Always have the volume on an even
number, this includes your TV, your
radio and anybody else’s number based
volume control that you come into
contact with. Except numbers ending in
5, and sometimes 3.

If you start something it has to be
finished; like if you have covered half
of your car in soap suds and a rain
cloud chooses that point to become
incontinent, you have to keep washing despite
the sniggers from neighbours. A well-timed
middle finger may help.

Plant trees. They are not just a source
of oxygen, they bring people together to
sweat, swear and argue over whose
government is the worst and ultimately unite
you over a shared hatred of balding Dutch men.

Appreciate the power of photos and
don’t always look to capture the smiling
faces; the sad ones tell a more honest
story. Never let your mum throw them
away because the damp loft has given them
a musty smell that you can taste, it only
forces you to notice their memory.

As a Scottish teacher once told me, in
between sermons about the real men of
the highlands, you should carry a tampon and
a condom with you like you would your
phone, because one is 10 times better than a
plaster in an emergency and one can hold about
5 gallons of water. Fact.

Saving the best until last is not just the
craft of the gluttonous, because the middle
of a bakewell tart is the taste your tongue
wants to be left with, the electric bill
reminder is what you open first, not the
handwritten cream envelope and your future
husband didn’t make you leave your previous
boyfriend because he’s worse in bed.

Cutting chicken up into cubes the size of
a thumb nail and making sure it is
accompanied by equal portions of rice or
vegetables, but with a slightly increased
measure of stuffing if appropriate, is not
pedantic, but good digestive sense.
Parallelism, symmetry and degrees have their
place outside of secondary school maths
rooms: carpets run parallel to walls, folders
to the edge of the desk; pictures stuck on a
wall follow a symmetrical pattern, striped
pillows point the same way; and 90 and
45 degree angles should be adopted by all
furniture and ornaments.

Don’t count your chickens, or sheep, count
steps; 7 stair steps, 2 paces to the left, 8 stair
steps, 4 paces to the right: landing to kitchen
when the lights have blown, again. It’s a
comfort to know your exit is the same amount
of steps you took to get here and that you
made the number-free open air last time.

Music can have the power of plastic
cups joined by string that run not just from
room to room, but vibrate between man-made
barriers of imperial prejudice. So listen to an
itunes catalogue of diversity and don’t skip
past Clair De Lune or Billie Holiday because
your Rage Against The Machine flatmate is around.

But the best principle to live by is
your own.