A Design for Life

     Well that's today's earworm sorted. Incidentally, when that song came out in the spring of 1996, I loved it so much that I straight away bought the cassette single and played it on repeat for a whole weekend. My parents were away, so I had the house to myself and blasted it from my second floor bedroom for hours. The only thing that stopped me playing it was the fact that I blew the speakers on my stereo on the Sunday evening because I'd been playing it at ever increasing volume for far too long. That took some explaining when my parents returned.

     I tend not to have rules to live by, I’m not that well organised. But there are certain guidelines that have served me well over the years (and days, some of these are fairly fresh discoveries), and I thought they might come in handy for other people too.

     Anyone who requests that they want ‘The End’ by The Doors played at their funeral is so tediously unimaginative and selfimportant that their corpse should be reanimated, just so I can flick their ear really, really hard, before allowing them to be dead once more.

     Anything that is described as ‘classy’ automatically ceases to be so.

     Thermal underwear is the work of angels and in a British winter, will improve your quality of life by an immeasurable amount.

     Soundtrack your life. And now I come to think of it, play the Rocky theme tune at my funeral.

     If you have ever written ‘could/should/would of’, please do fuck off right now. It’s HAVE.

     Always carry a paper and pen.

     If you have children you will exist in a permanent state of fear and selfloathing. This is normal. As is The Guilt. But there are downsides to having children too.

     Dance to the music.

     There is only one good thing about Autumn, and that is trying to catch falling leaves before they hit the ground. Try it. It’s really bloody hard, but also far too much fun for something that is free and doesn’t make you feel like shit the following day.

     ‘Like’ and ‘Share’ on facebook are suggestions, not commands.

     Take the tablet, apply the cream, pour the wine. And then drink the wine, obviously. It's not going to do anyone any favours to stare at a glass of wine for days at a time. And if it's white wine, for the love of grapes, chill it properly. Warm white wine makes me feel sick (bad teenage memory).

     There’s always one.

      Look around you. Notice things. Observe people. You will learn more from opening your eyes that you ever will from any book, song or film.

     One word alone can arouse the urge to kill, bring down governments, and set fire to the world. One word. Most dangerous from the mouths of toddlers. A single word. ‘Why?’

     Look at the night sky and watch the stars. Realise that you are simultaneously both the least insignificant thing in the world, and the most important.

     Go for walks in the woods. And if some bloke, covered head to foot in black clothes, including a black scarf wrapped around his face, leaps out of the undergrowth, shouts something incomprehensible, and begins marching towards you, and you're on your own, in the deepest part of the woods, your mobile has no signal, and this man is still shouting and marching towards you, and you haven't seen anyone else for at least twenty minutes and you're terrified and thinking about all the women who've been murdered by strangers out in the countryside, and you want to run away in the other direction, but you're worried that doing so will provoke this strange man dressed all in black, with his face completely covered, into chasing after you and attacking you, so you don't run, but your body courses with adrenaline and you have to force yourself to walk past him on the path, trying not to look at him, maybe he hasn't seen me, maybe with that scarf over his eyes, he can't see me, I'll be really quiet, he doesn't seem to be looking at me, I can get away, I know the quickest route back to open countryside, okay, I'm past him, go down into that path there, oh shit, there are noises behind me, I'm going to have to run, JESUS CHRIST there he is, he's following me, he's coming after me, he just shouted something again, oh god, I'm going to die, he's going to kill me, and every muscle in your body goes into flight mode and you run, run like you haven't run since you were a child, fear adding wings to your feet, and you're shaking, your breath coming in ragged little gasps, your lungs are bursting and finally you're out into the open and you grab your phone, and you bump into a woman and tell her not to go into the woods because there's a man in there who followed you and she looks worried.

     And then she laughs. And explains it's a game played by people from Aylmerton Field Study Centre.

     Should you find yourself in that situation, please do remember that you have my blessing to tell her to fuck off with the laughing.