The thoughts of a painter decorator in Worcester.

There is a philosophy behind the jobs we do. If you work in an office, you can expect that to be one of hectic, email-appearing and phone-answering chaos, with a day that is characterised by responding to sudden demands and kicking your feet to keep the normal daily demands from drowning you. You might visit the vending machine or escape for an hour at lunch. Each job has behind it features that dictate a certain philosophy on what to expect of you.

Painting and decorating has its own as well. It's skilled work, but one that is without the intrusion of the email or the phone to the same extent as office workers. The steady hand on a roller, the studious application of tape or the deft stroke of a brush, gives us an almost monkish philosophy of our own. Sometimes, the radio is on, but just as often it is our own meanderings that form the background to our work.

I wondered recently if this might be the reason why a decorator from Sussex has found fame with his new invention of a single-use syringe for medical purposes. It is an excellent invention: a simple concept that addresses a great need. Perhaps, without the constant interruption in many other worlds of work, the man had the time and capacity and imagination to think of this device and make it a reality. Like Einstein, working quietly away in the Bern Patent Office in the early 20th century, devoid of interruptions and demands, his idea took shape.

It is an interesting thought - so perhaps I might take up physics in my spare time in an attempt to answer the vexing question of Dark Matter and just what makes up 70% of our universe,(thanks to Radio 4's In Our Time with Melvyn Brag for that one - Thursday mornings offer good intellectual pursuit!) or I might contemplate what simple health device I could engineer to help make the world a better place. We are limited only by our imagination!

You can read the story of inventor Marc Koska's one-shot syringe here.