Dear Davej, your fast approaching the time to leave school and step out into the world and make your own way and whilst I don’t want to give you an idea of the future so that you can benefit from discovering it yourself, I can say that if you tear this letter up now, you won’t go far wrong. You are going to be incredibly lucky in life and love and the older you get, the more you will realise this. You will always want for things but temper that with the thoughts of what you’ve got because it’s pretty damn good.
So given that life is going to be good for you what else can I tell you, nothing much, just a few pointers.
The friends you have now will, for the most part be your friends for years to come, they will move away and start their own families, but you’ll all get together periodically, as families and now and gain just as mates for card nights round each others homes and golfing breaks abroad, when you do, try and drink less. You will find that your capacity for drink is poor and will always send you into deep sleeps. Those sleeps will become the prime opportunity for your friends to get their own back on anything you’ve done to them in the past.
You won’t know what super glue and a Nokia is at the moment, they haven’t been invented, but they will be. Super glue is a very strong adhesive that sticks fuck all together as the advert claims other than skin. A Nokia is a telephone that has no wires, you’ll carry it around with you. By applying super glue to the back of the Nokia and it’s control buttons and then placing it onto the top of your head whilst your asleep and then constantly ringing you, your friends will have something they can tell their families about for years. Nokia have their own signature tune that serves well in your pocket, but only annoys if its coming from the top of your head. It won’t be a major thing and drowning the Nokia will eventually silence it and after a couple of hours, remove it from your bonce, but you will be left with flaky looking skin and a reddish rash for a while.
The finger painting of the words ‘hello sexy’ on your forehead with sun block, on the first day in Portugal after an afternoons drinking and sleeping by the pool, again won’t be life threatening and for the most part won’t spoil your trip as you can cover it with a hat until the sun blends it all in, however some establishments that you want to visit will have to wait as they ban head wear in the evenings.
The clipping of the family pet in stripe patterns with a set of Whal hair clippers won’t be so funny, you might have been drunk and asleep at the time, but it was in your own home and you will be deemed responsible because of that. Don’t fret about it, a clipped Labrador isn’t hurt or embarrassed by it, but folk will look at you as if you are some kind of sadistic torturer until it’s grown back.
Fire and heat won’t be kind to you, but don’t alter your life to avoid it, damage and injury will be minimal, don’t put your life on hold because of it, just try to remember that towels and bedside lamps should never come into contact, especially when it’s done deliberately, your aim of creating a more subdued lighting effect will work, but a sixty watt bulb is a heat source and a towel is a flammable object, if left unattended they will ignite.
Towelling dressing gowns and flame should never come into contact so try not to lean against a gas hob whilst wearing one, you will ‘flash over’ don’t worry, it will be a violent fireball that engulfs you quicker than you can spit, but once the faceing of the gown has flashed over it will extinguish itself.
Night lights or tea lights are small candles set into thin metal containers, they will be made en-masse in China, you’ll know this because they will stamp the words ‘made in China’ on the base of each one. They will be sold in boxes of twelve and if set out in a room, can give a much more romantic feel to it, but a word of warning, read the back of the box because on there, it will tell you to place these candles on a heat resistant base, not directly onto the furniture as the metal containers get very very hot and if left long enough, will burn down into the furniture by as much as 1mm and leaving a nice circular pattern on your best oak with the words ‘made in China’ clearly visible. You will be able to cover most of them will other household objects, telephones, ornaments, magazines etc, but the layout won’t be the same and furniture is expensive.
Finally, you will continue to use pencils through your life so stop wondering how they get the lead into them, its not important and will do your head in.
All my best Davej.