The promise of play

Until recently, if you’d told me I needed to spend more of my life or , let alone , I’d have smiled and nodded in agreement, while privately concluding you must be one of life’s underachievers, attempting to make a virtue of your loserhood. I was – and to be honest, largely still am – the other kind of person: productive, driven, happiest when absorbed in something constructive, vaguely agitated when obliged to stop and appreciate a beautiful sunset or a stunning work of art. This preference for goal-focused activity may owe something to my early training as a newspaper reporter. When an impatient editor is hassling you for an article he needs in two hours’ time, you don’t announce