Small Beds and Large Bears

My parents spent a great deal of time on my junior orthodontics. Not money, though, thankfully: NHS dentistry was much easier to access in my youth (although read on for more news about that.) Still, the months I spent all braced up would, you’d expect, encourage me to look after my teeth into adulthood. Especially [...]

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 innocent man has only so much to fear from the police as they do from any other bunch of otherwise laughable, heavily armed, thick-skulled, stoked-up neds.
There’s currently a peaceful demonstration and climate workshop camp being run near the proposed site of the coal-fired white elephant at Kingsnorth. The site’s owner is reportedly more than [...]

I don’t know if I’m the first person to sustain a bongo-related injury at a festival. Certainly it was a cause of as much amusement as swelling, although I’ve now found a medical use for that magical disappearing hand gel they stick in portaloos and on hospital wards: a combination of soapiness and evaporative coolant [...]

The band practice left me with a blister on my little finger; on the smallest knuckle, of all places. I think it came from resting it habitually on my top E-string as I played. With my weird, bendy-backy spatulafingers, it’s more comfortable to keep my hand cupped, so I tend to mute with the various [...]