Six cost-of-living tips for young people, by old people

THE cost-of-living crisis is worsening, and young people will bear the brunt. Here is 68-year-old Roy Hobbs’ advice to see them through it.

Get bloody dressed

Hoody finishes just above your bellybutton? Wearing sandals in November? Jacket unzipped? It’s your fault you’re cold. At your age I wore three pairs of trousers and the World War One greatcoat my grandfather had died in, and that was to bed. Put some clothes on and you won’t need your precious heating.

Build a real treadmill

And these gyms you go to are a waste of money. The thick end of 50 quid a month to run on a treadmill like a hamster? If you’re going to do that, build a man-sized treadmill and rig it up with flywheels to a generator. You could power the whole house with that. I’ll make you one in my shed.

Live at home until you get married

I never worried about bills until I was 27 because I was still sharing a bedroom with my two brothers. I handed over my pay packet to my mother and she kept most, put a little by and gave me ten and six back for toffees and the cinema. I was courting, of course, but in those days you waited.

Eat stodge

There were none of these pan-Asian flash-fried avocado brunch pizzas when I was a lad. We ate stodge, and plenty of it. What was it? Stodge. I think suet was involved, meat, certainly potatoes, vegetables to a degree but not to the point you could identify them. Good honest stodge. Three meals a day.

Stop messing around with those stupid phones

If you’ve got the internet at work you don’t need it at home. Just print off anything you need during the day. No wonder your hands are cold when you’ve got them poking out of a pile of blankets to work your mobile. What’s wrong with staring at the TV for six hours a night?

Be born in a more sensible year

Look at their dates of birth these days. ‘2002’ and ‘1995’. What bollocks. Get yourself a nice sensible birth year, like 1954 or 1968, and you won’t have all this trouble. Enjoy the postwar boom, get yourself a nice cheap house, final salary pension, retire. But the young today would rather be modern and cool.

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The top six scents if candlemakers targeted middle aged men

MEN aren’t known for their love of scented candles. Maybe that’s because the manufacturers aren’t using the right fragrances, like these…

Industrial products

Middle aged men have a strong affinity for products with a chemical toxicity: creosote, turps, petrol. A man who doesn’t notice his partner’s new perfume will easily distinguish which brand of gloss paint has been used just from the smell. Incorporate layers of solvents into a candle, light in a well-ventilated area and you’ll have a very happy man, and probably dead pets.

Anything being cooked or burned

Whether it be charred burgers on a barbecue or furniture on a bonfire, middle aged men love the visual and olfactory delights of heat and fire. A candle with the greasy scent of a distant burger van or cardboard boxes being burned in the back garden would be a must for Christmas stockings, especially if it took half an hour to light then became an uncontrollable inferno.

His own farts

Smelling their own farts is a lifelong hobby of most men, who like to savour what anal parfum they’ve crafted today. Obviously a candle reeking of other men’s farts would be horrible, so it’s a bit of a non-starter in mass production terms for Yankee Candle.

Retro perfumes

Brings back the heady, carefree days when men fell in love with the first girl to pay them any attention. And you’ll never forget the fragrance she wore – Tramp by Lentheric, Charlie, or the sophisticated Le Jardin by Max Factor. Stick those in candles and it’ll raise the sap in a middle-aged man quicker than a two-for-one offer in Halfords.

Freshly-cut grass

If a man has a lawn he will wax lyrical about its freshness when cut. If your partner needs to be distracted, you could light this candle and watch him over-dramatically filling his lungs and emitting an ‘Aaaahhhh’ as he says, ‘Freshly cut grass, can’t beat it!’ Basically catnip for dads.

Themselves

As with farts, men take great pleasure in testing the quality of stench from various bodily areas, whether a gentle scratch and sniff of the arse-crack, or deep inhalation of a sour armpit. If Gwyneth Paltrow can release a ‘This Smells Like My Vagina’ candle, it should be easy to capture the male market with: ‘Jesus It’s Like Something Died Up There’ or ‘Mings Like My Little Unwashed Soldier’.

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