Those of you that know me reasonably well will know that I’m kind of working at the moment, but not really. It’s a very weird situation to be in, as I’ve always had a job since leaving college and never had more than two weeks off for holiday in my entire working life (although we did take a three week holiday in California in the eighties, that doesn’t count as it was before children).

So I find myself biding some time and getting my life (and the garden, promise) into some order after some twenty years running full tilt at the coalface of the design industry. It’s an interesting time not just for me, but for the industry in general, and I’m expecting to be back in operation with a renewed vigour and super clarified focus on what I’d like to achieve in the next phase.

Someone who’d been through this phase said it’s incredibly valuable in determining exactly what the next thing is going to look like, and although it seems a little early for me to say too much about that just yet, I am beginning to see what they mean.

There’ll be a lot more to say about this interregnum in due course. In the meantime, there have been many simple pleasures I have enjoyed that, to be honest, would not have happened if I were in full time employment. So I’ll take these and enjoy them – they will help inform the next step forward in some way.

One of my oldest friends arrived at lunch today with a scrap of paper scrunched up in his pocket with four key questions he wanted to make sure we covered. At Jacob Kramer College of Art in 1980, he was always an odd combination of diligence and waywardness with an enviable talent. He’s still the same (hence the note). He could, and still can, draw better than I can.

Great to catch up then: old friends, new thinking, our music, Leeds Savages and New York experiences. All over a pint in The Vic. Lovely.

And yes, we did cover the four questions. If you want to know what they were, you’ll have to ask me yourself.