Ridiculously, last night was so hot that we couldn't sleep. And not only us, it appears. Just about everyone we know was too hot to sleep. Winter seems to have forgotten its place. Our problem is that our sweet and rather ancient house only has storage heaters. It takes about 24 hours to have any effect when you adjust the controls, so a freak warm night like last night leaves you stuck. Dunno what anyone else's excuse was, though.

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We've decided to buy a house. I am getting fairly ancient, and we're fed up with renting. Between us, over the years, we must have spent millions of pounds in rent. We could be living in a mansion by now. Or something. Anyway, it's time for all that to stop. Time for us to enter mortgage slavery. And so on. We've started looking, and we reckon we should be able to afford at least something.

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It's Christmas. More or less. Time for waste, desperate commercialism and bad temper. Here's "Green Goddess" Julia Stephenson on having a green Christmas:

But, like many of us, I wonder how what was once a glorious festive pageant, lighting up the dreariest, darkest days of the year, has turned into this exhausting three-month consumer orgy that leaves us shattered and skint by January.

[...]

We have replaced our Christian God with a shiny, new material god. The Argos catalogue may have replaced the Bible, but it's a pretty poor substitute.

This new God is far more demanding than the Christian one, who was happy with a weekly appearance at church and a few kind thoughts. His replacement demands 24/7 attention and needs to be fed with an endless supply of unnecessary and planet-destroying things.

From The Independent