Thing Not To Do Today: flirt.

What's wrong with flirting? you may ask. Flirting is fun.

Yes, but flirting is fun on the edge of danger. A motorcyclist flirts with disaster when he goes round a blind bend at seventy miles an hour; a trapeze artist flirts with death every time he goes to work; practically everyone who's ever taken an exam flirts with fate by being not revising all the syllabus.

As for the sort of flirting that takes place whenever we meet a possible partner, ooh, that's the most exhilarating and dangerous flirting of all.

If you must flirt (and really I'm afraid that we must) then take care.

Thing You Have Been Warned Not To Do Today: flirt. This word arrived in English in the 1500s. To start with it meant to sneer, but very soon it came to mean something witty. The word flirt may originally come from the Old French fleureter, which means to talk sweet nonsense, and is to do with fleur, flower, and the idea of a bee flitting from bloom to bloom.