The Spark: David Airey on Hot Takes, Bad Habits, and Big Life Questions

0:03Katy:We are back for another dose of the lovely David Airey who joined us on Monday to talk about his new book coming out, Logo Design Love, the third edition. But we also chatted about 20 years of being a graphic designer. And actually, I was really surprised, David, that it ended up sort of being about life and love and realizing what's more important. And it was really humbling. It was a pleasure talking to you, Katie. And yeah, any designer, it's about more than work. It's our lives outside of design that inform the design that we do. So there's a balance there that needs to be struck. Yeah, I think you've probably gone, like, again, I'm making a ton of assumptions, but I feel like I know you because we have sort of chatted back and forth over the years.

0:51Katy:And I get the impression that we can also come to the, you know, David Airey, the graphic designer. And when you kind of go through that moment, you realize you are more than just your job title and you probably have to work on the other things which are, let's be honest, more important. Yeah. Yeah. My other half, Catherine, she showed me a video recently. It was the Dawson's Creek actor. He died to see that. And he was talking about what mattered to him. and whenever everything was stripped away from him he couldn't he couldn't care for his family because he was you know months in and on a bed I think he might have said so sad yeah you ask yourself you know what are you really so I I wouldn't define myself as um as a graphic designer graphic design is what I I do for work um but yeah it's it's it's always it's always more than that and my family are really what matters most.

1:51Katy:Oh, so humbling. And so too many amazing people gone too soon. It's the sadness of life. And I think we all kind of try and not think about what could happen. We just try and, I mean, that's the other thing. Work can be a very good distraction, can't it? We can sort of get ourselves whisked up in it and it can help us numb the difficulties of life sometimes. Yeah, yeah, it can. I can get absorbed in the work and that helps too, you know, when you're focused on one thing, you know, because there are so many distractions. And yeah, I don't, whenever I'm actively working on a job, I'll not have my email inbox open, for example, because I used to and you'd get another email just take your attention away from what you're doing so it's good to be focused on the work whenever you're doing the work it is a good well yeah it's just it can be a distraction from other things yeah um but at the same time it's good to focus yeah now we're with um we're gonna sort of like pose five questions to you because this is the spark we have a little bit of fun on the spark and we're gonna start with something that um i'm i'm really quite concerned about uh i don't know what you're going to say here and it is it's an interesting question and david uh from what i have learned about you it's uh it's going to be an interesting one you're a gentle kind very generous human being but um david tell me what's your most controversial creative opinion controversial i was more controversial in my earlier days in the profession, I remember some of the blog posts that I made.

3:43Were you an angry,

3:43Katy:were you an angry male graphic designer? I might've been Katie. I might've been. There was one blog post where I toured the London Olympics load of shreds. And that's not the type of thing I would do now. Or there was another blog post where I called out someone who stole my work and then his name ranked top of a Google search. due to my blog post. And my blog post was, don't hire Matt Earnshaw. And I realized that he wouldn't have been the only one. So I quickly took that down. Anyway, yeah, I was more controversial back in the day because I knew that it would generate views and comments on my blogs.

4:28But yeah, that's not the way I would do things today. A controversial opinion though. it's probably that it's not really controversial but i would say discipline matters more than passion you get people who say follow your passion if they're asked you know do you have any advice and do it because you're passionate about it but passionate passion is inconsistent whereas discipline is more reliable and i would say that long careers they're built on more steady effort not that emotional intensity that you would relate with passion and and when you are disciplined about doing the work over a long period of time then you become more competent and it can be that competence that then fuels the passion when you realize i am actually good at this then that the passion can grow from that so rather than following your passion if you don't know what you're doing a better approach would be just try something be disciplined at it for a while see if you like it over a longer period and if you don't move on to something else but don't feel that you need to be passionate about it because that can lead you to think this isn't right for me even though I am passionate about the projects that I do but not all the time yeah there are times when I just want to go to the cinema and watch a film you know I don't need to be passionate every every second of every day so yeah passion passion flows up and down but discipline over time

6:15Katy:I'd say that's more rewarding that's very valuable and as for um you know past past mistakes and all that jazz um one of the things that I keep coming back to at the moment David I mean I I had a back injury I spent pretty much a year on the floor and you do really spend a lot of that time uh well you first of all beat yourself up how the blood you know how the bloody hell did I get here and you beat yourself up and you're angry and you're bitter and you go through all the emotions and then you sort of start to say well come on let's be kind to ourselves let's have some compassion and one of the things i keep coming back to is if we can have some kindness and compassion for ourselves and know that we have at times acted like a massive dickhead right then surely everybody else has been that way as well so let's give ourselves and other people a break and the world would be a much better place yes well said well said i'm not perfect by any means no one is yeah nobody is if someone is a dick to you just remember that there can be other things going on in their lives that you don't you don't see exactly cut them a bit of slack too 100 there's always a reason behind it you know everybody's dancing to their own music and as my nana always very wisely said you don't know what hell other people are going through wise words she was a good egg she wasn't completely wise she was always slipping us sugar cubes across the table in front of my mom so not completely you know on the right track one of my memories from uh from my childhood was i was in the kitchen my parents were in the other room and i was probably i don't know six or seven but i remember it vividly there was a sugar a sugar container and I got a teaspoon and I was just eating the sugar and my brother came in and saw me and ran to my parents and yeah I got a telling off for that but just eating sugar oh I love that honestly that's hilarious um my nana was really naughty her and I used to sort of sneak um you know those really awful processed white slices of bread that when they're fresh when you say fresh when they're fresh you you basically she used she used to smother them in butter and uh squeeze some ketchup in the middle and then fold it over and then you get that amazingly satisfying curve yeah in the white bread and then her and i would stand in her micah kitchen which i think was like yellow work surfaces in durham and just eat this like little treat and still to this day if i'm hung over or if i feel like i need some home comfort But I mean, Tom will take one look at me if he sees me getting a white slice of bread out and ketchup.

9:02Katy:And it'll just disappear into another room because he thinks it's disgusting. And I'll just stand by the fridge. It was brown sauce sandwiches for me when I was younger. Really? So you did the same? Yeah. Oh. Yeah, it was the HP sauce. I didn't think I ever tried the ketchup. Oh, we just had a Nan of Green Gables moment, David.

9:25yeah i've just got a bread maker the other week actually because i don't like all the you buy a loaf out of the supermarket and the use by date will be i don't say the 10th of the month and then you look at it after the 20th of the month and it looks fine and you think what is in this to keep that so you know there's no mole on there so yeah i'm trying to trying to bake my own now.

9:50Katy:I love it. You'll be getting an outdoor sauna next and a little bathtub. Oh, I love an outdoor sauna. No, so would I. Shall we do it? Shall we get one? Yes. How can we convince Tom? Come on, give me a really good reason, David. Put a bookshelf in it. That is genius. Would the books be okay, though? They can have their own compartment just outside. Just outside the outside sauna. we could like maybe have an undercover yes i like where you're going with this we could have an undercover seating area adjacent to the new outdoor office space where i could record my podcasts and there could be like a tub with a sort of you know a lever above so you could like cool yourself down and then under and to the side i'm getting carried away here to the side there would be like a really we'd make sure there was a really cozy little wooden armchair with like one of those fake fur things.

10:44That sounds good too.

10:45Katy:Yeah. Yeah. Two of those. I might get my friend who does interior design to do a CAD drawing and bring it to life and then I can show Tom. I think he needs to see it visualised. Yeah, I think I'll have to drop it to the kids. We'll need to get rid of the goalposts. So there's a bit more space. You'll have to have a family conference. you know one of those those amazing do you remember those amazing things when we were younger in our early careers the stick the extendable stick so you could press on the board was that just me no no yeah that will come in useful when you first went to job interviews years ago did you have did you have a pencil skirt suit as well because i did that's how old i am i a pencil skirt suit no i think i think my i tended to wear a dress i didn't know where you were going there but thanks for being a good sport but speaking of interviews one of my earliest interviews was for a radio station in glasgow i was going to be doing some pr for them and i i didn't remember walking into the man's office he went in in front of me and then I walked in and then he closed the door behind me and after the interview I got up and I went to the exit so I was going out first and I held on to the handle and I pulled it towards me but little did I know it was a sliding glass door so I'd pulled his glass door off the wall and was done oh oh my goodness that wasn't the best way to end the interview did you get the job um i didn't oh well that really was a sliding doors moment it was very good yeah oh my goodness you'll take you can take that you can borrow that yeah i will what what is a trend you're secretly over but everyone else seems to love it probably goes back to social media and algorithms and designing for algorithms rather than the people that are going to be involved with the design work.

12:56So social platforms, they tend to reward speed and volume. And that seems to be shaping what designers are producing and putting up there. You know, there'll be over and over and over. If you're on Twitter or X, you'll see just a couple of visuals. did I cook or something like that? Or people will just want critical feedback. Well, maybe they won't want the feedback. Maybe they'll just be putting it up there because they know the algorithms are rewarding this. So I know why it's done, but I don't think it's good for people who are just entering the profession to see that this is what is getting more attention on social media because it just exacerbates the problem.

13:43It does. So if you reduce your exposure to social media in that way, then that can protect the attention and the level of taste that you have over the work that you're doing. That's a trend that I don't particularly like. The algorithms and the work that they promote.

14:05Katy:Yeah. Yeah, it's exhausting. We actually just did a bit of a, how are you finding social media in 2026? And I've not read the article that our writer Tom Mays drafted up yet, but that's coming out tomorrow. So by the time people listen to this episode, it will be on the site, but it's really interesting. Most people are saying they're over it. They're kind of done with it and much more leaning towards in real life events. I mean, that's kind of been the thing on everybody's mind for a good year now. I think community is the buzzword of the day. Yeah, you're doing more of the creative boom in real life, aren't you?

14:41Katy:I am indeed. Yeah. Well, it's not me personally. It's all these amazing volunteer hosts. There are now 10 in real life events across the UK. There's one in Belfast and they're run by people who just want to sort of do something locally for their community. It was a thing that came about from the community the the private um the studio uh creative booms private uh community they all said this is great this is fab but we want to meet in real life as well it'd be nice to meet up and i was like well i can't be everywhere all at once even though i love that film was it everything everywhere all at once um but why don't you you know if you want to i'll i'll support you why don't you volunteer and you can host something in your own area and then literally within six months there were eight more and um i think brighton just had theirs they were buzzing afterwards saying it was absolutely incredible because i think um before the pandemic there were so many i could only speak of manchester there were so many amazing events that were happening and there were mainly talks and workshops and ladies wine design um all sorts of amazing things going on and then obviously that tailed off um and then some things have come back we're seeing people like process and craft put on amazing events so when i sort of said what do you want to do do you want to do talks and all the rest of it a lot of the community said we like those but there doesn't seem to be anything where we can just rock up and talk to each other so that's what we said we said all right no talks we just make it a social a sort of casual networking and there's a really lovely um little kind of i suppose you could call it a tagline that our designer angela roach came up with and it is don't be shy say hi isn't that lovely it is yeah it's just it's just a grassroots thing so to say it's me is uh completely false it's all these amazing wonderful people across the uk who are dedicating their spare time and believe you me i love that i love saying that believe you me we are working really hard at creative boom to get some sponsorship again for um 2026 so we can support them and do more things i mean it's it's it's fab to see they're all so amazing yeah that is great because we could all do with more face-to-face contact you know rather than screens it reminds me of tina tina roth Eisenberg and when she started Creative Mornings and how that grew.

17:20Katy:Oh, that was amazing. All in the world. Yeah. Amazing. Like, I wish I could say this was my idea so I can like, you know, show off about it on my CV, but it's not at all. Well, it's all under the Creative Boom banner, isn't it? And, you know, you deserve, you deserve a lot of credit for that. Well, who knows what's going to happen next? It's certainly nice to see it all coming together and so much possibility. really enjoying seeing them grow. I think we might have one in New York soon. So that's going to be interesting. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, somebody emailed and said, do you think it would be all right to hold one in a brewery?

17:56Katy:I was like, you're asking a Brit. Yes, please. It'll be fine. It'll be fine. Yeah. Oh, what's the smallest thing that instantly improves your work day? Not checking my email.

18:14yeah just having that slow morning what i do is i get up at about 6 30 this is during the week whenever the kids are going to school i get up at 6 30 and i'll get the kids breakfast they are out the door scarlet walks just down the road to get a bus to school and so she leaves at about eight and then isaac and catherine catherine works in the school that isaac is in primary school he's in he's in year four just and they leave at quarter past eight and then after that i'll just i'll tidy up the kitchen you know do a bit of dishes i might put on a lot of washing so it's

18:55Katy:really really um rock and roll it's helpful gosh yeah well and and it's it's just that way to have us have some slow time and not get right into it and be faced with an inbox that's full of probably half junk because like I said, I don't take on too much work. So there might be a few client emails in there, but if I don't check them until half nine, 10, then it gives me that thinking time to prioritize what needs to be done to maybe start on the work before seeing if there's any any new inquiries that really helps is just that lack of distraction for an hour or two after after the house is quiet yeah I enjoy that just peaceful it is yeah and when I'm in my office here I I tend to work without any music on the background because that can be a distraction to me sometimes so if there are birds in the garden I'll hear them or if it's raining I'll hear that on the roof and so there is there's an ambient noise but I like I like the peace it helps me work.

20:10Katy:I'm very much the same very much the same yeah it's um there's there's something special about the sound of rain on a on a roof like that it reminds me of caravan holidays or being in the tent oh yeah you you go away on a camper don't you i do yeah i do yeah any plans i've got a little jack um we were going to go to a national trust um campsite in ambleside this weekend but it's absolute torrential rain so we've asked if we can move the weekend and if not it doesn't matter because it's the national trust doesn't it and it's not that expensive um we are not fair weather campers can I just say it's just that it has been raining every day in the UK apart from on Saturday yeah I know it's it's been um it's been a strange start to the year and it was good that it was dry on Saturday because that's when I take Isaac to his football matches he does training on a Wednesday a Friday and then on a Saturday he'll play four 12-minute matches against other teams from the area and he absolutely loves that and I love watching how he enjoys it so much.

21:20Yeah, so it was good to have a dry day. And he doesn't mind playing in the rain. He gets soaked through sometimes, but he doesn't mind that because he loves playing football.

21:28Katy:Well, you don't when you're a kid. I mean, God, we were climbing trees and getting chased off fields by farmers and playing in brooks and we just didn't care, did we? We did not. I remember crawling up a few streams, pretending I was a commando. Same, same with the little toy soldiers. Yeah, yeah. Action Force, I think, was the toys that I had at the time. Yeah. Yeah, I would set them up, pretend they were having a battle. Yeah, same. I think I had Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle models as well. And we'd set them up on various things, hanging from trees and yeah, good times. Good innocent times. What's one piece of advice you'd ban from the creative industry forever?

22:16hmm it's like room 101 this thinking back to when i started out i would say yes to pretty much everything a client would come to me with an inquiry that i hadn't done before it might have been oh some some print work or some digital work i'm not sure exactly what it was but i would i would say yes just because i needed the money and i felt like i couldn't afford to say no and And for a long time, I thought that that is good because it helps me realize what I don't want to do. But there's a limit there. If I'm always saying yes to everything, it can lead to burnout. If I'm doing too much work that I don't enjoy, would I ban it?

23:02No, because we all find our own paths. and my advice is it's applicable to me but people are in different situations so if I was starting over again I wouldn't do as much of a broad scope of work but at the same time I'm conflicted because it took me a while to figure out that the logo and the identity was really what I enjoyed the most. So had I not done that, it's a tough one, Katie. I wouldn't want people to be burning themselves out by taking on too much work, by saying yes all the time. So earlier in your career, yes, that can help you learn, but long-term, long-term it's shaped more by what you decline than what you accept.

23:55Katy:so yeah i think what you're trying to say is you know the the piece of advice you'd ban is that all advice should be banned because we've got to go through that initial phase ourselves to learn what works for us and it's all it's different for everyone yeah that's a good way to summarize yeah well i mean i'm just thinking about all these things at the moment as well and um whenever anybody comes to me and asks me which is you know it's wild that younger people do but they're like how did you make creative boomer success and i was like well first of all define success and second of all um it is like george's marvelous medicine i've just thrown a ton of stuff into this cauldron and i have no idea what's in there but i just know that um you have to keep going um keep experimenting and it's a million tiny little steps to get to where you need to be and that path and that journey will be different for everyone so whatever worked for me won't work for the next person especially now with everything being so different yeah yeah yeah well said um everybody not everybody but there are so many opinions people are very forward at telling you what to do and only accept advice from people who you respect because you have to filter out social media for example the comments on there that can they can turn you off anything that you do if if you're constantly surrounded by so much negativity and i think the algorithms boost that negativity because they know that it creates controversy and that's what keeps people returning yes so yeah just be careful who you take advice from and try it for yourself 100 and i love that we keep coming back to social media um i i did the same as a lot of other people started a blue sky account um after all the things that were going on with twitter x and um rather ironically i've just kind of parked blue sky now because it's even worse than x in my opinion yeah i just keep seeing so many negative things and i'm like okay i i mostly detach myself from what's going on social because i completely come at it from a business point of view um but yeah i'm done with this channel this is very very toxic and my life is infinitely improved good yeah good yes it was interesting what you said about the article that you you put out there about social media and how most people are a lot of people are like steering away from it yeah I can I can understand the value in it because it if I'm going through a quiet spell for example I'll be more proactive in updating my portfolio and then I'll share those portfolio pieces on social media and that generally leads to more work so there is an advantage to it but more and more the downsides seem more apparent yeah with the negativity and the back and forth with different opinions put out there to cause a reaction and you don't even know if it's a real person because so much of the content will be generated from bots yes so is there really much of a point in communicating with people if you don't well certainly if you don't know who they are if you know them and if you you trust that that's them then okay but i would be very reluctant to comment on a post that i didn't know didn't know the person who was making it i don't i don't do it no no 100 it's um it's nice to dip in and out um and i actually a lot of people in that kind of survey said that they only mainly go on linkedin and instagram now so that's interesting and uh don't go on it that often as well so very positive yes pretty similar to myself would be linkedin and yeah linkedin and twitter i don't have an instagram account i i never i never set one up good it's uh it just makes you feel like a complete dork that you need to spend a fortune on clothes and your house and you always feel like you you you're not going on enough uh adventures traveling and then on top of all of that you see everybody else's amazing work and then you just feel completely hopeless and and you go into this spiral and this is just like 10 seconds of it you know like that episode of black mirror when he plays that computer game and he goes on this awful rampage have you seen that one i have yeah and then it turns out that it was only for like 1.2 seconds or something like that it's like it's like that instagram is evil yeah i'm glad i'm glad that i i never started i I was tempted to, but I think at the time they just released the ability to choose your own extension after the Instagram.com.

29:04Wow. And I was going for David Erie, but someone was squatting on it. Those bastards. So, yeah, as if I was going to pay them. Do you want me to bully them?

29:12Katy:Do you want me to say, come on now? So I didn't. I'm glad for that because my other Catherine, she uses Instagram and she thinks that she should come off it. and I think she should come off it because like you said it can affect your thinking in ways that aren't positive well there are like you know it isn't completely evil it is how you use it you have to be you have to be disciplined there's that word again um it's actually been it surprised me how much it allows me to stay in touch with a larger circle of friends that I I'm not you know often in touch with because everybody's busy you've got kids and it's strange that that's the sort of platform that's become the thing we we stay connected through you know whether it's just sending silly things to each other um and ironically it's like led to more things in real life so i take it with a pinch of salt so yeah as soon as it kind of balances more in this negative way i'll just come off it again because i go on and off it all the time because i'm an absolute lunatic anyway oh well that's what i love about the studio is that the space that you've created um yes there's no algorithms and no it's just a great bunch of people so it really is i'm just going on there now actually because they're all um have you seen they started calling me the dear leader no i hadn't noticed that's very hard and every every time like i welcome new uh members a couple of them especially Paul Leon goes all hail the illustrious leader and then somebody else wades in and says welcome to the cult I'm like like people if you've just joined us we are not a cult I am not the dear leader this is a very warm and friendly creative and then they all wade in again and they're like that's what that's what a cult leader would say they're all asking for cloaks they want cloaks like the traitors i'm like oh my god what have i started yeah you set up that um that was a group kind of video call i think paul neon was one of the side rooms that i was in with yeah he's a great guy he's lovely a few other great people in there so yeah well done with that thanks love i think you were one of the first ones actually and i think paul he was in there i've forgotten his surname there's so many people now there's like 7 250 people or something like that that's impressive but he was like oh my god i love the studio i just was in a room with um one of my uh favorite graphic designers and got to chat with him and i don't know anywhere else i could have done that so wow how cool is that yeah right i'll crack on i do waffle a bit david you just have to tell me to shut up it's all good kitty right oh i'm curious about this because you're a creative hero to many and i know i'm embarrassing you there by saying that but who's your creative hero past or present and what have they taught you without you even knowing it one of the first names that comes to mind is paul rand because the logo work that i do is what i find most enjoyable he was one of the pioneers one of the greats he was there was a clarity in what he presented and i felt like the editing of his design work was almost like a creative discipline in itself the way that you can remove things and make it better so just simplify while retaining that distinction and along similar lines somebody somebody you interviewed Tom Gaisemore of Gaisemore and Havif or Sharmayev and Gaisemore and Havif yeah Tom Gaisemore and Ivan Sharmayev they were two that I really looked up to and they kindly contributed to some of my books and I interviewed them for my blog and if I'm thinking about thinking about younger people then I think you might have spoken with Luke Tong recently yes did you yes he seems to be doing such a brilliant job oh he's such a good egg yeah he seems to know what he's doing in terms of helping others yeah he always seems really positive i like that and what him and dan are doing the the birmingham design conference seems really popular too it's great to make it over you should come oh are you going to come i'm i'm going to be there i i should yes yes i've been meaning to let's get a posse together yeah that would be great um luke is a gem um i i actually shared that we'd spoken and i know he's always being very popular in the industry but I shared that on my Instagram this is another example of why Instagram's quite lovely actually at times the amount of people that sent me a message and said love Luke what a gem what a gem gem was like the word people mostly used to describe Luke and I told him this and he was really quite um humbled you know as you would be because I think that's important isn't it we're all often just at our desks heads down working and doing and in your case my case we do these extra things to support others and then when you get that back it's nice to tell people you know you're doing great and you're doing something really really valuable to the community yeah and lucas um as are you so i would include i would include you there I'm a massive twat, David.

35:04Katy:Don't include me. Other names that spring to mind. The list would be huge. But there'd be Paula Sher. There would be Christopher Doyle. Yes. Jesse Reid and Hamish Smith of Order Design in New York. Such great people. Perniklas Beddo in Sweden. Oh, there are so many. So many people have been really kind to me over the years. through either promoting my work or through just saying something nice in an email that I would keep in a little folder or contributing to my books. Yeah, I have been so fortunate with the people that I've come across. The design profession, I completely get that not everyone is great, but it's the same across any profession really.

35:57But the design profession has been very kind to me. there are so many good people in it the list that I have would go on and on and on but those are

36:06Katy:just a few names yeah same love it um it's a it's a great industry and seeing you know on the Dixon Baxi tour that I did just seeing all the lovely gifts they'd had from people and the things they were telling me they'd sent out it just shows it just sending that little email or telling Luke Tong that everybody loves him or you know occasionally dropping you an email or whatever it is it might be just small but actually it's lots of ripples in a big pond isn't it it is yeah so if you're listening to this folks if you're listening to this and somebody's inspired you and you've been meaning to reach out just drop them an email and say you love their work and that you're uh so impressed by them and kiss their ass a bit and everything will be great

36:55yes that's good but it doesn't happen very often when somebody will send me an email like that but it really brightens my day if somebody has said that because we're i'm kind of isolated here you know i'm working from home and that's why i i think that in real life things that you're doing

37:12Katy:are brilliant um well yeah maybe you should do an in real life in banga that is a good idea put you on the spot actually i've got a very good friend who's just recently moved there for love and i think you two would get on really well he's he's absolutely brilliant um would you like me to put you in touch with graham yes sure do i will do um i will drop you both an email um he's he's a really good egg and i think he's starting to sort of enjoy taking a dip in the sea as well so maybe you could go and have a dip together there you go yes yes i'll make a note so yeah introduce me please and yeah we'll see what we can do about the in real life banger the creative boom banger oh that'd be great right chain reaction time i think it's starting to be called chain reaction i'm pretty sure this was a sort of thing back in the day when radio was uh bigger than it is now.

38:09Katy:But Liz Seabrook was our guest last week, David, and she wants to know, what do you think you should be doing right now? But why are you not doing it?

38:22Oh, I often think maybe I should be homeschooling my kids, because I can see the things that are wrong with education. There's a great TED talk by a man who is now deceased, Ken Robinson, Sir Ken Robinson, and he spoke about the value of creativity and how schools almost throttle that out of children. It's more about being regimented and how much can you remember, how much can you remember and then recall in an exam. And there's so much pressure on kids with exams that I wonder, should I be taking my children out of school? And then I think to myself, well, what are the logistics of this? Will I have to give up my job or how will that work with me and Catherine?

39:19So it's something that's been on my mind. Should I do it? And how can I do it? At the minute, I'm not my kids are both doing brilliantly I don't I don't know whether that's in spite of school or how much a role being around kids in their classes I know being around the kids in their classes will help so if if homeschooling was a thing it would need to be a collection of kids from the local area and perhaps switching the teacher around from day to day something that

39:52Katy:make it a bit more manageable for parents because the social aspect is really important i would not take my kids out of school and then homeschool them at home on their own i don't think that would be helpful for them because they need to interact with people their age and learn how to develop their relationship skills so that's something that's been on my mind niggling away yeah it comes back now and again but the great thing is that they're both doing brilliantly Scarlett and Isaac so if they weren't doing as good it would be more of a pressing issue yeah but for now it's just something that I think about now and again can I tell you a little story please do so my mum and I um I think my dad as well my husband were out on a walk this was years ago and my mum would be pointing out plants and flowers wild flowers and things and I just sort of like looked at her and went mum how how come you always know what these things are called and she said oh well when we were when we were very little my father would take um take us out on walks into the sort of hills because they were in durham so they were surrounded by countryside um and he would sort of point things out to us and tell us what they were called and she talked about she often talks about how her dad did that and taught her how um taught how to spot things and how to use certain things like with the dot is it the dot leaves to get rid of nettle stings and things like that yes yes yes all these like little skills but it wasn't just that it was um classical music it was poetry um lots of other things that he taught and he was um you know like men men of his era always at work so she treasured those moments with her father um and still to this day uh remembers everything he taught her so i can you get what i'm trying to say yes yes i love that they learn they absorb things like a sponge so it doesn't need to be a regimented homeschooling routine it can be just like you said pointing things out again yeah yeah 100 they'll they'll absolutely remember it and they'll get like a broader um experience you know learning experience but you seem like an amazing you two seem like amazing parents bringing up amazing kids and it's so sweet that you uh just only want the best for them and it sounds like they've already got got everything they need right in front of them so well they might disagree with you from time to time if I don't oh yeah you might might have this conversation again well no hopefully they won't um uh turn into sort of terrible teens.

42:35Katy:Very unlikely, David. Very unlikely. Fingers crossed. Now, what is your question for the next guest? If you were to die tomorrow, what would you have wanted to do more of? Wow. That really sums up, doesn't it? What we've been talking about, really. That's kind of similar in a way to the question that your last guest posed to me. But yeah, it strips it all back to focus on what's important really and yeah we the more we think about that the more fulfilling i think our lives will be in general yeah because i don't think we quite understand how precious it all is so shame that we have to be reminded of how finite it is when we're faced with sadness sadness and loss and bad health we're all here for a human experience to make the most of each day and to enjoy everything we can now there's going to be suffering because that's part of being a human but if we can think of something some small moment in our daily lives that brings us joy and then try to do more of that then it's a good way forward that will be something i'd take with me when i pitch the outdoor sauna and outdoor book library to thomas oh do i will i will david this has been so lovely thanks for joining us on the podcast katie you're very welcome thank you for having me thanks to adobe acrobat studio for sponsoring this episode if you're ready to spend less time on the administrative side of work and more time on the work that really matters, Acrobat Studio is well worth exploring.

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