Running Away

Artrockers,

Even an urbanite like myself occasionally feels the need to look at trees, listen to babbling brooks and skim stones across the waves. In order to satisfy this desire we go on holidays. For others the desire seems so overwhelming that they actually buy a second home, away from the sturm und drang of city life. Others buy boats, some even buy planes. And while they may tell themselves that they're doing this for fun / because the can afford it / in order to look at trees I perceive a deeper, darker reason, so deep that they aren't even aware of it themselves - Escape. That's escape as in the need to flee. Why buy an additional home, equip it, pay the poll tax, install security just to spend a few weeks of the year there? Well, maybe some will say it's an investment, a hedge against hard times to come, which is of course true, but why does it have to be in a field?If it's all about long term investment I'd recommend buying your second home in London with it's ever spiralling prices maintaining the national house price average at an artificial high.

I believe that the need for a second home in the country displays a subconscious knowledge that sooner or later it's all going to go pear-shaped in the city, that the great unwashed will, at some point, realise what a bunch of soft gets they've been for allowing the establishment to get away with treating them like crap for so long, sharpen up the dripping knives and head out looking for blood. Or terrorists will let off a dirty bomb, or maybe the city will be drowned in the flood. Deep down they know that one of these scenarios will happen, so it's important to have somewhere to run to when it does. And what about the boat owners? Well, the endless marinas that now blight our coast are testament to the fact that this bunch aren't taking any chances, when the nasty comes down they'll be heading out to sea where the sans-cullottes can't follow. The boat sits, fuelled up and pointing out to sea, waiting for Armageddon.

Of course all those charlies who bought narrow boats the better to cruise that canals have fatally misread the signs, there's no escape for a boat that can't take to the sea, just cruising round and round in circles 'til the plague, or the boredom gets you.

Holders of pilots licenses and the owners of private planes are taking no chances - when the balloon goes up so will they.

The most extreme case of Escape Syndrome (I thought of it, I can name it) though resides with the super-rich who's antenna for the apocalypse is particularly well developed - not for them the country home or boat, you see they know that it isn't going to be restricted to the cities, it will be planet-wide. So where do you escape to then? Don't worry, they're on the case, led by super-super rich person Richard Branson (who's escape gene is so well developed he bought himself an island...or two) they'll be leaving the planet. That's right. You think all this creating craft to leave our atmosphere is for fun? Do you think it's the old hippy looking to make money from space tourism? Think again, it's an escape pod for people with the cash to pay for it.
And they're packing their bags right now.

Tom Artrocker