Miscellaneous

As backhanded Christmas gifts go, a copy of 12 Rules for Life, must be up there with wrinkle cream or a nose-hair trimmer. One generous soul decided that Jordan Peterson’s bracing self-help book, published two years ago, was just the tonic I need to improve my life and character.   Who knows what advice to take, when feedback from the game of life is so wickedly fuzzy? Most decisions are inconsequential, and some which look good will come back to haunt you. But in the game of kings, results are unambiguous: win, lose or draw, and then you get reincarnated. So in the spirit of January resolutions, this is how those

Q. This autumn I will be studying in Paris. A friend from Italy will also be studying there and she wants us to share a flat. She is amazing and I worship her but, the problem is that I need to be alone first thing in the morning — and she wants to talk. The truth, ridiculous or not, is that if I can’t have my mental privacy at this time, I am much less productive. Although she knows how I feel, whenever we have stayed the night under the same roof, the moment I put a foot out of bed she somehow knows and comes into my room talking.