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What those 'Live, Laugh, Love' signs would say if they were telling the truth

DOES a friend have a house full of pukey little signs saying things like ‘Family is where the heart is’? Here’s what they’d say if they were honest.

‘Dream big’

Dream big, but strictly in a realistic way. Because it’s just possible you’re not actually going to live in a 16th century farmhouse in the Cotswolds with the money you made from being a famous influencer on Instagram.

‘This kitchen is seasoned with love’

This kitchen is seasoned with ketchup, some oven chips you kicked under the cooker and a jar of horrifically out-of-date horseradish sauce which has been inside the fridge door for four years.

‘All a marriage needs is love’

All a marriage needs is for neither party to snore. That’s it.

‘Find a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life’

Find a job you love, but only if you’ve got rich parents and can survive being paid a pittance for it.

‘Best friends forever’

Unlikely to be fulfilled, even if written on a faux-ceramic plaque and accompanied by two teddies holding little hearts. More likely to be ‘Friends for a bit then gradually fade out’. Also a sign that the giver is pathologically clingy and insecure, and needs to be gradually disentangled from.

‘Our family doesn’t have to be perfect to be wonderful’

Families can be wonderful, but dirty socks and pants left everywhere can sometimes take the edge off the wonder.

‘Love will see you through’

No guarantee of that. Money and a professional qualification for a well-paid career are better.

‘Friends are the family we choose’

Friends are certainly like family in that they can be flaky, irritating and hard to shake off, and sometimes you wonder if you have anything in common with them. For example, one of your friends bought you this sign and now you have to hang it in your hall. Even your sister wouldn’t have done that to you, and she’s a cow.

‘A home is made of hopes and dreams’

A home is made of bricks and lots of insulation. Good luck finding a hope-dream home in the UK.

‘Never regret anything that made you smile’

That fling with a married guy at work made you smile, didn’t it? Now you’re divorced and rent a dingy terraced house with no parking.

‘Dance like nobody’s watching’

For God’s sake, just dance like everyone else is dancing. Stop making a drunken spectacle of yourself again.

Six wankers you only meet in London

LONDON – cultural powerhouse, historic capital and magnet for wankers. Here are some pain-in-the-arse individuals who the regions can’t hope to match.

Fringe media ponce

Often going by a bollocks nickname like ‘Nez’, he’s a player in the media – but can never clearly explain an actual project he’s working on. They usually have some dull celebrity connection, such as knowing Simon Mayo. It’s good that Simon is a ‘great bloke’, you just didn’t need to be told 15 times.

Sadist Tube workers

No one’s expected to be ecstatic about working in grimy pedestrian tunnels, but these gleeful bastards take obvious pleasure in informing you you’ve missed the last train to Edgware. You’ve got a nasty feeling that a power outage leaving hundreds of commuters stranded in the station has them scuttling to the storeroom to release some of that sexual tension.

Rich girl who does nothing

Drinking herbal tea and occasionally phoning your coke dealer sounds chilled, but any normal person would soon crave a job cleaning toilets just for some sort of purpose in life. Actually that’s unfair. Persephone/Rosamund/Cosima doesn’t do literally nothing. Sometimes she sits in her massive Georgian front room learning to play bass guitar.

The world’s worst cab driver

It’s always an unlicensed cab. Going in the opposite direction to the sat nav is never a good sign, nor is disappearing for 10 minutes to do some errand, or running out of petrol in the middle of nowhere, making it harder to get home than when you hailed the f**king cab.

Pub-going Hampstead posh kids

Hugo, Arabella, Eduardo et al are the bane of London pubs. They’re unbelievably posh – that spotty twat plays polo! That one’s mates with Princess Eugenie! You know this because they SHOUT ALL THE F**KING TIME. They all seem remarkably thick too, so by the time Seb starts talking about his inheritance you’re seriously considering joining Class War. 

Gangsta bullshitta

Avoid these dicks like monkeypox. They’re not dangerous, but do have a deadly array of anecdotes: the time they knocked out a police dog with a punch, the time they jumped a 20-foot wall to escape the ‘feds’. All not in any way made up. Usually to be found doing shit jobs like temp work in a warehouse, which is odd considering they’re so good at drug dealing.

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