Vinyl LPs, paper diaries, real magazines – these things all do their jobs well and look fantastic to boot. Tom Hodgkinson on the joy of returning to the old ways

Possibly the cleansing spirit of the New Year had got to us, but in early January Victoria and I found ourselves impulsively cancelling all our streaming services – Netflix, NOWTV, Apple TV and possibly one other that we signed up to by mistake. We saved nearly £500 in the process.

As a replacement, we are following Idler reader Bob’s advice and switching to DVDs. I went down to Richer Sounds and bought a DVD player for £29. I plugged it in and it worked instantly – no signing in, no passwords, no ads, no synching up with another “device”, no buffering, no problems.

By coincidence a neighbour told us she was chucking out her DVDs, so now we have a nice collection of movies which we can watch whenever we like, for nought pounds, and without paying any tax to an American multi-national media conglomerate.

Idler contributor Ben Moor recommends a DVD rental service called Cinema Paradiso, which we might check out. We’ll also be scouring charity shops for groovy finds.

Truly, I resolve that 2026 will be my year of living analoguely.

In another analogue triumph, Victoria gave me a lovely Smythson pocket diary, and I’ve been happily copying out the dates from my utterly crap shared Apple calendar, which doesn’t work, into this delightful papery thing, which doubles as a notebook and thinking pad and which looks beautiful, too. Also, I found that with digital calendars, I was prone to miss appointments and forget things, if one tiny little setting went wrong.

For Christmas presents, I went down to Special Rider, a newish bookstall and LP stall in Shepherd’s Bush Market. There I bought three paperbacks and two fantastic vinyl LPs – The Dubliners and Leadbelly. They all worked first time! I’m tempted to save even more money by logging off from Spotify. How much is that costing me a year? £144 or something like that?

I’m also loving my subscription to World of Interiors magazine, which costs a mere £28 a year. Every month, they send you a gorgeous work of art which is surprisingly weird and avant-garde. Excellent value.

When it comes to online meetings, what’s wrong with the phone? Just this morning, I had a Microsoft Teams meeting set up, and no matter what I tried, I  just couldn’t log in to the damn thing. It didn’t work! (Why has Microsoft, purveyor of utterly shit products, become such a massive company? It’s not fair.) So the other person suggested the radical idea of picking up the telephone – and hey presto, success!

How about you – what do you do to live analoguely? Which old ways have you enjoyed going back to?

Happy New Year,

Tom

PS May I plug my new book again? How to Live Like a Stoic: A Handbook for Happiness is out on 12 February and may be pre-ordered here.

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SELECTED COMMENTS

These comments were mailed to us after an earlier version of this piece was sent out as a newsletter. We like to publish a selection and reserve the right to edit them for clarity. Please add your thoughts in the box below.

Sir: Dear Esteemed Editor and the Director of the Idler: Do you honestly think that Caligula on the Potomac (see my book) will allow you or me to live ‘analoguely’? He will sue you for undermining the MAGA project. Some of us never subscribed to the wretched streaming services and therefore can feel virtuous. Happy New Year. Hasn’t it started well!
Guy Standing

Sir: I was stirred by your ‘radical’ intentions and write in complete agreement after unplugging from most things myself. I often sit with paper diary at the ready waiting to book a meeting while someone moans about not being able to access their ‘calendar’. Usually muttering my least favourite phrase ‘bear with me’. What does that even mean? Anyway, cheers to the analogue revolution. Yours truly, a happy subscriber.
Jose Adams

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