Thing To Do Today: claver.

The whole world is being rocked by desperate ISSUES.

Everything is of CRITICAL IMPORTANCE, from the amount of sugar your three-year-old eats to the exact wording of an email sent by one official to another official the year before last.

The ABSOLUTELY VITAL includes everything from the design of your wood-burning stove to the word you use to describe your own sex (the word you use to describe someone else's sex is a matter so fraught with extreme danger that most of us have given up even trying).

Think before you speak they used to say. Now it's more like read a couple of doctoral theses before you speak...and then, probably, decide not to bother.

The word claver means to talk idly, or to gossip.

Personally, I think we should all do more of it.

Thing To Do Today: claver. This word has been around since the 1200s, but no one's sure where it came from. 

But it's all right, that really doesn't matter all that much.