Inspired

The only inspiration that really matters is one that makes you want to do things. So I guess the bowl of salmon and morel soup I had in Stockholm that made me want to cook will have to count.

The poetry of Vladimir Mayakovsky and Charles Bukowski that made me realise new ways of writing certainly counts. But if there’s one thing that inspires me more than anything else, family and friends aside, it’s music. And here I am at an age where I’ve finally started to hark back to the ‘good old days’.

I admit to not being very consistent about which ‘good old days’ in particular, but the 1980s produced some inventive, life-changing music – and we’re hearing it all over again at the moment, though, sadly, it now has a slick corporate coating. And, while we still enjoy the beauty of music sleeves by Peter Saville, there were other designers reflecting different ideas – some political, some absurd, some just reflecting a lack of budget.

The key difference between then and now is that when these seven-inch singles came out, they were not produced with the intention of launching multi-million pound album sales, but with the intention of changing the world and the way we look at it.