Towns Beginning With M

When Ailz couldn't get to sleep last night she started making a list of British towns beginning with "M".

Manchester, Middleton, Malton, Macclesfield...

Once you start that sort of thing it's very hard to stop.

Maidstone, Malborough, Middlesborough, Mansfield...

Give Me Sunshine

If I were buying this house now it would bother me more than it did then (1986) that it faces North.

I suppose I used not to feel the cold. Or- at least- not care about feeling the cold.

Nor can I have found it as oppressive  as I do now that the inners of the house- the corridors and stairwell- are so dark and dank and Daphne du Maurier. I can only conclude that my 35 year old self possessed reserves of natural cheerfulness that are now all used up.

The Next Big Thing

I remember the first mobile phones. You'd see men- they were always men- strutting around with shoeboxes clamped to their ears and you'd think, "Drug Dealer!"

I  remember the first home computers. My girlfriend had one. I used to go to her house to play arcade games on it. I certainly never foresaw a time when I'd be doing, well, what I'm doing now.

The next big thing is the 3D printer. The technology exists. Printers are being used to make everything from guns to human organs. I don't know anyone who owns one yet, but I expect I soon will. I expect to own one myself. They're going to change the way we consume- and the way the world does business. You want some common household object- anything from a car to a washing-up brush; you no longer go to the shop or place an order online, you simply enter a code into your household printer and "voila!". I understand the first models are well within the budget of an average middle-class family- and the price keeps coming down.

We'll wonder how we ever managed without them.