Excerpts from ‘Never Hit A Jellyfish with A Spade’ by Guy Browning.

This book has How To articles that Browning wrote for the British newspaper The Guardian and here are some of the best bits.

On How To…

Ø Die: ‘The best way of preparing for death is to make sure you have a good life. This doesn’t mean you should live each day as if it were your last. You don’t want to spend every day of your life with eighteen anxious relatives around your bed and a priest warming up in the hall.’

Ø Be Beautiful: ‘Some people start ugly but become beautiful, like the ugly duckling. But if you are young and ugly you should brace yourself for the fact that most ugly ducklings grow up to be ugly ducks. On the other hand, swans make a nasty hiss while ducks make a lovely quake. There’s got to be a moral there somewhere.’

Ø Get Up: ‘If you don’t think anything will get you up in the mornings, simply have a small child. Then you will be able to get up quickly and efficiently, and you’ll be able to do this six or seven times every night.’

Ø Meditate: ‘The constant repetition of ‘om’ can help induce a trance-like state, either because your brain settles down or because your flatmate has just punched your lights out.’

Ø Reorganize Your Room: ‘Reorganizing your room is a cheap form of therapy, if you discount the cost of physiotherapy to rebuild your back after the attempt to move your bookcase with all the books still in it.’

Ø Be A Student: ‘When you first become a student you have to decide whether your life is going to centre around coffee or alcohol. If it’s alcohol, then you drink yourself stupid on a regular basis. This is a vital part of the education process. The first year has to be spent in the student bar where beer is cheap; the second year is spent between the off-licence and your evil-smelling digs; and the last year is spent in rehab, or the library as it’s sometimes known.’

Ø Put People At Ease: ‘The best way to put someone at ease is to make them feel superior. You can do this by admitting you’re stupid or sad or unlucky (most people will assume you’re at least two out of three already). The fastest way to make other people feel superior is to bang your own head quite hard against a low beam. This instantly robs you of dignity, composure and intelligence, and makes virtually anybody else look as though they’ve got their life completely together.’

Ø Love: ‘Men love women because they are the loveliest things on God’s earth. Women love men because chocolate can’t mow the lawns.’

Ø Live Together: ‘The key to living together in a relationship in the same as in the diplomatic world: nothing keeps people together like a common enemy. That’s why living together so often leads to children.’