Everyone loves to hear about a holiday going badly wrong.
A compelling tale where the couple’s apartment is sited next to out-of-control teenagers, they suffer 14-hour plane delays and experience dodgy catering leading to lengthy periods in bed for most of their stay before recovering just in time to fly home.
But even better is the utopian disaster. This is where some crazed individual or other gives up their promising career, sells their lovely home and goes to live in a commune in the middle of nowhere complete with loser volunteers.
To anyone contemplating such a drastic venture I would suggest reading The Utopia Experiment by Dylan Evans in which he helpfully acts out this scenario for our entertainment.
He is far from the first to attempt such a thing – DH Lawrence used to obsess over starting again on some little island or other.
But, of course, it is destined to end in tears as all that happens is the same problems that occur in civilisation at large are replicated in miniature form. Human beings cannot escape their own humanity.
So Dylan gives up his job in academia, sells his house, gets married to a woman he barely knows called Boe and sets up his community in the Scottish Highlands.
There is an extra twist to this gripping saga in that he is possessed of an apocalyptic gene and is so enthralled by the possibility of the world’s imminent demise that he encourages his London-based sister to buy a horse as a means of getting around post-apocalypse.
Inevitably, this search for a simpler existence based on self-sufficiency is not without its teething problems. There’s the Highlands weather to contend with, killing animals is fraught with all sorts of unseen difficulties and the personality clashes kick in big time, particularly with a self-styled hippie called Adam who claimed to have direct links to the Great Spirit. Dylan implodes and finds himself being sectioned. Experiment over. So much for utopia.
