Richard Vobes Went Quiet and Bought a Water Butt. That's How I Know He's the Only One Left Telling the Truth.

The movement is loud. Have you noticed? It has never been louder. Three-hour livestreams, the capital letters, the man with the good microphone and the bad eyes telling you, again, at volume, that it is all about to happen. And I will confess something to you that has taken me a long time, and cost me a friend or two, to arrive at: I have stopped trusting the volume.

Which brings me to Richard Vobes, and why I want to write in praise of him, and why it is harder than it sounds.

You have to understand what the man was. Richard Vobes ran a show — The Vobes Show — and he ran it nearly every single day. The whole circus came through that studio: he had them all on, one after another, and he asked them the questions the rest of us were only shouting at our screens. He was the room. If you wanted to know what the movement thought, on a Tuesday, you watched what Richard put out on the Tuesday. He talked to everyone.

And then — and this is the part I need you to sit very still for — he stopped.

Not all at once. But if you follow him now, as I do, morning and night, you will notice the strangest thing has happened to the loudest questioner we had. He has gone quiet. He does not, much any more, do the great topic. He does not top-and-tail your day with the fear. He talks, instead, about a supply of water — “it's always good to have a supply of water, isn't it?” — as gentle as a man offering you a biscuit. He talks about growing your own food, being free from the supermarkets. He looks out at the green and pleasant land — “when they're not covering it with concrete” — and something in his voice has changed. The man who interviewed the whole world now, mostly, tends a bit of it, and says very little.

A lesser mind sees a retreat. A lesser mind says: poor Richard, he's given up, he's doing the gardening now. I want you to look again, because I have looked again, and here is what is actually in front of us.

Ask yourself who is loud. Ask yourself, honestly, how a man makes a living being loud about the end of the world, week after week, and what — precisely — he needs from you to keep doing it. A man selling you fear wants something. But a man who goes quiet, who stops selling you anything at all, and turns to the camera only to remind you to keep water handy and to let the children be bored — that man wants nothing. And in this movement, in this year, a man who wants nothing from you is the single most trustworthy object in the field. His silence on the big subject is not surrender. It is the most eloquent thing anyone in this movement has never said. It is a conspiracy of vegetables, and I am, God help me, all in.

Because the less Richard says, the more I hear. I watched nine minutes of him talking about a water butt and I found seventeen layers in it. I am not exaggerating for effect; I counted them, on the back of a gas bill. When a man has seen everything — and Richard, remember, saw everyone — and he chooses, out of all the things he could shout, to quietly show you a leek, you do not conclude that he has run out of things to say. You conclude that he has arrived at the one thing that survives being said out loud, which is: get on the land, keep your water, and stop giving them your attention. “Freedom is an attitude of mind,” he says. I have written that on a Post-it. It is on the kettle.

So I resolved to follow him. Naturally. I am nothing if not a man of action. I bought a grow-bag and three tomato plants from the garage, and I set them on the windowsill — north-facing, but I felt the intention was what mattered — and I sat down to prepare myself properly for the work ahead by watching, I want to say, some hours of Richard Vobes videos about growing tomatoes. When I looked up, four days had gone, and the tomatoes had gone with them. I had watched a man tend his plants so devotedly that I had failed entirely to tend my own. I do not think that is a coincidence. I think that is exactly how deep the programming goes.

And before you write to me — yes, I know how it sounds, and no, it is not my fault. I applied for an allotment in this town. I am forty-seventh on the list. Forty-seventh. Richard tells you, and he is right, that the council will make it difficult for you to grow your own food, and I am living proof: a man kept from the soil by a waiting list and a clause about “raised structures.” Richard got out. I am in a queue. That is not the same as doing nothing. That is the machine, working exactly as designed, on me, personally, in a low priority order.

Here is the truth I have come to, and I have come to it the hard way. The age of talking is over. The wise move — the only move — is to go quiet, to withdraw with dignity, to stop shouting into the storm and simply tend your patch and keep your water and say nothing. That is the lesson of Richard Vobes. And I feel it so strongly, so completely, that I have decided to say so — here, now, at length, in a piece that has run, I see, to something over fourteen hundred words.

I put it to Barry, Thursday, in the Alexandra. I said, Barry, the talking's finished, we must all fall silent now and go to the land. And Barry said, “Roy, you've told me that four times, and you don't have a garden.” Do you see? Do you see what they've done to Barry? I let him get the next round. It felt, somehow, like the self-reliant thing to do.

I am not a clever man. I could not interview the world; I can barely interview the man at the garage. But I have a gift, and the gift is this: I can hear the silences, and I know which ones are full. There is one clip — I'll not link it, it isn't time — where Richard says nothing at all for four whole seconds, and only looks at a leek. When you understand that pause, you will understand the entire thing, and you will not sleep for a week.

Watch him. Then watch him not-saying it. Then, before they ration it, go and buy a water butt.

— R.S.