Canberra Potters' next round of classes go live on September 8. Get in quick

Since moving to Watson two years ago, a few local things have been high on my list of things to do. Getting to the top of Mt Majura without feeling like I was going to die and joining an introductory class at the potters centre. At least now I've done one.

With four terms a year, applications open about six weeks in advance. You keep an eye on social media, waiting for the link to go live. I missed out again last term, only to randomly notice, via Instagram, that a couple of places had opened up and was blown away when I got one.

I'm not sure why I was so keen to join a class. Some part of me hoped that I might meet a Patrick Swayze-like classmate who'd be keen to reenact that scene in Ghost. It must be a common misconception as our instructor Katrina Leske made a fleeting reference in our first session. No pressure on Anthony, the only man in our class of about 12.

But the main reason is that I'm obsessed with the series The Great Pottery Thrown Down. During lockdown it was my guilty obsession. Like Bake off, but with clay instead of flour and eggs. Judge Keith Brymer Jones, himself one of Britain's leading ceramicists, is the most wonderful man on television, always spontaneously breaking into tears when a contestant's piece touches his heart. Brymer Jones came to represent our renewed ability to find joy in the simplest of things.

So I walked around the corner for my first class with this joy in my heart. Leske, who alongside her role as gallery and visitor services manager is also a practising ceramicist, walked us through the course outline. We'd cover various hand-building techniques, learn to use the wheel, learn all about glazing and how different firing methods would affect things differently. I was fired up.

It had been years and years since I had done anything creative. I've dabbled in a little embroidery, bought some blank canvases from an art store thinking it would be easy to paint, I don't think cooking counts because I do that because I have to eat, not because I see it as anything creative.

For many of us, being creative, using your hands, using your imagination, making things, is not something we do every day. We sit in an office, we make policy, we make decisions, but we don't actually make stuff.

Remember when you were a kid, and you'd create worlds out of playdough, or plasticine, shaping something literally with your own hands into something from your imagination. This was it all over again. It was liberating.

And it was bloody hard. I thought I'd be a gun on the wheel. After all, I'd binged several seasons of Pottery Thrown Down in anticipation, learned all the words to Unchained Melody. I'm one of those people who is okay at most things. I can hit a golf ball, cook a sponge, carry a tune if I have to. There's not a lot I excel at, if I'm truthful with myself. I thought it would be the same with the wheel. That I'd kind of get it. But no. I struggled big time. The course allows you to fire up to 13 pieces. But I fell well short because I didn't feel any of my thrown pieces were worth firing.

But I think I found my niche with the other techniques. I love my Antarctica trio, a seal, and a mother penguin protecting her chick. They were raku fired and while the glazes didn't quite work out how I had planned, it was exciting to see them come out of the flames. I joked with Leske that, as part of this job, I sometimes enjoy the obscure descriptions artists give their work. This trio represented the strength of nature as it fought against the warming climate. Or something like that.

I was also inspired by the work of Canberra-based artist Alexander Thatcher who makes cute little houses in their Little Tree Studio. My little home represented just that, home, a place to just be.

Many people in the class were keen to sign up for another class. I'm keen to try a spoon carving workshop with Twig to Table. I need something to put on my spoon rest.

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