Aries

Aries will lose half an hour today looking for something they were holding ten minutes ago. They will turn the house over, ask everyone at home, get annoyed with themselves twice. When they find it, they will not mention it to anyone - which is the only part of the whole story that takes real effort.

Taurus

Taurus will be somewhere today where you have to wait - a counter, a doctor, a garage - and will wait without once glancing at the clock. They will sit still while everyone around them fidgets. People will assume they have time; they simply worked out long ago that being irritated does not move the queue.

Gemini

Gemini will be asked today to translate or explain something to someone who does not understand, and will do it patiently, all the way through, without once letting on that it is slow going. It will take longer than it is worth. Of all the things they know how to do, this is exactly the one they never list when someone asks what they can do.

Cancer

Cancer will buy something today just for themselves, with no excuse that the whole household will use it. They will bring it home normally, not hidden in a bag. Nobody will ask anything, and that silence will be the strangest part of their Thursday.

Leo

Leo will read something written about them today - a message, a comment, an appraisal from work - and will not reply. Not tonight, not tomorrow. The reply you do not send is sometimes more accurate than all the ones you wrote and deleted beforehand.

Virgo

Virgo will fall asleep today on public transport or in an armchair in the middle of the day, unintentionally, for about twenty minutes. They will wake up feeling they have wasted time. Those twenty minutes will be the only reason the evening turns out bearable.

Libra

Libra will choose the restaurant, the film or the route themselves today, in a single sentence, with no detour through "wherever you like". The others will agree immediately. The whole procedure that usually takes twenty minutes will be over in twenty seconds, and nobody except them will notice anything happened.

Scorpio

Scorpio will be in company today where somebody tells a story with a hole in it, and they will see the hole straight away. They will let the person finish. They will laugh along with the others and will not go back to it - which for them is not letting it slide but a decision made in about two seconds, somewhere in the middle of the story.

Sagittarius

Sagittarius will fix something at home with their own hands today instead of calling someone in. It will take three times as long and end up looking slightly crooked. They will look at it every day for the next three years with more satisfaction than if it had been done properly.

Capricorn

Capricorn will be invited for coffee in the middle of a working day today, and will go. Without calculating what it costs them, without making it up by starting ten minutes earlier. They will be back in an hour and a half and not a single task will collapse, which is a fact they will be avoiding for the next few weeks.

Aquarius

Aquarius will ask someone how they are today and will wait for the whole answer, without using the pause to steer the conversation somewhere more interesting. The conversation will be ordinary - health, a child, the car, prices. That person will remember that afternoon longer than any brilliant idea Aquarius has had this year.

Pisces

Pisces will refuse to lend money today to someone who asks regularly. Briefly, with no account of their own situation attached as proof. It will weigh on them until the evening, and on the other side it will be forgotten by noon.