner and a jam.
Today’s uke fests are generally
three-day affairs that include
everything from headline concerts
to open-mic nights, workshops, art
exhibitions and markets. But one
event has remained unchanged:
Ukulele Festival Hawaii.
Held in Kapiolani Park in
Waikiki, the one-day extravaganza
was started in 1971 by Roy Sakuma
 ukulele · cameron murray

while he was working as a Roy now puts on festivals on two

groundskeeper for the Honolulu
City Council.
“I was cleaning the park and I’d
sit there and every day have this
dream of putting on this festival,”
says Roy. “Through the years, it’s
evolved into this thing where
Hawaiian entertainers will come
and support this event every year,
and it’s grown to the point that the
place is always packed. We get
tourists from around the world who
plan their vacations specifically
around this ukulele festival, which
is really nice.”
One man’s dream: Ukulele Festival Hawaii brings it all home
other Hawaiian islands as well and,
amazingly, he’s managed to keep
them all completely free.
“It would be so easy for me to
move the festival, let the promoters
handle it and make money, but
that was not my dream 47 years
ago. My dream was to bring
recognition to the ukulele and
bring families together.”
Wherever you are, there’s a pretty
good chance there’s a ukulele
festival near you. Go and check one
out sometime. I promise you won’t
regret it.

155
 [Photo: Hazel Thompson]
Idler questionnaire

Amma Asante
BAFTA-award winning Amma Asante is a former actress who turned her
hand to directing and screenwriting with A Way of Life (2004), Belle (2013)
A United Kingdom (2016) and her latest, Where Hands Touch

Tell us about your new film.
It’s set in 1944, and is based on
the history of the biracial children who
were born between the two world wars
in Germany. It explores the struggle for
identity in a world gone mad. 

What are you reading?
A book that I’ve been asked to adapt
into a screenplay. 

What was your worst ever job?
Telephone market research in
Wimbledon, South London, when I
was 17. 
 stand up.
How many hours do you work each
day?
Twenty-five. Just joking, just feels like
it. Probably around 14 hours a day.
 you know.
Town mouse or country mouse?
Town, for sure.
 your life?
Does love bring happiness or
unhappiness?
Depends whether you love yourself
or not. 

Digital or analogue?
Digital.
What are your three greatest
pleasures?
A popular brown fizzy drink,
sleep, and spending time with
my husband.

Do you believe in the nap?
Indeed, I do!

What did you dream about
last night?
That I was laying upside down on
a staircase and couldn’t work out
how to turn myself around so I could


What would the current you say
to the teenage you?
You’ve got more to offer than
How important is idleness in
Very. Doing nothing is my fourth
greatest pleasure in life. It allows my
brain to recuperate and prepare for the
next creative outpouring.
Where Hands Touch is scheduled for
release later this year

156
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“The thing I like about your idling philosophy

is the cultivation of interest, the grappling
with what life is for” – Jeremy Paxman
‘What amazes me,’ he said, out of nothing,
‘is that you’re building a surroard you
may never use.’

The new book from Sunday Times

bestselling author Dan Kieran