A very good evening to you from the Lifestyle Support Guru! I hope you have all had a thoroughly enjoyable Easter break, despite the cold and wet weather – if you have lived in the UK for most of your life, you should now know how to make the most of your time despite any inclement weather (this includes during the now-laughably named ‘summer’). Your house 
should be filled with ‘rainy day’ items such as Hungry Hippo, Jenga, Operation, Happy Families, Monopoly, the complete works of Shakespeare, a box set of Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings and, of course, a lifetime’s subscription to Netflix. Obviously, once you have turned eighteen, all of these can be replaced by going to the pub (where you may find they have most of these items anyway).
It is through my occasional visits to the pub that I have learned what TRUE POWER is. Do not be fooled by men of little worth such as Trump or Putin or Kim Jong-un, who may try to convince the world that they have TRUE POWER simply because they have nuclear (pronounced as ‘nucular’ by some, just as ‘secretary’ becomes ‘sekettri’ and February changes to ‘Febuwari’, or ‘prostate’ to ‘prostrate’ and even ‘ask’ to ‘ax’ – such strange variations!) power. Nuclear power is not TRUE POWER!
So, what is TRUE POWER? I hear you cry in despair!
I sometimes cry in despair, beloved believers – usually when someone is in front of me at the bar placing a large order one drink at a time and then remembering that he also wanted a packet of peanuts, before turning to his friends (it usually is a ‘him’, I’m afraid) and asking, ‘What did your better half want, Hugo? Was it a Campari and soda or a daiquiri?’, to which Hugo replies, ‘I can’t remember. I’ll go and ask her.’ Hugo then returns and says, ‘She’s changed her mind. She’ll have Sex on the Beach, ha ha!’, at which point the whole group guffaws as if they’ve just heard the funniest joke in the world and some wag shouts, ‘Not here she won’t, Hugo – nowhere near the bloody beach, old thing!’, at which they all guffaw again and another wag points out that there’s a pile of workman’s sand over the road by the building site which might do instead and they all chortle merrily once more! By this time, you are ready to string Hugo and his better half up by piano wire after having stabbed the rest of the merry group with the little plastic swords used for putting the fruit into Hugo’s better half’s cocktail. But I digress…
TRUE POWER is going to the pub and:
1. having one of the ‘regular rowdies’ (who are loud but not nasty) tell you that they deliberately stayed in the town pubs the night before (Easter Sunday) because they knew it was your quiz and they didn’t want to disturb it, as they have done before when they’ve had one or two too many ‘sherbet dips’.
2. having the same ‘regular rowdy’ (who has to be in his fifties!) apologising for sitting in ‘your seat’ because he wants to watch the football, and then, when the game finishes, making a point of telling you that you can have ‘your seat’ back!
This is TRUE POWER, dear devotees, and all done without using the ‘death stare’ perfected over many years of teaching. Now I use the ‘I’m just a little old lady’ smile and the ‘I might cry if you’re nasty to me’ trembling lower lip. Works every time! Sleep well, ardent admirers.