Three degrees at 8:30am. As yesterday : bright sunshine, frost and a cold wind. They say that on St Valentine's day the birds choose a mate. Well, they were certainly making plenty of noise if that's what they were doing this morning.
It being St Valentine's day, I wanted to write something witty, fascinating and erudite on that subject. I started doing a bit of research, and immediately hit a problem. There seem to be at least three completely contradictory accounts of St Valentine's life. In fact, there seem to be at least three St Valentines celebrated on three different days of the year. I'd like to have discovered something of his life's work, but again, I found confusion and contradiction. And the really burning question of why he has come to be associated with lovers, marriage and all things connubial (as well as being patron saint of greetings card manufacturers, bee keepers and travellers) was answered in more than three different ways.
By the time I started reading that St Valentine did nothing remotely romantic and in fact the celebration is an echo of past pagan festivals in which young men drew lots for girls (my sources are curiously silent on the question of 'what then?'), I realised that this project was about three times bigger than I could handle in the three minutes I had before B's gentle humming turned into unfeminine bellows for undivided attention.
So...I thought I might point you towards another article, one that I wrote earlier, also about things coming in threes.
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Thursday 14 February 2008
Three of everything
Three degrees at 8:30am. As yesterday : bright sunshine, frost and a cold wind. They say that on St Valentine's day the birds choose a mate. Well, they were certainly making plenty of noise if that's what they were doing this morning.
It being St Valentine's day, I wanted to write something witty, fascinating and erudite on that subject. I started doing a bit of research, and immediately hit a problem. There seem to be at least three completely contradictory accounts of St Valentine's life. In fact, there seem to be at least three St Valentines celebrated on three different days of the year. I'd like to have discovered something of his life's work, but again, I found confusion and contradiction. And the really burning question of why he has come to be associated with lovers, marriage and all things connubial (as well as being patron saint of greetings card manufacturers, bee keepers and travellers) was answered in more than three different ways.
By the time I started reading that St Valentine did nothing remotely romantic and in fact the celebration is an echo of past pagan festivals in which young men drew lots for girls (my sources are curiously silent on the question of 'what then?'), I realised that this project was about three times bigger than I could handle in the three minutes I had before B's gentle humming turned into unfeminine bellows for undivided attention.
So...I thought I might point you towards another article, one that I wrote earlier, also about things coming in threes.
It being St Valentine's day, I wanted to write something witty, fascinating and erudite on that subject. I started doing a bit of research, and immediately hit a problem. There seem to be at least three completely contradictory accounts of St Valentine's life. In fact, there seem to be at least three St Valentines celebrated on three different days of the year. I'd like to have discovered something of his life's work, but again, I found confusion and contradiction. And the really burning question of why he has come to be associated with lovers, marriage and all things connubial (as well as being patron saint of greetings card manufacturers, bee keepers and travellers) was answered in more than three different ways.
By the time I started reading that St Valentine did nothing remotely romantic and in fact the celebration is an echo of past pagan festivals in which young men drew lots for girls (my sources are curiously silent on the question of 'what then?'), I realised that this project was about three times bigger than I could handle in the three minutes I had before B's gentle humming turned into unfeminine bellows for undivided attention.
So...I thought I might point you towards another article, one that I wrote earlier, also about things coming in threes.
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