Cueva de los verdes

This means Green Caves in English and is an attraction in the North of Lanzarote. It is a lava tube open to the public in Haria. It was a hideout for locals sheltering from invasions. La Graciosa island is also in the North.

Europe's Most Touristy City

Dubrovnik, Croatia, is Europe's most touristy city. In 2025, it welcomed 6.5m tourists for a city of only 40,000 inhabitants.  Croatia is on the Adriatic Coast.

Creativity Hacks

Change your input to change your output.

Example:

• Read something outside your domain (architecture, anthropology, game design)
• Listen to music you normally wouldn't
• Walk a different route
• Watch a documentary on something you know nothing about

Why it works: novel inputs create new mental connections.

The Creative Confidence Podcast

IDEO's Creative Confidence Podcast is here. Topics covered include Storytelling for Entrepreneurs.

In the above podcast, the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip and Dan Heath, is referenced.

Creativity is the Highest Calling

There are philosophers and creators who believe creativity is the highest calling.

On the philosopher side:

• Nietzsche - argued that self-creation is the highest human act
• Joseph Campbell - saw creativity as the path to personal myth-making and meaning
• Ken Robinson - argued that creativity is as important as literacy

Overcoming Writer's Block

Creative Writing and Creative Thinking

Creative writing and creative thinking are important skills. Both require the exercise of the imagination. 

We live in a world where we constantly consume the output of others' imaginations, and our own creative powers are not always cultivated to the full.

Creative writing must absorb readers in an entertaining way. In some philosophies, there is no greater goal than entertainment. You must write in a way that is individual to you and compelling to read.

Entertainment is the most accessible form of meaning-making.
If you can entertain, you can teach, persuade, inspire, or transform.
If you can’t entertain, you lose the audience before you begin.

There is a technique called the "Five Seeds" method, which uses "seed prompts". Start your piece by first developing the following:

1. A title
2. A metaphor
3. A question
4. A contradiction
5. A sensory detail

The Parasympathetic Nervous System

The PSNS (parasympathetic nervous system) is part of the autonomic nervous system that promotes "rest-and-digest" activities, calming the body and supporting energy conservation and internal homeostasis. It promotes glandular secretion including insulin production for glucose metabolism. By contrast, the sympathetic nervous system prepares the body for stress and rapid action.

Field Lane

Field Lane was the southern end of Saffron Hill, now demolished, where Dickens based Fagin's den in Oliver Twist (1838).

The Tornado of 1091

The tornado of 1091 destroyed the church of St Mary le Bow when it was being built.

The Rhone River and "La Venoge"

The Rhône River is a major river in France and Switzerland, which flows from the Rhône Glacier in Switzerland (in the Canton of Valais in the Swiss Alps) down through Lake Geneva and out to the Mediterranean sea. 

The river's name comes from the Latin word Rhodanus and reflects the fact that this was an important waterway in the time of the Greek and Roman empires.  

In 1948 the French started construction of dams and diversion canals along the Rhône.

The river has many tributaries (a stream or river flowing into a larger one) such as:

• The Venoge (subject of the poem "La Venoge" (1954) by Jean Villard) 
• The Aubonne (which gives its name to the Aubonne municipality and Aubonne Castle) 

Both  of the above can be found around Lake Geneva. A translation of the poem "La Venoge" can be found here. It begins beautifully "On a un bien joli canton, des veaux, des vaches, des moutons" - "we have a lovely canton, it's got cows, calves, sheep".

Djed Pillar

The djed is a symbol in ancient Egyptian religion.  It is a pillar-like symbol representing stability. It is commonly understood to represent the spine of Osiris, the Egyptian god of the afterlife. It is speculated that it is modelled on the sacrum of a bull's spine.

Qawra

Qawra is in the Northern part of Malta, an island country in Southern Europe, between Sicily and North Africa. Official languages are Maltese and English.

Cult of Mithras

The cult of Mithras was a Roman "mystery religion", centring around the god Mithras, which originated from Mithras of Indo-European origin. Mithras was associated with contracts, friendship and cosmic order. 

Mystery religions, or mystery cults, sometimes shortened simply to mysteries, were religious schools participation in which was reserved to initiates. A famous cult of pre-Greek origins was the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Mithraism became popular in Italy, Britain and North Africa and survived prior to the advent of Christianity. 

Rituals took place in underground temples called mithraea. There are a number in the city of Rome. There are remains of one near Hexham in Northumberland, England, and also one in London.

Tower Bridge

Tower Bridge was opened on 30 June 1894. It was originally chocolate brown. It was painted red, white and blue in 1977 to celebrate Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee (25th anniversary). It is a bascule bridge (French for seesaw), which uses weights and pulleys to operate a drawbridge mechanism.

What is a Fabian war without Fabian means to support it?

This phrase is used by Thomas Paine. What it means is that a long drawn out struggle is unviable without sufficient resources to sustain it. A shorter, sharper approach may be required if resources are scanty.

William Pitt

William Pitt (1759-1806) was the last Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1783 until the Acts of Union 1800 and the first official Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from January 1801. He was born in Hayes. He was the sound of William Pitt the Elder, Prime Minister from 1766 to 1768. The family fortune was made in India. Their house was later lived in by Everard Hambro, son of the founder of Hambros Bank (founded by a Danish banker), and demolished in 1933. 

Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine was an English-born American Founding Father, and author of the pamphlet Common Sense (1776) framing the argument for America's independence from Great Britain. Quotes from his work:

• From the errors of other nations, let us learn wisdom
• There is something absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island
• The cause of America is in great measure the cause of all mankind

In 1796 he published an open letter to George Washington, whom he denounced as an incompetent general and a hypocrite. Washington may have avoided Paine at this point, possibly believing his politics to be too radical.

Paine's footnote to his letter objects to the appointment of a single Executive in government: "It is necessary to the manly mind of a republic, that it loses the debasing idea of obeying an individual".

More writings of the Founding Fathers can be found here.

Chaturanga

Chaturanga is an ancient Indian strategy board game - the ancestor of chess. In this game the bishop is instead the elephant. There is also a game called chaturaji, a four-person version of chess. It was played in India up to the 1800s.