Convenience Big Store: Pirates, pit vipers and panoramic views

22 October, 2023

The great escape

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Pirates, pit vipers and panoramic views

A few weeks ago, says Zachary Crockett in The Hustle, Ben Saul-Garner paid around £3,000 to be "abandoned on a remote island in Indonesia". For 10 days, the 33-year-old Londoner slept in a hammock, subsisted on coconuts and crab, and spent his time foraging for firewood – all in total isolation. "There's something about just being in nature," he says, "and going back to basics, that I love." Saul-Garner booked his trip through Docastaway, one of a growing number of niche travel firms catering to those in search of "extreme isolation". The company offers two packages: "Survival mode", in which clients are dropped off with just a machete or a harpoon and have to figure out the rest by themselves; and "Comfort mode", where a crew is on standby with "food, water, shelter" and other necessities. In recent years, says founder Alvaro Cerezo, Survival mode has become an increasingly popular option.

The tricky part is finding enough remote, but basically safe, windswept atolls to park clients on. "There are lots of beautiful islands in the Philippines, but there are pirates," says Tom Williams, boss of British firm Desert Island Survival. "In Indonesia, there are pit vipers, and in New Guinea there are green mambas that can literally kill you." A "risks and dangers" tab on his website elaborates on the various traumas that can be inflicted by "monitor lizards, wild pigs, sharks, jellyfish, pufferfish, stingrays, and other island-dwelling creatures". And the success of survival TV shows is massively driving up the cost of renting remote islands. A famous YouTuber recently paid $70,000 to rent an island in Panama for a video. "He turned up there with friends," says Williams, but "there were way too many insects for them. So they left."

Property

THE OLD SCHOOLHOUSE This Grade II listed, three-bedroom property is in the chocolate box village of Lower North Wraxall in Wiltshire. Built in 1832 with Cotswold stone, it was recently restored to expose its high ceilings, internal stonework and wooden beams. Original stone-mullioned windows offer bucolic views of the woodland outside. Bath is a 15-minute drive; Chippenham station is five minutes closer and has trains to Paddington in 70 minutes. £850,000.

Books

Wylie in 2003: "I can do anything I want." Eamonn McCabe/Popperfoto/Getty

The Jackal of the literary world

The 75-year-old American literary agent Andrew Wylie is so fearsome he's known as "the Jackal", says Harry Lambert in The New Statesman. And when I interview him at his office in a Manhattan skyscraper, he doesn't hold back. America, he declares, is the "land of the completely stupid"; the bestseller list "was composed of trash when I started in 1980, and it's composed of drivel now"; the idea that the publishing industry has made peace with Amazon is like saying "the Uyghurs are getting along well with the Chinese". He can speak bluntly, he says, because "there are 1,500 writers behind me. So I can do anything I want."

Wylie, who comes from a moneyed east coast family, dabbled in journalism and poetry before setting up his eponymous agency aged 33. His skilfulness in poaching star authors from rivals has helped him build a formidable roster of talent, from Sally Rooney to Martin Amis to Bob Dylan. One client, Salman Rushdie, is an author of "Mozartean fluidity", he says; Philip Roth, by contrast, would call him up in the middle of a project and complain: "This is the worst shit I've ever come across, I can't do this job." Wylie's lack of scruples has won him few friends. In 1988, one magazine editor wondered in Vanity Fair why he hadn't yet been "run out of town". But thanks to his relentless focus on literary quality, and the deep loyalty he inspires in clients, he "remains in town" 35 years later.

Tomorrow's world

Some 50 million miles of power lines need to be built or upgraded by 2040. Getty

A $600bn-a-year nightmare for Net Zero

In the rush to embrace green tech like solar panels and wind turbines, the world appears to be forgetting something rather crucial, says Brad Plumer in The New York Times: the infrastructure needed to support it all. In an extensive new report, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warns that around 50 million miles of power lines around the world need to be built or upgraded by 2040 – equivalent to nearly doubling the planet's existing electric grids. To keep pace with renewable energy commitments, the world will need to spend a whopping $600bn a year by 2030. Yet with the "notable exception of China", investment in grids is declining in many countries. As IEA director Fatih Birol says: "It's like being focused on building the fastest, most beautiful car you possibly can, but then you forget to build the roads for it."

The problems are already stacking up. Around the world, at least 3,000 gigawatts of renewable energy are "waiting for permission to connect to power lines" – equivalent to five times the total solar and wind installed last year. In the US, it can take more than five years to hook a new power plant up to the grid. One factor is residents refusing to allow new lines to be built in their neighbourhoods. Another is that utility companies are having to upgrade infrastructure in cities to handle the "influx of power demand" from electric vehicles. In the Netherlands, demand is so high that 3,000 neighbourhoods will have to wait until 2025 before they can install any more charging stations. If governments want to meet their ambitious renewable energy targets, they need to get on with clearing this "logjam".

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Love etc

Kate Lister: I kissed a Tory, and I liked it

Dating apps these days are filled with a particular "sexual embargo", says Kate Lister in the I newspaper: many people specify "no Tories" in their bios. But despite being a leftie, I'd never take up the injunction myself – not least because "some of the best sex I ever had" was with a Tory I met on a dating app. "At least, I think he was a Tory." It wasn't long after the Brexit referendum, he was a Leave voter, and "we had a very heated argument about the Irish border before ending up in the sack". We were furious with each other, and the result "was some seriously energetic sex". Hooking up, it turns out, is a great way of working through political differences. "After your third orgasm, it is hard to care that much about revoking the EU ban on imperial measurements."

Inside politics

Milei demonstrating how he'll "tear up the status quo". Tomas Cuesta/Getty

The "sex guru" on course to be Argentina's president

Javier Milei, the front-runner in Argentina's presidential election, has to be one of the most eccentric politicians in the world, says Ana Lankes in 1843 magazine. The 52-year-old libertarian economist has boasted on television about being a "sex guru" whom former girlfriends call "the naughty cow". He raffles off his congressional salary every month to fans on social media, and recently started wielding a chainsaw to "demonstrate how he plans to tear up the status quo". He sometimes dresses up in head-to-toe spandex as his alter ego General Ancap, the leader of "Liberland", where nobody pays taxes. And he was so heartbroken after the death of his beloved English mastiff Conan – named after the 1982 movie Conan the Barbarian – that he had the dog cloned into five puppies. He calls them his "four-legged children".

Milei's views are as extreme as his public persona. He has dismissed the Pope, who is Argentinian, as an "ignoramus" and a "leftist son of a bitch". He has suggested that people should be able to buy and sell organs legally, and when asked whether he thought parents should be able to sell their children, responded: "It depends." But whatever he's doing, it's working. His rock-inspired campaign events, typically "more theatrical than political", are a big hit with his young, male-dominated base. And he was a surprise winner in the presidential primaries in August, taking 30% of the vote. If he triumphs in the election, the first round of which is today, "Argentina had better brace itself".

Quoted

"War does not determine who is right, only who is left."

Bertrand Russell

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