Richard Littledale
Richard Littledale
radio microphone
BBC Radio 2Janice Long Show
Alex Lester Show
Pause for Thought
Richard Littledale: Series 25, Number 3
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Thursday 3 October 2013

"You're a brick". I wonder whether anyone has ever said that to you? Once in a while, people say it to me, and I have to say I take it as a compliment. We tend to use it to say that someone is strong, dependable and immovable in the best way - like a brick wall. I'm not sure I'll be using the phrase any more.

I live on a busy road and twice in the past 18 months a car has been catapulted through our front wall and into the garden. The first time it happened was on a cold winter's evening, and it took hours for the wrecked cars to be towed away. Several hours in, with the crumpled car wedged in our wall with its hazard lights forlornly winking on and off, a policeman suggested with a grin that we might like to leave it there "as a feature".

The second time it happened was in the summer, and the car came a little further up towards the front door, beached on the rubble of the broken wall like a metal whale. Plant pots, gravel, lumps of masonry and bits of bumpers were scattered in all directions, and the pot plants which I had so often forgotten to water were clearly no longer an issue!

In the end, it's all too easy to get upset over such things. There's lots of mess, of course, and its frustrating when you clear a mess up only to have it made all over again. We've had more bricks in and out of our garden these past 18 months than in all the time since the house was built. In the end, though, things mend so much easier than people and both these accidents were without injury. On both occasions I was able to assure the drivers that the main thing was that cars and walls, rather than people, were injured. They seemed a little surprised to be met with reassurance where they were expecting bristling anger.

There's a Proverb tucked away in a little read bit of the Bible which says this: "a gentle word turns away wrath". In other words, the right word in the right tone can take all the heat out of a situation. Why not try it today?

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© BBC 2013
This talk by Richard Littledale was first broadcast as BBC Radio 2's night time "Pause for Thought"
at 01:30 during the Janice Long show and at 03:30 during the Alex Lester show.
It is reproduced here by permission of the BBC.