Melinda believed in doing at least three good deeds every day. So each morning as she walked Muffins in the park she would look for opportunities to help her fellow man and woman.

“You need bigger shorts, your backside is showing,” she called after a jogger. Then there were the children. She helpfully read them the ‘no ball games’ sign.

Her neighbour was out with a young girl, probably his niece as they held hands. Which was good because she was able to tell her neighbour’s wife where to find them, when she got home.

It was wonderful helping people!

E.M. Swift-Hook

The music started up again and there was a tap at the door. Distracted, he turned smiling, knowing who it would be.
“I grabbed a drink. Thought you’d like one too.”
This was the reason he had taken that retirement two years ago. Vexana. Nearly sixteen years old now, Legacy raised and the perfect age to become willing cannon-fodder for them. He was trying hard to convince her that there were other, better, ways to serve the cause, ways that could achieve just as much — more — and not cost you your life. So far he wasn’t sure he had succeeded, but it was a work in progress.
Torbalen hoped she would, one day, be able to learn the kind of skills needed to do his job here, or maybe she would move on to something different, better and safer. It would be folly to assume he could ever persuade her to step away from The Legacy. Much as he wanted her to do exactly that, he couldn’t deny her the same right as he had to serve the cause for which her parents had died. But he could, and would, do his best to ensure the way she served that cause was one that would never place her in the same kind of extreme hazard her parents had so willingly undertaken.
He accepted the drink she offered and sipped at it as Vexana dropped into the only other chair available.
“So you think these two are any good?” She gestured vaguely in the direction the music was coming from.
“Not bad. They have that raw edge you kids seem to like.”
The girl rolled her eyes.
“You kids? Sheesh!”
Torbalen hid his smile.
“Sorry. You young adults. Let me try it again. This duo has the kind of unconstrained spontaneity that young adults seem to find inspiring. Is that better?”
The girl’s eyes narrowed slightly. He felt she was judging his very soul and finding it wanting. It was a court with no facility for appeal, but it was also a judge who could be merciful and accept age as a mitigating factor. She looked away and glanced at a screen, firing off a couple of quick, texted, messages before deigning to give him her attention again.
“She was back there today.”
Torbalen tried to make that comment fit into the landscape of the world he shared with his granddaughter. He failed.
“Who was back where?”
The slight impatient sigh told him he had made some mistake by not knowing.
“At the dojo? That new girl I told you about? She’s good. You should come see her. She was talking politics with some of the others too.”
He felt a lurch of concern at those last few words. He owned the building the dojo occupied, it was one of the main places he had people keeping an eye out for potential recruits. One of the first things many of those angry and hate-filled kids wanted to do when they got here from whatever war zone hell-hole they had fled, was to learn how to defend themselves. They believed if they did they would never feel so vulnerable again. So, it made good sense to have his people there ready to listen to their woes and alert him to any who might be more useful.
In terms of recruitment, it was right on the front-line and the people he had doing it there were all well trained and experienced.
His grand-daughter didn’t know any of that. She was simply passionate about martial arts as a sport. Vexana trained there and she also helped out a couple of hours each day after school assisting in teaching the children’s classes. Torbalen had complete trust that his people would watch over her there with as much care as he did himself. Although of course, Vexana had no idea of his real role here on Skapandir. She knew he owned the dojo and maybe even believed she was the only one bringing him word of what happened there. But she was also not naive and would have worked out by now that there was some kind of Legacy connection with the place.
“Vexy, you know you mustn’t get into that kind of conversation with anyone.”
She glared at him.
“I just said she was talking with some of the others.”
“Good. Because it is really not — ”
“Not what?” Vexana snapped. “Not appropriate? Not my business? My parents died because of it so I think that makes it my business.”
She was brittle and defensive. He said the wrong thing, as he always did.
“My son and daughter-in-law died because of it, Vexy, and I would rather my granddaughter did not and I have the suspicion that they would’ve felt the same.”
“They died. You didn’t.”
He sighed heavily. It was an old argument and he had never yet won.
“I have given my life to The Leg— ”
“Really? How is that? You were just running a shipping business.” The girl almost spat with contempt. “How did that help anyone?”
“I was doing other things too.”
“Like what? Making a donation now and then? How very noble and heroic.”
“It wasn’t like that. We’ve been over this before. You know I can’t tell you exactly what I was — ”
Vexana made a sound that was a half-growl, half-groan of frustration and threw herself out of the chair, back towards the door. In a moment she would slam it hard and he would hear her feet thump down the small staircase.
He hated that.
Each time it happened he was left with the chill of fear that this might be the time it had gone too far and she might do something rash.
“Tell me then,” he said quickly, breaking the usual script of their ongoing melodrama. “Tell me about this new girl.”

From Mistrust and Treason the first book in Iconoclast, a Fortune’s Fools trilogy by E.M. Swift-Hook.

The collected ‘wisdom’ of seven decades on this planet condensed into poetic form. Certainly not philosophy to live your life by…

There was an old woman
Who really liked booze
Who had gin every day  
And an afternoon snooze
She liked drinking and smoking
And very fast cars
And picking up young men
In small back street bars

©️jj

C H Clepitt has just brought out the first in a new series of queer fairy tale retellings. Eye of the Beholder is the first story in the Magic Mirror series of books which will retell these stories in a different time period, with queer protagonists.

When pressure from his materialistic children turns Claude into a thief, it is down to his youngest daughter to set things right. Angelique agrees to take her father’s place as prisoner to what she is told is a hideous beast. Angelique soon discovers that the so-called beast is nothing more than Rosalie, a princess cursed to remain trapped in a castle, unless the curse can be broken, something she assures her is impossible.
Angelique does not believe in the impossible, and sets about trying to find a way to save her new friend, who she is rapidly growing to love.

The Prologue

You may assume that this will be a tale of magic and mystery, of love and of the inadequacies of those self-indulgent creatures known as humans. All of those things are true, and whilst the events I am going to relay to you happened a long time ago, in a land you may not have heard of (for indeed, human memory is short), their truth is universal and the lessons we take away from them are never quite learned in their entirety.
It was a time of great sadness. The people mourned the death of the King, for he was a wise and kind King who loved his family and his people equally. There are some amongst the race of humans who see sadness as weakness, and one of those such humans was the ruler of the adjacent kingdom. A selfish and heartless man who craved power above all else, he kept his people in poverty, for it was the best way to break their will and keep them subservient. Despite owning all the riches of his kingdom, and sitting upon a golden throne, he was still not satisfied. He mistakenly thought that he deserved more riches, and the acquisition of these would lead to his happiness. It was with this thought that he decided to invade the bereaved Queen’s kingdom.
The wicked King underestimated the Queen’s sense of duty, and her love for the people for whom her husband cared so dearly. So, charging the protection of her daughter and only living family to a wizard, she led her army to meet the invaders and fend off their advances.  
The wizard had been one of her husband’s most trusted advisors. He had arranged the marriage between them and was godparent to their daughter. But the Queen was betrayed by the wizard, who, as the Princess had gone from child to woman had grown to covet her for himself. Being a proud and conceited mage, he did not once doubt that the Princess would return his affection.  When the Princess rejected his advances, he slashed her face with his dagger and was only prevented from doing further harm by a brave footman who fought him off and drove him from the castle.
Incensed by the rejection, the wizard lay a curse on the castle.  The curse made it so that none who seek the castle should find it, so those who left the castle could never return. So upon her return from the war victorious, the Queen was unable to find her home, or her daughter, the Princess 
Distraught, the Queen continued to rule her kingdom from a new castle, but she never never stopped searching. However, the curse was so powerful that she never did find her castle nor her daughter.

A Bite of… CH Clepitt

Q1: What is worse, ignorance or stupidity? 

Ignorance. People can’t help stupidity but they can fix their ignorance

Q2: Are you ticklish? If so where?

Nope, and don’t touch me.

Q3: How much of your writing is autobiographical?

All characters are fictitious, any resemblance to persons, living or deceased is purely coincidental. I write own voices queer fiction so to that extent it is autobiographical, and a lot of emotions/experiences could be transposed. But I have never been trapped in a magic castle or anything

Q4: Have you ever written somebody you love into a book?

What’s love?

C H Clepitt has a Master’s Degree in English Literature from the University of the West of England. As her Bachelor’s Degree was in Drama, and her Master’s Dissertation focused on little known 18th Century playwright Susannah Centlivre, Clepitt’s novels are extremely dialogue driven, and it has often been observed that they would translate well to the screen.

Since graduating in 2007, she gained experience in community and music journalism, before establishing satirical news website, Newsnibbles in 2010. In 2011 she published her book, A Reason to Stay, which follows the adventures of disillusioned retail manager, Stephen, as he is thrust into village life and the world of AmDram. Clepitt’s feminist fantasy, The Book of Abisan not only crosses worlds, but confuses genres, and has been described as a crime drama with magic. She has often said that she doesn’t like the way that choosing a genre forces you to put your book into a specific little box, and instead she prefers to distort the readers’ expectations and keep them guessing. Her 2016 work, I Wore Heels to the Apocalypse does just that, as just like the characters, the readers won’t know what’s going on in this laugh out loud satirical scifi.

 About her latest book she says…

“Representation matters. It matters so much, and you only realise how much when you eventually have it. Queer theory and queer readings of stories and films developed because queer people wanted to see themselves in stories. They wanted their own happy endings, so they read them into the narrative. This series is going one step further. It’s rewriting the narrative and inserting overt queer rep. We deserve better than hints and readings. We deserve to see ourselves, to have our own stories. That is what I’m hoping to do with this project.

“I am also reworking all the aspects that would be problematic to a modern audience. In this retelling of Beauty and the Beast I have taken out the kidnap element and changed lots of other aspects too. If you want to find out more, you’ll just have to read it!”

You can find her on Twitter and her own website.

They’d been for a walk by the lake, they did every weekend. Then John made lunch whilst Stella tidied. In the afternoon there was facetime with the grandchildren and a game of Scrabble. Putting the box away, Stella caught a glimpse in the mirror and sighed.

“You remember weekends before we played Scrabble? We’d make love, sometimes on a blanket under the trees. When did we get to be old?”

“Speak for yourself woman!”

“But we are.”

John drew her into his arms with a smile.

“Guess that’s the last game of Scrabble we’ll be playing for a while then.”

E.M. Swift-Hook

‘Much Dithering in Little Botheringham’ is an everyday tale of village life and vampires, from Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook.

When the bat man finally turned up Em wasn’t impressed. He was skinny, largely bearded and unpleasantly sweaty, he also wore sandals with socks and baggy khaki shorts. He shook hands rather too vigorously and introduced himself in a surprisingly bass voice, although he appeared to communicate with the world via the use of a few words as possible.
He was hung about with boxes and bags, and as Em followed his red gooseberry-like calves through the lich gate she sincerely hoped he was more useful than he looked. The church door stood open and he strode in with his sandals slapping on the ancient stone.
“Where bats?”
“Belfry.”
He turned to smile at her, revealing a set of long, yellow teeth that made Em think of the donkey sanctuary.
“Pipistrelle?”
“Nah. Bigger.”
He spared her a disbelieving sneer before heading towards the vestry door.
Em enjoyed a silent moment of glee and waited for him to admit his error. It took a while but he eventually reemerged.
“Where staircase.”
Em pointed to the door that was almost hidden in the linenfold panelling that covered the white stone walls up to a height of about seven feet. Batman disappeared again and Em composed herself to wait. There came a disturbance in the air and Erasmus appeared on her shoulder. He was giggling. 
“I’m glad I stayed awake to watch the fun,” his voice in her mind was full of unholy glee. “The guy with the beard is getting on Enoch’s nerves.”
“Enoch?”
“Head of the family of small bats. He is so gonna shit on the human’s head. Just waiting for him to take his hat off.”
A faint scream attested to the validity of Erasmus’ instincts before the sound of careful footfalls had him fading abruptly into the background. Arnold came down the aisle walking softly and carrying a large broom. Em grinned and cocked her chin towards the open belfry door. Arnold sat beside her putting something small and black in her hands as he sat. It was a knitted bat, perfect in every detail and Em could feel her face creasing into a doting smile. Erasmus’ voice in her head was awestruck. 
“How’d he make a woolly me?”
“I dunno, boy, it’s beyond my skills.”
Arnold just grinned.
The sound of sandals slapping on the difficult spiral of the old stone stairs alerted them to the arrival of a hyperventilating bat man. He just about fell into the nave, with his beard full of bat shit and his eyes ablaze with missionary zeal.
“Rhinolophus hipposideros. The biggest colony I have ever seen. I will be writing this up immediately.”
He bobbed his head to Em, in a sort of a gesture of respect, before almost running out of the building. 
“Rudolph’s hippopotamus?”
Arnold’s grin grew wider. “Lesser Horseshoe Bat. Rare.
Em nodded and she and Arnold sat in companionable silence for a while, with neither being quite sure what to make of the odd little man’s shenanigans.
Em was thinking about going home when she felt an inimical presence coming close. Being who she was she wasn’t about to run away, but neither was she up for a confrontation with something she had yet to suss out. So she took the third way. She drew in a deep breath and held it, gently willing herself to be unremarkable and at one with the old building. Years of practice ensured that she succeeded to the extent that the light passed through her instead of around her and she became effectively invisible.  Arnold picked up his broom and began methodically sweeping the worn flagstones of the church floor. He had just progressed to the corner by the belfry and quietly closed the door when the vicar swept into the building like an avenging vicar.
“Arnold. Who was that strange little man I just passed?”
“Which strange little man, vicar?” Arnold was the picture of bucolic stupidity as he blinked down at the smaller man.
“The one with the unkempt ginger beard and all the bags.”
“Oh that one. I don’t rightly know. He was messing about in the churchyard. Then he run off. Why?”
The vicar waved a distracted hand. “Never mind. Just so long as he wasn’t… I mean… Well… See there’s a strange car parked outside that nosey bitch Vanderbilt’s house. So I wondered if he was anything to do with her.”
Arnold grunted. “Mrs Vanderbilt don’t usually have no truck with men. Strange or not.”
“Maybe you are right. But doesn’t the old bat seem a bit strange to you.”
“Her’s a woman. They’m all strange.” Arnold shrugged about a yard and a half of shoulder and carried on with his slow methodical sweeping.
The vicar stared at him for quite some time before seeming to come to the conclusion that his employee was just as slow on the uptake as he appeared. He turned on his heel, as if about to leave the building, when he must have caught on to something not quite right. His eyes rounded and his nose became damp and pink and twitchy as he stood very still – scenting the air and finding something not to his taste.
“Arnold,” he said sharply, “can you not smell something?”
“All’s I can smell is bat shit.”
The vicar shook his head and his features rearranged themselves back to handsome human mode. “Oh yes. Maybe it’s the inimical winged rats I can feel. Carry on with your work.”
And he was gone.
Em would normally have dropped the concealment immediately, but some seventh sense had her remain hidden. Which was just as well, as only five or so minutes had passed before the vestry door sprang open to reveal the vicar’s suspicious face.His eyes raked the building before he pulled his head back and closed the door with bang.
Walking home a while later Em was troubled.
“What are you?” she asked herself. “What the heck are you?”

Part 7 of Much Dithering in Little Botheringham by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook, will be here next week.

Was it beauty’s fate to be
The pawn of serendipity?
Was she made as mild as milk
With skin as white and soft as silk
With auburn hair and emerald eyes
Just to be a nice surprise?
Was she put upon the earth
As a toy of fate from birth
So that a prince of bold descent 
Might find her out by ‘accident’?
Might take her to his castle cold
And keep her there til she grew old
Perhaps that was the master plan
But beauty ain’t the toy of man
And she a meeting engineered
With a lively dwarf with a silky beard….

©️Jane Jago 2020

    When Cargo Freighter Zulu/973 found it, the sleek little flitter was floating aimlessly in space, sort of halfway between the mining belt at Beta#32 and the transport station that orbited Jupiter II. It was much more elegant and aerodynamic looking than the ugly cargo hauler that nudged it with an armoured loading claw. The claw poked a bit more firmly and it drifted, with no more sense of direction than any of the other bits of space junk the traders had amassed on their journey.
    “Seems dead.” Captain Clearwater remarked to nobody in particular. “Let’s have a look then.”
    His communications officer turned the cargo hauler’s docking camera to face the wreck. She seemed to be in going on for perfect condition – clean and shiny and with some sort of earthside oriental script scrawled across her slightly flared bow.
    “Get Leah up here.”
    Somebody scrambled. Clearwater wasn’t a man to be kept waiting. Leah Su arrived promptly. She was as poised and unruffled as ever, but her bulky escort was red-faced and sweating. 
    “Su reporting for duty, sir.”
    “You’re the nearest thing to a linguist we have hereabouts. Can you read the writing on that ship?”
    “More or less, sir. It says something like ‘sea of stars’. Very roughly. I guess it is the name of the vessel.”
    “Probably is. Can you see an identifier?”
    “No sir.”
    “Me neither. And I reckon that makes it fair game. Whatever spoilt rich boy lost his toy out here, I’m thinking finders keepers. Even if nobody has put a bounty on her, she should fetch a few bob for salvage. I’m going over to have a look. Take the con Su.”
    Clearwater may have been greedy and even unprincipled, but he wasn’t fool enough to go and inspect a possible salvage vessel on his own. He gathered up a sizeable force, and broke out the blasters. 
    In the end, there were a dozen space stevedores, wearing their exoskeleton work suits, in the airlock, along with the captain, his first officer and the ship’s metallurgist. The inside door sealed and they put on their helmets before Su began pumping out the air. It took a good ten minutes before it was safe to open the big doors into the blackness of space.
    As the doors slowly slid back into their pockets in the hull, Clearwater straddled a jet scoot and headed for the flitter. First officer Ganges clutched the sissy bar behind his captain’s ample backside, and the rest formed a chain behind Ganges clipped together by lanyards attached to their tool belts. It wasn’t the most comfortable way to travel. But it wasted the least energy and Christopher Clearwater abhorred waste. Particularly if he was paying for whatever was being wasted.
    The jet scoot gently nudged against the silent craft. Clearwater’s voice rasped in the ears of his party. 
    “Anybody have any idea how we get in?” Then. “Let’s at least look for a door before we break out the cutting gear.” 
Nobody moved or spoke. Before the captain had chance to get properly irritated, Leah Su broke the silence. “Our docking camera view shows a touch plate about two metres to your right.”
    Clearwater grunted and edged that way. He slapped a large gauntleted palm against the shiny ochre-coloured plate. To everyone’s surprise, the three leaves of an oddly shaped and almost invisible portal slid silkily apart. Clearwater engaged the electro-vacuum parking brake and effectively suckered the scoot to the side of the flitter. He climbed carefully off his seat and made his way hand over hand to the open portal with his crew following him. 
    Inside the portal was the expected airlock although the controls were rather closer to the ground than would be normal. 
    “You. Gamble. Stay with the scoot. The rest of you get away from the door. I’m going to try and operate this airlock.”
    Being known as a bad-tempered bastard with heavy fists gets you obeyed speedily, so Clearwater didn’t even bother to look around before crouching by the control panel.
    “Pictograms,” he grunted, “that’s handy.”
    He touched one and the outer door closed tidily. A second button had air being pumped into the chamber. 
    First Officer Ganges fiddled with his meters and gauges. “Seems breathable, sir. A bit heavy on the oxygen but nothing problematic.”
    “Okay. But we keep helmets on until we are inside. Officer Su. Can you hear me?” 
    There was no response. 
    “Gamble. Do you copy?”
    “Sir.”
    “Right. Open a channel to Su on the mother ship. I’m gonna be using you as a bounce station.”
    “Done, sir.”
    “You got me now, Su?”
    “Yes sir.”
    “Okay.” He turned his attention to the boarding party. “Right you lot. Blasters out. And stay alert. Opening inner doors now.”
    Back on the cargo hauler the bridge crew heard a gentle hiss. 
    “We’re in. Seems deserted. Air is breathable if a bit oxygen heavy. We are removing helmets.”
    The sound of heavy booted feet and muttered conversation went in for several minutes before the captain spoke again. 
    “This is a rum old vessel. Everything is of the most modern and the very highest spec. But it seems to have been built for dwarves. And not very bright ones of them. Every control has a pictogram. Makes it easy for us, though. I reckon I can manoeuvre this baby alongside you and dock her. Standby docking grabs.”
    “Aye, aye sir.”
    “Closing door and pumping out airlock.”
    The next sound the bridge crew heard was a wet gurgling groan followed by what sounded like something heavy hitting a hard floor. Followed by silence. As Su frantically toggled the comms button the flitter disappeared. One second she was there, the next gone. For an instant there was an eye-wateringly bright bluish outline on the blackness of space, then even that was no more. Su knuckled her eyes.
    “What the frag?”
    “Continuum Drive maybe?”
    “Too fast even for that…”
    The helmswoman kept the levelest head of them all. “Some odd sort of drive sir. Pushed us three parsecs.” 
    “You sure helm?”
    “I’m sure. My gauges are going apeshit.”
    “How long to get us back?”
    “About two days sir.”
    “Gamble’s a dead man then.”
    “Not necessarily, sir.” It was the comms officer who spoke in a very shaky voice. “Look out of our starboard window.”
    A figure in a spacesuit floated just outside the metre-thick plexiglas waving its arms frantically. 
    “Fetch him in,” Su said, “let’s see if he knows any more than we do.”
    He didn’t. So there seemed no point in going back to where the flitter had been. Instead, Su was elected Captain and life went on much as before – if with less enthusiasm for ‘salvage’.
    On a barren lump of rock on the other side of a foreign galaxy there was unbridled joy among the arouraios kin. Those whose bones had been close to coming through their skin were now fed, and the freezers held enough sustenance to carry the whole colony through at least two turns of the mother planet. Captain Skrzzt looked at his mate and smiled to see the gleam returning to her dark fur and the sparkle of fun illuminating her eyes. 
    Not only was the colony saved, the big bipeds also had surprisingly tender sweet flesh and the idea of another raid into their space was already being mooted.
    Skrzzt ordered his ship to be camouflaged with a wrap of dull-coloured polymer while he chose a crew from the hundreds who volunteered. 
    The last thing he did before turning his trusty ship back towards the areas travelled by the food creatures was to require the name to be painted on the bow. 
    The Marea Celestia winked out of the sky above her home asteroid…     
© Jane Jago

Benjo was an alley cat who lived in Devil’s Lane
He was the biggest alley cat and quite a frigging pain
The children loved to pet him when they came home from school
But Benjo was just letting them, ‘cos Benjo was no fool.

Benjo was the father of every kitten in the ‘hood
It’s not so much that he was bad, it’s more he was too good
At rooting in the rubbish and hunting out each rat
So all night long there was a din, none slept as he got fat.

And when the people rose each morn with bags below their eyes
They’d see Benjo relaxing having won his nightly prize
And though the grown-ups muttered than the damn cat had to go
The children wouldn’t hear of it for all so loved Benjo.

So no one dared remove the dreaded Benjo from his lair
He’d claws as sharp as scimitars if an adult did appear
And though he made a misery of every sleepless night
Benjo was the biggest cat and never lost a fight.

Until one night the neighbourhood was plunged into such quiet
That all who woke, for once refreshed, the mystery enquired
For Devil’s Lane was catless and no one for sure could say
Where Benjo had vanished to upon that fateful day.

Benjo was an alley cat who lived in Devil’s Lane
Until he left the rats behind and ne’re went there again
Now he is a purry cat on pillows stuffed with foam
For Benjo was a clever cat who found himself a home.

E.M. Swift-Hook

One of the inescapable facts of being a twenty-first-century pensioner is that you have to deal with technology.
Oh yes you do.
Don’t try to tell me you live techno free. 
You need a bank. You need a phone. You watch television. And I bet you even FaceTime your grandkids.
Unless you live in a mud hut somewhere, with twenty cats and an effective system of barter, you are rubbing shoulders with technology every day.
And if you weren’t doing techno you wouldn’t be reading this erudite treatise.
*stops to light a ciggy and take a strengthening glug of Jim Beam*
So. Technology. I bloody hate it but I have to deal the same as you do. 
What’s to hate?
Numero uno. Too many choices. Mac or PC? Apple or Android? Laptop or tablet? Trackpad or mouse? The list is right about frigging endless.

Life hack number one: everybody has a grandchild, nephew/niece, child of a friend who is a geek. Have this young person brought before you. Give them a budget (twenty per cent less than you want to spend because the little shit will overspend) and tell them to go to it. And when (s)he has spent your hard-earned (s)he gets to set up the system and teach you how to use it.
At least that is what I did, got my nine-year-old great grandson and his dad along to sort me out…
Had to call young wossname (poor little sod has some schoopid middle-class name like asparagus or something, so him and me agreed on wossname)  back a few times until I got the hang of it but we are mostly okay now.
What did he get me? Laptop and dimphone. And a sinister looking thing with a blue light in it that sneers at me from behind the telly.

Life hack number two: do not be sweet talked into buying a smart phone. They are fucking expensive and you WILL break it. And the monthly contracts are eye-watering. My dimphone was twenty quid from a leading supermarket and it’s pay as you go. So I stick in a fiver now and again, and I wasn’t too bothered when I got wazzed and dropped it down the john.

Life hack number three: passwords. Do not use the same one for everything. That’s dumb. Do not use your name and date of birth. Only twats do that. Finally. Do not assume you will remember them. You won’t. Keep a hidden list. 

Life hack number four: Do not allow yourself to be talked into one of these streaming services. Unless you really do watch a LOT of television/movies/musicals. In which case discuss it with your geeky niece or nephew not the pimply excuse for a human bean behind the counter at computersrshite 

Life hack number five: whenever your broadband contract comes up for renewal refuse to pay whatever they are asking. If you can’t get it below last year’s price you haven’t whined enough.

Life hack number six: have unlimited broadband. You might think you  can never use forty-three helicopters (or whatever the things are called), but you will and then the grabby bastards will want your firstborn child and a Lamborghini to pay for the two days you ran over.

Life hack number six-point-one: do not buy an ‘upgrade’ it will make your laptop explode and your geek will sigh at you…

Right. That’s all for now. I’m going down the pub to see the male stripper