Thing Not To Do Today: be bland.

Watch out! Bland-alert! There's someone over there dressed from head-to-foot in beige!

Pudding? Oh no, not...not...not blancmange!!

Aarghhh! Lift-music!!!

If variety is the spice of life (and it's certainly one of the spices of life) then blandness is the sliced white bread of life, a substance so unappealing that even mould hardly likes to touch it.

So don't be bland: wear scarlet, laugh out loud, dance, sing, fall in love, argue, smell the coffee. Look out for something beautiful, ugly or dangerous. Be something beautiful, ugly, or dangerous.

Don't be calm. Don't be soothing.

All right, bland can mean suave, smooth, and on the whole rather agreeable if you're in the diplomatic service, but, let's face it, life is too short for on the whole rather agreeable.

So don't be bland.

Be interesting.

Thing Not To Do Today: be bland. This word comes from the Latin word blandus, which means flattering.

And that brings us rather nicely back to diplomats, doesn't it.