Thing To Do Today: a paradiddle.

Paradiddle may look like a piece of Age-of-Enlightenment whimsy (well, taradiddle has been around for over two hundred years) but it's relatively new.

Fancy a paradiddle? 

Well, here's how.

You need two drumsticks - or pencils, spoons, or even fingers, one to be employed by each hand.

Now, all you have to do is hit something (not anything alive, please, and preferably not something fragile or belonging to someone else) first with the left stick, then the right, then twice with the left.

Or, and this might be easier for right-handers, right-left-right-right is just as paradiddly.

Or you can do the two patterns alternately. Like this:

How could anyone, but anyone, resist?

Thing To Do Today a paradiddle. This word was made up in the 1900s. It's an imitation of the sound a paradiddle makes. Paradiddle paradiddle paradiddle paradiddle...