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

Working is bad enough in the winter, but in the summer it can become completely intolerable. Stuck in airless offices, every fibre of our being seems to cry out for freedom. We're reminded of being stuck in double maths while the birds sing outside.

Although I played a lot of computer games in my 20s, now I have children of my own I hate them with a passion.

Labour-saving devices just make us try to cram more pointless activities into each day, rather than doing the important thing, which is to enjoy our life.

To me there is no more depressing sight than a five-year-old staring at a screen, unsmiling, mouse in hand. Besides whatever dreadful things this prolonged exposure to screens is doing to their brains, computer games tend to be solitary affairs, and produce little laughter.

Sensible people advise against drinking on an empty stomach, but to my mind it is the best sort of drinking.

By taking out a loan, I am committing myself to years of interest repayments, and therefore to years of wage slavery. And the UK has been borrowing like crazy since 1694, when the Bank of England was invented. This means that we are locked into high taxation to pay for 300 years of wars and other costly and generally disastrous state enterprises.