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ОглавлениеBoxing Day
Here in the UK the 26th of December – the day after Christmas Day – is called ‘Boxing Day’.
According to some sources Boxing Day was originally a day when the wealthy would give a boxed gift to their servants. Whether this still happens is something that I haven’t the time nor the inclination to find out. But I can tell you that for those of us who aren’t in servitude, it’s a public bank holiday.
For many years in my family, Boxing Day used to be a re-run of Christmas Day. Sometimes the venue would change but there was always another roast turkey dinner, more Christmas crackers, more party hats, another Christmas pud, more mince pies and once again no one would even touch the Christmas cake. When we were very, very young there even used to be a second round of present giving.
When my wife Kate came along, Boxing Day became ‘our’ day. We’d get up around midday, open a bottle of champagne, play with our presents from the day before, roast chestnuts in the oven, play silly board games, watch Christmas movies, and eat posh nibbles. It was, quite simply, a fantastic day. Our first Boxing Day together I even ended up asking Kate to marry me. That gives you some idea how good Boxing Day made me feel about life, and there hasn’t been a Boxing Day since that hasn’t given me a similar inner glow, a similar joy for life.
And I speak with some authority here because in the last five years I’ve celebrated Boxing Day at least sixty times.
That first Christmas after Kate passed away my mother, concerned for my welfare during the festive season, asked if I’d like to spend Boxing Day with them. It was a generous offer but, call me sentimental, I decided to spend it just as we always had.
I got up late, I opened a bottle of champagne, I sat in bed and browsed my collection of gifts from the previous day. Then I took the Brie from the fridge, a box of posh crackers (the edible kind) and worked my way through the whole lot whilst I sat in front of the telly and watched The Santa Clause. A little later I emailed friends I’d been meaning to catch up with, and followed that with a walk down to Old Leigh. I looked out at the boats resting in the mud, and then I went home, wrote down some thoughts, and did some planning.
By the time I went to bed I felt like I’d had a week’s holiday, and all I’d done was get out of bed and see how the day unfolded. It was such a good day that I caught myself wishing that Boxing Day happened a little more frequently than once a year, at which point I had the following crazy thought:
Why can’t it?
What was to stop me replicating the same structure – or lack of structure – on any other day of the year?
Answer: nothing.
From that day on I decided to have a ‘Boxing Day’ once a month. Once a month I’d get up with absolutely no plans whatsoever and see how the day unfolded. And that was almost five years ago.
There have been successful Boxing Days (in that I achieve that holiday feeling by the end of the day) and less successful Boxing Days (when I didn’t), but there have never been unsuccessful Boxing Days (days when I somehow felt more stressed at the end of the day than the beginning). But of all the ideas I’ve had over the years, Boxing Day has been without a doubt one of the easiest to implement – which is why it’s at the start of this book.
The Principles of Boxing Day
From here on, when I refer to Boxing Day, I’m referring to my Boxing Day, our Boxing Day, the one we are about to create in your life. Now whether or not you continue to spend the 26th of December as you have in previous years is entirely up to you, and whether you want your Boxing Day to be called ‘Boxing Day’ or ‘Spontaneous Day’ or ‘Whatever I Want Day’ or something else is equally up to you, but for the purposes of this book, Boxing Day will be the day when you give yourself permission to do whatever you feel like doing, within the realms of possibility, on the day itself.
Let’s cover some basics here: Boxing Day isn’t just a ‘day off’, it’s important to get that concept out of your head immediately. Boxing Day is a day when you get to live totally in the moment. And why is this important? Because living in the moment takes a lot less energy!
As adults we expend a huge amount of energy just juggling the day-to-day. Young children, on the other hand, don’t. They live utterly in the moment and the job of structuring their day is handled by (hopefully) a responsible adult. Within the confines of whatever structure is imposed on them their day is totally driven by what opportunities exist, right now. They don’t have to expend any energy on thinking, and as a result they seem to have bucketfuls of get-up-and-go. You could probably power the whole of Birmingham on half a dozen four-year-olds and a ball pool if you could just keep them in that ball pool long enough.
And four-year-olds never seem to suffer from that Monday morning feeling, they never seem to worry about how they’re going to make it through the week, and they never pace themselves. They throw themselves at life, and when they run out of steam, they’re done. Have you ever seen the way a four-year-old sleeps? They’re so out of it you can pick them up without waking them.
Boxing Day is a little like being a four-year-old for a day. It releases you from thinking about the future or the past. For twenty-four hours everything else is on hold. If you do Boxing Day properly you should feel like you’ve had a mini holiday – by the end of a Boxing Day you should feel rested, and energised, and happy.
So, let’s reiterate how Boxing Day works in one concise sentence:
BOXING DAY IS DRIVEN BY THE MOMENT,
THE HEART, AND THE OPPORTUNITY.
Re-read that last sentence because the success of your Boxing Days, should you choose to have them, relies heavily on how well you understand the concept and implement the principles. To boost your chances of success, however, there are some special Boxing Day rules.
Rule Number 1: No Pre-Planning
Everything you do on Boxing Day should be decided on the day, and determined by what you feel like doing, what’s possible, and what opportunities present themselves. Do not plan your Boxing Day in advance.
Now you might say to me, ‘But I really need to finish decorating the spare room – taking a day to do that would be very useful.’ Well, fine. If you wake up on Boxing Day and you really feel like decorating the spare room – if that’s the one thing that would really make your day – then go for it. Knock yourself out. Personally I hate decorating with a passion but there have been Boxing Days when I’ve decided to ‘work’, when that’s the thing that I want to do more than any other choices that are available to me. The rule here is to not, under any circumstances, plan in advance to spend your Boxing Day up a ladder with a paint brush. If you know that spare room needs to be decorated then my advice to you is to set aside another day to do that, and keep Boxing Day separate. And if decorating the spare room is really that important, write it down on a piece of paper and come back to it when we discuss Goals later in this book.
But then you might say to me that your wife / husband / significant other won’t stomach the idea of you taking a day off ‘to do nothing’. To which I would say, you’re not going to do ‘nothing’. You’re going to do lots. You’re just not going to plan it in advance, and you’re not going to let anyone else determine what you choose to do.
Now having been married I appreciate that this might be challenging. So, one way to get buy-in from your significant other is to have a Boxing Day together or, better still, individual Boxing Days, albeit on the same day. This would avoid a day spent negotiating what the two of you are going to do – or, worse still, one partner dictating or submitting to the other – but I’ll leave that for you to decide.
You might also say to me, ‘But I’d like to take the kids to this or that attraction and we need to book tickets in advance.’ Great. Jot that idea on a piece of paper and we’ll come back to it in a few pages time when we discuss ‘Now Lists’, but pre-planning a trip to an attraction isn’t a valid Boxing Day activity. Waking up on Boxing Day and saying, ‘Hey, let’s all go to the zoo’ – that’s fine. Deciding to do it the day before and booking your tickets online – that’s not allowed.
And stop stamping your feet on the floor and pulling that face. How old are you? Five? These are the rules and they’re there for a reason.
Finally, you might whine, ‘But I can’t afford all these days off! Mega Corp Ltd only gives me x number of vacation days per year. Blah blah blah.’ Oh, for goodness sake! Then allocate one Saturday or Sunday per month to be your Boxing Day! There’s no reason to start using up your holiday allocation.
Having said all that, whilst you’re not allowed to plan what happens on your Boxing Day, it’s still necessary to do some preparation so that Boxing Day actually takes place! Let’s not get Planning Boxing Day (a big ‘no-no’) confused with Planning to have a Boxing Day (a big ‘yes-yes’).
For example, if you’re a busy mum with numerous people relying on you to wake them, feed them, clean them, dress them, listen to them, advise them, help them, sympathise with them, transport them … and all the other countless things that come under the Mum job description, standing at the top of the stairs and declaring to the rest of the household that ‘today is my Boxing Day’, in the vain hope that they’ll be able to ‘muddle through without you’, isn’t going to work. You’ll probably need to consider at least some of the following:
What’s the best day to have my Boxing Day?
Should I arrange child care?
Shall I prepare some microwaveable meals in advance for the family?
Do I need to warn anyone that I’m ‘out for the day’?
You might even need to strike a deal with yourself that whatever you decide to do on Boxing Day – and remember, you can’t decide that until the day – will involve ‘leaving the house’, so as to avoid that temptation to answer the call to Motherly Duty.
Rule Number 2: Book Boxing Day in advance
This might seem to run contrary to rule number 1, but the only element of Boxing Day that should be pre-planned is deciding when your Boxing Day is going to take place.
If, like me, you use an electronic diary then I recommend you create a monthly Boxing Day appointment. Make it the 26th of each month if you like, especially if you intend to treat the official Boxing Day (the 26th of December) as a Boxing Day. In reality, it doesn’t matter when your Boxing Day takes place, so long as it’s regular and booked in advance.
You might have thought that given the spontaneous nature of Boxing Day activities it would make sense for Boxing Day itself to happen spontaneously – wait until you wake up one morning and if you’re in a Boxing Day mood, declare that day Boxing Day.
There are two problems with this approach.
Firstly, if you’re a workaholic, a ‘busy’ person, or you work at least five days a week and have commitments most weekends (i.e. someone like me), spontaneity might be something that you struggle with.4 Therefore a spontaneous Boxing Day would inevitably involve cancelling whatever you had planned. Faced with a lot of last-minute diary shuffling, a task that no one enjoys, it might be easier to be spontaneous another day. Pretty soon Spontaneous Boxing Day would become something that you intend to do, someday, but keep putting off. ‘I’ll have a Boxing Day tomorrow,’ you’ll say. ‘There’s just too much to be done today.’
Secondly, if you’re the total opposite of the person above (How do you live? Seriously – how?) then there’s an equally good chance that you won’t have any problems cancelling work, or anything else you had planned. Assuming, of course, that there was anything planned in the first place. Pretty soon you’ll be having Boxing Day on a fortnightly, weekly, twice weekly, almost daily basis which will probably have two knock-on effects:
1 The rest of your life won’t work, as the stuff that really needs to get done sits in the corner and gathers dust. Worse still, when you eventually get cut off by the electricity board you’ll blame me and my stupid Boxing Day idea, and that simply won’t do.
2 Boxing Day will lose its potency. Yes, whilst you’re sitting there in the dark, with the bailiffs knocking at the door, you’ll cast your mind back to the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that, and realise that Boxing Day just ain’t what it used to be – a week or so ago.
The only way to safeguard against these two scenarios is to book Boxing Day in advance, and make an appointment with yourself.
But, you might be saying, what if I desperately need a Boxing Day? Or what if I’m due to have a Boxing Day but I’m not in the mood, or it’s just not convenient? Well, that’s why you need Rule Number 3.
Rule Number 3: You can move Boxing Day, but you can’t cancel it
It’s a fact of life that no matter how much you try and schedule your time, ‘stuff happens’. So if today was supposed to be a Boxing Day but you’ve just had an echoey conversation with your best friend who rang you from an underground sewer after a freak manhole cover incident, open your diary (planner/calendar/wall chart …), reschedule Boxing Day to another date, then throw a length of rope over your shoulder, jump in your car and go rescue your friend.
Equally, should you wake up desperately in need of a Boxing Day, open your diary (planner/calendar/wall chart …) and see if you can swap whatever you had planned for today with your next scheduled Boxing Day.
Believe me, this strategy works well. I’ve been known to postpone Boxing Days several weeks when Life is throwing everything it can in my direction, and similarly I’ve been known to have two Boxing Days within a few days of each other if I’ve deemed it necessary. This rule allows me to respond to the pushes and pulls of daily life whilst still getting an average of 12 Boxing Days a year.
Of course, this rule, and Rule Number 2, are virtually impossible if you don’t have a mechanism to manage your time.
Managing Your Time
Time is quite possibly the most valuable commodity you have. Everything else can be bought with money, and money itself can be created, found, given, even stolen, but not time. You have the same number of hours in the day as everyone else. And whilst you have some influence over the number of those days you might have left, believe me when I tell you that it doesn’t matter how healthy or safety conscious you are, they can still be snatched away from you at any point.
You’ve probably heard it said that ‘Time is Money’. But imagine if it was, and the hours and minutes of your life were somehow controlled by a Universal Bank of Time. What an austere organisation that would be.
Under their strict account usage terms, the UBT would actually mandate a compulsory daily withdrawal of 24 hours. The hours would be automatically transferred to you at the start of each day. However, you could never make a deposit. You could never put back what you didn’t use – and unused hours would be taxed at 100%. Worse still, the Universal Bank of Time would steadfastly refuse to issue statements. There’d be no online banking with the UBT. You couldn’t even get them to give you a balance, so you’d never be sure how much time you had left.
If real bank accounts worked this way you’d make sure you spent every penny of your daily withdrawal limit on something worthwhile. Pretty soon you’d probably start to plan your spending – you might even keep a book of items you wanted to spend your money on.
So why don’t you do this with your time?
You don’t expect to get in your car on Monday morning and have it drive you to work on its own, do you? No. You have to control the darn thing. And it’s the same with your life. ‘Taking control’ comes in many guises, but one of the simplest and most fundamental ways to take control of your life is to manage your time, and to do that:
YOU NEED A DIARY.
When I say ‘diary’ I mean, of course, a calendar in which you write appointments, not a journal in which you ponder the meaning of life. You might call it your ‘planner’, or ‘schedule’, or ‘that boring thing that I can’t see the point of’ – I call it a diary.
Here’s what your diary needs to be able to do:
It needs to be with you (you, not your partner), and preferably within arm’s reach, at all times
You need to be able to see a whole week at a glance
You need to be able to put things in, take things out, and move stuff around, fairly easily
It would also be useful if it could do the following:
Remind you of upcoming events
Warn you about public bank holidays, birthdays, days such as ‘Mother’s Day’, changes to and from British Summer Time5 etc
These days most people’s mobile phones can be set up to do all that and more. But it’s not the lack of diary options that stops people from using them, it’s the fact that most people don’t see the need for one. They’re not very sexy. It’s all a bit too much like hard work. So let me see if I can sell you some of the benefits of having a diary using real examples from my own life, when I was young and stupid.
Have you ever forgotten someone’s birthday? Someone important? How did that feel? Did they give you a hard time about it? Did they get upset? Did they hurl things at you and, in a flurry of tears, accuse you of ‘not caring’? That wasn’t true, was it – it was simply because your ‘current diary system’ (i.e. keeping it all in your head) failed you dismally. Am I right? No? Ok, try this …
Have you ever missed an appointment? There you are, sitting on the couch, squinting at the TV, thanking your lucky stars you have an optician’s appointment on – oh bugger, it was yesterday. You missed it. And why was that again?
Have you ever parked your car and noticed that the road tax expired last month? And when you went to renew your road tax you discovered that you no longer have a valid MOT certificate? Or insurance? Uh huh …
Have you ever arrived at work an hour early – or late – because the clocks changed at the weekend? And you didn’t know? Feeling sheepish yet?
Do people phone you up to find out why you haven’t turned up to that rehearsal / football match / band practice?
Does it ever seem like you spend your free days doing stuff for other people? Do you ever wonder why you agreed to do that in the first place? Do you ever wish you’d made time for yourself? Have you ever agreed to do something for two different people on the same day? How did it feel when you had to let one of them down?
Do you ever wonder where the time goes? Or how busy people fit it all in? Do you ever wish you could do more – for yourself, get a few things done, make things happen, finish decorating that room, take a day off, go to that concert, take a vacation, spend time with the kids, take a Boxing Day, be happier????
Finding the Right Diary for You
There are some superb diary options out there. I used to use Microsoft Outlook – I hated it with a passion, but it’s what my clients used, and it did the job, albeit in an annoying Microsoft kinda way.
I’m now using Google Calendar. Compared to Outlook, Google Calendar is, quite frankly, brilliant. Easy to use, free, and sophisticated enough that I can share various aspects of my calendar with trusted friends or work colleagues, and vice versa. My one and only gripe is that I have to be connected to the internet to amend it, and more than once I’ve wished there was a proper application that I could install on my machine,6 similar to the one I have on my iPod.7
As you’ve probably guessed, I’m a diary nerd. And I like an excuse to play with technology. If you’re a technophobe then an old-fashioned Filofax would work just as well if you used a pencil and an eraser, and got into the habit of looking at it on a daily basis. Many, many years ago I used a Franklin planner and for a while that worked well. Then I moved on – ‘upgraded’, if you like.
In that respect, diaries are similar to computers. They don’t seem like they’re essential, but once you’re using one you’ll not only wonder how you coped before, but you’ll need to upgrade it.
But let’s just start with the basics. Let’s get you using a diary and managing your time. Let’s take action!
Action Points
Throughout this book there are various Action Points. These boxes serve as Stop signs. The idea is that you stop, address the action, and then continue.
Now clearly if you ignore the Action Point – the Stop sign – it’s unlikely that you’ll be hit by a truck a moment later. Also I’m not going to pursue you through the proceeding pages, flag you down and issue you with a ticket and three points on your Amazon account. That’s not going to happen.
Also, I’ve always been quite enthusiastic about ‘ideas’. But whilst I like to collect and share ideas, I fully accept that you have just as much right to ignore them completely. I promise not to get annoyed with you for dismissing any suggestion (and these are only ‘suggestions’) I throw in your direction, if you promise to forgive me for being a little passionate, or teacher-ish.
That said, I’m assuming you bought this book because something in your head said ‘Hey – I do want to be happy’ and way back on page three, four, something like that, we agreed (well, you read it and I didn’t hear you object) that you couldn’t achieve this aim without putting a little effort in. So as I’m writing the words, addressing the Action Points is your part of the deal.
With all that in mind, here’s the first Action Point of the book:
STOP! ACTION POINT!
Get yourself a diary
Popular options are …
a paper-based diary (such as a Filofax)
the calendar on your phone
Microsoft Outlook
Google Calendar
Just pick one.
How to Use Your Diary
Hurrah! You have a diary. Fabulous. Now let’s start using it.
You might think that’s pretty straightforward but you’d be surprised – especially if you’re a ‘diary newbie’ – how easy it is to screw things up. So here’s my step-by-step guide:
1) Put ALL your appointments in it. Not just your appointment with your physiotherapist or family planning clinic. Everything. Even the appointments you know you won’t forget: your band rehearsals, your evening classes, even WORK. The only possible exception is IF you work a regular five-day week (in which case put the times you’re not at work in your diary – such as a vacation). If you don’t work a five-day week – if you work part-time, or shifts, or you’re on a contract – put the work days in. Yes, it looks crowded! Now you know how busy you are.
2) Unless you have another system for this (one that actually works) add all birthdays and anniversaries, and potentially extra reminders a few days ahead of the real event (e.g. you might want an appointment entitled ‘It’s your wedding anniversary this time next week’).8
3) Add your own birthday. You’d be surprised how many years I agreed to work on my own bloody birthday!
4) Add bank holidays, Easter (remember Easter moves around from one year to the next), Mothering Sunday, Father’s Day, Christmas Day, Boxing Day (the real Boxing Day), Valentine’s Day, and both days when they change the damn clocks – in your diary. Links to all these dates are on the website.9
5) Delicate one, this one – you may wish to add your menstrual cycle, or the cycle of someone you’re close to. I’m just putting the idea out there. Moving on …
6) If your diary has a reminder function, set it to remind you of events and appointments several days in advance. Yes, days. Mine is set to ten days (plus the day itself). Birthdays are set to one month. There’s no point in getting a reminder about an important birthday or anniversary on the actual day itself – not if you need to get a card and a gift (what d’you mean you always buy the card and gift on the day?)
7) Start checking your diary regularly. How regularly? At least every day (set yourself an alarm if you have to until you get into the habit). You’ll be surprised how often you discover an appointment you’d forgotten about. If your diary only allows you to see one day at a time (which is daft – ideally you want to be able to see the whole week in one view) then don’t just look at today – have a quick look at tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.
8) Before you agree to anything check your diary again. If the date’s free, enter the new appointment. If it’s not, decline the appointment, or shuffle stuff around so you can make it.
9) Do not agree to an appointment if you don’t have your diary handy. Here’s how you avoid doing that – you say the following amazing magical phrase: ‘Let me check my diary and get back to you.’ See how easy that was?
10) Beware people who say, ‘What are you doing on …?’ It seems like an innocent enough question, and – puffed up with pride in your newly organised life – it’ll have you reaching for your diary and revealing to the other person that you’re ‘free’. Which then makes it virtually impossible to turn down their request to babysit their pet python. Even if you are busy you’ll find yourself negotiating over whether what you have planned is more or less important than Percy the Python’s happiness and well-being. The appropriate answer to ‘What are you doing on …?’ is ‘Why do you ask?’
11) When agreeing to an appointment check the day before and the day after (so that you don’t agree to ‘climb a mountain’ the day after you ‘swim the channel’).
12) When you add an appointment, consider adding supporting appointments. Have you just accepted an invitation to a party? Great. Is it a posh do? Do you need your suit dry cleaned? Will you need a hat? Do you need a present? A card? A partner? Do you need to factor in travel time? Make appointments with yourself on various days before the party to sort out all these things, along with an appointment (with yourself) to get ready for the party, and to journey to the party itself. Seriously. You’ll thank me later. Oh, and book out the day after the party to ‘recover’.
13) When you make an appointment remember to add some slack in case it overruns or starts late. Sadly not everyone is as organised as you.
14) Take your diary with you EVERYWHERE. When you leave the house and you check you have your keys, check you have your diary.
15) And finally – make an appointment every month for a Boxing Day.
STOP! ACTION POINT!
Pre-book your Boxing Days
Now that you have your diary, why not create a regular appointment with yourself for Boxing Day? I recommend you start with one a month – maybe on the 26th – always remembering that you can shuffle them about if they’re not convenient.
Remember the principle of Boxing Day:
BOXING DAY IS DRIVEN BY THE MOMENT, THE HEART, AND THE
OPPORTUNITY
And remember the Boxing Day Rules:
1 No pre-planning what you’ll do on the day
2 Book Boxing Day in advance (and do whatever preparation’s necessary to make sure the day actually happens e.g. arrange childcare, prepare meals etc.)
3 You can move Boxing Day but you can’t cancel it
Potential Boxing Day Problems
I can’t promise they’ll have the same effect on you, but Boxing Days have had a profound effect on my life; that simple one day a month has the power to restore my flagging enthusiasm for life in the way that so many exotic vacations in the past have utterly failed to.
That said, not every Boxing Day has been a rip-roaring success. Most of the time that’s just because life’s like that, but I’ve also discovered that Boxing Day has enemies that like to skulk around in the shadows, waiting for their chance to mess things up.
Fortunately, my suffering doesn’t need to be your suffering. Here’s the spotters guide to common Boxing Day problems.
‘Excuse me, but have you just told me what to do?’
Perhaps the strangest (for me) feedback I get from readers are those people who like the idea of Boxing Day, can see the value of a diary, and would be prepared to take on some of the other ideas in the book, but can’t, because they have an in-built resistance to being told what to do.
Now personally, so long as I can see the sense in something and I’m not feeling ‘oppressed’, I love being told what to do. It appeals to my very masculine, somewhat nerdy, love of manuals. Give me a step-by-step guide that gets me from A to B with the minimum amount of thought and I’m happy. But if you’ve spent a lifetime being bossed about, then I can see how you’d object to me telling you to do X, Y and Z.
So let’s take me out of the equation.
You downloaded this ebook. You decided to read it. You get to decide what you like about it and what you don’t. You’ll decide what might work, what wouldn’t, and what’s worth a try. And finally, you’ll decide when and how to proceed.
It’s all about you.
I’ll be over here if you need me.
‘Haven’t you re-invented Saturday?’
Not everybody is able to see how a Boxing Day might be a good thing. Some people – let’s call them ‘young people’ – tend to look at me blankly for a moment or two before asking me how a Boxing Day differs from, say, Saturday. Or Sunday. Or virtually any other day of the week when they’re not at college. Which seems to be most days.
Before I became the grumpy old sod you see before you now, Saturdays were sacred and followed a very strict routine: I would roll out of bed around midday, and settle down with a bowl of cornflakes in front of The Chart Show before considering whether I should wander down to the town centre to ‘mooch about’.
This relaxed state of affairs continued throughout my teens and twenties, and might have continued into my thirties if it hadn’t been for the arrival of …
The postman.
If you’re in your early twenties you’ve probably yet to appreciate the sheer amount of admin that awaits you the moment you get a bank account, a loan, a credit card, a car, or move into a place of your own. Suddenly there’s a mountain of paperwork to be addressed, most of it hidden amongst an even bigger mountain of junk from people trying to sell you stuff. And whilst you can (as I did) leave this stuff on the side in the hope that it’ll kind of sort itself out, I don’t recommend it. Handing over your money to these organisations is only part of the payment required – the remainder is due in time, sorting out all manner of insurances, MOT certificates, and taxes of numerous flavours. And that’s assuming that you never miss a payment, your car never needs fixing, your boiler never packs up, and the Gas Board doesn’t decide to change your supplier without your knowledge. If you manage to juggle all this nonsense without surrendering the occasional Saturday I take my hat off to you. Personally I’d developed a morbid fear of ‘post’ by the time I was thirty.
