I've been in pain for a couple of days and not very productive. So I was thinking about Cole Porter (1891-1964), one of the very few musical composers who wrote his own lyrics (Irving Berlin was the other famous one). Porter's legs were badly damaged in a horse-riding accident, but not amputated. He lived in pain for the rest of his life and addicted to painkillers, and wrote his masterpiece, "Kiss Me, Kate", which won the first Best Musical Award. Pain doesn't stop genius. I guess I'm just lazy.

And that makes me think of a line by Marcel Proust (1871-1922) who, you remember, lived in a cork-lined room (for a while, maybe about three years) because of his asthma . Proust said, "Art is not forgiving." - or was it allows for no excuses? Oh, dear...wait till I check it out....

And then everything went black. Not in me, but in my computer - the battery died on me. So I plugged it in and now it's 3:40 a.m. and I picked up where I left off, reading about Proust and his life and career and reading wonderful quotations but I couldn't find the one on art. I remember being very dismayed when I first read it. I was trying to write (for a living) and be an artist at the same time and it wasn't working out very well. My "masterpieces" are unproduced, some of them even written but stifling in a filiing cabinet drawer or a box or the time machine attached to my desktop.

I'll write a different blog tomorrow. It's tomorrow already - anyway, tomorrow is another day and I'll think about it then. About what?

Hush.

Several magazines run profiles of celebrities. The ones I enjoy the most are the ones with pictures inserted in the interview showing answers to the questions about prizes and artifacts that the subject loves, idiosyncratic things like a photograph, or a toy with some personal significance, or a useful tool that has outlived its usefulness, or some new gadget that particularly appeals - you know what I mean. I find I think of those things quite often when I am using one of my favourite things and I'm going to list some of them (we love lists don't we?)

I have a wonderful bed table. It's not for the side of the bed, it's for across the bed. It's a queen-width table on casters that straddles the foot of the bed until I want to slip it up across my knees and it becomes a desk for me to work at. I write on my little Mac on a small hard plastic lap desk but all my papers and equipment are in easy reach on my sliding bed table. I love it and I use it every day, and night.

I have a favourite omelet plan, the only Teflon thing I own and I love it. I learned how to make omelets, finally, by watching a new chef at the omelet table in the Paradise Hotel in Nassau, as he ruined several efforts. I learned by seeing what he was doing wrong, but closer to being right than I had ever been. My pan is from the Jamie Oliver collection, and worth it.

I have a Hugh Jackman figure as Wolverine from the X-factor movies. I've never unwrapped it. I am told that such toys become collector items if they remain unwrapped -i.e. - unplayed with. I really don't want to play with it but I keep it on display in my living room because I like it. I prefer Hugh Jackman as a song and dance man; Wolverine is a bit over the top for me, but he's nice to have around.

Have you ever found an instant favourite? I just did. You must know that I like things tidy (except my papers; I always have trouble with them). I have soft-sided boxes that fit into my clothes drawers to hold underpants, silk undershirts, pantyhose, and so on, and plastic baskets to hold tea bags, or hair stuff (combs, elastics, etc.), small lazy Susans, cupboard shelf size to hold small dishes in the cupboard and various sauce bottles in the fridge. So when I received from my artist granddaughter two specially home-made cylindrical cloth "jars", stiffened at the rims to hold them upright, I was so pleased to get more storage equipment.

How does that saying go? "A place for everything and everything in its place." I wish.