FordeFables - Song For Today

Song For Today: 26th May 2019

26/5/2019

Today’s song was released in February 1994 in the United Kingdom and remains Prince's only number one single in the ‘UK Singles Chart’.

When I think about it, only Prince could have sung a song that is worth dedicating to a princess; my Sheila, ‘The Most Beautiful Girl in The World’ that I have ever had the good fortune to meet, fall in love with and marry. What more can I say about Sheila that I haven’t already said? What more is there than the stars in the heavens have not yet already foretold in the Chinese Sky? Sheila’s body beautiful is both inner and outer. She is what any market trader worth his salt could tell you in a few seconds; she is the perfect peach. Looks alone will never prove sufficient enough to indicate more than the peach looks good enough to eat. Only smell, touch, handling and taste will tell you anything about its true nature; what it’s like on the inside.

Let me tell the world and his neighbour once again that Sheila is good through and through, and by God, she is ‘The most beautiful girl in my world.’

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 25th May 2019

25/5/2019

Today's song takes me back to the 60s and the Everly Brothers. This song asks the burning question that so many people have frequently asked themselves on a cold winter’s night when they are drinking a cup of cocoa at home alone, or on a weekend when others are going out with their girlfriends and boyfriends and the only friend you have to snuggle up close to you is your 12-year-old cat who likes to sleep a lot or your pet bulldog that loves to slaver all over you to show he loves you.

The Everly Brothers sang ‘When Will I Be Loved’ in the summer of 1960 and peaked in the charts at number 8, but Linda Ronstadt covered the song in 1975, and her version was an even bigger hit in the US peaking at number 2.

Before one can be loved, one must fulfil a vital prerequisite in order to place oneself in the 'Love Stakes'; one must become a runner in the race. This essentially means that one will never make good in the 'Love Stakes' unless one takes part. In social terms, it helps enormously if you make yourself ‘available’ to be loved; a most unlikely happening if one never pursues interests and activities outside the walls of one’s home. I have never yet met one person yet in my 76 years of life who met and married their milkman or who fell madly in love with their new window cleaner as they exchanged glances through the window pane one wet Wednesday morning. As the Lottery slogan on the television used to say, ‘You have to be in it to win it!’

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 24th May 2019

24/5/2019

Today’s son is ‘Frankie’, which was written by Howard Greenfield and Neil Sedaka and was released in 1959. It was made popular by Connie Francis. On the ‘B’ side of the Connie Francis record was ‘Lipstick on Your Collar’ which fared much better in the rating’s chart in both the UK and the U.S.A. than Frankie did.

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I was 17 years old when I first heard this song. My sisters favourite pastime was teasing their big brother during my teenage years. Our father was strict; particularly about the conduct of his daughters and, how they might be viewed in public. He did not want any aspersions reflecting on the family name and his parental role as an upstanding citizen of the community. He essentially disapproved of Mary and Eileen wearing lipstick or any womanly apparel before they had outgrown being girls.

Being a bit of a lad with the young women as a teenager, my next two sisters would resent the seeming freedom that was afforded to me (the firstborn of seven children) where contact with the opposite sex was concerned or the type of clothes I wore. Consequently, when my sisters Mary and Eileen were unable to get me into trouble with my mum because of their resentment of the parental latitude afforded to me, they would seek a laugh at my expense.

One of them would sneak my dirty white shirt out of the wash basket after weekend use and smear the shirt collar with lipstick (applied so thickly, as though some young woman had kissed the life out of me). When my mum did the weekly wash on a Monday, she would see the ‘lipstick on my collar’ and presume that I’d up to tricks again over the weekend. Then, she’d and start singing Connie’s song of the same name as she scrubbed it clean smiling as she did so, with Mary and Eileen foolishly giggling somewhere nearby.

I heard mum sing the ‘B’ side to this record release often, but I never once heard her sing the ‘A’ side, ‘Frankie that I sing today. So, I would consider 'Frankie' to reflect the romantic ‘good boy’ side of my character and 'Lipstick On My Collar' reflecting the 'bad boy' in me.

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 24th May 2019

23/5/2019

Today’s song is ’Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ which I first heard Frankie Valli sing. The song was among his biggest hits, earning him a Gold Record and reaching Number 2 on the Billboard Top 100. ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ has had hundreds of cover versions, many of which have been on the charts in different countries.

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We are all able to tell those couples who are in the throes of a passionate relationship whenever looking at strange couples in public places. They are the two people in the room (usually a dimly-lit corner) who I call the constant touchers and permanent eye gazers. They just can’t keep their hands and eyes off each other and it requires very little imagination by the observer to know that their very minds are on the same track of thought.

When I think back now, I often had to check myself a few times during past romantic outings, when in a pub with a woman whom I had fallen in love with, couldn't keep my intense impulses to myself. Had I not gripped my pint glass as firmly as I did, God only knows where my hands might have strayed, whoever was watching?

Ironically, my many years as a Marriage Guidance Counsellor, taught me that often the first sign of relationship deterioration/collapse is reflected in an absence of the three ‘T’s from the couple relationship; talking to each other, touching each other and transferring loving looks towards each other.

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song for Today: May 22nd 2019

22/5/2019

Today’s song is ‘My Grandfather’s Clock’. The song was written in 1876 by Henry Clay Work, the author of ‘Marching Through Georgia’.

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I well remember this song as a child being played by brass bands in Brighouse Park when we used to go on Sunday afternoon family walks during summer months. We would walk across the fields and down a long country lane from Hightown to Brighouse and at the end of the day walk the three miles back home. Both walk and fresh air would knock us out and make us ravenous. However, I liked listening to the words of ‘My Grandfather’s Clock’ on the radio best of all, for the story it told.

The song is told from a grandchild's point of view and is about his grandfather's clock. The clock was bought on the morning of his grandfather’s birth, and worked perfectly for 90 years, needing winding just once weekly. The clock, however, does not act like an inanimate object and seems to have a mind of its own. It responds to all manner of events in the grandfather’s life. For instance, it chimes 24 times when the boy’s grandfather gets married and it gives out an eerie alarm that warns of the old man’s death. When the old man dies, the clock stops and never works again.

At the age of 15 years, my first job was working at a Cleckheaton textile mill called ‘Bulmer and Lumb’. I started my working life as a ‘Bobbin Boy’ (a young employee who would push away filled carts of yarn that had been spun to another department and return to the spinners and winders departments with a cart of empty bobbins to fill their machines again). During the morning tea break, the female workers in the spinning and winding departments would tell all manner of stories; more often about the things that women usually talk about in groups, like accounts about this young man or another, or someone’s husband who’d gone astray.

There were four Bobbin Boys and we would usually join the women for their morning tea break. The women seemed to like our joining them, and I can only presume it was because we presented no male threat to them, and I am sure they spoke about some topics simply to embarrass us or notice our ears prick up at the mention of certain things.

One Irish woman called Maureen who worked in the winding department was always telling tales ‘from the old country’ as she used to call Ireland. We never knew how truthful her tales were, but we just loved hearing them. Her stories were always too long for a five-minute tea break and would often be started one morning and part-told. When the tea break was over and the women were called back to their looms and winding machines, Maureen would promise to finish the tale the following day. It was thought by some of us that she deliberately told long stories so she could leave them unfinished one morning and give herself time to think of a suitable ending of the story that same night before she resumed the tale at the next morning tea break.

True or false, however, I loved listening to Maureen’s stories and would eagerly retell her stories to my mother (who was also called Maureen). When I passed her stories on to my Irish mother, mum would listen attentively and make one of three remarks. Mum would usually say, “Go on with you, you, eejit!” or “Yes, I heard that one a number of years back!” or “Tell it to the postman!”

I never quite knew why the postman was always part of one of mum’s responses until I learned the answer many years later. It would seem that if a person owed money in the 50s and 60s and was being pursued by their debtor’s via a solicitor’s threatening letter, the house owner would simply recognise the official envelope upon receipt and immediately pass it back to the postman saying, “Right surname but wrong person. This person doesn’t live here and never has!” The postman would return the letter to the sender with his official explanation. This ruse usually bought the debtor some extra time.

Today’s song reminds me specifically of one story my Irish work mate, Maureen once told. It was a tale about an eccentric and wealthy Irish widow. Seemingly, the couple had been happily married for over 55 years and when the woman’s husband died in the middle of the afternoon at 2.59 pm, the hands of the mantle clock mysteriously stopped at the time of his death. The clock had seemingly been a wedding present to his parents, and they, in turn, had given the clock to their oldest son and his new bride on their wedding day.

The story recounted was that while the mantle clock remained in the widow’s house, she never wound it up again in memory of the loss of her husband. The widow reportedly pined the loss of the only man she had ever loved for the remainder of her life, and when she died fifteen years after her husband, instructions had been left with the solicitor in her will to have the clock buried in the coffin with her. The instructions indicated that the mantle clock would be placed in her hands in a position of repose.

Being a popular villager, the widow’s funeral was well attended, and she was buried in the church cemetery at 2.00 pm one sunny day in the month of May 1916. After the parish priest had said the graveside prayers over the widow’s coffin (which was placed in the same ground above the coffin of her husband in a joint burial plot), the funeral attendees gradually dispersed. Shortly after, the parish grave digger returned and completed his task of replacing the loose soil and sealing the ground of the grave.

The grave digger, who was partial to having a few bottles of stout on a lunch break before he spent the afternoon backfilling graves, claimed he’d been so busy that morning digging two separate graves for use in the afternoon that he hadn’t time for his usual lunch break and therefore didn’t taste a drop ‘of the brown stuff’ before evening. He told his drinking mates in the pub that night about the eerie goings-on in the graveyard that afternoon after the widow had been lowered to her final place of rest.

The gravedigger said that he returned after the grave-side attendees had departed and he started to shovel back the soil over the widow’s coffin. Before he had shovelled six spades back into the opened grave plot, he thought he heard a ticking sound coming from inside the widow’s coffin, and after climbing down into the grave and placing his ear to the wooden casket, he listened again. He was certain that the clock in the hands of the deceased woman ticked. Seconds later, the clock (which hadn’t been wound and re-started for the past 15 years) chimed three times. At that precise moment, the church steeple clock struck 3.00 pm.

According to the winder, Maureen, recounting the gravedigger’s telling of his part in the mysterious burial, the couple’s clock which they had been given as a wedding present seventy years earlier had started ticking in the deceased widow’s hands at exactly 2.59 pm: the precise time of day that the widow’s husband had died fifteen years earlier!

When I told my mum the tale later that evening after I’d returned home from work, having herself been steeped in Irish folklore ever since her own childhood, my mother remarked that she was inclined to believe my Irish workmate’s story. I still think to this day though, that Maureen from the winding department in ‘Bulmer and Lumb's Mill' was winding us all up by spinning her morning listeners an Irish yarn which had originated from the mouth of a drunken gravedigger in ‘Murphy’s Pub’ in May of 1916.

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 21st May 2019

20/5/2019

Two years ago, Sheila’s mother, Elizabeth, died. She was cremated at Oakworth Crematorium. Although I was receiving chemotherapy at the time for a Lymphoma that almost killed me off in late December 2016, my body was strong enough to enable me to attend the crematorium service to say ‘farewell’ to my dear mother-in-law.
I never knew Mother Elizabeth during her years of good health, and by the time Sheila and I first got together, Elizabeth had been in a residential home in Oakworth for the previous fourteen months. In the spring of 2008, (while living with and being cared for by Sheila), Mother Elizabeth was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s which was moderated by medication.
By the time Mother Elizabeth entered my life, she had progressively worsened in her illness and her absence of short-term memory meant that though she conversed with me during our visits to the residential home and on the walks that Sheila and I took her, I could never say with certainty that she ever recognised me. I can say that she never knew me, despite attending the wedding of Sheila and me in November 2012.
My own terminal blood cancer and hospital treatment meant that I was never afforded the opportunity of seeing Elizabeth in her residential home as often as I would have liked to. However, in the all too brief time, I was acquainted with Mother Elizabeth, I felt that I got to know the things that were important in her end-of-life years.
Those important aspects she most enjoyed were, seeing Sheila, Winston and her grandchildren, and being taken on regular walks by Sheila. Sheila made up a goody bag of sweets and chocolates daily for her mum, but the generosity of Mother Elizabeth invariably involved giving half of them away to staff members and then reminding Sheila that she had no chocolates left! Mother Elizabeth once told me that she loved chocolates from a shop in Marble Arch, London. So, Sheila and I harmlessly deceived Mother Elizabeth every time thereafter we brought her sweets to the residential home. The chocolates we gave her would be accompanied by the white lie that we had purchased them from the shop in Marble Arch earlier.
Other loves of Mother Elizabeth's life in her later years were listening to classical music, observing the large tree outside the window of the residential home from her window chair, being comforted by her prayer book which she invariably held, and stroking our dearly departed Rough Collie, Lady.
Was I to remember the Mother Elizabeth that I saw and briefly knew for 'one thing only', it would have to be that huge smile which had constantly lived in her face since she first learned to laugh at the world, and which she greeted everyone with. Her big smiling face represented her love of life. love of family and love of nature, as well as those smaller pleasures we too often take for granted. Her most repeated sentence during every walk she was ever taken on was 'It's a lovely sunny day!' She would repeatedly utter this observation whatever the weather was like; be it breezy, cool, cold or overcast. She wasn't being demented in her choice of description, she was just being the person she always was; a positive woman who never focused on the dark clouds in the sky but upon the brighter sky, waiting in the wings to follow when the sun decided to push itself forward.
Her beaming smile was literally the most beautiful present she could give me when she lived, and it is the fondest memory that will always remain with me of her. It was no less than ‘bountiful beauty’ born in the brilliant radiance of a loving heart, and representing a glowing reflection of the kind, sincere and gentle disposition she inwardly possessed. I am so pleased to have married the beautiful daughter you gave birth to, Mother Elizabeth, who was created by the heavenly potter from the same mound of clay. Love from Sheila and Bill x
In memory and celebration of your beautiful self and the presence of your beautiful daughter in my life, I sing my song in dedication to both my ladies today.
Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 20th May 2019

20/5/2019

‘Buffalo Soldier’ is a reggae song that was written by Bob Marley and Noel ‘King Sporty’ Williams. It was recorded by Bob Marley and the Wailers. The title and lyrics refer to the black U.S. cavalry regiments, known as ‘Buffalo Soldiers’, that fought in the Indian Wars after 1866. Marley linked their fight to a fight for survival and recasts it as a symbol of black resistance.

The origin of the term ’Buffalo Soldier’ is theorized as given to black troops by Native Americans, who thought African Americans' hair felt and looked like a buffalo’s pelt. The name was embraced by the troops, who were well acquainted with ‘the buffalo's fierce bravery and fighting spirit’. The Buffalo Soldier's duties were settling railroad disputes, building telegraph lines, repairing and building forts, helping settlers find a place to live, and protecting the settlers from attacks by Native Americans.

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My father was a man whose formal schooling in Kilkenny, Ireland, like many other children of his time from poorer families, was curtailed at the age of 12 years of age to go out to work for the family. Consequently, he never placed too much importance on education and felt that nothing like hard honest work with one’s own hands could be beaten when it came to determining the true character of a person.

Indeed, the only other pleasure I ever saw my father indulge (apart from sucking toffees) was watching western films and reading copious cowboy paperbacks about the wild west whenever he went to the lavatory for a half hour sitting. Often, in order to get the last word, dad would end heated discussions with some well-remembered quotation from one of the John Wayne films as he walked off. One of his oft-quoted lines was John Wayne saying, “A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do!"

Apart from his lack of formal education, my father’s knowledge (outside the workings of a coal mine) comprised mostly of ‘The Wild West’ and was largely confined to the life and times of famous cowboys, gunslingers, and the native Indians, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. He would have performed very well on University Challenge with ‘The Wild West’ as his chosen topic of expertise.

It was my dad who first told me about the ‘Buffalo Soldiers’ who were recruited into the American Cavalry in the 19th century to fight the ‘Indian Wars’.

In later years, after my dad’s death, I had extensive contact with many prominent Jamaicans during a three-year period at the start of the New Millennium (when I liaised with the Jamaican Minister for Education and Youth Culture during a ‘Trans-Atlantic Pen-Pal Project’ I established and managed between 16 schools in Falmouth, Trelawny, Jamaica and 16 schools in Yorkshire, England). I had two trips across to Jamaica to facilitate this work, and it was in Jamaica that I next heard the term ‘Buffalo Soldier’. It was one of their famous reggae singer’s songs; the late Bob Marley.

Dad would never know how he and a cannabis-smoking Jamaican reggae singer would enjoin to cement one moment in my memory bank.

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 19th May 2019

19/5/2019

Sunday May 19th ‘Now is The Hour’

During the ‘Second World War’ years, time spent with one’s loved ones were the most precious moments of all. Whether one was a civilian or a serving member of the British Army, Royal Navy or Royal Air Force, there was a premium placed on ‘time’ that no amount of wealth could buy. If you had a lover, husband, son or brother in any of the three arms of the British forces, you would treasure whatever little time you shared with them on leave. One never knew from one hour to the next, whether one’s home, works, or street might be blown up during the night-time air raids, or whether one’s loved one was lying dead in a muddy trench or bleeding out alone from a fatal wound in ‘No Man’s Land’ between enemy trenches. Be sure though, whether the ground they died on was foreign or ally, the very last image they would see would be of an England they fought for, loved and cherished and in the forefront of the image would be portrayed the faces of their loved ones.

Wherever one found ‘love’ during such uncertain times, the temptation was to take it there and then, because tomorrow, one might be dead! Hence; so many couples took the advantage of their sweetheart’s short leave to marry there and then, and some even undertook the most dangerous of liaisons during the absence of their betrothed.

This weekend in Haworth is the 1940s weekend. It is the time of year when we remember those ‘Second World War’ years between 1939-45 when Great Britain clawed its way back to victory from the jaws of defeat after the German Luftwaffe had gained aerial superiority at the start of the war. As an aerial warfare branch of the combined German Wehrmacht military forces during the ‘Second World War’, the Luftwaffe rained down destruction on the heart of England during the early stages, and yet, despite the superiority of their deadly flying machines, it was the sheer courage of the British and Ally pilots who eventually won the battle of the skies in feats of bravery hitherto unseen. As the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill said of them on the 20th August 1940, ‘Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by many to so few’. He was referring directly to the heroic efforts of the Royal Air Force crews who were fighting the Battle of Britain against the odds; the most pivotal air battle of the war that was primarily instrumental in preventing the anticipated German invasion.

I was a war baby at the time as the war was being fought. These were years when the English man, woman and child all pulled together in sacrifice, suffering and a dogged belief that our country would eventually win through. Despite the harshness of the times, aggravated by nightly war raids on our major cities and daily rations applied to every family across the land, the greater the adversity the stronger grew the community spirit. As the men mostly filled the serving ranks of the Army, Navy and Airforce, the womenfolk of the country were put to work on farms, in munition factories, clothing factories and in all areas of wartime manufacturing. Children, being children did what they have always done; they played out when the school day was done before every house in the land was ‘blacked out’ in the evening (curtains were drawn to prevent the light below being seen by the German night raiders and bombers).

When the German planes flew over, air sirens would alert the community and the families would leave their houses and conceal themselves in sheds and protective bunkers until the siren hooted loudly again to signal that the attack was over and it was okay to return to the house (providing, of course, it hadn’t been bombed to smithereens in one’s absence). A commonly used home shelter known as the ‘Anderson Shelter’ would be built in a garden and equipped with beds as a refuge from air raids. These shelters offered a modest level of protection but were probably crucial in offering some psychological comfort to the masses apart from sheltering the inhabitants from the nearby debris of bombed houses and buildings.

As the Germans bombed London and other British cities relentlessly, night-after-night between 1940-41 the skies would be lit with a lightning bolt of exchanged warfare as their planes were fired upon from British guns below. This became known as ‘The Blitz’. The Germans conducted their mass air attacks against industrial targets, towns and cities, with London taking the brunt of their bombing missions. During such night attacks as buildings and house were bombed and flatten, the noble firefighters continued to work in the open air quenching the fires and rescuing the trapped and the dead from beneath rubble remains. They carried out their work as gas mains around them exploded and water pipes flooded the furnaced ground. All around them death filled their lungs.

Such men and women were called ‘Angels of the Night’ (a term that came from ‘World War One’ and the original term ‘Angels of Mons’). This was a popular legend about a group of angels who supposedly protected members of the British Army in their first major engagement of the 1914-18 World War. Heavily outnumbered, the British went into the Battle of Mons.

After the ‘Second World War’, all the children of Great Britain were taught the values that their fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers, aunts and uncles practised throughout their war experiences. This is probably the greatest asset any British person over 65 years of age inherited from our immediate ancestors. Whatever our parents had or hadn’t, they shared with their neighbour during times of need. Whatever they could never have or get, they learned to do without and ‘make do’. They could be bombed to bits, forced to bury their dead with their own hands, see their loved ones killed by bombs in front of their eyes, get up hungry and go to bed hungry, wear holed shoes and hand-me-down clothes: they could lose everything material around them but they would never lose their pride in self and country!

There was one wartime account I shall never forget being told as a young boy by an aged person. It was of a woman whose husband had been killed abroad in the battle trenches and who was rearing their 7-year-old son. One night, the widow and her young son stayed over at an aunt’s home in a different part of London. They had been visiting the aunt in the late afternoon but had stayed too late to get back home before the blackout. When the woman and her son returned home the next morning before the boy’s school day had begun, they turned the corner of the street where they lived and witnessed half the houses in the street had been bombed and demolished in the night-time air raid. The woman’s first thought of “Dear God! Where’s my house gone?” was quickly converted to “Thank God we weren’t there and are alive today!”

A passing neighbour saw her in the rubble ruins of her home scratting around to see if there was anything to salvage after she had washed her son at a neighbour’s house and sent him off to school for the day. When the passing neighbour spoke with the widow, he found her trying to locate her doorstep in the rubble, so that she might clean it, whiten it and put it in its proper place when she next had another house!

When asked why she should have done such a thing, the story narrator simply said, “Nay Lad, what else was she expected to do. She did no more or no less than any of us would have done in her circumstances. She knew that the best way to beat Hitler, the only way to win the tyrant was to ‘carry on’ with the day ahead in the best way possible!”

The account moved me so much that I included it in one of the many books I was to write in later years (64 published books in total).

There were two national figures during the ‘Second World War’ years that helped to generate hope of the masses. Churchill did it with his mastery of the English language, but Vera Lynn did it through the wartime songs she sang and broadcast to soldiers fighting overseas. While Prime Minister Winston Churchill helped to protect the land we occupy today, Vera was able, through her songs to preserve the image of England that each soldier had left behind and was fighting to one day return to.

I have been personally blessed to have been a friend of Vera for the past thirty years and over the next three days of the ‘Haworth 1940s Weekend’, I will be singing one of three of Vera’s songs that are her most famous and best remembered. Please sing along with me as we give thanks to all the men, women and children (soldier and civilian: alive or deceased) who fought to preserve the freedom that England enjoys today. God bless you all.

Love and peace Bill. xxx

Song for Today: 18th May 2019

18/5/2019

Saturday, May 18th: Haworth Event:
In every country there is a visual entrance that tells the traveller when they are arriving back on home ground. For instance, in New York harbour, it's the 'Statue of Liberty' and in England, it's 'The White Cliffs of Dover'.

This weekend in Haworth is the 1940s weekend. It is the time of year when, we in Haworth, through our nostalgic celebrations remember those ‘Second World War’ years between 1939-45 when Great Britain clawed its way back to victory from the jaws of defeat after the German Luftwaffe had gained aerial superiority at the start of the war. The Luftwaffe rained down destruction on the heart of England during the early stages, and yet, despite the superiority of their deadly flying machines, it was the sheer courage of the British and Ally pilots who eventually won the battle of the skies in feats of bravery hitherto unseen.

As the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill said of them on the 20th August 1940, ‘Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by many to so few’. He was referring directly to the heroic efforts of the Royal Air Force crews who were fighting the 'Battle of Britain' against the odds; the most pivotal air battle of the war that was primarily instrumental in preventing the anticipated German invasion.

I was a war baby at the time as the war was being fought. These were years when the English man, woman and child all pulled together in sacrifice, suffering and a dogged belief that our country would eventually win through. Despite the harshness of the times, aggravated by nightly war raids on our major cities and ports, every family across the country were daily rationed with their food supplies. But the greater the sacrifice was asked of our soldiers, seamen, pilots and civilians, the graver the adversity they faced, the stronger grew their patriotism and community spirit and a belief that we would win through.

As the men mostly filled the serving ranks of the Army, Navy and Airforce, the womenfolk of the country were put to work on farms, in munition factories, clothing factories and in all areas of wartime manufacturing. Children, being children did what they have always done; they played out when the school day was done before every house in the land was ‘blacked out’ in the evening, when curtains were drawn to prevent the light below being seen by the German night raiders and bombers up above.

When the German planes flew over, air sirens would alert the community and the families would leave their houses and conceal themselves in sheds and protective bunkers until the siren hooted loudly again to signal that the attack was over and it was okay to return to the house (providing, of course, it hadn’t been bombed to smithereens during one’s absence). A commonly used home shelter known as the ‘Anderson Shelter’ would be built in house gardens and equipped with beds and a few essential items as a refuge from air raids. These shelters offered a modest level of protection but were probably crucial in offering much psychological comfort to the masses, apart from sheltering the inhabitants from the nearby debris of bombed houses and buildings.

As the Germans bombed London and other British cities relentlessly, night-after-night between 1940-41, the skies would be lit with a lightning bolt of exchanged warfare as their planes were fired upon from British guns below. This became known as ‘The Blitz’. The Germans conducted their mass air attacks against ports, industrial targets, towns and cities, with London taking the brunt of their bombing missions. During such night attacks as buildings and house were bombed and flatten, the noble firefighters continued to work in the open air, quenching the fires and rescuing the trapped and the dead from beneath rubble remains. They carried out their work as gas mains around them exploded and water pipes flooded the furnaced ground. All around them, smoke filled their lungs and the putrid stench of burnt bodies pervaded their senses. Still, with little thought about their own safety, they carried on.

Such men and women were called ‘Angels of the Night’ (a term that came from ‘World War One’ and the original term ‘Angels of Mons’). This was a popular legend about a group of angels who supposedly protected members of the British Army in their first major engagement of the 1914-18 World War, in the 'Battle of Mons', and where the British were heavily outnumbered.

After the ‘Second World War’, all the children of Great Britain were taught and reared with the values that their fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers, aunts and uncles had practised throughout their war experiences. This is probably the greatest character asset any British person over 65 years of age inherited from their immediate ancestors. Whatever our parents had or hadn’t, they shared with their neighbour during times of need. Whatever they could never have or get, they learned to do without and ‘make mend and do’. They could be bombed to bits, forced to bury their dead with their own hands, see their loved ones killed by enemy bombs in front of their eyes, get up hungry and go to bed hungry, wear holed shoes and hand-me-down clothes: they could lose everything material around them but they would never lose heart or pride in self and country! Not one English person was ever ashamed to patriotically fly the Nation's flag.

There was one wartime account I shall never forget being told as a young boy by an aged person. It was of a woman whose husband had been killed abroad in the battle trenches and who reared their 7-year-old son on her own. One night, the widow and her young son stayed over at an aunt’s home in a different part of London. They had been visiting the aunt in the late afternoon but had stayed too late to get back home before the blackout. The woman and her son returned home the next morning before the boy’s school day had begun, but when they turned the corner of the street where they lived, they saw that half the houses in the street had been bombed and demolished in the night-time air raid. The woman’s first thought of “Dear God! Where’s my house gone?” was quickly converted to “Thank God we weren’t there and are still alive!”

A passing neighbour saw her in the rubble ruins of her home. She was scratting around among the ruins to see if there was anything left to salvage. After she had washed her son at a neighbour’s house, she kissed him and sent him off to school for the day. When the passing neighbour spoke with the widow, he found her trying to locate her doorstep in the rubble, so that she might clean it, whiten it and put it in its proper place when she next had another house!

When asked why she should have done such a thing, the story narrator simply said, “Nay Lad, what else was she expected to do. She did no more or no less than any of us would have done in her circumstances. She knew that the best way to beat the tyrant, Hitler, was to ‘carry on’ with the day ahead in the best way possible!”

The account moved me so much that I included it in one of the many books I was to write in later years (Robin and The Rubicelle Fusiliers).

There were two national figures during the ‘Second World War’ years that helped to generate the 'hope' of the masses. Churchill did it with his mastery of the English language, but Vera Lynn did it through the wartime songs she broadcast to soldiers fighting overseas. While Prime Minister Winston Churchill helped to protect the land we occupy today, Vera was able, through her songs to preserve the image of England that each soldier had left behind and was fighting to return to.
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I have been personally blessed to have been a friend of Vera for the past thirty years and over the next three days of the ‘Haworth 1940s Weekend’, I will be singing one of three of Vera’s songs that are her most famous and best remembered all day long as Sheila and I walk down the Main Street and soak up the atmosphere of the 40s. Please sing along with me in your own homes as we give thanks to all the men, women and children (soldier and civilian: alive or deceased) who fought to preserve the freedom that England enjoys today. God bless you all.
Love and peace Bill. xxx

Song For Today: 17th May 2019

17/5/2019

Juniors OO v SK Vorwarts Steyr O2.5
Floridsdorfer AC v FC LieferingO 1.5
SC AUstria Lustenau v SV Ried O 1.5

This weekend in Haworth is the 1940s weekend. It is the time of year when we remember those ‘Second World War’ years between 1939-45 when Great Britain clawed its way back to victory from the jaws of defeat after the German Luftwaffe had gained aerial superiority at the start of the war. As an aerial warfare branch of the combined German Wehrmacht military forces during the ‘Second World War’, the Luftwaffe rained down destruction on the heart of England during the early stages, and yet, despite the superiority of their deadly flying machines, it was the sheer courage of the British and Ally pilots who eventually won the battle of the skies in feats of bravery hitherto unseen.

As the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill said of them on the 20th August 1940, ‘Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by many to so few’. He was referring directly to the heroic efforts of the Royal Air Force crews who were fighting the Battle of Britain against the odds; the most pivotal air battle of the war that was primarily instrumental in preventing the anticipated German invasion.

I was a war baby at the time as the war was being fought. These were years when the English man, woman and child all pulled together in sacrifice, suffering and a dogged belief that our country would eventually win through. Despite the harshness of the times, aggravated by nightly war raids on our major cities and daily rations applied to every family across the land, the greater the adversity the stronger grew the community spirit. As the men mostly filled the serving ranks of the Army, Navy and Airforce, the womenfolk of the country were put to work on farms, in munition factories, clothing factories and in all areas of wartime manufacturing. Children, being children did what they have always done; they played out when the school day was done before every house in the land was ‘blacked out’ in the evening (curtains were drawn to prevent the light below being seen by the German night raiders and bombers).

When the German planes flew over, air sirens would alert the community and the families would leave their houses and conceal themselves in sheds and protective bunkers until the siren hooted loudly again to signal that the attack was over and it was okay to return to the house (providing, of course, it hadn’t been bombed to smithereens in one’s absence). A commonly used home shelter known as the ‘Anderson Shelter’ was built in gardens and was equipped with beds and limited supplies as a refuge from air raids. These shelters offered a modest level of protection but were probably crucial in offering much psychological comfort to the masses apart from sheltering the inhabitants from the nearby debris of bombed houses and buildings.

As the Germans bombed London and other British cities relentlessly, night-after-night between 1940-41 the skies would be lit with a lightning bolt of exchanged warfare as their planes were fired upon from British guns below. This became known as ‘The Blitz’. The Germans conducted their mass air attacks against ports, industrial targets, towns and cities, with London taking the brunt of their bombing missions. During such night attacks as buildings and house were bombed and flatten, the noble firefighters continued to work in the open air quenching the fires and rescuing the trapped and the dead from beneath rubble remains. They carried out their work as gas mains around them exploded and water pipes flooded the furnaced ground. All around them death could be smelled as the stench of burning flesh filled their lungs.

Such men and women were called ‘Angels of the Night’ (a term that came from ‘World War One’ and the original term ‘Angels of Mons’). This was a popular legend about a group of angels who supposedly protected members of the British Army in their first major engagement of the 1914-18 World War. Heavily outnumbered, the British went into the Battle of Mons.

After the ‘Second World War’, all the children of Great Britain were taught the values that their fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers, aunts and uncles practised throughout their war experiences. This is probably the greatest character asset any British person over 65 years of age inherited from our immediate ancestors. Whatever our parents had or hadn’t, they shared with their neighbour during times of need. Whatever they could never have or get, they learned to do without and ‘make do and mend’. They could be bombed to bits, forced to bury their dead with their own hands, see their loved ones killed by bombs in front of their eyes, get up hungry and go to bed hungry, wear holed shoes and hand-me-down clothes: they could lose everything material around them but they would never lose heart or their pride in self and country!

There was one wartime account I shall never forget being told as a young boy by an aged person. It was of a woman whose husband had been killed abroad in the battle trenches and who was bringing up their 7-year-old son alone. One night, the widow and her young son stayed over at an aunt’s home in a different part of London. They had been visiting the aunt in the late afternoon but had stayed too late to get back home before the blackout. When the woman and her son returned home the next morning before the boy’s school day had begun, they turned the corner of the street where they lived and saw half the houses in the street had been bombed and demolished in the night-time air raid. The woman’s first thought of “Dear God! Where’s my house gone?” was quickly converted to “Thank God we weren’t there and are alive today!”

A passing neighbour saw her in the rubble ruins of her home scratting around to see if there was anything to salvage, after she had washed her son at a neighbour’s house and sent him off to school for the day. When the passing neighbour spoke with the widow, he found her trying to locate her doorstep in the rubble, so that she might clean it, whiten it and put it in its proper place when she next had another house!

When asked why she should have done such a thing, the story narrator simply said, “Nay Lad, what else was she expected to do. She did no more or no less than any of us would have done in her circumstances. She knew that the best way to beat Hitler, the only way to win the tyrant was to ‘carry on’ with the day ahead in the best way possible!”

The account moved me so much that I included it in one of the many books I was to write in later years ( ‘Robin and The Rubicelle Fusiliers’).

There were two national figures during the ‘Second World War’ years that helped to generate hope of the masses. Churchill did it with his mastery of the English language, but Vera Lynne did it through the wartime songs she broadcast to soldiers fighting overseas. While Prime Minister Winston Churchill helped to protect the land we occupy today, Vera was able, through her songs, to preserve the image of England that each soldier had left behind and was fighting to come back home to.

I have been personally blessed to have been a friend of Vera for the past thirty years and over the next three days of the ‘Haworth 1940s Weekend’, I will be singing one of three of Vera’s songs that are her most famous and best remembered. Please sing along with me as we give thanks to all the men, women and children (soldier and civilian: alive or deceased) who fought to preserve the freedom that England enjoys today. God bless you all.

Love and peace Bill. xxx
https://youtu.be/aWYuxF3xsO0