Small Beds and Large Bears

Hi,
Sorry I haven’t been in touch. Let’s recapitulate on events so far. My wife K. took out home-contents insurance with UIA Insurance a couple of years ago, in the names “K. —” and “J. —”. When it came to cancel the insurance, you refused to let my wife do so, saying there was a contract [...]

Last year I discussed my carbon audit for 2008. I use The Carbon Account to keep as close a track of my personal carbon emissions as possible. This year I’ve been keeping a similar record, but the result is confused and a bit unimpressive: the bottom line is a CO2 equivalent of 2.8 tonnes. You [...]

I admire skepticism. Being cool-headed about empirical situations helps you make informed conclusions, and hence decisions, even as you might labour under the pressure of those situations.
Science constitutes formalized skepticism: strictly so in its theoretical, dehumanized sense; more approximately so in the way that scientists as a whole practice their craft. But science’s skepticism is [...]

I’ve never thought of myself as the sort of internet junkie that can’t last more than an hour or so without tweeting, blogging or checking something online. I tend to be a briefly toe-dipping early adopter, then later on a resolute if unenthusiastic long-term user of new technologies. The idea is that this nets me [...]

Momus has discussed the late-70s/early-80s life and times of Alberto Camerini in a recent post. It was in the context of a recent BBC4 documentary Synth Britannia, and he helpfully links to the first ten minutes of the documentary for those of us who—sometimes to our pride, sometimes (like this one) to our shame—don’t have [...]

We’ve finally spent all of our wedding-gift Ikea vouchers, thank Christ. Not that we weren’t grateful for receiving them in the first place, of course: the final bill was reduced by an order of magnitude, which was a welcome surprise. And not that I don’t on one level like Ikea: the remarkably well laid-out showrooms [...]

The stress of buying a house takes all the wind and bluster out of one, which is why there’s been so little posted here recently. I’ve been almost too busy to be angry about things, not that you’d know if you worked with me. I’ve managed to successfully disguise my home worries as work worries, [...]

Longstanding Bedswatchers will remember my brief assignation with recruiter Ron from Ashton Carthorse. I’ve not heard from Ron since then, and often I wonder what might have happened to him, whether his mother still has that sciatica, and if Barnesy the family pinscher is still tottering around in an incontinent manner. Would that we had [...]

Brennig wonders how anyone could ring anyone else at 2.30am about a car. All I can add in terms of data points is that my birthday began earlier than I had planned this morning, as someone who’s either a quondam Iraqi translator, gangland supergrass, or Russian billionaire fallen from grace texted K. at a little [...]

Forward! with the great people’s construction project! May great successes befall the imagining of your beneficient representation through the medium of collectively owned urban transport infrastructure! Celebrate the greatness of both our interpersonal bonds and the proletariat’s cultural simplicity, through enhanced technological efficiencies!
Along with being uploaded to YouTube, Inaugural Trams (featuring Franz Ferdinand’s Nick McCarthy [...]