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This much I know: it's hard to get inspired when I'm feeling down. And feeling down is contagious. There's a lot of down going around, and it's getting in my way.

What to do?

Taking a walk is always a good cure-all. A wander is even better. Nearly any wander will do, even around your own back garden/yard. It's best if its not a goal-oriented wander but rather, a looking/experiencing walk. Yesterday my partner Mark and I wandered from our home in W10 to Shepherd's Bush Market.

Shepherds Bush Market is moments away from the shiny new Westfield mall. These two marketplaces have some things in common. Each has their own tube stations -- each has two, in fact. The Westfield is full of brands like Habitat, Tiffany, and Apple, while Shepherds Bush Market is full of brands more familiar to people from Jamaica, India, Peru, or Nigeria. You can buy Nike trainers at both. Both have several options for lunch. I'm not even going to make the "you can get apples at both" pun. Sorry.

The Westfield is a wonder, in its own monstrous way. Depending upon your mood, it offers the seeker of inspiration a range of gratifying emotions: from a depression-be-damned haze of gleaming escapism to a full-on hit of post-consumerist cynicism.

However, the miracle of Shepherds Bush Market is that, although physically a neighbor to this monument to brand-fueled capitalism, its a lifetime away from the Westfield in form and content. A ten minute stroll from Next, Gucci, and Niketown, past the betting shops and coffee shops of Shepherds Bush Green, and you enter another continent. Several other continents, in fact.

Typo-ridden Obama teeshirts vie with African printed cloth for the attentions of your digital camera. You discover types of mung beans you didn't know existed. It's a pungent mash-up of souk, medina, and car boot sale. Whole halal lambs, gigantic sacks of cassava flour, enormous yams that could alone feed an entire family, alarm clocks, wheelie bags, multiple brands of Thai fish sauce, fluorescent garlands of fake flowers, Nike Air trainers encrusted with Swarovski crystals. I wouldn't call it a pretty place, but Shepherd's Bush Market is exhilarating, if you're open to it.

I get most inspired when I step out of my own world into THE world. When I'm forced to bump up against alternative points of view, uncomfortable truths. It's exhilarating to have the mind and body challenged by new stimuli. This is why some people climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. I, instead, order the tripe. Or meander through communities of which I am not a part.

Actually, to be honest, I let Mark lead the way, and thus improve the odds we end up discovering boundless inspiration. Left to my own devices I probably would have made a beeline to the Apple Store.