Thing To Be Today: kind.

Being kind is hideously unfashionable, I know.

Anyone with any ambition (or sense of self-preservation) should be rigorous in his or her attitude to others. It doesn't matter what people mean, or what they believe, or if they're puzzled or ignorant, or even seeking enlightenment, the fashionably correct thing to do is to search for any small glimmer of wrong-thinking and then denounce the thinker as evil.

And then destroy him.

But still, I can't help looking back to the Olden Days (by which I mean my Younger Days) when you could seek out all sorts of people, and listen to what they had to say, and be generous and understanding about it, and then learn a lot from working out why you agreed or disagreed with them.

Ah well. At least we can still help old ladies across the road...

...hmm...

...perhaps we'd better make that old men...

...actually, that would still be ageist, wouldn't it. As well as sexist.

Um.

Would it still be all right to put out some seed for the birds?

Thing To Be Today: kind. This is basically the same word as the kind of kind which means sort. It comes from the Old English gecynde which means natural or native.

Oh dear. Even that derivation is a bit dodgy, isn't it.