We have often heard that travel broadens the mind. Well, my mind is about to be 11,000 broader as on Saturday 7 September I will be flying from London Heathrow to Halifax, Nova Scotia to start a 3 week trip from there by boat, planes, trains and automobiles to Vancouver on the other side of the continent.
And why am I doing this?
Apart from it being a great adventure – one of many that I have had in my lifetime – I will be capturing six public timepieces for my ClockStar collections (http://clockstar.co.uk/). This will be my sixth – the four that you can see on my web site plus a yet unpublished set of the ‘oranges and lemons’ clocks of London but that is another story.
So why do I make such journeys and take such photographs?
I have always been fascinated by clocks and watches. My grandfather used to have a pocket watch and my parents bought me one for my 21st birthday and again for my sixtieth. Sadly the former was stolen but the latter – a replica of the Great Clock at Westminster which displays the time backed by the peals of the Westminster Chimes and on the hour strikes of Big Ben, a sound that I hear most hours of the day and night as I live 400m from the Elizabeth Tower, I still carry. And will do to Canada.
One night though I had one of my many dreams (a life changing recent one I will share with you all soon) and I saw images of six clocks all holding hands. When I say holding hands, I mean that the clock hands all point to each other around the circle. Look closely at the images on my web site and you will see that the lower hand on the right image points to the clock below it to its left whose upper hand points back and so on. There is method in my madness!
These collections adorn the walls of my Westminster flat but are also for sale which brings me to the main point of this blog. I am trying to expose my project to the world and ask if you would be kind enough to like and follow my Instagram page – clockstar_photography and ask as many of your friends, enemies, family and colleagues to do the same. At some stage then my story might meet an individual or company also wanting to look at these travel stories from around the world. I have Cuba, Germany and New Zealand lined up next.
So Terry you want to make money out of your hobby?
Yes. I do. But not for myself.
I have never been one for amassing personal wealth or property. Probably because I am not very good at it but I am comfortable.
I have all that I need so the income from my project will be put to what I believe is an excellent use – to enable a number of young people to experience the London life for a few days that I am fortunate to experience every day.
When I was 7 years old for some unknown reason I was chosen by my school to bring a purse of charitable collections to an event at The Royal Albert Hall hosted by HM Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother. As 300 or so of us children paraded down the central aisle to drop our purses into a bower in front of her she smiled and said thank you to each and every one of us. It was a life changing event which is why I am still talking about it over 60 years later. The building itself is unique. There was music and a ballet performance – something that I had not experienced before. Afterwards my parents and my maternal grandparents who had brought me to London for this special day took me around our capital city for the first time. We ate in an Italian deli, saw the lions in Trafalgar square, Buckingham Palace, The Houses of Parliament and of course heard Big Ben chime first hand.
I believe that it is the right of every child in every country in the world to experience their capital city as I did and in a small way I want to start a stone rolling that one day might roll around the world. Which is where the income from my project comes in.
I plan to start a charity with it. The purpose of this charity will be to offer a 3 day trip to London for a number of children (with their guardian) to experience London with a ride in a black cab, red bus, river taxi, see a West End show, Buckingham Palace, The Houses of Parliament, The Tower of London and of course the centre of time – Greenwich.
This will be an expensive exercise but my hope is that this life changing experience will have the knock on effect that the lucky recipients will tell their friend about in and inspire them to make such a trip of their own to broaden their minds.
This project will need a constant flow of funds. I do not want to go ‘cap in hand’ as most charities do. I want to earn the funds by enticing individuals or companies to subscribe for just £75 plus VAT per month to my ‘ClockStar Collectors Club’. Every six months the subscribers will receive a new framed collection of my clock photographs to display in their homes, receptions, board rooms or just store away as an investment.
If you would like to become a ClockStar Collector (there will only be 250 as I am limiting the editions of my collections to add to their value), then great. If not, again may I ask if you would be kind enough to tell as many of your friends, enemies, family and colleagues about this project.
Whatever help to this project that you can offer would be greatly received but at least I hope that you will enjoy my Instagram posts and the web site videos of my travels. Clock On Terry.
So finally, I hope that you will agree that in all of these endeavours to slightly mis quote Neal Page in the great Planes, Trains, & Automobiles film “Let Me Just Close This Conversation By Saying I Am One Unique Individual.”