Kitty Flanagan - 488 Rules for Life - The Thankless Art of Being Correct

17

Don’t take food or beverages into the toilet

Who’d have thought that ever needed to be said? But apparently it does. You know who you are (American guy called Tom who lives in Manchester) and whom I witnessed take a newspaper and ‘hot cup of joe’ into the bathroom.

18

The bathroom bin is for bathroom rubbish only

Sometimes you find that the bathroom bin is the closest bin. Perhaps you arrive home, you’ve just finished eating a banana or a packet of Twisties and you spy the bathroom bin as you walk down the hall. You must forgo the urge to toss your empty wrappers in there. Because what happens is, the next time someone is using the toilet, they’ll look down into the bin, see the banana skin and think, Oh dear god, was someone eating a banana on the can? How disgusting!

19

Flush. Pause. Check— FPC

Always wait after flushing so you can do a final check to make sure you are leaving nothing behind. Nothing. Not a mark, not a smear—there should be zero evidence of what’s gone on in that bathroom. Don’t leave a crime scene.

20

No phone calls on the toilet

The only thing worse than having a phone call with someone who is on the toilet is the realisation that they are indeed on the toilet. It’s usually something that dawns on you slowly. Probably because—for most normal people—the idea of making calls from the dunny is beyond comprehension, so it always takes a while to put all the pieces together. First you notice the strange echo-chamber effect, then come the oddly timed pauses and strangled grunts in their speech. ‘So I wondered if you … hnnnn … could let Margaret … hnnnnnnn … know that I might be late … hnn … today.’ And finally confirmation comes when you actually hear the waterfall cascading into the bowl or, worse, the splashdown. Unbelievable as it may seem, a lot of people take calls while on the toilet; I know because I hear them do it in public toilets all the time. A phone rings and then the person actually answers it? ‘Yeah … hnnny hello?’ What is wrong with these people? The toilet cubicle is not a phone booth.

21

The sink is not a dishwasher

These days most people have a dishwasher or, as I like to call it, a magic, electric, washy-washy box. And it really is magical, you can put anything in there and it comes out clean, requiring minimal effort on your part. Yet there are still people who think that dumping dishes in the sink, near the dishwasher, is good enough. It isn’t. Either go the extra half a yard (literally—the dishwasher is never far from the sink) and pop that sucker in the dishwasher or wash it up. They’re your two options. Do not, however, just plonk it in the sink and think, Well done me!

22

Everything can go in the dishwasher

Everything. No matter how big. Even if it takes ten minutes to rearrange everything in order to cram that saucepan or wok or blender jug in there, it’s better than having to spend two minutes washing something up.

23

Flog the dishwasher until it does the job properly

Sometimes the dishwasher does a half-arsed job and you find something that still has a bit of food stuck to it. When that happens, it’s up to the dishwasher to make things right. Don’t be a martyr and clean the dish or frying pan or wooden spoon yourself—that’s rewarding the dishwasher for shoddy workmanship. Instead, you put whatever it is right back in the dishwasher and leave it there until it comes out clean. Whether it takes another two or another twenty wash cycles, it doesn’t matter: the dishwasher has got to learn.

24

One person cooks, the other cleans up

In a couple or a family, the person who cooks the meal should never have to clean up as well. If you live alone, obviously this is not feasible, therefore I suggest you try to cook as neatly as you can. However, I must stress that this ‘cook neatly’ thing is a guideline, or recommendation, not a rule. As someone who lives alone and cooks like the Swedish chef from The Muppets , I cannot in all good conscience instruct anyone to ‘clean as you go’.

25

Clean up the kitchen before you go to bed

Again, not really a rule, more of a note to self.

A word about wellness

Wellness advocates and experts all claim they can improve your quality of life, whether it’s by not eating sugar or by drawing toxins out of your body with hot cups and candles or by rubbing your face with dung because that’s what some tribe did 5000 years ago in a tiny part of outer Mongolia. But sometimes I think we can get distracted by all the hype and forget to look at the bigger picture.

I was backstage at a corporate event once and witnessed a well-known anti-sugar crusader nibbling the dark chocolate coating off a single almond. She was scraping it off in tiny bits with her front teeth. It took her about twenty minutes. She noticed me staring (it was hard to look away, she was gnawing at that thing like a rat on a cable) and confessed that she allowed herself a minuscule amount of dark chocolate every day as her little reward. I told her quite smugly that I didn’t allow myself any dark chocolate whatsoever. I didn’t say that it was because dark chocolate is a punishment disguised as confectionery, rather I just enjoyed pretending I took my health more seriously than she did.

I know she looks better than me and I know she’ll live longer than me, but my point about looking at the bigger picture is that I’m not sure I want to live longer if the only ‘treat’ I’m allowed is one dark chocolate nut per day. Especially if I have to eat it hunched over in a corner like an obsessive-compulsive squirrel.

And for the record, I don’t want to drink bone broth for breakfast or rub my face with dung either. I guess I just don’t care enough about my own wellness — which is not a word, by the way — and you can read more about that in Language Rules.

26

Cushions are not spiritual advisors

The current trend for putting trite advice on soft furnishings has to stop. No one has ever read Live, Love, Laugh on a pillow or Dream, Relax, Feel on a wall hanging and thought, Oh what an excellent idea, I’ve not lived, loved or laughed in ages. Well, that all changes right now, thank you, cushion!

In fact, more often than not, I find these clichéd bon mots have the opposite effect and actually inspire rage and the desire to punch something, usually a cushion with the hateful Keep Calm and Carry On printed on it.

27

Never tell someone to ‘just imagine the audience naked’

This is one of the dumbest things you can ever say to a person who is about to do a bit of public speaking. There would be nothing more distracting than looking around a room and imagining what everyone looks like in the nude. How are you supposed to remember your speech when you’re envisaging a room full of lumpy naked people?