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One of the least arduous but most productive of gardening jobs, the magic of deadheading never fails to delight me. It was a revelation when the principle was explained to me: that flowers are the attempt by the plant to reproduce itself. So if you cut the heads off before the flower turns into seeds, the plant will continue to flower.

Tom Hodgkinson

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Tom Hodgkinson
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: January 1
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There is nothing so perfect as pinball and a pint at 11 a.m.
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The idea of a government is to create an ordered, willing work force where there's no trouble. I think idlers are generally seen as potentially dangerous because they're asking questions.
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It takes a while to master the art of hammock-lounging. At first I could only manage five minutes or so before I thought I ought to get out and go and help a child learn how to swim or something. But after observing the Mexicans' capability for staring into space for hours on end, I decided to put in some proper practice.
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Truly, the bench is a boon to idlers. Whoever first came up with the idea is a genius: free public resting places where you can take time out from the bustle and brouhaha of the city, and simply sit and watch and reflect.
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Paradoxically, to be truly idle, you also have to be efficient.
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The world's richest half billion people - that's about seven per cent of the global population - are responsible for fifty per cent of the world's emissions.
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One aspect of fast London life I have never understood, for example, is the custom of the gym. Why do people go to gyms?
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Being lazy does not mean that you do not create. In fact, lying around doing nothing is an important, nay crucial, part of the creative process. It is meaningless bustle that actually gets in the way of productivity. All we are really saying is, give peace a chance.
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The art of living is the art of bringing dreams and reality together.
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What I've found in working less is you start to get a bit more involved in the more real politics, which is local politics that affect what's going on in your own community.
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Part of this individualism is you feel this pressure that you alone have to conquer the world, and if you don't work all the hours God gives then you start feeling really guilty. If you can stop feeling guilty, then I think it's easier to start doing what you want to do.
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Beauty, pleasure, freedom and plenty of sleep: these are the hallmarks of a successful idler's break. Travel should not be hard work.
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Benjamin Franklin and the whole idea of a new attitude to money: Time is money. He invented that idea. Before that, time wasn't money in the same way in the medieval age it was regarded as sinful for money to be the object of your life.
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Life has been reduced to a series of long periods of boredom in the office punctuated by high-octane experiences which you can rack up on your list of things to do before you die. That's not really living: that is slavery with the occasional circus thrown in.
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My idea of childcare at festivals is to sit at a trestle table with an ale while the kids run around and make up their own games.
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We have an idea that if something we're doing isn't actually earning money, or spending it, then it's completely worthless. But if you start to work less, you can actually start to give more to society, but on a local level.
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If you look at the literature of the 19th century, you get things like Kafka and Dostoevsky, who basically write about feeling bored and alienated. That's because we lost contact with the important things in life like work that you enjoy, or the garden, nature, your family and friends.
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When the going gets tough, the tough take a nap.
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Am I the only person in the world who is shocked and amazed at the ongoing flattery of uebergeek Mark Zuckerberg?
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Although I played a lot of computer games in my 20s, now I have children of my own I hate them with a passion.
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