A friend of mine warned me recently of the dangers of spending all day staring at a computer screen; apparently the muscles of the eye involved in switching between distance and close-up vision become weak and lazy after a long period of inactivity.

He suggested I do exercises every now and again – looking out of the window at something far away, and then back into the office around me. Ha, I do plenty of this anyway, I thought. But how much of my distant gazing was actually zoning out rather than focusing in, I wondered?

So I tried it, and I discovered something so painfully obvious, that it made me write this article. The world is 3-dimensional. It is infinitely deep. And the eye is the speediest tool we have – one moment I’m at the end of my nose, the next I’m a mile away on a rooftop. And in between, the space – for the first time giving this attention to my focus I am aware of the space between as an area in itself – magical and full of potential.

I am revelling in my sense of sight. Seeing us fun and surprising. How did I forget about this?

One possibility is the mind’s view that “I’ve seen it before so I don’t need to look.” Oh, a tree. Big deal. Grey sky. Yawn. Wish it was blue. Wish I was looking out over a vineyard in Sicily….Which is one reason why travelling appears so enlightening to us. Suddenly all our senses are forced to wake up and it feels good. But walking down Balham High Road this evening it didn’t seem like I had seen it all before. Have you ever had that startling experience of walking into your living room and seeing an object that’s been there for years, as if for the first time?

Another explanation might be the dominance of screens in our culture, work and entertainment. Watching sports is more often done on the TV where the work of picking out what to watch is done for us. But is some of the joy taken out of it too? Is there another game in simply allowing the eye to roam around and chase whatever takes its fancy?

I realise that on a deeper level the backdrop (or rather frontdrop as my eyes tend to look forward) of my life appears more often to me like a picture than a sculpture – moving, yes, but not so shapely as it turns out to be. Even a film is flat; 3D provides an illusion of depth but we know this to be false; we are intelligent animals. Somewhere inside us a disappointing bargain is being struck: the age of convenience denies us our sensual workout, and the reward is a comfortable blindness.

Annalie Wilson

www.annalie.co.uk

On the art of making a latte last two hours…

There are few things I like better in life than the indulgence of very slowly sipping a cappuccino in a coffee shop, and watching the world go by…While some people like to go bungee jumping or water skiing on their holidays, my idea of bliss generally revolves around sitting in a leafy European square somewhere with a cup of something hot and frothy, a cake and a good novel.

I’ve never been to Vienna, but I’ve often fantasised about the quality of the coffee houses, the precise flakiness of the strudel. It’s no surprise that Paris is one of my favourite cities, a place where the café culture (rightly) dictates that chairs face outwards to encourage blatant people watching.

London is getting better and better at doing decent coffee, but it’s still not quite as good at providing the places that allow you to really linger (perhaps it’s to do with our distinct lack of squares and leafy boulevards). There’s a fine art to making a tall latte and a cinnamon bun last two hours (still a rare affordable luxury, even in a recession). But in many establishments before you know it, an over-eager waitress will have whisked your tepid, half-drunk coffee away.

Chains, and their special brand of faceless anonymity – same furniture, same wall colour, same cake selection, same piped music and pictures – are sometimes better at allowing you stay as long as you want. But that’s mainly because the staff just don’t care. Better by far to choose a local independent café, to support someone’s family business, and become a familiar, welcome face. They won’t mind if you’re the kind of customer who spends two hours consuming one Americano and an apricot Danish, because they know you will be back tomorrow, and that you not only know their wifi password off by heart, you’ve also only got two stamps to go on your loyalty card before you get a free mochaccino.

Of course, some people wonder why a cup of coffee costs over £2, and feel that they are somehow being ripped off. ‘But I can make a cup of coffee at home for virtually nothing,’ they protest. That’s missing the point entirely. When you go to a café alone, you are not just paying £2 for the cup of coffee. You are paying to have a few moments of peace in a busy day, to have a space to ponder and be alone with your thoughts. You are paying to escape the familiar grottiness of your own home or workplace. If you like, you are effectively renting a table on a very short-term lease in a calm place where tasks and errands and unpaid bills and dirty dishes aren’t calling you. (How many novels and great ideas have started in coffee shops? How many writers still sit hunched over their netbooks, waiting for inspiration?) You are paying for the overheads of the shop, the rent, the staff, the lighting, as well as the coffee grounds. All that for £2 suddenly seems like a bargain.

So where are the best slow coffee spots in London? My favourites change from month to month, year to year. In central London, I have a perennial soft spot for the café at the top of Foyles, mainly for the free wifi, the jazz soundtrack and the eclectic mix of ‘starving-in-a-garret’-type individuals who appear to be writing screenplays on Mac books, while spinning out a cold espresso and a glass of tap water.

Out east, Counter Café, is a not-so-hidden urban secret – an Aussie-inspired joint tucked in a corner of Hackney Wick, with battered chairs and brick walls, that does seriously good flat whites and food. There are other cafés I love even more for the aesthetics, the buzzy atmosphere, the delicious cakes. But you can’t necessarily hang around in them, or guarantee you won’t be hurried along. And that is the key to slow coffee happiness.

Cheryl Freedman

With limited reserves of energy and time at my disposal, I can never truly keep up with the Zeitgeist anyway. So I have decided, instead, that I will become a slow music listener. My rules are simple:

I will listen to albums from start to finish. One of the things I really miss as an adult is the joy of truly losing myself in music, for hours on end. I remember lying on my bed and studiously listening to every track on OK Computer, familiarising myself with each individual guitar part and bassline. I was once able to recite track-listings on albums backwards. I’d pore over lyric sheets and sleeve notes and obscure dedications and gatefold artwork. Then gradually one-on-time with music took a back seat to jobs, kids, aimlessly surfing the internet… And, meanwhile, the shuffle button slowly killed the album as artistic statement. But I refuse to be the cultural philistine who only downloads the singles. So I am going to put on records, be they by PJ Harvey or Tinie Tempah, and listen to every single track with no distractions. No Twitter feed, no Facebook updates, no rubbishy property show in the background. Just me, my headphones, my duvet, possibly a cup of tea and a packet of HobNobs. Bliss.

I will listen to music that I already own. My shelves at home are lined with thousands of CDs from the last 20 years. Most just sit there, slowly acquiring a film of dust. Yet are The Vaccines or any of the other bands du jour really better than the gazillions of forgotten records I already own, but can’t quite bear to throw out? Of course they are not. So I am going to resist the cult of the new, and the clarion call of this week’s supposed talent (James Blake, Nicki Minaj et al). Instead, I will journey to the centre of my CD rack. As well as the Bob Dylans or Beach Boys, the Elbows and Eels, I will revisit the recently unexplored nether regions, the much-loved World Party or The The or Talk Talk records, even if they are hideously unfashionable and everyone else has forgotten who they even are. I may be some time.

I am going to listen to songs I love over and over again. Just because I can, and without shame. (Current random favourites include Yeasayer’s ‘O.N.E’, Caribou’s ‘Odessa’, LCD Soundsystem’s ‘You Wanted A Hit’, Nick Cave’s ‘Albert Goes West’, and Nick Drake’s ‘Joey’.) Music is all about transporting yourself to a better place. In its best moments it’s a form of pure meditation and escapism. If you love it, listen to it and nourish your inner self. Even if ‘it’ (and I don’t say this lightly) is the Glee soundtrack.

I am going to listen to ‘slow’ music. Quite literally. In a fast-paced city, on a packed out Central Line train, it’s sometimes all that keeps my sanity intact. Folk is generally good (though I draw the line at Mumford & Sons). At the moment, during rush hour, I’m working my way through the Fairport Convention and Richard and Linda Thompson back catalogue. Very, very slowly. And, yes, in weaker moments I have been known to put on Classic FM.

Do you have a slow music rule you adhere to? Please let us know here.

Cheryl Freedman

Carl Honoré

Slow down with Carl Honoré, author of the global bestseller In Praise of Slow, on his first-ever weekend Slow Retreat in Devon, England – March 19th-21st 2010. Always in a hurry? Is every moment a race against the clock? Do you yearn to slow down? Well, then, you’ve come to the right place.

Reset your metronome and reconnect with your inner tortoise in 2010, on the spring Slow Retreat weekend, exploring the ideas behind the book that defined the international Slow Movement with author, Carl Honoré.

Surrender your mobile phone when you arrive, and relax as the roadrunner world melts away. Swap bleeps and rings for birdsong and the crackle of log fires at Fingals Hotel, idyllic Devon farmhouse hideaway.

A lively weekend of workshops, debates and slow activities will bring to life the benefits of deceleration and show you how to put the Slow creed into practice. Carl will be restricting the Retreat group to no more than a dozen people to ensure plenty of slow time and personal attention.

The aim? For you to return home with your own personal recipe for slowing down – and the confidence and tools to make it work.

A weekend of laughter, reflection, conversation, rest and the finest slow food – the Slow Retreat weekend is guaranteed to lift spirits and change lives.

For more information log on to www.carlhonore.com

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The Slow Retreat weekend starts from £399pp, including accommodation, full board (inc wine), all activities and a signed copy of In Praise of Slow. Fingals Hotel, Devon (www.fingals.co.uk). For more information please contact Carl Honoré (carl@carlhonore.com) or Anna (07855 465970, info@slowretreat.co.uk)

First published in 2004, In Praise of Slow looks at how the world got stuck in fast-forward, how more and more people everywhere are slowing down and the rise of the Slow Movement. In Praise of Slow is published in more than 30 languages and has been a bestseller in many countries. In October 2009, it was the inaugural selection for the new Huffington Post book club. Newsweek called Carl Honoré “an international spokesman for the concept of leisure.” ABC News christened him “the unofficial godfather of a growing cultural shift toward slowing down.”

I’m sitting in the airport now having finally managed to score the only available notebook from the dismal array of shops at Terminal 4. Alarming that writing by hand with a pen is considered so out of fashion as to be served by a solitary spiral pad left to rot on a dusty, out of reach shelf in WHSmith. Besides, it’s tiny, and my writing, as has been noted, belongs in a doctor’s surgery.

Suddenly, time switches its focus. Instead of not having enough, I’ve got too much, so I’m trying to make things last longer instead of trying to get through them. I was lucky with the notebook mission, I’ve been to Boots (twice), had a few goes on the moving walkway – which was surprisingly bouncy, incidentally – now what?

Coffee, of course.

I’ve often cringed at the phrase “people-watching” – perhaps because it brings back memories of scruffy-haired boys at school trying to impress girls by being all aloof and philosophical (at the same time cultivating a clever excuse to stare at them.) But there are certain patterns of behaviour I see others doing or find myself doing that make me smile, because deep down we are all the same.

The little deceptions we practise on ourselves, for instance – the women who order a skinny latte and then balance it out with a calorie-laden blueberry muffin; the diet coke and large fries syndrome. My own version of this is to work on the principle that broken biscuits don’t count, cake doesn’t make you fat if it’s on someone else’s plate, and anything with fruit in the title is healthy.

I catch myself picking up my coffee and sipping it as the waitress walks past, in case she swipes it away despite the fact that it’s almost full; it’s a split-second impulse to protect my property – swiftly followed by a feeling of shame at being so neurotic and grasping.

As humans we are often in a mess because we have these instincts but are bewildered by them, embarrassed or unable to admit them at all. Most of the time I catch my inner monologue huffing away at someone for taking up two seats on the train or shouting and laughing hysterically on a mobile phone – and then I catch myself doing the exact same thing and justifying it defensively to an imaginary audience.

Amazing really that there are so many of us, humans – and we all think we are different – the main character in this feature film called life – the centre of the universe. It can be a relief sometimes to admit we aren’t perfect, and to cut other people a bit of slack as well. After a few minutes of sitting in Costa coffee I too am an armchair philosopher, ready to embrace the world with an unconditional
empathy – at least until the next threat to my ego arises…

Annalie Wilson
www.annalie.co.uk/

Read more of The London Loaf.

Image by larskflem.

Zelda writes:

Following this exciting ten-day Festival through a lens, this ten-minute film documents the Slow Down London Festival 2009. It grasps the essential notion that as a collective we are finding ourselves in a time – especially in relation to the economic crisis and climate change – where alternative ways of living are vital to explore.

The Slow Down London Festival offers debates about time, speed, travel, food, craft, mediation, gardening, yoga, culture and history. It is trying to give a space to place ourselves now, in real time, to inspire the idea that living more slowly is not that difficult. With the balance in each step, and each decision we make, we can create a more sustainable present.

Watch the Slow Down London Documentary

It is Saturday evening at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, and Carl Honoré invites us to the revolutionary idea of SLOW. Carl Honoré is the author of In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement is challenging the Cult of Speed and explores how we live in a speedocholic culture.

Considering the economic crisis that we are faced with today, and our well-known stress-factors, the question arises if we are ready to slow down? If we are ready to re-evaluate the meaning of time in relation to our lives and if there are alternatives to this culture of speed? Carl Honoré encourages us to see that Slow is for every one, that Slow is about doing things at the right speed and that being in fast-forward mode eventually only does us harm.
Watch Slow as a State of Mind

Dan Kieran, Ian Vince and Prasanth Visweswaran are living examples how it is possible to travel really sloooowly. They made an exciting road trip across the UK by travelling in a 1958 electric milk float. This little adventure brings to light how magnificent slow travel can be when we take it slowly.

Watch Three Men in a Float

STOP! Excuse me please, but why are you walking so fast? Standing outside the bookstore Foyles at Charring Cross Road, Bruno Contigiani director of the Italian organisation The Art of Slow Living is handing out speeding tickets to people who are walking at a speed of lightning. Along with the tickets Bruno hands out 14 ‘Slowmandments’, inspiring people to make a little change in their daily routine, and maybe to bring more happiness to life.

Watch Speed Ticketing

For more footage visit Zelda’s YouTube page

Image by Liz Poirier

Some people say that if you don’t drink, smoke or pursue – ahem – other worldly pleasures, then you don’t live longer – it just feels longer. On the other hand, research suggests that a glass of wine a day can add five years to your life.

Between these perspectives lies our modern confusion over pleasure – should we indulge ourselves, or should we abstain? At a Slow Down London evening called ‘Wine and Words’ last week, everyone seemed to keen to plump for the former. But this wasn’t just your average midweek booze-up. Hosted by poet and former wine writer Harry Eyres, natural wine evangelist David Harvey and natural wine producer Frank Cornelissen, the event aimed to introduce people to the ancient way of enjoying wine – slowly, and with words.

“For the classical poets, wine was something magical and mysterious,” said Harry. “It inspired them to conversation and poetry. There can be much more to drinking wine than just glugging it down.”

Frank agreed: “Wine has always been our drug to get in touch with our spiritual side.”

We sampled wines made on Frank’s small estate in Sicily. These wines are made entirely naturally, and have more in common with the wines drunk in ancient Rome than with those we usually sink down the pub. “They may taste slightly strange, but that’s because they haven’t been stripped of their flavour by modern production techniques,” warned David.

So did we get in touch with our spiritual sides? It’s hard to say – but we certainly experienced something. The first wine was poured into our brown cornstarch cups, which apparently open up the wines. It was pale orange and tasted like muddy apples and grapes. Rather than clean tasting, it was ruddy, pungent and real.

“In our era, everything is about speed and technology,” said Frank, the wine warming him to the Slow Down London theme. “The world has gone mad with speed – but when wine is made naturally it is a magical product.”

When the second wine was poured I discovered it had an alarmingly meaty tang. I looked desperately around for moral support before swallowing. But as the finish developed, softer flavours came through, rounding out the initial shock with dark fruits. This is the pleasure that Frank is talking about – taking it slow and allowing the wine to work its magic.

The evening was a lesson in slowing down. We drank no more than a few inches of wine over two hours, but many people still tottered out of the room with smiles on their faces – those natural wines clock in around 14 per cent. And we learned a few new classical poems along the way.

So should we take a Slow approach to wine? The answer – perhaps unsurprisingly from Frank – is absolutely. “Wine invites us to slow down,” says Frank. “It inspires you to stop, unwind and reflect. I think everyone in London probably needs that.”

Chris Cox

Image by pizzodisevo

For someone seen as a leader of the global slow movement, Carl Honoré is a ball of energy. Speaking at the South Bank Centre on 25 April 2009, the Canadian journalist and author of In Praise of Slow took the audience on a speed history of the Slow movement.

Looking unfatigued despite having just flown in from Canada, Honoré attacked the subject of “finding your inner tortoise” with a vigour not usually found off the squash court.

A paradox? Perhaps not. During his talk, Honoré argued that slowing down does not mean, as some critics believe, simply doing everything slower. There is “good slow” – which could be anything from getting enough sleep to cooking a decent meal. But there is also “bad slow” – for example, casually collecting your belongings while your house is on fire. Speed and slowness are both important. The trick, Honoré believes, is getting the balance right.

Unfortunately this is where we are going wrong. “Our solution to everything these days is making things faster,” he told the audience. “Not reading enough? We learn to speed read. Trouble finding love? We go speed dating.” In the United States there are even drive-through funerals, where you can pay your respects as quickly as ordering a burger.

These examples made everyone laugh, but they also point towards something serious. As Honoré explained throughout In Praise of Slow, the relentless pursuit of speed is having a damaging effect on our culture, our relationships, our environment and – ultimately – ourselves. When we are rushing through our lives, we don’t realise that we are accumulating damaging levels of stress and fatigue – particularly in big cities like London, which Honoré calls “particle accelerators”.

So it has been in response to this acceleration that the Slow movement – a term Honoré uses reluctantly – has sprung up in so many forms, such as slow food, slow cities, slow sex and slow work to name a few. Across the world people are finding ways to challenge the cult of speed that shapes many of our lives. “Slower can often mean more efficient, because you get things right first time,” he said. “If you are always in top gear, you make mistakes and cause chaos.”

In conversation with BBC journalist Rosie Goldsmith after his talk, Honoré said that the global meltdown was the perfect illustration of this. “The financial crisis shows you how catastrophic too much speed can be,” he said. “No one had the time to stop and think about where the financial system was headed, and now we are facing the biggest economic crisis in decades.”

So how can we start slowing down? One way is simply by doing less. We are always trying to cram more into our days, but this means we barely appreciate experiences as they go whizzing past. This rings true in London, where there is pressure to seek constant entertainment. Another way is to have some kind of slow ritual in your daily life, which could be anything – cooking, meditation, walking to work, spending time with friends.

“It’s about finding a way to apply the brakes,” said Honoré. “It helps you to find what the Italians call the tempo giusto – the right speed.” And with that, he calmly bounded off the stage.

Chris Cox

Green Man

As the Slow Down London Festival approaches, I thought it might be appropriate to consider some of the culprits of our speedy society. And here it is: the apparently benign and dependable Green Man is one of the worst offenders!

He always appears in the distance when you’re approaching a crossing, egging you on to make a dash for it. You could just get there comfortably in your own time but his goading presence tempts you to quicken your step. Green lights are just as bad if you’re in the car or on a bike, but lights are lights and men are men – they should know better.

Also some Green Men last longer than others, have you noticed that? Some of them give you long enough to cross there and back and stop for a sandwich on the way, whereas others are flashing away impatiently before you’ve even made it to the middle. Old people and those who have difficulty walking are basically screwed.

And what of the Red Man – why doesn’t he get the respect he deserves? Because he’s dull and unpromising, that’s why. In comparison to the laissez-faire licentiousness of the Green Man. I mean, which one would you invite to your dinner party? Hardly the Red Man. He’d be sat in a corner complaining of indigestion. And yet what sort of a guest would the Green Man make, always rushing off somewhere and enticing your other guests to do the same?

Perhaps it’s time we gave the Red Man a chance. He’s had time to stand and survey the world, to take it all in. Don’t let’s be put off by his redness – it’s probably just an unfortunate skin condition. Beneath his rather severe surface lurks a kindly soul who just wants to keep you safe.

Annalie Wilson

‘For the promoters of slowness – such as myself in the Slow Lane column – the past 12 months have presented both confirmation and conundrum. The world has bowled along happily for decades in the fast lane, with an occasional half-friendly, half-condescending wave towards the slow one. But after the greatest financial crisis since 1929, it has been forced into low gear, if not reverse.

Perhaps we Slowniks were right all along: the good ship Enterprise was steaming at full speed towards the iceberg, trusting faulty predictions and a brazen conviction of invulnerability. When disaster strikes, however, those who say, “I told you so,” do not get thanked.

Three friends, former BBC radio producer Tessa Watt, agency management consultant Deepa Patel and project management consultant Amanda Stone, started planning their 10-day Slow Down London festival just before the capital and other financial centres were gripped by forced deceleration. For Watt, who left the media circus a couple of years ago to become a yoga and meditation teacher, that only accentuates the relevance of the message.’ Read the full article.

Image by Mike Hill.