Last week I stood down from a voluntary role that I have held for 7 years.

The only analogy I can allude to is a maritime one. Many years ago I plied my trade patrolling the waters of the UK mainland in a quest to prevent smuggling of people and contraband. They were exciting times and indeed uncertain ones at that. The sea is an awesome environment within which to work, predictable to an extent whilst being wholly unpredictable. It is something that has to be treated with respect.

That part of my career came to an end by getting promoted beyond the rank of those who normally manned the vessels and I gradually got immersed in the rapidly expanding world of IT systems and their relative weaknesses. This eventually led to getting involved in designing systems. There was always a momentum going from one part of my career to another where the energy swung towards the new path like a pendulum.

Stepping down from the board of the Agile Business Consortium last week is literally like losing both main engines in a flat calm. I had not expected the effect to be so dramatic in that I had not realised how much of my day to day life was absorbed by it. Paying off vessels in the past, particularly where the crew had been a great working team was always a sad affair but life and shore-based activities carried on like waves rolling onto a beach, sometimes noisy, sometimes like a whisper.

I now have to channel all that energy that had been absorbed into my creative side of the business which has played second fiddle of late. My emerging study of the Stour at low tide, made on Kodak large format film, is gaining all manner of support and I am pleased with how it is playing out. The unseasonal South Westerly depressions that have been battering the country for for last few weeks have put paid to getting put with the wooden camera, but these cannot last forever.

Before I know it, I’ll be firing up on all cylinders on both engines and wondering how I ever fitted other work into my regime.

Now where did I leave that Blue Peter?