Monthly Archives: March 2022

Arts, France, History, Literature

The ‘billet-doux’ should return!

SHORT-SWEET LETTERS

Have you heard of a billet-doux?

During the Thirty Years’ War, when French soldiers might have slept in a different town each night, they took their chance, whenever they could, to write home.

The letters from their latest “billet” would hopefully be “sweet”. And so the term “billet-doux” was derived.

The practice carried on into peacetime, with many a young lover receiving regular letters, generally of no consequence other than the assurance of undying love.

Of course, the subject doesn’t necessarily have to be love. It might be gratitude, appreciation or wonder!

In an age when people often claim they don’t have time to write letters, might we encourage the return of the short, sweet note – the billet-doux?

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Arts, Literature

A Prophetic Ray?

THE BEST REASSURANCE

LORD BYRON’S The Bride Of Abydos is a tale of frustrated love set in Turkey. There are a few lines we might take to heart even if we don’t live in a Turkish palace.

Deciding that their love will be for ever unrequited and the world will be a darker place because of that, the young man urges his beloved to rise above the sadness and be a blessing to the world:

“Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life

The evening beam that smiles the clouds away

And tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.”

We might be a rainbow or even a smiling beam, but a “prophetic ray” for tomorrow? Sometimes the best reassurance we can give is the “prophecy” that there will be another day tomorrow.

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Arts

Persevering with a smaller solution

PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS ARE ALWAYS POSSIBLE

LATE one evening, during the War of Independence, the American ship Constitution dropped anchor outside what was thought to be a safe harbour. Overnight, the wind died away. When the sun rose, the Constitution’s crew saw five enemy ships staring at them.

Out of sight of the enemy, the captain sent a boat out with the anchor. Those in the boat rowed until they reached the end of the anchor rope and dropped the anchor overboard. The sailors on the ship wound it in, pulling the Constitution a rope’s length out to sea.

They did this for two days and two nights! When the wind picked up, the Constitution had a good head start and escaped.

If the problem requires a big solution and you don’t have one, try a smaller solution and persevere with it!

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