Staying alive despite the doomsday merchants

I’M WRITING this a week ahead of time because the elves that make the newspaper magically appear every morning are having a few days off at Christmas, so by the time you read this you may already be dead.

Unless, of course, you are reading while clinging alone to a solitary rock in an unrecognisable post-apocalyptic landscape of waterlogged chaos and rubble, in which case I commend you for getting your hands on a copy of the paper and taking time out for a nice sit down in the midst of your fight for survival. It can’t be easy being the last person alive after the world has ended.

I refer, obviously, to the Mayan prophecy, the one that everyone has been saying for years is the definitive date for our world to cease existing. If you have a strong sensation of actually reading this, and can physically feel the newspaper in your hands, or can see the words in front of you on your iPad, it can only mean one of three things: (1) you are the sole survivor, in which case, congratulations, and happy looting (2) there is an afterlife after all, with newspapers on sale there, or (3) the Mayans were full of it.