“A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping…We live too fast and coarsely, just as we eat too fast, and do not know the true savour of our food”
Thoreau
In theory Christian McEwan and I should be soul-mates. She’s written a book called “World Enough and Time”, which is about slowing down and she has the crossword addict’s love of words. She delights in finding “significant” anagrams, such as Listen/Silent, Begin/Being and Busy/Buys. She derives enormous pleasure in a game where you take away the first letter of a word to form a new word, such as making laughter from slaughter; here from where; earth from hearth and yes from eyes.
She’s a writer, a teacher and a poet, and years of research have produced a cornucopia of literary and poetic allusions to the Slow Life. There’s delight on every page. In fact this would be a perfect read were it not for her intensely irritating habit of equating Slow with a rejection of the modern world. She repeatedly cites the example of a monk (either Christian or Buddhist) as her ideal (strangely, never nuns, but perhaps she’s heard what it’s like to be taught by one) because of their ability to free themselves from the material world and to spend the day in contemplation and prayer. To my mind such a life is pointless, fatuous and parasitical, more to be despised than admired. A person who devotes their life to contemplation and prayer is deliberately choosing not to make the most of whatever talents they possess. It’s one thing to ask people to slow down, quite another to suggest that they drop out altogether.
The picture on the front cover of “World Enough and Time” shows a Scottish landscape which has been photo-shopped onto a picture of the author’s unfeasibly tidy desk. The Scottish scene has been chosen as this is where she was brought up, although she has lived for most of her life in the States. She’s thoroughly American now and this book would be much better if only she had retained more of the Presbyterian Scottishness of her youth.
I was running over in my mind who are my favourite columnists. They are: for politics Matthew Parris; for business Luke Johnson; for venom Rod Liddle; for films Deborah Ross; for TV James Delingpole; for campaigns Christopher Booker; for restaurants Giles Coren; for gardening Robin Lane Fox. They’ve all got one thing in common which is that they don’t take themselves too seriously (except, sometimes Giles Coren) and they write, as all columnists should, with the main purpose of entertaining the reader. But my favourite columnist is Carla Carlisle, who writes about nothing in particular in her ‘Spectator’ column on the final page of Country Life. I like her, even though, when she expresses an opinion, I rarely agree with what she has to say. But we are definitely on the same wave length in her piece entitled ‘Take Your Time’ when she reveals that she has joined Slow Food UK. She says:
