Thing To Do Today: be simple.

Simple Simon met a pieman
Going to the fair
Said Simple Simon to the pieman
Let me taste your wares.

Said the pieman to Simple Simon
Show me first your penny
Said Simple Simon to the pieman
Indeed I have not any.

I wonder why Nursery Rhymes are so often difficult to understand?

Simple Simon, for instance, was deeply worrying to me as a child (was he a fool? Disabled? A peasant? And what was a pieman? A pieman sounded jolly sinister to me, frankly, like one of Batman's enemies. And what on earth were wares? In any case, surely a penny wasn't enough for a pie? Was penny a euphemism for something too nasty to print? And if everything was exactly as it seemed then, well, what was the point of the song?).


Poor Simon. Still, there's a lot to be said for being simple. Complicating something is often just a way of disguising the fact that it doesn't work very well or, indeed, make a lot of sense.

So let's be simple for a change:

Have a meal made up only of items you can taste.

Wear a set of clothes you can put on in less than three minutes.

Say I don't understand if you don't. (No, it's all right: ten to one no one else will understand, either, and you might just prevent a prolonged global recession.) 

There. Don't you feel unusually light-hearted and relaxed?

That's right: simply happy.

Thing To Be Today: simple.  This word comes from the Old French and before that from the Latin simplex, which means plain, or, literally, one-fold.