‘I deliberately chose a wind-up word,’ said professional idler Tom Hodgkinson and I suspect the other author this evening, psychopath specialist Kevin Dutton, had done the same.
Tom is the first to admit that his ideas are nothing new, just culturally unpopular since the protestant/puritan work ethic. Though he’s used the words idling, loafing and laziness what he really means is daydreaming, contemplation and creative boredom, or just doing stuff you want to do rather than being ‘condemned to toil by outside forces’ – ‘no shit jobs’. Which is something else both speakers had in common – very quotable.
Not that he’ll be pinned down into a definition, this would be anti-idling. One woman asks if playing app game Candy Crush is the best use of her retirement. Tom says, ‘I’m wary of having an approved list of idling activities’ and then describes how his magazine, The Idler, praised MP Nigel Mills for playing the game in a parliamentary committee. Continue reading
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