Down the pan

When surrounded by Chaos, a large Cardboard Box, if used in the correct manner, as described below, will generally Restore Order.

There are two methods of Order Restoration via a Cardboard Box. They are called Cardboard box Order Restoration Method (a) and Cardboard Box Order Restoration (b).* Don’t ask me why – they just are.

Cardboard box Order Restoration Method (a)

1. Place every non-essential item you own in Cardboard Box.
2. Take to charity shop.
3. Go home to find Order Restored.

Cardboard Box Order Restoration Method (b)

1. Take Cardboard Box and 1 set of clean underwear to remote woodland with freshwater stream running through it.
2. Live in Cardboard Box. Keep spare underwear neatly folded in corner of Box.
3. Forage for food.
4. Regularly wash self and underwear in the stream.
5. Climb trees. It’s fun and healthy.
6. Make friends with the local cheesemakers. Offer them blackberries in exchange for cheese. Cheese is rich in protein and calcium, not that you care – you eat it because it’s delicious.
7. If foraging doesn’t yield enough food for survival, ask the cheesemakers if they have any paid work available. Failing that, get a job in the local pub.
8. Once you have a job you may choose to live somewhere that has room for you to stand up and walk around, with a roof that doesn’t fall apart at the first sign of rain.
9. You may also require loads of cheap new clothes from Primark that you realise you don’t like as soon as you get them home.
10. Buy an excess of kitchen equipment, furniture, ornaments, state-of-the-art electronic goods with lots of buttons and alarms and lights, and a rather unusual vintage item which is made of wood and painted with a coat of with flaking green paint. When you see it in the charity shop you will fall instantly in love with it, though you won’t know what it is. The vulunteer assistant will tell you she thinks it’s an excessively ornate hat stand, but you’ll have a feeling it’s an innefficient tool for removing mud from the underside of horse-drawn carriages, while your landlady may later claim her great aunt Maud had one, handed down from her father’s side, and she used it for milking the neighbours’ sheep at night, when nobody was looking.
11. Have a good night out once in a while.
12. Go on, put on those beer goggles. You know you want to.
13. Spot a man you wouldn’t like if you were sober, in a nightclub you wouldn’t like if you were sober.
14. Drag his attention away from a semi-naked pole-dancer by purchasing a triple Jack Daniels at the bar, wedging the glass between your breasts and inviting him to lap it up.
15. As soon as you’ve reach the point where you can remember both his nickname (Pervy Pete, Dead-end Dan, Pongo…) and his surname, assume it must be true love, and invite him to move in with you. Don’t be put off by the fact that he never calls you by your name – it’s probably not that he can’t remember it, but everyone calls you Aisha and he likes to have his own special name for you. He calls you Boobs. Sooo sweet…
16. Get a spare set of keys cut, and give them to him.
17. Let him bring all his state-of-the-art electronic equipment, his three-wheeled atrocity of steel and rusty iron that he got from a charity shop (it could be some kind of prototype domestic robot, though it looks more like a commode with the recepticle fitted upside down and a blunt spike attached, or a  weird sadistic sex toy) his manacles, his whips, his – huh? Wait a minute.
18. At this point it would be prudent to obtain a large cardboard box. This box can be used in one of two ways…

*It’s best to try Method (a) first, as Method (b) doesn’t work and is therefore more suited to those who are practicing for a chaos marathon. For more information about Method (b) click Here

©Jane Paterson Basil