Getting shit for free
Happy Friday!
This week I believe in getting shit for free...
Something remarkable happened to me a few weeks ago. Thanks to the resourcefulness and generosity of my friend and spirit guide Documentally, a rather exclusive, high-end and indeed Swiss tech company sent me their new Punkt MP02 phone. For free. No strings attached.
I've written elsewhere about how everything is free, but I've never had the gumption to straight up ask people to send me stuff. But The Swiss Phone Incident has inspired me: never again will I spend significant sums of moolah, until I've first tried to get it (or do it) for nothing.
Of course, nothing is for nothing. I doubt Punkt would have sent me a free phone if I didn't have some record (however modest) of writing about stuff on the internet.
The Swiss Phone Incident has made me realise that, although writing isn't a terribly well-paid job, it does open up opportunities to supplement one's income.
For example, some friends recently invited me to Love Trails, a running festival in Wales that sounded right up my alley - if it wasn't for the £130+ price tag. So, in the after-glow of The Swiss Phone Incident, I emailed the organisers suggesting that I give a talk in exchange for a free ticket and travel expenses.
To my enduring surprise (I still think it was all a dream), they said yes. What's great about this - aside from saving well over £130 - is that instead of merely going to the festival, I am the festival - or part of it, at least. My experience of Love Trails will be all the greater for not spending money on a ticket.
I have found this again and again: spending money is the simplest, but also the lowest impact way of acquiring a thing or an experience.
Hitch-hiking will always be more latent with possibility than buying a plane ticket. Skipping food from bins is so much more fraught with surprise and reward than is shopping at Lidl. Sharing tools and swapping skills with your neighbours opens up futures that are sullied by contracts and cash.
By spending a little time figuring out how we might get shit for free, we not only save money, but also become more engaged with the people and planet around us, learn new skills or practise old ones, and - above all - have more interesting stories to tell of our lives.
I won't post my review of the Punkt MP02 here - it's a niche topic, and I doubt many people can afford to spend £300 for a phone that doesn't even take photos - but I hope that The Swiss Phone Incident inspires you to look for opportunities where you can spend a little less and live a little more.
~
For those of you who are interested in what I think of the Punkt MP02, the review is on my blog.
Extinction Rebellion have some nice ideas. From what I've seen and heard, the mainstream media response is not unlike their response to the Occupy protests of 2011. When, like the BBC, they question the practicality of the protesters demands, they miss the point by a galactic margin.
Mass actions like Occupy and Extinction Rebellion do as much as anything to raise awareness of important social and political issues, while also introducing a new generation to the demands and delights of direct action in the most visceral way imaginable.
In so doing, these mass protests have political and social ramifications that endure for at least a decade, often a lifetime.
Thanks to R for representing!
Saddles for this year's Thighs of Steel charity bike ride are now up for grabs!
Check out the video for some inspirational shots of people cycling in the sunshine - bonus points if you can spot my backside.
Then sign up to join me for a week of steely thighed adventure - I'll be in the core team for Rome-Bari, Dubrovnik-Corfu and Corfu-Athens!
If you like this sort of thing, then you'll probably also like my back catalogue of over 500 posts, all found at davidcharles.info.
This vlog from The Tim Traveller is almost certainly the best thing on the internet right now. Featuring abandoned railways, sinister music, spaghetti borders, spoilers for WWI, and waffle time. There is nothing here to like not.
I've published 5 books, including stories of hitch-hiking from London to Ben Nevis, and cycling 4,110 miles around Britain. Visit my tiny book shop.
The ebooks are Pay What You Want, so you choose the price tag. Can't say fairer than that.
Today might be Good Friday, but it's also Bicycle Day - the celebration of the first deliberate acid trip.
On 19 April 1943, intrigued by 'a peculiar presentiment' and 'excercising extreme caution', chemist Albert Hofmann ingested 0.25 mg of lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate - 'the smallest quantity that could be expected to produce some effect'. Or so he thought.
Hofmann recorded the details of his experiment in that day's lab journal:
4/19/43
16:20: 0.5 cc of 1/2 promil aqueous solution of diethylamide tartrate orally = 0.25 mg tartrate. Taken diluted with about 10 cc water. Tasteless.
17:00: Beginning dizziness, feeling of anxiety, visual distortions, symptoms of paralysis, desire to laugh. Supplement of 4/21: Home by bicycle.
What followed was a remarkable descent into horror and beauty, confronting demons and angels, and finally an experience of death and rebirth. 0.25mg of LSD, it turned out, was a pretty big dose.
The next day, Hofmann writes:
A sensation of well-being and renewed life flowed through me. Breakfast tasted delicious and gave me extraordinary pleasure. When I later walked out into the garden, in which the sun shone now after a spring rain, everything glistened and sparkled in a fresh light. The world was as if newly created.
For more about the discovery of this remarkable compound, read Hofmann's autobiography, LSD - My Problem Child, available online, for free. (You didn't even have to ask!) The story of his first self-experiment begins on page 11.
Much love, - dc
CREDITS
David Charles wrote this newsletter. David is co-writer of BBC Radio sitcom Foiled, and also writes for The Bike Project, Elevate and Thighs of Steel. Reply to this email, or read more at davidcharles.info.