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How is your family pathetically competing for warmth?

THE cold snap is here, but there isn’t enough heating to go around. Here are the desperate ways your family will be competing for warmth this winter.

Saying their room is the main room

Only heat the main room, is the energy-saving advice, but everyone is the main character in their life story, so by extension their room is the main room. Your dad will insist his shed should get the electric heater because that’s where he hides out for days at a time, and your mum will try to nab it even though the kitchen oven chucks out loads of warmth.

Calling in old favours

Remember the handful of favours you did for your family? It’s time to ruthlessly cash them in if you want a prime spot in front of the three-bar electric fire. You didn’t show your brother how to clear his internet history for nothing all the way back in 2017. That could be rather embarrassing if the details got out… Now watch him begrudgingly shuffle out of the way.

Telling you there’s no room

Opening the door for even a second will cause precious warmth to escape. That’s why your family has propped a chair up against the living room handle to prevent you from getting in. They claim there’s no space, so, like Mary and Joseph, you’ll have to trudge around in search of warmth before sitting in the modern equivalent of a stable: a bus shelter defaced with cock pictures.

Visiting the in-laws

Desperate chilliness calls for desperate measures. Instead turning on your own heater, why not pop round to your most disliked family members and steal their warmth? You’ll have to endure their company, but you’ll save hundreds of pounds by the time they get bored of making veiled criticisms of you and kick you out.

Descending into a survival of the fittest scenario

It’s everyone for themselves this winter. Entire families will be crowded around the storage heater like piglets straining to suckle on a sow. Runts will get crushed in the struggle, leaving the bigger and stronger family members to take the spoils. Bad luck, gran, but you had a good innings.

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Five things men never take for granted

MEN are often accused of being uncaring and thoughtless. Here are five examples that prove otherwise, sort of.

A bargain

Men cherish price reductions, whether eight almost out-of-date lasagnas are needed or not. He will always proudly tell you ‘the bargain story’ like a caveman showing you a dead deer. A good bargain is a sign of virility, and men may well engage in a ‘bargain-measuring contest’. Above all he’s really stuck it to ‘big retail’ with that £6 blazer Next had written off as landfill.

Good advice

A DIY tip, a good shortcut, or even a half-decent joke will make the giver a trustworthy advisor. The advice will then be stolen as the man’s own information, and circulated to anyone who’ll listen. He’ll embellish it to add personal authenticity and disguise it being plagiarised – though the excessive detail may give the game away. It’s all a bit of a palaver over handy places to park in Crewe.

Their achievements

Whether it was coming second in the local pub pool league 14 years ago, or having trials for a tier nine football team when they were eight, a man’s achievements will never be taken for granted. ‘Salesperson of the month, February 2013’ is particularly impressive, along with any flattering interest from random females, even if he’s reading way too much into it.

Their mates

Mates, even if they’re twats, are a bedrock of a man’s life. They’re regularly bonded with over football on a pub TV, and may congregate to perform repair tasks on each other’s houses or cars. All will have great expertise on many topics from windscreen wipers to the war in Ukraine. They’re clearly talking bollocks, but a mutual pact of silence over this is what mates are for.

Their hobbies

Whether it’s trains or trainers, nothing but the best will do for a man’s hobby: the most up-to-date running gadgets, a frighteningly expensive Intercity train that’s five inches long. There’ll be genuine Tuscan buffalo mozzarella for the stone-built pizza oven, which is odd when he fails at simple tasks like replacing his 15-year-old boxer shorts, but it’s all part of the joy of being a man.

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