I watched a short video on the watchmaker Roger W. Smith. He works in isolation (Isle of Man) and so nothing or no one influences his work.

The great thing about making watches in Britain is there is no industry around us, nobody influencing my design. So what I design is what I make and I think that’s very important. More so on the Isle of Man, obviously there’s no other watchmaking on the Isle of Man, the influences just aren’t around and I can just get on with my day’s work and just make what I want to make and I can design a component and by the end of the day we can have that component fitted into a watch.

And that, to me, is true independence.