Wouldn’t you know it.
The official UK publication date for The Slow Fix is January 31st. But my agent has just sent this photo from Waterstones Piccadilly.
People can’t even wait for a book about the benefits of, er, waiting….
That said, it’s nice to know people are keen.
So it all starts here. My third book is now out there in the world. Let’s see what happens next.
Wish me luck…
Two new studies on the effect that the new technologies are having on children. As always, the picture is mixed and a bit contradictory.
Yes, the new gadgets can help with learning. But only if used wisely.
If technology is good, many children are getting too much of a good thing. All those hours spent in front of screens are conditioning them (and the rest of us, for that matter) to expect everything to happen at the speed of software.
Result: shorter attention spans; lack of focus and concentration; a tendency to give up when an easy answer does not present itself at the click of a button.
What’s the take-home? Like most things, technology is good – in the right dosage.
It’s the woman in the bakery who clinches it.
The build-up is pure Paris. In a smart boulangerie off the Boulevard Saint-Germain, I am waiting to buy breakfast for the third morning in a row. Levitating on the aroma from the baking ovens, I ogle the exquisite pastries and eavesdrop on a couple arguing in stage whispers in front of me.
When the moment comes to place my order, the woman behind the counter interrupts me. “Bonjour, monsieur,” she says, with a triumphant smile of recognition. “If I’m not mistaken, you would like a croissant and a pain au chocolat, n’est-ce pas?”
Et voilà!
Suddenly I am not an anonymous tourist anymore. I am a local. Well, not quite a local (I’m not chic enough ever to be a true Parisian), but I have become a character in the morning drama at this boulangerie.
I am now the Man Who Always Orders One Croissant And One Pain Au Chocolat.
To anyone who aspires to be a traveler rather than a tourist, this is delicious vindication. It is like a Parisian version of Cheers: walking into a bakery where everybody knows your name, or at least what you eat for breakfast.
Such moments are rare in this world of Fast Travel. We are often too rushed to connect with local people or cherish the small details that make each place thrilling and unique. Result: everywhere ends up feeling the same as everywhere else.
This is particularly true if you use hotels. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve stayed in some wonderful hotels and enjoyed myself immensely along the way. But lately the charm has worn off. More and more, I find myself waking up in well-appointed rooms and wondering: Is this Taipei, Toronto or Torino?
Hotels everywhere trade on the same formula: walls painted in safe, restful shades; crisp white sheets and black-out curtains; flat-screen TVs at the foot of the bed; clock radios with iPod docks; desks with ethernet cables; organic toiletries in the bathrooms.
And don’t forget that perennial fixture: the trouser-press. Who uses those anyway? And how?
Even the little touches – that soapstone sculpture by the sofa, those art-books on the coffee table, the original watercolour above the bed – that are supposed to be the USP of boutique hotels can have a contrived air. Like something left behind by a designer or consultant who has already moved on to another project.
That is why I often avoid hotels these days. Slow Travel is about engaging with local people and experiencing a place from the inside. Renting a private apartment is the perfect way to do that.
And it’s easy to arrange now thanks to a gamut of websites. My favourite is Airbnb. In recent months, I have used the site to stay in the apartment of a choreographer in Bologna and a designer in Bogotá, a mini-mansion on Venice Beach in Los Angeles and a stylish bachelor pad in Mexico City. All cost less than a standard hotel.
More importantly, each one had its own character and allowed me to experience the city like a local. While grappling with jet-lag, I hung out with the guy selling tacos at the crack of dawn outside that loft in Mexico City.
Even rentals that don’t work out so well – the cramped flat owned by the chain-smoking fortune teller in Paris springs to mind – deliver a rare glimpse into local life and add vivid stories to my traveling database.
The boulangerie moment happened during a recent stay in a charming apartment right on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. Plucked from the Haven in Paris website, which specialises in boutique rentals in the French capital, it was the sort of pied à terre that dreams are made of: Oak parquet floors. Chocolate-coloured silk curtains. High ceilings with tall windows looking out onto a statue of Danton. A sweet little kitchen for cooking up the fresh produce on sale at the market round the corner.
To my delight, the owner of the apartment keeps a bookshelf stocked with tomes you might actually want to read. I even found myself leafing through Jean-Paul Sartre for the first time since university. Can you imagine that happening at a Marriott?
But the main appeal was the way the apartment plugged us into neighbourhood life. A strike on our first day meant there were no newspapers at the kiosk across the street. For the rest of our visit, the vendor and I kept up a running joke about how industrial action is practically the national sport in France.
And then, of course, there was the food. Every morning, we brewed our own café au lait and went down to the boulangerie to buy the pastries for our petit déjeuner. We shopped in the local marché, picking up cured ham from the boucher, a glorious medley of cheeses from the fromagerie and a bottle of burgundy to die for.
By the end of our stay, the apartment felt much less like a rental and much more like “chez nous.”
Will we return in the future? It’s hard to say. Part of the appeal of staying in private homes is that there are so many to choose from.
But if one day we do go back to “our place” on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, I know where I’ll be buying breakfast.
NB: The woman in the photo is NOT the same woman quoted in the blog post.
A few months, ago, I was invited to join a think called the Future Prosperity Panel. It was convened in London by Aviva, a global financial services company. There were nine members (they called us “thinkers”) on the panel, all from different backgrounds. The aim was to reach beyond the traditional confines of the City and Wall Street to find fresh ideas for reshaping financial services for the future.
Each thinker wrote an essay putting forward a single idea. Mine was that we might be able to inspire people to save more if we make saving more like a game. Since I submitted the piece, the media has been full of stories of how “gamification” is working wonders in many fields of human activity. So perhaps I was on to something.
You can read a very abridged version of my essay on Page 3 of today’s Financial Times. An interview with me will be broadcast on Radio 4’s Today Programme very soon (depending on how the News of the World story plays out).
And for the full version of the essay plus a video interview and more background on the think tank, click here.
Jump into the debate and let me know what you think….
If Carlsberg did anti-speeding campaigns, they’d probably be a bit like this one from Western Australia.
Forget the tired old shock tactics of yesteryear. Instead of trying to browbeat or terrify people into driving more slowly by bombarding them with gory images of mangled corpses, bashed up cars and severed limbs, the Enjoy the Ride campaign puts the stress on all the benefits that flow from following the speed limit.
Fewer accidents, to be sure, but also: Less money spent on fuel. Fewer toxic emissions into the environment. A calmness that allows you to take in the scenery, listen to music or talk radio, chat to your passengers or just let your mind wander (not too much, obviously.) Your car becomes a Zen refuge rather than a torpedo of road rage.
In other words, Enjoy the Ride embeds the old discussion about speeding in a broader conversation about why slowing down can pay handsome benefits in every walk of life.
Very Slow.
The campaign officially launches today. It is genius. (And I’m not just saying that because I went to Perth to front the campaign.)
Check it out HERE
Today is the International Day of Slowness.
Switch off your Blackberry. Turn off the TV. Go for a walk. Share a long, leisurely meal with friends or family. Read a story to your children. Take a nap in the middle of the day. Do some yoga. Spend the afternoon with a friend that you normally just speak to on Facebook. Channel the Pointer Sisters by bringing a slow hand to your lovemaking.
Wander round a forest or park. Smell the roses.
Or just sit still and do nothing for a few minutes. When was the last time you did that? And didn’t feel restless or guilty?
Do whatever slides you into a slower gear.
Just don’t try to squeeze all the suggestions on the list into a single day. That would turn slowing down into another exercise in rushing to cram everything in. Remember that less is more.
The bottom line is that this is a day to set your inner tortoise free. Don’t fret and overanalyze. Just do it!
Remember that old Woody Allen joke? “I took a speed reading course. We read War and Peace. It’s about Russia.”
Sounds horribly familiar, doesn’t it? These days we skim through thousands of words a day at high speed. But how much of that ‘reading’ do we actually take in? Or enjoy?
The bottom line is that faster isn’t always better. You don’t gulp down a glass of fine wine. You don’t put Mozart on fast-forward. Sure, there are times when whizzing through a piece of text is the only option. Or maybe even the best option: I certainly don’t linger over the prose in the free newspaper on the Tube. But surely Tolstoy deserves a bit more of our attention.
That’s why the Slow Reading Movement is gaining ground.
My latest blog at Huffington Post is on Slow Food, Slow Cooking and Slow Eating.
Bon appétit!
My latest blog at Huffington Post is on the power of Slow Thinking.
My latest blog post at Huffington Post is all about Slow Sex…