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The five rapidly worsening stages of having a spring clear-out

FROM starting out enthusiastically to wondering if the best solution is just to burn the house down, here are all the stages in having a spring clear-out.

Start with total enthusiasm

After a year stuck in the house amassing pointless crap that you’ve bought online without being able to get rid of any old stuff, it’s now time for a clear out and a massive charity shop run. You are committed to creating a minimalist environment that Marie Kondo would be proud of.

Feel twinges of early regret

It’s taken ages to get everything out of the wardrobe onto the bed and the only thing you’ve found to get rid of is a ball of wool from a misguided lockdown attempt to take up knitting. Start wondering if it will all go back in again and wish you’d watched Loose Women instead.

Have an extended break for nostalgic melancholy

Find some old photographs from school and spend ages gazing at them in a state of misty-eyed nostalgia, wondering if you would have been happier married to Jordan Gardner from woodwork class than your actual husband. Suddenly realise two hours have passed and it’s getting dark.

Wish you’d never f**king started

You’ve done nothing apart from make a massive mess and develop serious doubts about the state of your relationship. Get into a temper and start trying to shove everything back into the wardrobe, making it into even more of a disordered nightmare than it was before.

Consider burning the house down

Your crap seems to have magically multiplied and can’t be put away again, you’re knackered and you’re sobbing into a mug of neat gin. Find a stray lighter amongst the mess and seriously consider torching the house, collecting the insurance and starting again from scratch.

 

Six types of pub you should avoid like the f**king plague

HEADING down the pub? Just make sure you don’t go to any of these hellish watering holes.

Rough pub

There’s nothing more relaxing than feeling you could be glassed at any second. Luckily there are subtle warning signs that you might be in a rough pub: people with recent facial stitches; casuals in the toilets doing coke; and fights instead of having a burger and curly fries at lunchtime.

The ‘f**king hell this is expensive’ pub

You’ll know you’re in one if three glasses of wine cost almost 30 quid. Frequently gastropubs with pretensions, these could be used to set lifelong alcoholics back on the path to sobriety just from the sheer cost of drinking in them.

Upper middle class twats’ pub 

Mainly found in nice places like Hampstead and Cheltenham. The pubs themselves tend to be charming, but filled with the worst kind of affluent scum. Perfect if you want your pint to be ruined by some twat called Bruno loudly talking about his internship with Facebook while Polly and Portia shriek with laughter sycophantically.

The ultra-generic modern pub

With shiny new woodwork and some historical prints, these characterless voids are like stepping into a computer simulation of a pub. They also try to suck in every potential customer, so expect to wait at the bar for ages while pensioners take f**king forever to order a pot of tea and some fairy cakes.

Real ale twats’ pub

There’s nothing wrong with real ale, just the people who drink it. These beardo-the-weirdo types will clog up the bar area as they look for new and obscure brews, and will ask for a ‘taste’ of Old Cobbler’s Nutsack, or whatever, instead of just buying a f**king pint.

Family ‘fun’ pub

Dante’s 10th circle of Hell. If you like drinking in a filthy aircraft hangar full of screaming kids, this is the pub for you. The only upside is that you can relive your childhood by ordering fish fingers and baked beans for £1.50.

 

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