THE cost-of-living crisis is worsening, and young people will bear the brunt. Here is 68-year-old Roy Hobbs’ advice to see them through it.
Get bloody dressed
Hoody finishes just above your bellybutton? Wearing sandals in November? Jacket unzipped? It’s your fault you’re cold. At your age I wore three pairs of trousers and the World War One greatcoat my grandfather had died in, and that was to bed. Put some clothes on and you won’t need your precious heating.
Build a real treadmill
And these gyms you go to are a waste of money. The thick end of 50 quid a month to run on a treadmill like a hamster? If you’re going to do that, build a man-sized treadmill and rig it up with flywheels to a generator. You could power the whole house with that. I’ll make you one in my shed.
Live at home until you get married
I never worried about bills until I was 27 because I was still sharing a bedroom with my two brothers. I handed over my pay packet to my mother and she kept most, put a little by and gave me ten and six back for toffees and the cinema. I was courting, of course, but in those days you waited.
Eat stodge
There were none of these pan-Asian flash-fried avocado brunch pizzas when I was a lad. We ate stodge, and plenty of it. What was it? Stodge. I think suet was involved, meat, certainly potatoes, vegetables to a degree but not to the point you could identify them. Good honest stodge. Three meals a day.
Stop messing around with those stupid phones
If you’ve got the internet at work you don’t need it at home. Just print off anything you need during the day. No wonder your hands are cold when you’ve got them poking out of a pile of blankets to work your mobile. What’s wrong with staring at the TV for six hours a night?
Be born in a more sensible year
Look at their dates of birth these days. ‘2002’ and ‘1995’. What bollocks. Get yourself a nice sensible birth year, like 1954 or 1968, and you won’t have all this trouble. Enjoy the postwar boom, get yourself a nice cheap house, final salary pension, retire. But the young today would rather be modern and cool.
