Right, you’ll like this one (not a lot, but you’ll like it - ooh was that Paul Daniels?). I’ve often got bits of half written potential blog material lying about, and one of the ones that I’m often caught adding to is one on life lessons. You know the sort of thing: stuff I wish I knew when I was 18. Here’s an example:

Secrets:

If you have a secret that you want keeping, do not tell another living soul about it, even if you trust that person with your life. Think about it. How many times has someone told you a secret and you’ve gone: ‘oh, well I can tell X because she doesn’t know Y and that means that the secrecy contract between Y and I obviously becomes null and void’. This is your first mistake. X will then tell another of her friends, who will tell her husband (because they usually don’t count) who, searching for things to say, will tell his Mum, who will tell her next door neighbour, whose friend will tell her friend whose child will go to the same playgroup as Y’s child and suddenly everyone knows Y’s secret and you’re in deep poo. You know the drill. Also, once a secret has been passed on several times, it loses its secrecy. It starts as ‘don’t tell anyone but….’, then this in turn becomes ‘you don’t know my friend Y so I can tell you this secret she told me…’, then that becomes ‘my friend X has this friend Y and she…’ and on and on it rolls, like a tiny snowball rolling down a snowy hillside, gathering size and momentum until it’s so huge it kills a small child at the bottom (poor use of imagery but you get my drift).

So then I realised that I actually have several hundred Life Lessons that I wish I could tell my 18 year old self (like ’stop worrying that you might be fat - you have a flat stomach and are a size 8!!! WEAR THAT BIKINI, in fact, sod the bikini and just walk around naked!).

So, in the spirit of camaraderie and because you are always sending me very funny emails on random things, I thought I’d invite you all, my dear and blessed readers, to join in. I’ll even create a category just for you. So, in true MI:2 styley, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to provide me with at least one Life Lesson - something that you wish you could travel back in time and tell your 18 year old self (even though you know that 18 year olds think they know everything and, hence, will be extremely unlikely to listen to their 37 year old future self coming back and throwing unwanted advice about - as if!). This blog will self-destruct in 60 seconds.

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