Well today it’s identical high streets that are making my blood boil! Why is every single British town now just a repository for all the usual high street names? Where is all the interesting and individual jewellery? What can we do to get everyone investing their hard-earned money in well-designed, quality products?

As a designer, this subject is of particular interest to me, but particularly now due to comments from a number of retailers in the last few days. The poor, British, jewellery-buying public have been described politely as ‘conservative’ and less politely as ‘boring with no interest in anything but the traditional’. Can this really be true? Are there really so few people left out there who appreciate good design? Or do retailers just not want to take that risk? I guess we have to take some responsibility for this ourselves; I’m as guilty as anyone else of getting a cheap bargain on the high street, but it’s time we searched out the more unique and individual. I also suspect that the cost of premises prices new businesses out of prominant positions. Set in our routines as most of us are, it takes something really extraordinary to make us go out of our way and try something new. So again I sense a mission on the horizon: To try something new every day and to get everyone else to join me!