Kit: The bed that's the price of a flat

"Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world. No matter how great my weariness, the wrench of parting with consciousness is unspeakably repulsive to me." So wrote Vladimir Nabokov, novelist, lepidopterist and insomniac. He was expressing his disdain for those happy bovine types who fall asleep in public, but to me it smacks of the exhausted frustration of a man who just can't stop his brain-box whirring.

I'm no Russian genius, but I, too, find it almost impossible to get enough sleep. By Thursday of a busy week, I am so befugged and bemuddled with fatigue that I think I would gladly trade all ambition and fun and friendships to just once wake up feeling fresh.

The finest beds in the world, the company claims, are made by Savoir, which supplies the Savoy among others. It does so on the principle that if spending a fortune will make one detail infinitesimally more pleasing, then so be it. The beds can cost as much as a flat in a provincial city and come with a whole arcane vocabulary of ticking, teasing and eight-way star-lashed interlinking. I was content to leave all that inside the mattress and know merely that the one I tested was at the forefront of humanity's achievements in the field of bed construction.

So I lay, I twisted and ...I slept. Over the night, the mattress opened a cavity in my shape, and I sank into it. From then on, there is nothing to report, a case of no news being good news. Only in the morning, when my limbs wanted to stretch and turn a little, did I break out of the shape the bed had made, and wake up. It was still earlier than I wanted and I felt not fresh – in sleep, my debts are larger than Greece's – but OK.

Then I made the habitual mistake of checking the time on my phone, seeing that emails had arrived, and checking them, too. Five minutes after that, I was reading an article someone had filed, just making a little tweak, just sending a quick response. And five minutes after that, I was full-on working; yawning, blinking, still tired, thinking now not of going back to bed, but of coffee.

Samsung Galaxy S6

By Graham Boynton

For years the major complaint about Samsung and similar androids was that they were made of plastic and felt cheap. Samsung has now responded with the Galaxy S6, a stylish piece of kit fashioned in aluminium and glass. It feels and looks appropriately expensive, which indeed it is, selling from €699 (£560). The S6 is, however, much more than a portable design feature. The screen is just over five inches and has the highest resolution on the market with 577 ppi. It comes in 32, 64 or 128 GB internal storage capacities, all with a 64 bit core processor. The camera is 16 megapixels with a f1.9 aperture. The the battery is smaller than in the S5, but apparently more efficient.

Big Green Egg

By Graham Boynton

With the arrival of the European summer our thoughts are turning to cold beers and hot barbecues, and the issue in question is what cooker to use. For under €140 you can have the Weber One Touch Porcelain Kettle, a fine piece of equipment. Or, if you're looking for the Rolls-Royce of the genre, you have to go for the Big Green Egg, favourite of Heston Blumenthal and that king of the braaivleis, former England cricketer Allan Lamb. If you choose an Egg you'll be paying a lot – €550 for the small Mini Egg, and €1,728 for the extra large. Is it worth it? Well, the thermometer is very accurate, and the two temperature-controlling vents maintain the heat to within five degrees. In other words, it offers the kind of controls chefs and cricketers swear by. At a price.