Last night I was extremely privileged to enjoy a night aboard the ‘Roi des Belges’ (aka ‘A Room for London’), that intriguing little vessel that sits incongruously atop the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank. I was convening and hosting a dinner of invited illustrious guests to discuss my ‘Idea for London’, a cross-cultural listings website with a difference (working title ‘Air London’), for which I’d won the right to stay on the ship.

Sat in the lounge with its panoramic portals onto the London skyline was a lesson in detached delight. Making use of the binoculars to peruse the many splendoured tribes of London promenading in the warm spring sunshine, most welcome after the recent weeks of drenching, icy, hail showers, was strangely voyeuristic. I was both the observer and the observed, exploring yet exposed on the deck of the rather obvious visually alluring nautical feature. This brought to mind the Massive Attack lyric in ‘Safe from harm’ – ‘I was lookin’ back to see if you were lookin’ back at me to see me lookin’ back at you’ or maybe (and this is showing my age) the catchphrase from early 1980’s candid camera TV show ‘Game for a Laugh’ – “Watching us, watching you, watching us, watching you” (this was brilliantly subverted by Not the Nine O’Clock News).

It was people watching as a rather marvellous pre-Olympic sport as the ebb and flow of humanity along the concrete embankment echoed the murky movement of the Thames beyond. The current of pedestrians across Waterloo Bridge intensified as Big Ben struck five like a slowly turning diurnal tide.

Dinner was a delicious affair supplied by the good folk from Canteen below decks, and my esteemed panel of guests, from the Founder of Theatre radicalists Punchdrunk to the money behind ‘Housebites’ via the creative content guru of ‘VisitLondon’  and the sheer tenacity of Trillion Fund were generous in their gifted ideas and inspiration. Both the cooking and conversation left me with plenty to digest!

Later the conditions completely shifted. A weather warning was delivered to the Roi, the wind picked up creating a monstrous spectral moaning and groaning around the ship, a sound alien to my London ears that are usually attuned to the low grumble of traffic punctuated by shrill sirens or brusque horns. Rain hammer-tapped on the windows and roof and my eyes feasted on the glut of glistening wet cityscape across the river as the low, heavy cloud fluoresced frequently with the sharp brilliant crack of flash-bulb-like lightning.

The experience was the very embodiment of space and reflection, a few fleeting hours spent above the city yet still immersed in it. And if there’s a communications insight to this blog, as well there should be, it is this: Never underestimate the value of distance, a change of perspective and a little time to help you cogitate and ultimately create. We may not all be able to Captain the ‘Roi des Belges’ for a night, but we can all find time, space and a fresh angle on knotty problems to help unleash our talents.

Huge thanks to the team from Artangel and others for organising and hosting such a memorable, magical and marvellous night, and look out for more ‘Air London’ evolutions as the project develops.