Magazine Shop

You can now buy New Escapologist Issues One and Two at the magazine shop.

If you love the project and want to marry it, you can even take out a four-issue subscription for twenty quid.

Not Local?

Because New Escapologist has a political dimension, people will make not-unfair assumptions about the issues we’re “for”. For example, I sometimes receive article submissions about the importance of buying locally-produced food. Given that we’re associated with the Idler, this is perhaps understandable but culinary issues are somewhat tangential to Escapology and there’s a lot about the “Buy Local” movement that makes me uncomfortable.

In the UK, the sort of people who are most passionate about buying local tend to talk about “English apples” rather than “British apples”, a paralinguistic betrayal of their real agenda. Buying Local to these people is nothing to do with carbon footprints. It’s Patriotism.

If one is genuinely worried about the carbon footprint of importing, it is worth remembering that “abroad” may well be geographically closer than other parts of your country. Apples grown in Normandy are closer to London than anything grown in the North of Britain.

“It’s mad!” they say when they hear about Spanish asparagus being sold by a greengrocer in Solihull. “Mad!” Yet they overlook the logic that if there were no economic incentive, the greengrocer wouldn’t stock such goods. Who knows what other benefits are involved in importing? A single import initiative might be the lifeblood of an entire equatorial village for all we know. Even from a right-wing perspective, isn’t it better to let other nations do the dirty work while we concentrate on being world leaders?

Yes, there are advantages to Buying Local and New Escapologist is all in favour of certain types of autonomy and simplicity. But we’re not in favour of bumpkinism.

An Escapologist’s Diary. Part 8.

In the first part of this blog series, I wrote about how I had quit my office job and how I intended to escape to Montreal on a ‘mini-retirement’ with my girlfriend. Since then, we’ve enjoyed Montreal as planned but have also spent additional time in England, Scotland and Holland, hatching various schemes, some of which are already underway.

Five months later, I’ve taken a day job again. I’m working part-time as a contract librarian in Newcastle, England. Don’t squint so suspiciously though: this isn’t a tail-between-the-legs return to employment after a wild period of faux-rebellion. It’s a hobby.

Loser-Generated Content

“Piss off, T-Mobile … You’re embarrassing yourselves. Scram.”

Charlie Brooker’s angry and brilliant words about user-generated content cannot be missed.

This is not a proper post, I know. Sorry. There’s a real one coming atcha tomorrow.

Open Sketchbook

Just a quick note from Holly. At the Pigeon Press we have started a new roaming sketchbook project, details of which can be found here. Anyone who wants one is very welcome to ask for a sketchbook, just drop an email to the address on the site.

Issue One extra features

The reformatted edition of Issue One is the definitive one but there’s a bit of stuff we cut out. As a website bonus, we’ve posted some of these ‘deleted scenes’:

The above fresco is by the almighty Pete Thoms.

Printing problems resolved

Rejoice, for our printing problems are over. Outstanding orders will be shipped on Monday. You’re a very patient bunch. Thanks for not sending us mailbombs or reporting us to Ofcom.

New orders for Issues One and Two can now be placed via the magazine shop without fear.

An Escapologist’s Diary. Part 7.

Bobbing for Apples

My podcast partner excitedly reports that he’s ordered a new iMac. Perhaps tellingly, I struggled to remember what an iMac even is. My first thought was that it was one of those total-immersion cinemas (an IMAX) but knew that my friend couldn’t possibly have bought one of those.

It’s a symbollic triumph that the iMac had drifted so far from my consciousness. Back when I started out as an Escapologist, I would periodically visit the Apple Shop in Glasgow to test whether I could be seduced by these sophisticated pieces of technology. If I could remain unseduced by a tablet computer or a slick handheld book-reading thing, I knew I could withstand most of what consumer culture could throw at me. Tom Hodgkinson told me he does the same thing with the Argos home-shopping catalogue. I recommend this practice to anyone: allow the salesmen in, refuse everything and build up those muscles of resistance.

“Great Escape” photographs

The indefatigable Laura Gonzalez has uploaded a very fine collection of photographs of “The Great Escape”. The event – a talk and singalong – took place at the Glasgow Social Centre on 7th October 2009, hosted by Neil Scott and featuring Tom Hodgkinson (The Idler, How to Be Free) and Robert Wringham (New Escapologist).

Neil Scott and Tom Hodgkinson lead the acoustic singalong.

Neil Scott and Robert Wringham enjoying a pre-show beer.

An Escapologist’s Diary. Part 6.

My escape has taken me from Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa, through New York, to Birmingham, Glasgow and Dudley. As I clean up cat sick in Dudley, I think “I saw the Statue of Liberty the other day”. Such is life when you defeat Bad Faith.

The Lie of the Golden Age

David Cameron’s plans for Britain are, in his words, “big, bold and radical”. Or so I read in the Guardian this morning. Actually what he is advocating isn’t radical at all, but a return to a carefully undefined golden era.  (He probably could not get away with a call to a return to the 1950s. Yet.) But what the ‘Broken Britain’ catchphrase barely disguises is a bizarre fantasy of a saccharine era when women were cheery, well-behaved mothers, men were manly fathers who knew how to discipline their kids, foreigners still lived where they belonged, in other countries, and everyone uncomplainingly knew their place and loved their Queen. Obviously, this era has never truly existed. Yet the popularity of the Broken Britain idea would suggest that an awful lot of people have bought into this fantasy.