Time

‍Slipping Through My Fingers

I've had ABBA on repeat in my head for weeks."Slipping through my fingers all the time." If you know it, you know exactly the ache I mean. If you don't: it's a mother watching her daughter walk out the door to school, realising the years went faster than imagined.

I have teenagers. And somewhere in the last year, this song took on a different meaning. I feel time slipping through my fingers, literally, everything seems like a countdown and we are racing through life and i just reached that moment when the realisation hits of why are we flying through the good stuff. So I've become almost compelled to share as much of the world with my kids as I possibly can, as fast as I can, because I am acutely aware that I am running out of time before they go off and build their own lives, their own adventures, but I hope they take with them the values, resilience and some great memories .

Because here's what I've finally understood, at this exact point in my life: the holy grail we are all quietly chasing, through every hack, every shortcut- yep AI included, every "buy now, save time" - is simply more time. Not more stuff. Just simply more time.

So this summer, my family and I are doing something about it. We're off on a big, slow, multi-country adventure and we are heading off by train and that makes it slower which is on purpose, because the aim is not to tick off destinations, but to connect. With each other, properly, screens down, out of our normal routines. And with the wider world too, to actually feel how one country leads into the next, rather than flying we are indulging in each others time.

So, I'm not a hippy-trippy person. I'm really not. But I've come to a point in my life where I finally get it. Watching landscapes change gently out of a train window instead of vanishing between takeoff and landing. Wandering through a station and seeing commuters, school kids, grandparents, their ordinary daily life in a country that isn't performing for tourists. Sitting with my kids for hours with nothing to do but talk, play cards ( pray that its not Taco, Goat, Cheese Pizza) and watch the world go by. That's not inefficiency. That's the whole point. That IS the time I'm trying to hold onto.

And the bit I can't quite let go of, especially given what I do for a living. I run with my Co founder Jo, Our Fashion Fix. I live and breathe fashion. And yet the industry I work in is built almost entirely on the opposite instinct to the one I just described - it’s sprinting, not slowing down. Fast fashion sells us more, faster, cheaper, so we discard sooner and buy again burning through finite resources, fuelling conflict over raw materials, all in service of a "need" that was never really about the clothes. It is the definition of running in the wrong direction while shouting that we want more time. We are, quite literally, shaking the quicksand to make ourselves sink faster.

If the one thing every single one of us craves,rich or poor, however busy, is more time, why do we keep building lives, industries, and holidays that burn through it at double speed?

So that's my honest question for you this summer, what's your plan? Is it the quick smash-and-grab holiday flight there, flight back, ticks a box? Or are you willing to take the slower, gentler, more impactful trip, the one that costs you a bit more time upfront, so you get so much more of it back in the moments that actually matter? Yes i’m talking about value.

I know which one I'm choosing.

Interested to know your thoughts…………..