My son asked me what is the meaning of life.
It was bedtime. He looked up at me in the dark and waited.
I didn't have an answer.
We'd been living in Bali for eighteen months by then — what started as a three-month sabbatical had quietly become something else. A reset. The kind of slow unravelling that happens when you stop being busy enough to avoid your own thoughts.
A few days later I told him what I believed: that the meaning of life is leaving the world a little better than you found it. That it's about connection. About being present for the people and places that matter. About letting your children see you live by your values, not just talk about them.
So we made a decision. We're not going back to our old lives. We're selling our home. We're finding a piece of land in the West Country. And we're building Chalk & Clover — a small rural retreat where people can breathe, slow down, and remember what matters.
We don't have the land yet. We don't have a single pod. We just have a very clear picture of what we're building — and why.