Small Beds and Large Bears

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Next Friday is my 31st, and there’ll be some sort of drinking happening in Oxford.
If you’d like to come then you’re almost certainly invited, unless you’d like to meet me and kill me. Feel free to leave a comment with a valid email address—or email me—and I’ll let any non-murderers know what’s going on.

The Poet Laura-eate provides two perspectives on the problem of the colour of one’s poppies. I tend these days to wear a red poppy. But then I’m not wearing it entirely for myself any more: I’m also wearing it for my grandad. Imagine me as an old man, if it helps you contextualise that. If [...]

This weekend K. and I went to London, celebrating both our first wedding anniversary and a friend’s birthday. I hesitate to mention the particular dreaded decade involved, as he himself has described it as a celebration of the end of his twenties instead.
From the hotel we’d decided to splash out on a room in, to [...]

I was surprised, approaching my 30th birthday, to find myself thinking about my own mortality. I’ve tried very hard indeed to dissemble the event altogether; certainly I consciously played down the trepidation that started to fill my head at the very prospect of April 25, for no good reason, Jungian and unwilled. I’ve attempted to [...]

I attended Witney’s remembrance service today. It’s not entirely in character for me: I tend to shy away from large organized events unless they’re festivals full of my demographic (or what was my demographic, five years ago, I suppose). But since my Grandad became unable to attend on his own behalf—ironically, because the bits of [...]

There’s never enough time to do the things I have to do, let alone the things I want to do. But it was a shame to miss a 30th birthday party tonight, especially as I haven’t seen my ex-coworkers for so long and they were all such tremendous fun to work with. But after a [...]