Hi there,

Thanks for popping in. Got a cuppa ready? Well, let me tell you about last week…

There are times when life reminds you to look up. Not just in the metaphorical sense, but literally. To lift your eyes from the to-do list, the emails, the deadlines and the never-ending jobs that seem to fill every waking hour. Because when your nose is permanently pressed to the grindstone, it’s remarkable how much of the world slips by unnoticed.

Now, that may be obvious to you. It probably is. But this old workaholic occasionally needs reminding. And that’s exactly what happened to me last week.

It actually started with a dentist’s appointment in Tunbridge Wells.

Anyone who has ever tried to drive through Tunbridge Wells will know it can test the patience of a saint! So, instead of battling the traffic all the way to the surgery, I parked down by The Pantiles and decided to walk the rest of the way. It meant wandering the length of the town, through the old High Street and up Mount Ephraim.

What a difference.

When you’re behind the wheel, you’re concentrating on traffic lights, roundabouts, cyclists, pedestrians, parking restrictions and wondering whether the driver in front has actually forgotten where the accelerator is. But on foot? You notice the architecture. The little independent shops. Closed down businesses. New construction sites. Window displays. Hidden alleyways. Beautiful front doors. The flowers spilling from hanging baskets. People chatting over coffee. You hear snippets of conversation, smell fresh bread from a bakery, notice the weather properly. You become part of the place instead of simply passing through it.

It reminded me how often we rush from A to B without really seeing anything in between.

Then came Thursday.

Dave and I had decided to make a proper day of it before heading to the O2 to see James Taylor in concert. We’d booked our parking in advance—something I’d thoroughly recommend if you’re heading into London. All that worry about where to leave the car simply disappeared. We drove straight to the gates of the Queen’s House and the National Maritime Museum, parked with no fuss at all and immediately felt as though we’d left everyday life behind.

The Queen’s House was our first stop. What a view!

I’d imagined an interesting historic building, but I hadn’t quite appreciated what a remarkable gallery it has become. And then, there they were—huge, breathtaking paintings by Turner. You stand in front of works like that and realise that no photograph can ever prepare you. The scale, the atmosphere, the light… they’re extraordinary. And the spiral staircase too. Beautiful!

One of the unexpected highlights of the day, though, wasn’t hanging on a wall.

It was Simon.

He worked at the gallery and, as often happens, we got chatting. Dave asked how he’d ended up working in such a wonderful place.
Simon smiled and said, “I just needed a job, to be honest.”
He explained that he’d come to Greenwich and taken the job for three months while he found his feet. Eighteen years later, he was still there. I do love stories like that. Life has a funny way of taking the smallest plans and turning them into entirely different journeys.
He also had the most magnificent haircut. It reminded me of several of the portraits hanging around the house. Think King Charles II… but in jeans.

Hmm…
I may have picked the wrong king.
I looked him up afterwards, only to discover that Charles II was, apparently, notorious for wearing extravagant wigs. One rather persistent story even claims he had one made entirely from the pubic hair of his mistresses.

Blimey.

That rather took the shine off my comparison.
Anyway… moving swiftly on…

From there we wandered through the Maritime Museum.

Very quickly we realised we’d made a tactical error. You simply cannot “do” the Maritime Museum in an hour or two. There is far too much to see, way too much history to absorb. So we’ve already decided we’ll return one day soon, and devote an entire visit to it.

After that we climbed the hill to the Royal Observatory. And looked back over London…

If you’ve never stood there and looked back across London, I can thoroughly recommend it. The view is magnificent. Layer upon layer of London’s skyline stretches into the distance, old and new standing comfortably side by side.

We stood astride the Prime Meridian, met a lovely couple visiting from Austria, and spent far longer than expected learning about the history of timekeeping. It’s fascinating when you stop to think that something as ordinary as agreeing what time it is required centuries of ingenuity, science and determination.

Then, at the grand old age of 67, the penny finally dropped.

I’d always known that the Earth spins once every 24 hours while orbiting the Sun, and that the Moon is busily orbiting the Earth at the same time. But somehow I’d never quite joined all the dots. Standing there in Greenwich, it suddenly made sense. The Earth turns through 360 degrees every 24 hours, so every 15 degrees represents roughly another hour. That’s why the time changes as you travel around the world. New York, for example, lies at about 74 degrees west of Greenwich, which is why it’s usually around five hours behind us (or four hours behind during British Summer Time). It seems blindingly obvious now, but it was a proper lightbulb moment for me.

Every day’s a school day, isn’t it?

Then we wandered back down the hill, towards the Cutty Sark.

What an elegant ship she is.

Once the fastest tea clipper in the world, she raced tea from China to Britain, competing to be first home with each new harvest. Later, when steam ships made sailing clippers less competitive on those routes, she found a new purpose carrying wool from Australia.

I did smile at that. Bringing wool all the way from Australia… as though Britain wasn’t already rather well supplied with sheep History is full of these unexpected little twists.

By now we’d settled into that wonderful holiday pace where you’re no longer rushing anywhere. We strolled through Greenwich Park, quite by chance finding ourselves surrounded by graduates from the University of Greenwich celebrating one of the biggest days of their lives.

Families were everywhere. Proud parents. Proud grandparents. Friends hugging. Academic gowns flowing through the sunshine. Cameras clicking. So many smiles. It was impossible not to feel uplifted by it all. Total strangers sharing one of life’s milestone moments, and we happened to be there to witness it.

Eventually we made our way back to the car and drove the short distance to the O2.

Parking there proved just as easy, and after a leisurely meal we headed into the arena for James Taylor.

He was wonderful. We were up in the nose bleed seats, but it didn’t matter. We were there. And he was the legend that he is. Gentle, understated, funny and every bit as musical as ever. Some voices change dramatically over the years. His really hasn’t. It still carries that warmth and ease that has made his songs companions to so many of us over the decades.

His son Henry joined him on stage too—an impressively tall young man, standing even higher than his dad. There were plenty of familiar faces in the audience too. Well… perhaps not familiar faces, but familiar spirits. Tie-dye T-shirts, beads, a fair sprinkling of ageing hippies who clearly knew every word. There was a lovely atmosphere. Relaxed. Kind. Nostalgic without feeling stuck in the past.

By the time we arrived home it was close to midnight. A long day. Plenty of walking. 14,000 steps to be precise! Plenty of miles. Plenty of memories.

And here’s the thing.

None of it had anything whatsoever to do with Clarity.

No artwork. No deadlines. No production schedules. No sales figures. No emails.

Just a day spent looking, listening, learning and wandering.

As creative people—and I genuinely believe we’re all creative in one way or another—we sometimes forget that creativity doesn’t begin at the drawing board, the sewing machine, the potter’s wheel or the craft desk.

It begins with curiosity. It begins by noticing. By looking up. By walking instead of driving occasionally. By talking to strangers. By standing in front of a Turner painting. By learning why Greenwich became the centre of time itself. By watching families celebrate graduations. By listening to musicians who have spent a lifetime perfecting their craft.

Every new experience adds something to the creative reservoir we all carry around inside us. You may not use it tomorrow. Perhaps not next week. But one day, a colour, a conversation, a building, a melody or a moment will find its way into something you make or write or say.

You can’t keep drawing water from the same well forever. Sometimes you have to go and stand in the rain.

So if you’ve been working hard—and I suspect many of you have—perhaps this is your gentle reminder to step away for a little while. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Walk somewhere you normally drive. Visit a gallery. Sit in a café and watch the world go by. Talk to someone you’ve never met before.

Open your eyes.

And guess what else we saw, cruising around London, in front of us ??

A WAYMO gliding quietly through the streets of London.

Now, we affectionately call them TIM—The Invisible Man—because, of course, there’s nobody behind the wheel. We’ve only ever seen them (and travelled in them) in San Francisco, so seeing one here was quite a surprise. They’re not carrying passengers yet. They’re simply driving around learning London’s roads before eventually being made available to the public. This particular one was a Jaguar, and I have to say, I was rather delighted to see it.

As I have been writing this blog, I have realised something quite extraordinary.

In the space of a single day we stood on the Cutty Sark, one of the greatest engineering achievements of the Victorian age, and we watched a driverless Waymo glide quietly through the streets of London.

The Cutty Sark was launched in 1869. Waymo’s self-driving technology is already well underway.

Just think about that. In less than 150 years, we’ve gone from building the fastest sailing ship on Earth to building all electric cars that don’t need a driver at all. I wonder what the men who designed the Cutty Sark would say if they met TIM… Mind you, I bet they’d probably have run for cover when they saw the Concord take off in 1969 !

Then again, perhaps an even more interesting question is this…

What will people be saying about our technology 150 years from now?

The future has a funny habit of arriving quietly.

Which is why it’s always worth looking up.

Love and Clarity,

Barb x x x