untypicable: Not what you were thinking…

by Dwight Warner Group chats are the modern equivalent of shared housing: cramped, chaotic, impossible to leave without causing offence, and haunted by the constant possibility that someone will add a stranger (or a journalist, if you are a US National Security Advisor) without warning. They are also, in their own glitchy way, the purest expression of friendship. Which is why every group chat,…

by James Henshaw The promise of smart homes was always seductive: a gentle, helpful ecosystem of devices that would make life easier. Lights that turn on when you’re sad, thermostats that understand your feelings, speakers that play jazz when you express interest in becoming a better person. Instead, we got systems that mostly misunderstand us, shout from the kitchen at random intervals, and…

It’s 15 January, which means we’ve officially reached that magical point in the calendar known as Resolution Failure Fortnight. This is the period where we all quietly abandon the ambitious New Year versions of ourselves — the ones who meal-prepped quinoa, set six alarms for morning runs, and downloaded language apps with names like LinguaLion — and revert to the more realistic baseline model: a…

There is a particular kind of Christmas decoration that has quietly vanished from polite society. You don’t see it in lifestyle magazines or carefully curated Instagram grids. It lives instead in memory: slightly faded, slightly torn, faintly smelling of loft dust and whatever the 80s were made of. I am talking about paper chains, ceiling tinsel, those deeply unsettling Santa door posters, and…

Santa, as we tell children, is a bearded stranger who keeps a secret file on their behaviour, breaks into houses at night, consumes unattended food, and leaves again before anyone wakes up. In any other context, this is a safeguarding briefing. The moment you try to run Santa through a modern HR filter, the whole thing goes from “wholesome festive myth” to “ongoing disciplinary case”. It turns…

December is parcel season. For most households, that means cardboard, deliveries, and mild worry about whether the neighbours have noticed how often the vans appear. For ours, it means something else entirely: the shih-poo and the cockerpoo have entered their busy period. The shih-poo is an adult male with the soul of a retired headteacher. He believes in order, routine, and being the first to…

There are many fake divides in life. Cat vs dog. Tea vs coffee. People who say “we’ll pick that up in the next meeting” vs people who silently die inside when they hear it. But if you are even mildly nerd-adjacent, the real question is this: Are you a Minecraft person, or a LEGO person? Both involve small rectangular things. Both involve building. Both have caused at least one meltdown when a…

Pumpkins have been escorted off the premises. The clocks have sulked backwards. Somewhere in the kitchen, Mariah Carey is already defrosting on the side. Every year, Britain reopens hostilities over the same question: is it too early for Christmas? This year, let’s negotiate peace. Presenting the November Armistice—a set of gently binding social rules that lets everyone survive the grey without…

untypicable turns one on 2nd November — a Sunday, which already feels like a breach of etiquette. We don’t usually post at weekends, mostly out of respect for our collective sanity and the faint illusion of work-life balance. But birthdays deserve exceptions. So here we are: slightly over-caffeinated, overdressed in metaphorical party hats, and pretending this was all part of the plan. When we…

Every 31st of October, Britain divides neatly into two tribes: Those who think Halloween is “a bit of fun.” And those who, at the first knock on the door, dive behind the sofa as if the Gestapo have arrived with Haribo. In America, Halloween is a carnival of community spirit. Whole neighbourhoods are transformed into miniature theme parks. Children in perfect costumes roam freely while adults…

They say mindfulness is about being present. Unfortunately, so is everyone else. Everywhere you turn, there’s a person loudly breathing through their stress in a public park as if they’ve just invented oxygen. Or someone online telling you that gratitude is the key to happiness while selling a £49 workbook. You want to be Zen, truly — you’ve even downloaded the app — but by minute three you’re…

I was forged in the fires of a nameless factory on the outskirts of Malmö, born of alloy and ennui. One of a thousand in my batch, we were shaped with precision, packaged without ceremony, and scattered across the globe—each of us destined for a life of brief importance and eternal abandonment. My name? I do not have one. But once, they called me “Tool 103488.” I am the Allen key. You know me.…

Forget the dreaming spires, dusty dons, and Latin-quoting lords of Oxford. Let us imagine a world where Inspector Morse didn’t attend the hallowed halls of one of Britain’s most elite institutions, but instead honed his craft at Sheffield Polytechnic, circa 1972. Welcome to an alternate universe where murders are solved not with opera and obscure crossword clues, but with Northern grit, a…

They say all the world’s a stage, but for some of us, the performance starts before we’ve even left the house. Take last Tuesday, for example. I’d barely made it out of bed when I realised I was already rehearsing. Not for anything in particular—just for being perceived. The spotlight doesn’t wait for an invitation; it flicks on somewhere between brushing your teeth and wondering if cereal…

There are few acts in life more deceptively simple—and more culturally volatile—than making a cup of tea. It starts innocently enough. A mug, a bag, a kettle. But from the moment you decide whether to add milk before or after the hot water, you are declaring something profound about your character. Something your ancestors would have judged. Something the neighbours definitely still do. It is, in…

If you gave me a time machine, you might expect me to do something meaningful. Something noble. Perhaps I’d pop back and deliver a timely warning about antibiotics, or nobble Hitler before he got going. Maybe I’d whisper in Marie Curie’s ear about lab safety, or convince a young Elon Musk to take up bee-keeping. Honestly, the possibilities are endless for the morally upright, culturally aware,…