The Rules

Rule 13: Avoid Maidstone.

Rule 14: Don't answer the phone in a funny voice. The person calling is often considerably not who you were expecting.

Rule 15: Never try to impress your mother-in-law after your fifth Pimms.

Rule 16: You can't do handstands like you used to.

Rule 17: When visiting a hospital as an in-patient, remember to take pyjamas.

More Rules

Here are some more survival tips, gleaned from Brother Tobias' impetuous perambulations around life's treacherous cloisters.

Rule 6: Never sneeze with your tongue out.

Rule 7: The skirt you are clinging to in the shop is not necessarily being worn by your mother.

Rule 8: Growing breasts is not exclusively a woman's prerogative.

Rule 9: Do not rely on your friends to wake you at your station.

Rule 10: When making shandy, the volume of beer, mixer and ice combined is greater than the volume of their individual parts, and twice the capacity of the container you are using.

Rule 11: The last two sheets of lavatory paper on a roll always appear to be more.

Rule 12: You can't play croquet and stay friends.

The Rules

I've got a blister like a gun turret.

Rule 1: Don't run polypropylene cord through your hands without wearing gloves.

It looks smooth as liquorice, but if you examined it through a microscope I bet it would be like an uncut hedge, all ragged and vindictive. You could probably use it for making musically functional prosthetic legs for grasshoppers.

While we are about it, here are - in no particular order - a few more hard-won tips from Uncle Toby:

Rule 2: Don't take your boots off to test if an electric fence is working.

Rule 3: When eating spaghetti, make sure the plate is fully on the table.

Rule 4: Do not drape a coat with velcro fastenings over a chair when there are women in stockings around.

Rule 5: The puddle-jumper ahead driving at a brain-numbing four miles an hour is going to the same party as you; do not hoot or gesticulate triumphantly as you finally overtake.

More anon probably, if they occur to me.