August 2009: Life at the end of the Road

'Tis the season to be elsewhere. And with that in mind the blog of the month for August is Life at the End of the Road. It's written by Paul Camilli who lives on the Isle of Rasaay off the west coast of Scotland and works for Caledonian Macbrayne as a motorman on the ferry.  If you can't be elsewhere because you can't afford it or have swine flu and must remain in quarantine take a look at this blog and indulge in a bit of theoretical living.

Life at the end of the Road tells the story of Camilli's work on the ferry and of life on the remote croft he shares with his wife and son. The appeal of the blog, at least for jaundiced metropoles, is to pretend to want the kind of existence Camilli's describes. One look at the wonderful photographs of cloud-shrouded coastlines and open seas, of distant dwellings and people doing proper work, and we desk bound multitudes will likely turn a shade of yellow-grey.

But just read a little bit about what life is like and this patronising romance soon fades. Camilli has no mains power and relies on wind turbines to work his computer and allow him to blog. He has the sort of hands on, hard work, out in the elements life that has become mythologised by those of us who do not understand how the TV works, where the electricity comes from or what we really do for a living. But the joy of the blog is that Camilli has been living this kind of life for years. This is not a fashion, nor is it an escape. Camili's sense of luck and satisfaction is palpable.

Life at the End of the Road is not well designed and the photos are perhaps a little too big for the screen. But none of that matters. What it communicates is a commitment to an unsentimental life lived with rather against the natural world. That it lacks the sort of cynicism and ennui associated with capital living and money pursuit makes its all the more refreshing.