So I have escaped London for the countryside of Virginia to get some writing done. It is absolutely beautiful here; deciduous trees are beginning to blossom, deer roam around freely, everywhere I turn lush vegetation spills out around me. And there is not a brand in sight. In London I often feel suffocated by the level of intrusive advertising forced upon us (see the last post by Matthew De Abaituar), my eyeballs having literally nowhere to turn from the relentless sell. Here in Glasgow, Virginia the closest I've come to ambient media has so far been a hand-painted sign for freshly picked Blueberries at junction 29 of Route 11. The landscape is free from billboards. The people I've met wear non-branded clothes. The local stores (hypermarkets by British standards) are all chains but even their branding seems to be engulfed by the scale of the trees and the mountains. Yes there are big Honda 4X4's here and yes everybody shops at Wall Mart and yes they all drink Coca-Cola Light, but branded consumerism here feels like a bi-product of life, not the primary objective, as in the UK, where even the countryside is plastered with adverts for Homebase DIY, T-Mobile and FCUK. After five days of zero media interaction, I turned on a television for the first time yesterday, and was immediately sucked back into the maelstrom of rapid-fire infomercials, product placements and 'brought to you by…' messages that intersperses any sort of non-commercial content. I switched off after five minutes.

I'm having a hard time justifying the premise of this book to the good folk of Virginia. One farmer joked to me the other day 'You city folk, I hear you pay, like, forty bucks for a pair of jeans!'. And the rest. If they knew how much I've forked out for all this gear that I'm about to burn, they'd have a collective stroke. And these people are by no means poor. Sitting at the dinner table last night with a dozen locals, I tried my damndest to prove the universal validity of my book, but they were having none of it.

"You might not buy fancy branded clothes, but I bet there's something else you regularly buy into because of the status it brings. What about your SUV, that's a Toyota, right?"

"It's the only one on the market that can take snow chains. I have no opinion about Toyota."

"What about your computer? You've got a Mac G4 Powerbook. Come on, I bet you'd never go near a PC."

"Actually, I have both, and I use them for the tasks that suits them best."

"Er, what about food, I bet you avoid or gravitate to certain brands at the supermarket."

"I buy whatever is the best quality at the cheapest price".

I persevered for another five minutes, and then gave up. To be honest, I feel rather silly and inconsequential talking about the project here. The most branded thing in Virgina right now is me; poodling around aimlessly in directional sportswear, while all around get on with bailing hay and feeding the cows.

I started to get the itch today. Leaping deer and towering oaks are all well and good, but I was beginning to sense a familiar urge building inside me. Rather like the craving for a cigarette, there was something missing, something that would make me feel more happy and content than I was now, if only I could find it. The anxiety grew throughout the day, and I was starting to feel uncomfortable, a little irritable even. Next thing I knew, I was on the Internet, the Ralph Lauren store directory site if you must know, trying to locate the nearest outlet. Hechts Department store in nearby Roanoke had a concession. That was it, I had to go.



I persuaded Barry, whom I was staying with, to drive me there, on the flimsy excuse that I needed to do some research on brands in the US, take some pictures for this blog, that sort of thing. As we drove to the mall, the anxiety was raging, but knowing I was about to get my fix, it felt like the fevered anticipation before a big night out; the expectation of things to come. Walking into the mall, I felt a wave of relief wash over me. I dropped the pretence of field research almost immediately and headed straight for the store, leaving Barry for dust. I could just about see it in the distance, … the gold Times font and pony logo against a shiny royal blue background… racks of pristinely folded polo shirts in expertly co-ordinated colours…. and an assistant that could spot a rabid label-starved shopper at twenty feet.

I started grabbing at stuff. Casually at first, but I soon lost control, and in my desperate search for things to buy that I definitely did not need, I piled a load of fresh kill into the changing room, only then stopping to catch my breath. The smell of unspoiled new clothes, the kind you get in a new car. The crisp feel of the fabric, folded neatly against thin sheets of tissue paper. The glare of factory-fresh colours bouncing off the oversized mirror. And most importantly of all, the beautifully embroidered logo on the breast of the shirts, on the leg of the shorts, on the side of the socks. I had peaked.



From there on in I began to feel increasingly sheepish. Paying for seven items at the till, I felt a little stupid in front of the assistant. I didn't need any of this stuff. Besides, it was going to be burnt in what, four months? The assistant gave me a look of curiosity as she rang the stuff through. I was sweating. What must she think of me? What will the folks back at the house think of me? Coming out of my consumer tunnel, what did I think of me?

In the car going back home, I could feel the high depleting rapidly. I was still chuffed with my purchases, and was desperate to pull them from the bag and try them on, but I felt stupid having even bought the stuff in front of Barry.

"What did you buy? Anything nice?'

"Oh just a cheap T-shirt, nothing much"

From the bulge of the shopping bag it was clear I had bought much more, but nothing was said. The bill came to over $200. This has got to stop.