Five sickeningly high-achieving children

FEEL shit about how little you’ve achieved in your life? These exceptional children will make it even worse:

Mozart

Started playing the harpsichord at three, composed his first piece of published music at five, and was writing symphonies in his teens. Yes, he missed out on a normal childhood, but where did kicking a ball against a garden fence get you?

Louis Braille

At 15, around about the time you were attempting to make fake IDs, Braille had come up with his alphabet of raised dots that would go on to transform the lives of the blind around the world. Still, that one time you managed to get served before being thrown out of your town’s shittest pub was worth it, right?

Greta Thunberg

Long before she turned 18, Thunberg was an expert on climate change and global geopolitics, and world leaders were desperate to have an audience with her. At the age of 15 she already knew what her values were, and she lived them. You still can’t be arsed to put the recycling out.

Malala Yousafzai

This fearless human rights advocate became a Nobel Prize laureate at 17, probably around the time you were trying to smoke dried banana skins and telling your parents you hated them. Her campaigning started an international movement. Your dog still does not listen to you.

Your own child

Achieving more than you have isn’t difficult, and yet you still begrudge your child the decent A-level results they got because they studied hard rather than wasting their teens masturbating to All Saints videos like you did. The upside is that they’ll get a good job and be able to keep you in your old age.

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Cold showers are enjoyable, and other bullshit health obsessives believe

STAYING healthy is wise long-term, but wellness trends suck the enjoyment from life. Don’t get sucked in by the following bullshit:

Going sugar-free is good

Yes, we know sugar is bad for us, but we also know what consuming a Gü chocolate souffle whilst slumped on the sofa makes a bad day better. Smoking and drinking have already been taken from us, so if we aren’t allowed sugar we may as well just pack in human civilisation right now.

Superfoods are real

Every couple of years dozens of articles will claim some item – usually an obscure berry – has been deemed a ‘superfood’ by scientists. Suddenly, everybody will start clamouring to get them, as if a kumquat was the key to immortality and not just something that makes your porridge taste vile.

Fasting is fun

People who bang on about fasting claim it’s closer to the diets our hunter-gathering ancestors would’ve had, and thus more natural. However, hunter-gatherers wouldn’t have had 9-to-5 jobs in marketing, Brompton bikes, TED talks on hemp, or any of the other things these people are usually into, so they are ultimately talking shite.

Cold showers are enjoyable

Getting out of bed for work in the morning is a miserable enough experience without sending your body into cold water shock. While science has proved that regular immersion in chilly water has genuine health benefits, including the prevention of dementia, an old age full of clarity and memories isn’t worth freezing your bollocks off for every morning.

Vaginal steaming is a good idea

Future generations will look back and wonder how Gwyneth Paltrow, an already successful actor, evolved into fronting a company that traded exclusively in advising women to do medically unsound things to their genitals. A vagina is not some vegetables, or a cotton shirt, and steaming it will not get it clean or wrinkle-free.

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