I wasn't put on this earth to bake white bread

We've spent a lot of time recently discussing work, art and what makes us happy after dinner. If I had a pound for everytime someone has said "in the current economic climate" to me at work, I'd be able to achieve the eudaimonia I can't get my family and friends to agree could be achieved if I could work half-time, garden an acre while the sunshines and paint or sew in my sunroom on the days when it didn't. I still think it would be worth trying!

At a course I attended recently, the key speaker - ad-libbing admirably as the lighting, projector and microphones failed on him in turn - said he thought the only explanation he could offer for his amazing creativity was that he wasn't put on this earth to bake white bread. I am not sure that I'd go along with the notion that style is innate or somehow destined but am sure some of us are simply less satisfied with the ordinary than the rest of the world.

At the moment, as well as tackling the numerous ufos or unfinished objects - the oldest of which are over seventy years in the making and inherited - in my possession, I am also trying to decide what it is that I make that gives me the most pleasure. Is it the cushions I and the cats use everyday? Is it the paintings I invariably recycle once I regard them as finished or unfinishable? The quilts on the bed? The clothes I wear or the gifts I make for others?

Much of what's been on the radio - could we please have a more intelligent rent a philosopher than Alain de Boring she pleads - has concentrated on the status and interaction with other people work brings. Having had the misfortune to read Marx and Engels at school, I am not keen to define people by what they make. However, there is something about the tangible making of stuff that I do at home which transforms labour into lesuire despite the tight deadlines I seem to find myself trying to meet!