I heard a couple of interesting bits on the BBC 4 Extra, bits which rose up from radio pieces that I was not paying attention to.
One bit involved a tombstone. Someone charged with the job of writing the inscription for a young child wrote that the boy was the “Only Son” of his parents. His assistant respectfully suggested that he actually meant “Only Child.” I had to think about it for a second but it’s true. Saying he was the only son implies there might have been a daughter.
The other interesting bit concerned marriage. Two presenters were talking about an author who wrote what they said was a classic erotic novel based on his attraction to a certain woman. His attraction was never consummated and she politely but sternly rebuffed him at every turn. But years later they met again. She offered to him that had he found a way into her life 10 or 11 years earlier he might have had a chance with her. She had just been married and found the arrangement to be miserable. Even he, who had little to offer a relatively cosmopolitan and worldly woman such as her, could have wrested her away from what then felt like a soul-draining relationship with her husband.
She said the marriage worked because they both made a lengthy series of compromises, and gave each other freedoms they might not have anticipated or assumed. Compromises and freedoms. That sounds like a marriage that could work.
On the other hand it seems needlessly vindictive of her to even say that.
