Small Beds and Large Bears

It will come as no surprise to some to hear that I hurt my back again, first going to (niggling) and then returning from (alarming) Copenhagen. A combination of a week of stress over having to give a presentation, bookended by two attempts to lug cases up and down train station steps in four cities, [...]

We’ve both just returned from Copenhagen: a conference trip for me, a birthday holiday for K. Denmark is an oddity: much as Finland looks Scandinavian when you squint, Denmark looks a little Germanic when you don’t.
The capital city is wonderful in a lot of ways: it has London’s green lungs, and a brilliant public transport [...]

We soon come to the end of our first year of owning a garden. I have learnt since starting to fumble around in the earth that you should take at least a year after acquiring a garden, to merely dutifully weed and water and nothing else. That way you can see what really grows in [...]

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 [...]

Continuing to live in Oxford and its shire, first as a graduate, then as a publishing junior, now as a senior geek, has meant that many of the Proustian experiences that might call forth some halcyon day or other have largely been diluted over time. Ten recollections often crowd around the single, sharp, painful one [...]

Two months ago, I said:
Witney’s branch of Cargo closed recently. Fair enough, I thought, but it did so only to reopen in a far bigger store space (where New Look used to be). I give it six months….
Now? FALCO: Witney Cargo. We walked past its whitewashed windows earlier today. Apparently it’s going to turn into [...]

Looking back at 2009 in depth, I realise now that there was a lot more to it than I had first assumed. The middle half of the year was dominated by buying, and then decorating and moving into, a house: three months for the former, three for the latter. But I also wrote two chapters [...]

Every year during the twelve days of Christmas I try to read A Christmas Carol. I maintain that it’s no more or less pathetic or maudlin than watching It’s a Wonderful Life every time it’s on, but then whether that excuses it or not, I couldn’t say. This year, K. rediscovered her complimentary copy of [...]

[Seinfeld and Kramer] ‘Merry Christmas!’ said Seinfeld. ‘And a happy new n***er!’ added Kramer. ‘… What?’
Posted by Wordmobi

[Simon Cowell] ‘This is the best advent calendar,’ Simon Cowell declared, ‘that I’ve ever seen in my whole life.’
Posted by Wordmobi