Favourite Kit: Alex Hesz

1. Sonos Play:1

The combination of Sonos and Spotify petrifies me, it’s so good. Petrifies in the Natural History Museum sense. I’m left lying still, staring at the endless possibilities, wondering how I’ll still end up just putting on Radio 4 when I could listen to anything, anything, right now and it would sound brilliant, and I don’t even need to move my arm from underneath a sleeping child on the sofa. I’m joking, of course. They never sleep.

2. Pearson Imnotanumber road bike

I like Pearson. They’ve got an eye for design and a proper sense of humour, the two things that the rest of the cycling world (oh, just writing that I already feel like a gigantic fraud – I’ll push through) seems to lack so severely. It’s carbon, it’s Belgian underneath (and who doesn’t want to be Belgian underneath) and it’s a shade handsomer than most of the other toys you see haring round Richmond Park on a Sunday morning. I cycle to work, but my Pearson (which, let’s be honest, I’ve had to dust down after a midwinter of hibernation) is a lot nicer than my pig-iron commuter bike, so it gets the nod.

3. Shinola watch

I know. I should have a smartwatch. I’m supposed to. I’m borderline contractually obliged to by a client. But I still don’t. Not because I don’t think I will or everyone else will eventually (we totally will) but just because I like this one, and others like it, more at the moment. The utility offered by wearables has yet to dislodge the beauty and simplicity of a nice watch. But we’ll get back there, in time. And I say ‘back’ there because in 1990 we were all there already, mini calculators on our wrists, and loving it. And I bet the new ones are even better.

4. Nest learning thermostat

First things first: our Nest doesn’t work. It thinks it’s 20 degrees when it’s 12. It thinks it’s night when it’s noon, so it shuts down. It thinks the internet isn’t there when it’s fine. It’s worse in every way a thermostat can be worse than the ‘until you hear it click’ version it replaced. But it’s so pretty, so insanely pretty, that I’m willing to sit in my kitchen, shivering and worrying that my family is catching hypothermia, just to look at it, to enjoy how it comes to life when I approach, to enjoy the loveliness of its animation, as I guess at what temperature I should set it to (24, normally) to create conditions that support human life. I should probably get it fixed, but I worry that they’d take it away, even for a day or two, and I’d be left in without it, comfortable and warm and bereft.

5. Apple MacBook Air

Boring, I know. But really I’ve put this in because it isn’t a tablet. I don’t understand tablets. Particularly for anything other than watching video or browsing the web (which I sort of accept they’re good at). They’re almost as cumbersome as a laptop, but much less capable – or I’m just less capable with them. But my MacBook feels so full of potential. It lets you be faster and more responsive and more reactive to ideas, which makes you better at your job. And surely that’s the point of them.