It will soon be difficult to put up a shelf without a degree in shelf putting up.

Idleness for me is not a giving up on life but a spirited grabbing hold of it.

Writing a book is a brilliant thing because once you've finished it, you've done it, and there's the potential for it to go on earning you a living without you doing any more work on it. It's absolutely ideal for an idler.

When walking you see things that you miss in a motor car or on the train. You give your mind space to ponder.

If Adam and Eve were not hunter-gatherers, then they were certainly gatherers. But, then, consumer desire, or self-embitterment, or the 'itch,' as Schopenhauer called it, appeared in the shape of the serpent. This capitalistic monster awakens in Adam and Eve the possibility that things could be better. Instantly, they are cast out of the garden and condemned to a life of toil, drudgery, and pain. Wants supplanted needs, and things have been going downhill ever since.

If you look at the literature of the 19th century, you get things like Kafka and Dostoevsky, who basically write about feeling bored and alienated. That's because we lost contact with the important things in life like work that you enjoy, or the garden, nature, your family and friends.

Long weekends at festivals, short weeks at home, all summer long: now that is surely preferable to the immense cost and headache of the nuclear family holiday in the sun?