The Cloud Appreciation Society

Douglas McPherson speaks to the man whose love of clouds has struck a chord around the world.

THE ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes called clouds the patron goddesses of idle fellows. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of “The Idler” magazine, should also be head of the Cloud Appreciation Society.

Far from being an unproductive activity, however, Gavin believes that taking time to appreciate the beauty of the sky is not only conducive to relaxation, it can also increase your creativity and problem solving abilities.

“We tend to feel that we have to be doing something worthwhile all the time,” he says, “and actually it’s in the gaps between concentrating on something, when your brain is in idle mode, that your subconscious has time to do more processing. That’s when ideas and solutions come to you.

“So one of the values of cloud-spotting is that it allows us these meditative moments, even if it’s just a few minutes a day, when we can stop what we’re doing and engage with an abstract, gradually changing, ever-present part of our surroundings – and that’s good for you.”

Gavin has been fascinated by clouds since he was five years old.

“I remember being driven to school by my mother, looking out the window of her little Mini and seeing fingers of sunlight – what I now know to be crepuscular rays – bursting out from behind a fluffy white cloud,” he recalls.

“I thought it was very dramatic. It made me wonder what a cloud was made of, what would it be like to sit on one, and how did it get up there? I’m still trying to answer those questions today.”

As a teenager, Gavin was “swayed by society pressures” to think of clouds as bad things.