THE actress Joanna Lumley, pictured, laid down a few rules for modern life this week.
The first was "never be bored", followed by "don't use Twitter and Facebook", "put your phone away", and "don't yawn". Altogether, a pretty fine manifesto for modern life from Joanna, I think you'll agree, but I do have a few more suggestions.
l Do not eat food in the office. Remember: table in kitchen for eaty-eaty; table in office for worky-worky.
l Do not wear flipflops. Flipflops are not shoes – they are thongs for the gap between your toes and that is not an acceptable idea.
l Do not grab your wife by the neck in public and let her know through the press that you're divorcing her. It's rude.
l Do not try to ride on the back of someone else's success by unfurling a saltire from your wife's handbag and waving it in the air behind the Prime Minister. It's rude.
l Do not use exclamation marks, but do use semi-colons. In the world of punctuation, the exclamation mark is a hysterical thin woman who thinks everything is important! The semi-colon is an elderly gent who will happily sit between two clauses and make your sentences look more elegant. But please, if you are going to use a semi-colon make sure you put it in the right; place.
l Do not tip waiters. If you tip, you're part of a system that deliberately underpays staff. And think of the money you'll save.
l Do not choose a name for your child that is less that 2000 years old and ideally only choose names from the Bible. If you ignore this rule, the names will go out of fashion and when they grow up, Jaaydin and Cortnee will look silly.
l Do not eat meat. The right of an animal to hold on to its existence is more important than your right to stop feeling peckish.
l Do not read books on a Kindle. You do not legally own those books and ownership is one of the deepest joys of existence.
l Do not use your mobile phone if you're down the pub with friends. The best way to avoid this, and prevent others from doing it, is by getting all your friends to put their mobiles in the centre of the table. The first one to pick their phone up has to pay for the drinks.
l Do not scrunch scrunch eat and slurp slurp drink when others scrunch scrunch are trying to watch a film in the cinema.
l Do not eat any food that requires the piercing of plastic with a fork.
l Do not forget to give your mum a hug if you have just won Wimbledon.
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