Life Is About Recapturing Lost Freedoms.

Faffing Is Completely Harmless, Whereas Its Opposite - Dynamic, Purposeful Activity - Is Often Very Harmful. Faffers Do Not Tend To Kill People Or Make Them Work 12-hour Days Or Sell Them Shoddy Merchandise Or Lend Them Vast Sums Of Money That They Cannot Pay Back.

Benjamin Franklin And The Whole Idea Of A New Attitude To Money: "time Is Money." He Invented That Idea. Before That, Time Wasn't Money In The Same Way; In The Medieval Age It Was Regarded As Sinful For Money To Be The Object Of Your Life.

I've Given Up Email. Well, Almost. At The Weekend I Set Up One Of Those Auto-reply Messages, Informing My Correspondents That I Would No Longer Be Checking My Emails, And That Instead They Might Like To Call Or Write, As We Used To In The Olden Days.

It Takes A While To Master The Art Of Hammock-lounging. At First I Could Only Manage Five Minutes Or So Before I Thought I Ought To Get Out And Go And Help A Child Learn How To Swim Or Something. But After Observing The Mexicans' Capability For Staring Into Space For Hours On End, I Decided To Put In Some Proper Practice.

Indolence Of Course Is An Absolutely Crucial Part Of The Creative Process: You Do Not Find Poets Sitting In Rows In Cavernous Word Factories, Staring At Screens. They Are Rather To Be Found Lolling On The Sofa Or Strolling Through The Groves, Nursing Their Melancholic Temperaments And Losing Themselves In Extended Reveries.