Thing To Do Today: be passionate.

This is what is usually called St Valentine's day.* It's the day that birds are supposed to pair up, and so it's a time for love.

So let's be passionate.

So.

Who (and what) do you love?

Come to that, who (and, of course, what) do you hate?

Is there an overlap?

Well, whether there is or not, it's time to cast off your sensible winceyiette pyjamas and wriggle into your crimson satin undies** and indulge in an extreme passion.

What? 

You don't have a passion? 

Oh, but then you really must search for one. There'll be something out there. No, really, even railway timetables and ping pong have been known to move some people deeply.

Or, of course, there's always cake.

Why not eat a pink one today.

Thing To Do Today: be passionate. This comes to us from France, from the Church Latin pasiō, suffering, from patī, to suffer.

Oh dear. Perhaps we'd really be happiest sticking to the railway timetables and ping pong...

*It's really the festival of those two great heroes of language St Cyril and St Methodius, but more about them another time.

**Dark colours are best washed separately.