Blog Archives - FordeFables

January 31st, 2016

31/1/2016

Thought for today:
"Children find all aspects of nature fascinating and all manner of activity fun in the making, whether it be jumping in puddles, having mud baths, chasing rainbows or making a wish to a full moon in the dark of night.They are fascinated by all creatures large and small, particularly creatures with wings, whether fictional or factual. They love slimey snakes that slither through the long grass and frogs whom they love to squeeze until their eyes bulge. They delight in the touch of sticking their finger into a bowl of jelly, scraping out the jam jar or stroking the hide of an elephant. Watching a blacksmith shoe a horse makes them cringe in fearful anticipation as the nails are hammered into the hoof. While most children love all manner of pet creature, boys have a particular fondness for rats with long tails who are known to make friends so easily with any human who is prepared to house them in their shirt pocket and hold them close to their heart. They also love the look of shock they can produce upon the face of innocent girls whenever they take out their pet rat from beneath their clothes and swing it in front of their noses.
The thing that fascinates me most about children is their capacity to trust all manner of things strange and their willingness to interact with it within minutes of first acquaintance, as though they'd been life long friends. Children live in a world of magic that adults once had but lost. They find magic in all they see because they look for it, just like witnessing a caterpillar in the belly of a match box turn into a butterfly. They seek magic in stolen moments that others have abandoned. They can still feel that something is magical, even when they know how it's done, and feeling a hidden baby in the making inside mum's pregnant tummy is the most magical experience of all! When asking, 'How will it get out, Mum', replying,' 'The same way it got in!' will never satisfy their height of inquisitiveness.

If only adults could harness the magic of a child for the benefit of mankind, the world would turn more smoothly and spin in equal favour of all. We would then be able to refashion the world today through their indiscriminate eyes of innocence, employing their thoughts of purity and hearts of compassion in all we did. We would establish a humane code of conduct and lay down expectations that all would willingly ascribe to and follow. We would first feed, house, clothe and protect every man woman and child on the planet before going out to play!" William Forde: January 31st, 2016.

January 30th, 2016.

30/1/2016

Thought for today:
"'I wonder; if I keep my head down and stay quiet, will the trouble go away?'

I cannot count the number of times I have seen this thought float across the face of a dog or cat who knows they have done wrong. Alas. it is often harder to identify by look in a human, but is more easily recognised in their overall pattern of behaviour.

Then I started to think about all manner of 'avoiders.' Twenty five years as a Probation Officer taught me very early on that only those people who are prepared to open their eyes, face life head on and acknowledge their situation and behaviour, are capable of making positive change. For the past forty years I have studied human behaviour, and for twenty five of them I researched the three response patterns we each predominantly display; non-assertive, aggressive or appropriately assertive.

There is within each of us a bodily electro-chemical mechanism which involuntarily produces the response of fight or flight. This is designed to preserve the safety of the body by making it automatically select the form of action to engage in during the presence of danger that will keep us safe. For example, if we see a runaway truck heading straight towards us, without thinking, our body takes flight and automatically jumps out of the way to avoid a collision and remain safe. Or, if a mad man with a knife approaches us and seems determined to harm us and we cannot get away and avoid the threat, we automatically fight for our life.

There is however one type of person whose behaviour has led them to always seek to take the easier way out of trouble; the avoider. They do this by never getting into it; by avoiding all possibility of experiencing trouble and unpleasantness at every opportunity! Through constant repetition of this unnatural and unhealthy behaviour pattern which they reinforce over the years, they simply stop fighting their corner, they give way to the opinions and sway of the other person and forever feel unworthy as a consequence!They become one of the non-assertive people in society; the quiet ones who never say boo to a goose and who remain lacking in confidence, self respect and the ability to express their anger outside their own person.

Just who are these 'avoiders' and what are the ultimate consequences they face as the result of not expressing their true feelings, particularly those aspects of life that angers them?

In the continuum from the more harmless to grave, this is how they are best recognised. The non-assertive person learns to avoid all risk of unpleasantness early on and because of their constant need to please others at the expense of themselves, they present no threat to anyone and are liked by all; that is everyone except themselves! They hate to argue and rarely disagree, even when they do!

They always express liking the gifts of others which in reality they may dislike intensely, so as to avoid offence being caused. They are the spouse who is too fearful to tell their partner that they would prefer to eat Christmas dinner at home this year instead of mother-in-laws, but dare not say so. They avoid honestly expressing their anger and reduce such feelings to the rating of disappointment at best. They lack self confidence and constantly seek the love and reassurance of others. They give others copious compliments while at the same time putting themselves down.

As their avoidance behaviour becomes more entrenched in their overall response pattern, it becomes more automatic, until the time comes when they find that they cannot respond otherwise. Everything in their world is fake; their responses in social situations, their compliments, their pretend happiness. The sad truth is that while others may have been led to believe 'this' about them, the reality is 'that.'

They become more prone towards depression, are more likely to take pills or turn to the bottle of evening wine and are less likely to feel like socialising. They often bury their heads in the sand and busy themselves by overinvesting their time in their work or the lives of others (often a family member or close friend), instead of their own!

Unfortunately, all avoiders, though they may attempt to keep the truth from others, they cannot avoid knowing it themselves. Whereas others perceive their pretend happiness with life, only they know their real sadness. In the most extreme case of the non-assertiveness response, the person is more likely to self harm, kill self or even others, if their mind becomes unhinged!

The reason for this is that all the hurt they naturally feel and never expressed over the years is repressed deep within. Over time it builds up and up inside them and because the non-assertive person doesn't display the safety valve of expressing of their anger, their anger implodes first and then involuntarily explodes onto the outside world from which it has so long hidden. At the point of implosion, the subject becomes emotionally distraught and often psychiatrically disturbed.

Occasionally, our television screens may report a man who calmly arrived home from work, washed his face, cleaned the dishes and then after going into his garage and loading a shotgun, he returned to the house and shot dead his wife, child and pet dog before turning the gun on himself! When asked about their neighbour who'd committed such offences by the television presenters, the neighbour's responses would reveal the behaviour to be totally out of character with the lovely man they always knew ( thought they knew).

They would describe their neighbour as having been the kindest of neighbours, polite, courteous and generous to the core, a good family man who loved his wife and child to bits; a man who cleaned his car regularly, was never once heard to raised his voice to man or beast and who went to church every Sunday and kept his lawn meticulously tidy.

It might later be revealed that the man had been made redundant from his work that day after twenty eight years as a loyal employee of the firm. He just could not face the prospect of being unemployed, of telling his wife that he'd lost his job and that they'd have to move house as well as cancelling next year's booked holiday! Far better to avoid all the future hurt and unpleasantness to come by ensuring that he and his family were not at home when the bailiffs arrive to take his car, furniture and home.

My group work with such response types proved very successful. In order to break their pattern of avoidance behavior, this essentially involved encouraging them to express their anger when they felt it, to honestly express all their feelings, to learn to give compliments to self, to learn to refuse requests without explanation and to learn to relax.

Are you the non-assertive response pattern type? Would you like to change?
It's not too late you know. It's never too late!" William Forde:January 30th, 2016.

January 29th, 2016.

29/1/2016

Thought for today:
"Only cultural climbers and shallow folk of social aspiration try to impress clever people. Clever people just do what they do. They can see both the serious and funny side of life and if they think you're being too damned serious, they will simply stick their tongue out at you when you're not looking, whisper 'wanker' and expel a silent fart in your direction." William Forde: January 29th, 2016.

January 28th, 2016.

28/1/2016

Thought for today:
"There is no shame in making a mistake. As the Irish novelist and poet James Joyce remarked, 'Mistakes are the portals of discovery.'

During my lifetime I have never allowed my mistakes to define me, and I've made as many as most folk. I have instead reflected upon them to extend my range of possibilities by trying to learn from them.

Were I to live my life all over again, I know that there would be as many mistakes to be found in my future actions as there were in my past ones; not because I refuse to learn from my mistakes, but rather that I don't fear them occurring whenever I try out something new. When I look back on my life, I now know that the mistakes I made, along with every experience I ever had, made me.

The biggest mistake we make in life is not trying to make a living at doing what we know best by being the person we truly are. I know of so many people who either struggle at their work, don't get any satisfaction from their job and are essentially clock watching until the end of the shift or working out their time until they get their bus pass and pension. For a person in their prime of life, it saddens me when all they look forward to is retirement and old age.

Everything I ever did, both good and bad, right and wrong was meant to happen to me in the way it happened in order to produce the me I now am. As a child I stole quite frequently. I eventually became a good thief and after life's graduation, I turned from poacher to gamekeeper and became a Probation Officer for twenty five years. As a teenager, I was a very angry young man who often found it impossible to control my temper. I had a proneness to hit out at anything or anyone that angered me. At the age of 32 years, I founded the process of 'Anger Management' which I freely gave to the world. Within a matter of a few years, 'Anger Management' had mushroomed across the English speaking world and has since helped more people than I could ever count or was ever angry with.

Though I have been married more than once, I'd have to confess that my greatest need was probably to be a 'father' more than a 'husband.' Being reared in a large, Irish Catholic family, I was brought up with the expectation that every good woman was a good mother to her children. I have since learned that there are many reasons that can prevent a good woman being a good mother, particularly an illness that temporarily robs them of their capacity and inclination to display maternal instincts.

Unfortunately, my first wife suffered from post-natal depression. This was a condition not then defined as such by the medical profession which resulted in behaviour that I found unnatural and inexplicable at the time. As a consequence of experiencing post-natal-depression, she found herself unable to behave motherly towards our two young children immediately after their respective births and for a period of over three years, she effectively wanted little contact with them. During this protracted period I undertook both the roles of father and mother, believing I was helping my wife as well as looking out for the welfare of our two children. I wasn't! It was only after we'd separated and divorced that she started to behave like a 'mother' towards them for the first time. Only then did I realise that she wasn't a 'bad mother,' but an 'ill mother.' It was only in later years did it dawn on me that my own concern for our children at the time which led to me performing the dual roles of both 'father' and 'mother,' had effectively slowed down her potential progress and had denied my wife exercising her role as 'mother' to our children for a much longer period than otherwise might have been necessary.

After an acrimonious marital separation and divorce, my first wife, who'd been an unwell woman stopped being ill and became a healthy but very unreasonable woman instead. She denied me access to our two children for over two years and refused me any form of contact with them; even preventing me having any contact by letter or phone and returning presents I sent them for their birthdays etc. Unable to have contact with my own children, I found myself unconsciously seeking consolation through my contact with thousands of other children of their age.

Over the following years I became a children's author of some renown, publishing dozens of books and allowing the £200,000 profits from their sales to go to charity (mostly children's charities and causes). Between 1990 and 2002, I visited over 2,000 Yorkshire schools, holding assemblies to raise awareness of pressing child issues and bringing over 800 famous names and celebrities to read to them from my books in a bid to make the school children special.

At the age of eleven years, following a traffic accident from which I was not expected to survive, a life saving operation was successfully performed on me by an African surgeon at Batley Hospital. Despite being reared in a more racist country than England is today, I later went on to spend a large part of my life actively working to fight racism. As the country's youngest shop steward at the age of eighteen in 1960, and at a time when blacks and dark skinned people were barred openly from certain jobs, accommodation, clubs and were widely discriminated against, I brought hundreds of workers out on strike because my employers refused to let a South African job applicant fill a post for which he was qualified, simply because he was black. In early 2000, I worked in liaison with the Jamaican Education Minister to set up a pen-pal project between all thirty two schools in Falmouth (the old slave capital) and thirty two schools in Yorkshire in a bid to reduce racism between black and white pupils and increase a greater understanding of each other's cultures.

Throughout my life as a young man, I fell in love with life and every good looking woman in it that came my way. I was in short what my late mother would have accurately described as 'a romantic fool.' Around 2003, I put up my pen, having decided that I'd written enough books and due to ill-health factors, I retired early. After I met my wife Sheila in 2010, I fell in love all over again. She saw the romantic in me and persuaded me to start writing once more. Since that date, I have had an additional dozen books published; all romantic novels of course, making 65 publications in total. (All profits will continue to go to charitable causes in perpetuity).

During my earlier life, one of my traits would have undoubtedly been stamina. While defying the medical prognosis as an eleven year old boy by walking again after three years of being unable to walk, many would have mistakenly viewed me as 'courageous.' It would be closer to the truth to say that I genuinely feared the prospect of never walking again and I didn't possess the courage it would require to live out the remainder of my life as a crippled person from the seat of a wheelchair!

It is only during recent years that I've had both courage and inclination to look behind the mask of my past and to see the unvarnished truth head on, particularly relating to my failings and mistakes along with my many successes. It is only since I was told of my terminal illness a few years ago that I've experienced a fullness of life I've never felt before. It is only since I have found the strength to genuinely make myself vulnerable by revealing my daily thoughts on this page that I've found the real me I've always been and for whom I've searched so long.

We are not so or do this as the result of accident and there are no insignificant or meaningless coincidences in one's life. Not only do our failures and successes spring from all our actions, but the reasons for them are also to be found in in our life's experiences. Fate has much more to do with fact than we will ever know. So fear not the making of mistakes and know that if you can learn from them. Know also that they will be the making of you! All through my childhood I tried to be the me I most wanted to be. It was only when things had settled down in my old age that I could see more clearly the me I have been and now am, warts and all!" William Forde: January 28th, 2016.

January 27th, 2016.

27/1/2016

Thought for today:
"You're a loyal dog Shep and deserve a big kiss. I'm so glad we found each other. What I like best about you Shep is that you keep all my secrets and you never criticise me. Even when I do naughty things you don't leave my side; you stay with me. In all the time we've been together, not once have you complained. You know all there is to know about me, but don't tell. You're a good dog and you're my dog. When we get back home, you can have a big fat biscuit!" William Forde: January 27th, 2016.

January 26th, 2016.

26/1/2016

Thought for today:
"Today I go into hospital to get my other hand to operated on. When I phoned the hospital yesterday to check if my platelet count was high enough to have the operation, I learned that they were extremely low. The cancer ward said that I should cancel the operation but the blood lab and the hand surgeon said it would be okay to go ahead with it. It is like one hand doesn't know what the other hand's doing. Getting my hand operated on today naturally took my morning thoughts to those of 'touch.'

The people who touch our lives more than any others are those who are prepared to reach out. They have learned that often the greatest journeys through life begin with nothing more than reaching out and holding another's hand. Often, people can derive more comfort by their hand being tenderly held instead of money being pressed into it. Whenever we reach out to someone in need we learn something essential; that we were born to give. It is only through our acts of giving to others, the things they need more than us, that we truly become acquainted with the good people we were meant to be.

Never reach out your hand unless you are willing to extend it as far as the needs of another. Never withdraw it until it is no longer needed. To offer an empty hand to a person in need is to tease the tragedy of their circumstances and to laugh at them being laid low. Most of us possess much more than we shall ever need and while possession of itself is a natural trait to develop, it undoubtedly becomes easier for a wealthy person to lose touch with their own humanity while they focus upon the richness of their own circumstances instead of the poverty in the lives of others.

Many years ago when I was a child, I asked my mother, 'When we give to charity, how do we know how much to give? How do we know when we've given enough?' My mother, who was the most generous of women and would willingly give away her last penny without second thought replied, 'I would say, Billy, when it hurts to give any more, then you have probably given enough!'

I also remember as a child a poor neighbour who had a large family to keep and no husband to provide for them. The neighbour was extremely proud, yet lived from hand to mouth, one week to the next. Paradoxically, the only nice thing she possessed in the world was a beautiful red-leather purse which she carried everywhere with her. She handled her purse so much that it was the softest of leather to behold. Nobody would ever see her without her purse in one hand, yet everyone knew that what she proudly carried was always empty, bar a few pennies and half pennies. I often wondered the point anyone might have of carrying around an empty purse, but my mother didn't. Mum knew that one's purse was inversely proportional to one's heart; if one was full the other would be empty and vice versa!

Generosity and compassion to the plight of another requires unselfishness and feeling. If the act isn't colour blind, then it isn't genuine compassion which is being displayed and if the gift is given reluctantly, then it cannot be true generosity." William Forde: January 26th, 2016.

January 25th, 2016.

25/1/2016

Thought for today:
"A well known cure for boredom is curiosity. Unfortunately there is no cure for curiosity because the more we find out, the more we usually want to know. There are no foolish questions that either man or monkey can ask and neither ever risks becoming a fool until they stop asking. Just as life is meant to be lived, curiosity is meant to be nourished and kept alive. We all like to come across pearls of wisdom, but the simple truth is that only those of an inquisitive nature who are prepared to dive deeper into unknown waters are fated to find the oyster.

The absolute beauty about the world in which we live is that somewhere, right now, a breakthrough in medicine is on the verge of discovery and something incredible is waiting to happen. It could be the discovery of another planet in the galaxy, the learning that you are pregnant with the child that you have yearned to conceive since your marriage fifteen years earlier and never could, or perhaps the reunification of a mother with the son or daughter she gave up for adoption forty years earlier and whom she has bitterly cried herself to sleep nightly about ever since!

We live in a beautiful, amazing world where often breakthrough and discovery is separated from a person by no more than their curiosity, persistence and strength of belief." William Forde: January 25th, 2016.

January 24th, 2016

24/1/2016

Thought for today:
"Most of my life has been lived never knowing too much about my family background, apart from what my mum and dad chose to tell me, and because my father never said much about his family's background, I depended largely upon what mum passed on. My mother used to tell me that though her birthday is registered as being January 22nd, she was in fact born on January 24th. Happy birthday mum. I can't believe that almost thirty years have elapsed since you died.I love you.

Because I had been born in Southern Ireland in the heart of IRA country, along with my parents and two of my younger siblings, there always seemed to be a short straw drawn whenever I asked about my grandparents' background or their parents. The family mystery also deepened when it came about that though I was the eldest of seven children born to the same parents, some had their surname Forde spelt with the 'e' and others didn't! This discrepancy in our surname was quickly noticed by our teachers who marked down all of the siblings whose signature was written without an 'e' for bad spelling and not knowing how to write their own name. This led them to feeling pressurised and to adopting an 'e' at the end of their surname before they left school.

I was born in Portlaw, County Waterford in the house of my maternal grandparents. My mother told me as a child, that her father had been 'on the run' with the rebels following the 1916 Easter uprising and every morning I passed a wall full of framed Irish rebels which adorned the long corridor. They were headed by Kevin Barry, a famous rebel who was imprisoned in Mountjoy Prison and the first Irish Republican to be executed by the British for his part in an Irish Volunteers operation which led to the death of three British soldiers.

A number of years ago, whilst in Kilkenny at the family funeral of a cousin, I met my cousin John. Before that meeting, John didn't know I existed. After the funeral of cousin Teresa, I was standing in a crowded Kilkenny pub where the funeral party had naturally progressed to after the graveside service. At my back I overheard two men talking about a football hero of theirs who played for Kilkenny and also for the Irish national soccer squad. 'The best soccer player I ever saw on the field was Paddy Forde' I heard one man tell the other. 'He was my uncle' replied the other man proudly, who I tapped on the back to draw his attention before saying, 'And he was my dad!'

My cousin John who lived in Wales was overjoyed to meet me. He had sadly told his wife earlier that day that now his cousin Teresa had died, he was the only Forde left alive. I'm glad to say that he was overjoyed to learn that he had a large number of Forde relatives living in West Yorkshire and since he rediscovered his family roots, he and his wife Lynne now keep in regular contact.

John's father and mine were the closest of brothers. John's surname was the Ford without an 'e'. Over the years that followed, we frequently ribbed each other as to who was living the life of a fraud using the wrong surname and whose marriage might be null and void and children illegitimate as a consequence of supplying inaccurate information to the Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths?

In October 2015, my daughter Rebecca showed me a family tree which her maternal grandfather, whose newfound hobby is genealogy, had recently researched. It felt like I was on that popular television programme, 'Who do you think you are?' as the murky waters of my past revealed some surprises. I discovered that my paternal grandfather had been born in England, joined the British Army and was posted to Ireland where he lived thereafter. His army service resulted in him receiving not medals of distinctinction, but a prison sentence for 'Desertion' from the British Army. We never knew if it was because he had changed his sympathies from the British Crown to the IRA or whether he'd just had enough of army life and peeling spuds and decided to leg it. The records show that he was subsequently incarcerated in Mountjoy Prison; that hallowed jail which had held the Irish rebel, Kevin Barry many years earlier. I couldn't say that it was the same cell from which Kevin Barry made his final walk to meet his executioner; but it could have been! The prison records and a later census showed that when he entered Mountjoy Prison, my paternal grandfather's surname was registered as being Ford without an 'e', but upon his release, the letter 'e' was instantly and mysteriously adopted by him and the new family surname magically became Forde with an 'e'. So it seems that I have been spelling my surname wrong for the whole of my life however accurately/inaccurately my birth was registered; but I'm not changing the spelling of it now, having owned it for 73 years!

When my parent's seven children were born, the ones that my mother registered were given no 'e' whilst the ones my father registered were! I should have guessed that if one of my parents was telling the whole truth, it would have been my mother! Upon examining the family tree further, I learned that despite being the eldest of seven children, that for over seventy years, the sister I'd been calling Eileen all of her life had in fact been named 'Eile' on her birth certificate. My other siblings had always invariably referred to her as Eile and each time I heard this, I just put it down to some short-handed lazy practice they'd picked up. The reason I called her Eileen is because that is the name my mother always addressed her by, and having done so for seventy years now, if it was good enough for the mum who gave birth to her, then it remained good enough for me! It is a puzzle though why mum should have Christened her Eile yet called her Eileen for the rest of her life, although less of a puzzle I imagine, being a mama's boy, why I should have listened to mum all my life and ignored my other six siblings!

It's a real mixed up world we Irish live in, when one thinks about it. No wonder the English have never able to conquer the Irish on the battlefield. It isn't because of the proneness of the Irish to hide in bushes during skirmishes whenever they fired upon the enemy; rather that they kept changing sides and changing name, making it impossible for anyone to know and and keep track of who was friend or foe! Happy birthday Mum xxx" William Forde: January 24th, 2016.

January 23rd, 2016.

23/1/2016

Thought for today:
'Come home Daddy, please come home' by William Forde: Copyright: January, 2016.

'How much hurt can a torn tear hold?
How much love can a heart unfold?
How much blood can a war contain?
How many letters 'til you're home again?
How long must I wait 'til you return?
How much longer must I yearn
for you back home again, Daddy?'

Copyright William Forde: January 23rd, 2016.

January 22nd, 2016.

22/1/2016

Thought for today:
"A few months ago I reached my 73rd birthday; a landmark that I would never have attained had I kept on smoking tobacco. Between the ages of eleven and sixty, I smoked cigarettes daily. The only bad thing that ever resulted from the closeness I shared with my mother was that she was a chain smoker and gave me the first puff of her cigarette when I was eleven years old, besides turning a blind eye when I used to buy the odd cigarette from the local tobacconist. Ironically, the only bad thing resulting from the close relationships I shared with my own children was that in earlier years of their development, I too often smoked thoughtlessly in their presence whilst illogically verbally discouraging them from ever adopting the habit. If there is a distinction to be drawn between my behaviour and that of my mother's towards our respective children, it is this. Given all the scientific disinformation coming from the bogus tobacco research findings at the time, she may not have known the harm she was doing by her example, while I had no such excuse to fall back upon. At worse, deep inside I knew or at best, I should have known, but preferred to allow fact to be transformed into suspicion.

When I first started smoking, many adults would invariably turn a blind eye to a young person having a puff and shop keepers would split a pack of five Woodbines and sell cigarettes to youngsters for two pence each on their way to school. This was a time when society had been generally led to believe that smoking reduced tension and had a considerable calming effect upon an individual.

If one examined newsreels at the time about soldiers in the war, it would have been easier to find a baboon who'd been awarded a Victoria Cross for bravery in battle than to have found a serving soldier without a cigarette drooping from his mouth!

I was in hospital a good many times as a child and I still recall patients smoking in their beds. I remember doctors smoking pipes on their rounds and patients waiting in doctor's surgeries as they coughed away amid the fumes of Woodbines. I never saw one of my favourite film stars seduce the romance in his life without first sharing the same cigarette with her in an act of social foreplay and can still remember doctors and eminent broadcasters chain smoking on television programmes as a matter of course.

During my early years of smoking in public, cinema owners engaged in the practice of pretending to consider the comfort of the non-smoker in their establishments by having the smokers sit on one side of the theatre and the non-smokers on the other. I don't know which bright spark thought up that one! Thinking back now to those days when one smoked at the table between courses, shocks me to the core. I find it hard to imagine that non-smokers allowed the smoking lobby to ruin their lives for far too long without throwing buckets of water over them at the first sight of smoke emanating from their gills. Also, I think I'd rather be asked to clean a toilet basin than wash out an overfilled ashtray, let alone be expected to kiss a woman who smoked and feel romantic about the experience!

Throughout my years of smoking over twenty fags on a good day and forty on a stressful one, I was forever employing my good brain to defy logic by refuting the possibility of ill-health and the likelihood of an earlier death as a consequence of my smoking habit. However many examples were cited to me of smokers dying in their early fifties, I'd come back with constant references to 'so and so' who'd smoked sixty Capstan full strength daily and lived passed their hundredth year before getting run over by a number 57 bus in Clapham. Even experiencing two heart attacks at the age of 58 years still wasn't enough inducement for me to break this dangerous habit. I still preferred to rely upon my unwavering belief in the constancy of 'fate' to that of 'fact.'

I was sixty years old when I eventually gave up smoking altogether and I only did so then after I finally admitted to myself that 'I was addicted to the weed' and as such, I was no longer in control of my own body and was just as pathetic as some drug addict injecting their bloodstream daily with harmful toxins in order to get a high.

Being a person who liked to be in control, once I got it into my head that the tobacco weed was controlling me and not me, it, that was the last straw! My ego just couldn't take it a moment longer and I stopped, cold turkey. Since the tobacco haze has cleared, it is now easy to see that I was certainly killing myself through a habit that me and my loved ones had paid dearly for during earlier years. However, like all meaningful insight, awareness needs to be self realised and not hammered home by another! Telling me to give up before I'd decided to do so under my own steam, would only result in me smoking an extra fag in sheer defiance!.

I would just say four things to any smoker today who wants to stop being an addict to tobacco. (1)When you decide to quit, do it for yourself. (2)Don't deceive yourself that there is such a thing as being able to cut down your regular intake to a mere few cigarettes smoked daily on a long term basis, as the strength of the addiction is far greater than your will power to hold back its inevitable advancement once more. (3)Never forget that though you have stopped smoking tobacco, you will stay a 'tobacco addict' for the rest of your life and will never be any farther than one cigarette away from starting up the habit again!

Finally, never underestimate the pulling power of the weed. That desired mood alteration that a smoker gets with that first cigarette of the day is no less powerful than the high feeling one gets when you are in love. Just as 'being in love' can create a blindness to all other possibilities than what you want to believe, and preventing you seeing what is beyond your nose, so does being hooked on smoking!

Just as The Platters informed us back in my days of wild youth with a few lines of their hit song:
'They said someday you'll find
all who love are blind.
Oh when your heart's on fire
you must realise
smoke gets in your eyes.'"
William Forde: January 22nd, 2016.

https://youtu.be/vfBboBz3yoc

January 21st, 2016.

21/1/2016

Thought for today:
"I never recall as a child, seeing other children fly kites which had been bought. In the 50s, we made our own kites. The skin of our kites were made from brown paper, but what we made flew, besides providing me and my friends with many hours of fun on a windy day.

In fact, come to think of it, brown paper was used for virtually everything between 1940 and 1955. Parcels were wrapped in it, all shop owners used it to wrap up their sold goods and for a few unlucky households who knew austerity, it was even used in the outside privy. Before I was seven years old, I even believed it to be the chief material used to make the wings of planes in the First World War!

Flying kites was as much a part of character building in my youth as all the other games we played as children. From construction through to achieving the looping of the loop required the skills of many an engineer in the making, with a dexterity of hand needed to make it soar instead of crash to the ground. What kite flying taught us was how to take hold of life, how to control it, how to let go and how to have fun; ingredients of happiness sadly lacking in many today.

Self-control is the gate way to success and it also the chief element of self-respect. We can have all the talent in the world, but without the ability to harness it and use it appropriately it will prove of little worth. It was Benjamin Franklin who said, 'If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins......Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society.'

Control is an essential and powerful thing. I could never fully trust a person to control others who cannot control themselves, as he who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered self is mightier still.

Loosening the reins and letting go is also an essential skill to learn, both as an individual and also as a parent. Kite flying teaches a parent how to give freedom of expression to one's children at crucial stages of their development; enough freedom to test out new things and make use of their wings, while keeping them in your sight and influence to direct. It is only natural that one moment they will tug at your heartstrings and your inclination will be to pull them ever closer to you; at other times they will get too headstrong and pull away from you. When they pull away from you, resist the urge to yank them back, otherwise they will resent you for it and you might finish up losing them altogether. Try to control their direction too much and they will break free from your grasp or at worst come crashing to the ground beyond repair. Gentleness mixed with firmness and control blended with freedom of expression is the only way to enable them to loop the loop.

Having fun is an essential ingriedient to life and happiness. Not to be able to laugh at the world or laugh at oneself is to take life too dam seriously. There is no fear when one is having fun, no regret and no depression. Never grow too old that you completely lose touch of your childhood ways and never be afraid to jump in puddles for the sheer hell of it or be too timid to throw caution to the wind!

I bet you never thought that flying kites could be so much fun as well as being educational, did you? For those of you who have children or grandchildren aged 5-9 years old, I recommend my children's story 'Annie's Kite' which can be heard for free by following the link to my website. The story was produced for radio transmission initially and is read by the television actress Brigit Forsyth of 'The Likely Lads.' The book is also available from amazon or www,lulu in hard copy with all profits going to charity. The late Dame Catherine Cookson and her husband Tom who were good friends of mine loved the 'Action Annie' stories so much that they paid for a limited-edition publication of the twelve stories with the book profits going to a children's charity." William Forde: January 21st, 2016. .

http://www.fordefables.co.uk/action-annie.html

January 20th, 2016.

20/1/2016

Thought for today:
"Having been placed back on fortnightly blood transfusions again since my blood count after the Christmas break became critically low, I return to hospital for another much needed couple of pints today.

Though I have had some additional ailments to contend with over the past year since I finished nine months of cancer treatment, such as pneumonia, a leg ulcer, gout, arthritic knees and one hand operation (the second hand operation scheduled for six days time), the year has witnessed so many more good experiences for me than bad. For a start, my children have shown me many times over that they are my children, my family, my family and my friends, my friends.

One of my sons, whose marriage ended in divorce, found love again with a lovely woman after a lengthy period of unsettledness. Another son of mine out in Australia with two degrees in economics decided to give up his regular, well-paid job as a city accountant and instead work four or five part-time jobs which provides him with half the wage, longer working hours, but double his job satisfaction. He is currently on a six week meditational trip to India. My only daughter gave up her highly stressed job on medical grounds fifteen months ago. She subsequently left her London flat and moved back in with her mother to live for the next year. After Christmas, she felt well enough to secure another highly paid, highly stressed job back in London, along with another flat and has since returned to her life of independent living. In her time off work, she learned to drive and pass her test, although her first car was recently written off and towed away for scrap after the December floods while spending Christmas in Haworth with me and Sheila.

Despite their difficulties over the past year, I am extremely proud of all my children and their refusal to stay down when knocked down. My parents were like that, my siblings are like that, I'm like that and so are my children!

The past year has also blessed me with the discovery of so many new friends, many of them made through Facebook. There was once a time in my life when I would have been keen to make the clear distinction between 'acquaintance' and 'friend', but would have to admit today of not being as quick or as confident in my discrimination, especially from my Facebook contacts. Being a friend means being there for you when needed. A friend sticks close and does not fall away.

One of the things which has been reinforced for me over the past year, is just how resilient and strong in the face of the harshest of adversities many of my Facebook friends have been as they have negotiated their own personal ordeals with health issues, relationship breakups, family heartbreak, crippling injury or the death of close ones. I have learned through my many private and more public communications with them, that like my parents, siblings, and children, they also refuse to stay down when life's events knocks them for a six! It looks like good people are all made of the same stuff, be they parents, siblings, children or friends." William Forde: January 20th, 2016.

January 19th, 2016.

19/1/2016

Thought for today:
"Let's make a pact. However bad things in the future may get, let's promise to always stick together through thick and thin and always be there for each other. Let's face it, Buster, we're best friends. I know that to be so because you bring out the best in me, and you're the only one who'll tell me when my face is dirty and lick it clean. Ever since I first found you abandoned near the tip last January and brought you home, we've never stopped loving and caring for each other.You're my bestest friend and when I found you, I also found me." William Forde: January 19th, 2016.

January 18th, 2016.

18/1/2016

Thought for today:
"Over the past twenty years, the pharmaceutical industry has moved very far from its original high purpose of discovering and producing useful new drugs. It has now primarily become a marketing machine to sell drugs; many of dubious benefit. The drug industry is one of the most powerful in the world which few political bodies dare ignore.

Today, many people take pills for all manner of reason. After having had two heart attacks twelve years ago, I take pills today that essentially keep me alive. I know of many more folk who also depend on medication to improve their life and manage dangerous mood swings, but have come across even more people still whose lives have been severely diminished or ruined by pharmacuetical influence and the overprescribing by doctors too busy to talk to their patients.

My own view as far as the taking of bad or unnecessary pills are concerned is that addiction isn't really about substance. I believe that one isn't addicted to the substance, but more to the alteration of mood that the substance brings.

Fortunately, there are many ways to bring about the same good feelings produced by pill popping and altering one's mood. For sixty years now, I have practiced and benefited from Relaxation methods and have taught them for over fifty years. My wife Sheila teaches Yoga and some of my good friends teach Transcendental Meditation. I include a Relaxation tape I made over thirty years ago which can be freely downloaded from my website. This tape has never been sold and was produced to give away. Since 1973, between 5,000 and 10,000 have been freely given away.
http://www.fordefables.co.uk/relax-with-bill.html

In my own experience, I have found that what we constantly search for is usually found within ourselves. He who looks outside self, dreams, while he who looks inside, eventually awakes." William Forde: January 18th, 2016.

January 17th, 2016.

17/1/2016

Thought for today:
"'That's it! I've had enough! I want out of this life. I don't care anymore! I just want all this heartache and pain to end!'

So many times in my career as a Probation Officer have I come across someone at the end of their tether; someone who'd had enough and just didn't care for the continuation of their life anymore. The saddest thing of all I found, was just how good such people were in spite of the bad situation they were part of; just how strong they'd been putting up with it for so long despite them feeling failures for not being able to cope. The overwhelming majority of them had been to hell and back and had given 'their all' trying to make things better for another or attempting to carry on going when they felt there wasn't the slightest acknowledgement or appreciation in response. They had gone that far into their tunnel of unhappiness, they no longer believed they'd ever emerge from it.

I found the majority of these people highly sensitive, genuine and honest to the core. There was little that they wouldn't confide to another about themselves if they trusted and found their listener kind and empathetic. The moment they felt betrayed however, by one whom they'd invested trust in or felt rejected and devalued, they revealed their worse side and became the type of person you neither wanted to know or be close to.

It was at this stage that many started to seriously engage in the process of hurting themselves and they also stopped caring about how many people they happened to hurt along the way, despite it being against their nature to hurt at all! After hurting self and others, most would become overwhelmed with feelings of guilt and remorse and their future lives would be filled with constant pain, unresolved situations of permanent regret, self recriminations and misunderstandings. Being fuelled with a hatred against the one whom they felt had betrayed and rejected them, they started to hate themselves and loathe their very existence. Feeling forever bruised and constantly let down by others, they invariably ended up broken hearted, forgotten souls and greatly misunderstood.

Like the Archangel Lucifer cast down from heavenly grace, they effectively become Angels with broken wings. The longer I live, the more I understand that 'loving life' means 'loving self' and 'loving others.' All three loves are indivisible. The simple truth is that we can all fly when we feel loved, but when we feel cast down, we cannot!" William Forde: January 17th, 2016.

January 16th, 2016.

16/1/2016

Thought for today:
"Having tried and failed many times to have children, this couple resorted to IVF treatment and were eventually successful in parenting six healthy children, whom once asleep, they leave asleep. Like sleeping lions, the peace of their surroundings is best left alone, for when they wake all hell is capable of breaking out and unlike the items you came home with from M&S, they cannot be taken back for a refund!

There is in my mind no substitute for family and my heart goes out to anyone whose family relationships are poor. A family can be a haven in a sometimes heartless world. As the eldest of seven children, family is and will always be important to me. From all my experiences, parenthood provided me with some of the happiest moments of my life. I don't know what makes a good parent anymore than anyone else, but I will stand by one of my late mother's sayings when she said,

'Never forget, Billy, your children will become what you are, so be what you want them to become.'

So if there is any newly married couple out there thinking of starting a family and wondering 'when' is the best time to have children, early in your marriage or later, my advice is this: 'Don't have children until you cannot stand not to. That way they are more likely to be wanted and prepared for when they come.'" William Forde: January 16th, 2016.

January 15th, 2016.

15/1/2016

Thought for today:
"There was once two sisters who went everywhere together, did everything in unison and even spoke the same words at the same time and completed each other's sentences as though the words had been born within the same breath. They lived in the same house, shared the same room, slept in the same bed and wore the same clothes. Many who knew them believed that the sisters were so close that they thought the same thoughts and experienced the same moment. Being too old, now almost one hundred and three years of age, they no longer had a mother alive to turn to, but they had all they wanted out of life; they had each other!

On the day they died (which of course was within the same hour and day), when each of their personal belongings were gone through, an unopened envelope was found inside each of their correspondence boxes. Inside each envelope was a letter written by each of the women to her twin sister over ninety years earlier. Each letter had the name of the other sister on the envelope, along with the written instructions, 'Not to be opened until after my death.'

The most curious thing however was the nature of each letter's contents and it made the finder wonder if the sisters had actually lived one life or two and whose memories belong to whom?

As to the contents of each letter............. well that's a story for another day as I only thought of this opening to an unwritten book theme fifteen minutes ago as I ate my fried egg for breakfast and saw this wonderful picture of two old ladies pasted on Facebook and wanted some words to accompany the image and stir your imagination out of sheer devilment.

Come to think of it, real life isn't too different to that of fiction found in the writings of any author's page. None of us really knows from getting out of bed on a morning where our broken bodies, curious minds, wild imaginings and wandering feet will take us before we go back to sleep at night time or indeed, down which path our dreams and nightmares may take us until we wake again. In fact, can we truly say that we are awake now to the possibilities of our life or are not these thoughts we are currently experiencing but part of an eternal dream from which we may never be aroused; that is until we wake up and smell the coffee and start thinking upon eating another fried egg?" William Forde: January 15th, 2016.

January 14th, 2016.

14/1/2016

Thought for today:
"I have always been against blood sports like fox hunting, yet cannot deny that many farmers and country folk genuinely perceive the fox as being nothing less than vermin that should be stamped out at every opportunity.

The impact of foxes on agriculture is a controversial issue. In general, farmers perceive any predator as a pest because of losses suffered by their livestock. However, over the past two years, several studies on the economic role of foxes to agriculture have highlighted some interesting findings which justify more the existence of foxes in country life as opposed to their demise.

Each year, rabbits cause an estimated £120 million of damage to agriculture in Britain. Foxes are estimated to cause £12 million of damage, but this needs to be put in perspective because rabbits are the main prey of foxes in rural areas. By eating rabbits, it is estimated that foxes provide an indirect economic benefit to farmers of at least £7 million annually. Because fox benefits offset their costs, foxes are probably economically neutral to farmers. Research on lamb, poultry and piglets shows that losses to foxes are, in general, low and that a number of simple husbandry methods could effectively reduce predation considerably.

When I first started writing books for children in 1990, I was determined to write upon themes that many children would find meaningful to their everyday lives and feelings which they found difficult to deal with. Such feelings vary from child to child and include emotions and experiences such as bullying, discrimination, loss and bereavement etc.

I recalled as a child, my own greatest failing was a proneness to steal. Many times I tried to stop and many times I failed to grow honest hands. Like the proverbial addict who has grown accustomed to their sinful practice, I needed many attempts to stop stealing before I finally managed to stop altogether. Then, when I did stop, I didn't get the credit I craved and felt bitterly cheated that not everyone gave me the benefit of the doubt and believed I had reformed.

I have always held the view that everyone deserves 'a second chance' and based upon my own inadequate record of early reform, I also knew that many creatures needed second chances many times before they could take advantage of the offer. Providing others with 'second chances' was also the prime reason for me choosing to work as a Probation Officer during the larger part of my life.

One of my earliest books which was to establish my credentials as a writer was about a fox whose favourite food was feathered chicken and whose daily pastime was chasing lambs round and around until they dropped down dead. The book was called, 'Sleezy the Fox' and was so successful that the late Princess Diana phoned me up and asked to have a copy sent to her so that she may read the four stories to her two sons at bedtime, the then 9 and 7 year old Princes William and Harry. I must acknowledge harbouring a secret smugness in later years, knowing that one of my children's books became bedtime reading by the next King of England as he listened to the story from his sweet mother's mouth.

In the stories, Sleezy; this thieving and murderous fox became the bane of every farmer's life for miles around, yet try as they may to catch the clever fox and whatever trap they lay, none proved smart enough to catch Sleezy; until a kindly farmer who believed in giving all creatures 'second chances' arrived in the village and eventually caught the fox. This kind farmer had agreed to catch the fox, providing he could decide the fox's fate once caught.

All four 'Sleezy the Fox' stories are available for purchase in e-book format from www.smashwords.com or in hard copy from www.lulu.com or www. amazon.com with all profits from their sale going to charity, along with the £200.000 given to charity from the sales of my books since 1990. For any child who is unable to read or would like to hear a recorded abridged version of the four stories recorded by professional readers/actors, they can be freely accessed from my website by following the link below :
http://www.fordefables.co.uk/sleezy-the-fox.html

These four fox stories are suitable for the 7-11 year old reader. I would also designate them recommended reading for anyone who is inclined to believe in the sayings, 'Once a thief, always a thief' or 'A leopard cannot change its spots.' I would also highly recommend these Sleezy the Fox stories to those so called countryside conservatives who believe in the practice of chasing foxes with a pack of hounds across our beautiful rural land, and upon the dogs cornering their prey, inciting their hounds to rip open the fox's throat and to tear the trapped creature asunder like a rag doll; all in the reported interest of countryside preservation and vermin control.

Everyone deserves 'a second chance.' With a few exceptions such as evil dictators and the cruellest of despots like Hitler and his ilk, along with twisted violators of innocent children, I genuinely believe that the overwhelming majority of us are bigger than our worst action and are open to reform." William Forde: January 14th, 2016.

January 13th, 2016.

13/1/2016

Thought for today:
"So many times in life I have come across people (usually females) who feel themselves so lacking in confidence about their looks and personality that they fail to see their own beauty which they spend their whole lives hiding away from the world. They are in effect hiding their light under a bushel as the saying from the bible goes.

In biblical terms, a bushel was a bowl and not some evergreen shrub, but nevertheless the message remains the same. Until we are able to show ourselves to the world, warts and all, and like ourselves, it is most unlikely that the world will be able to see and accept us for the good person we are.

For most of my life I have held some curiosity for the wide variations of opinion that different men and women, different parts of society and different countries have held towards dress and nudity. I have always believed that nudity of itself is most natural and that it is mankind that is capable of making it unnatural, immoral, indecent or improper. Indeed, part of me is instantly annoyed when the public seeks to make a big issue out of a mother breast feeding her baby outside her home, especially when the feeding is done discreetly within public gaze.

As for 'getting an eyeful', seeing a woman naked as opposed to one partly clothed has never sexually aroused me; neither has any natural part of human functioning offended my sensibilities. While half the world is starving and a large chunk of it is at war, homeless or without gainful work, my time spent worrying about polite manners, proper speech and political correctness is never going to command centre stage of my attention.

While I readily recognise that I am not a perfect replica of many men and women, I do have a healthy respect for the mind and body of myself and those of all others. Where does this come from, you might ask? I have not the faintest of doubt in my own mind; it is from my own background and upbringing.

I was born the eldest into a large family of seven children, where room space was always at a premium and at a time when where there was nowhere to hide and nothing unusual to think twice about if you occasioned to see the naked or partially dressed bodies of your brothers and sisters; or even mum or dad as they bathed in the tin tub in front of the lounge fire. In fact I was born, not in hospital, but the spare bedroom of my grandparents house in County Waterford, Ireland. Later conversations with my mother led me to discover that two female neighbours present at my home birth observed my nakedness as soon as I entered the world. Naturally, they kept quiet about all they saw until I was 18 years old, when they assessed my embarrassment to have reached its highest and a few bottles of stout too many had been imbibed and a laugh at my expense desired.

During my childhood years it was usual for many rural families of the time to rear hens and other animals to help feed the family and therefore I knew all about the birds and the bees long before my contemporaries at school and all those other children who'd been born in towns had been stung by aging curiosity. I recall as a growing child never being afraid to ask my mother any question under the sun, however personal, along with her not being fearful to provide me with an honest and unvarnished answer. I know now that such an honest relationship between mother and son to be extremely rare, but it was one from which I always valued and have always benefited from.

Today, there is no issue or question that I would duck if the need presented itself with either children, siblings, family members or friends and though my body be broken, bent and battered by years of accidents, life encounters and personal abuse, I have never been ashamed of it, nor ever will be." William Forde: January 13th, 2016.

January 12th, 2016.

12/1/2016

Thought for today:
"If there was but one message that I could pass on to all young persons who are determined to do well in life it would be this; 'There is no shortcut to success, only those you imagine. You only get out of life and relationships what you are prepared to put into them, and you only have something to put in if you've gained anything from your experiences along the way.'

The simple truth is that sort cuts usually lead towards long delays.Those wanting the benefits of a 'quick fix' in life will usually find their elevator to success to be constantly 'out of order.' Unless they are prepared to put in the effort by using the staircase one step at a time, they will never reach the top.

There is nothing wrong to be found in taking the easiest route possible when it is demonstrably the best road to take. If however, you wish to make your mark in this world and stand out from the crowd, learn to exercise choice in what you do more often than chance. Leaving all to chance is flawed in the extreme. Getting on in life means learning not to put things off. You frequently need to get out of your comfort zone and get involved with life around you, however unfamiliar or threatening it may seem.

Learn to value friendship; invite people into your heart instead of ignoring them and always remember that to forget is sometimes 'forgivable,' but to forgive is always 'unforgettable.' Never cut corners with your important relationships. Whereas it hurts to love someone and not be loved in return, it will hurt you and them even more to love another and never find the time to tell them how you feel. There is no greater sadness than holding on to the loving words and deeds you never delivered to those you love, as this will only make you a victim of permanent regret.

So many times in my life have I heard people recount their childhood years and never once having had a hug or been told 'I love you' by mum or dad. This crucial absence of affection in their lives that most of us take for granted, is capable of producing the greatest feelings of loss, creating the biggest physical handicap and making the deepest emotional scar that can never be erased. The greatest blessing my mother ever bestowed upon her seven children was to never once allow us to start and end our day without giving us a kiss and telling us, 'I love you.'

Never forget that the people you take for granted today, may turn out to be the ones you need tomorrow, so don't be stingy with your time when dealing with the folk in your life who truly matter. The very best of gifts you can bestow is your undivided thought and fullest of attention.

Finally, the best reason I know that leads me to advise against seeking short cuts to success is that this road is invariably too bumpy and overcrowded with fortune hunters, glory seekers and chasers of celebrity. Far better if you want to stand out, not to follow this crowd, unless of course, you want to hide yourself away in the middle of their motorway madness of needing to get there quick at all cost, along with their mental mediocrity and road rage when they are brought to a standstill." William Forde: January 12th, 2016.

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January 11th, 2016.

11/1/2016

Thought for today:
"Once you know where to look for beauty, you will find it everywhere. You need not look far to make the discovery for it is in you and all around you, it is because of you; it is you!" William Forde: January 11th, 2016

January 10th, 2016.

10/1/2016

“You can say what you like, but some old-fashioned things like fresh air and sunshine are hard to beat. If ever you are feeling low or worried, a good walk in the English countryside can put the bounce back in your stride. I cannot imagine a more happier upbringing than to grow up in the countryside and to become acquainted with the notion that animals and the land are as important a part of our environment as is mankind.

Being born in the country gives one a truer perspective on learning to survive and an ability to focus on the positive. As the author John Steinbeck wrote about the farmers in the U.S.A. who lived from hand to mouth during the those long dry summers of the 1930's depression : 'And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.'

From all the authors whose writing I love, Thomas Hardy will always remain a firm favourite of mine. It was through the reading of his books and his countryside characters that I learned there are no 'secondary characters' in a book anymore than there are in real life, and that everyone matters. For purpose of narrative and plot, it may be essential to have a hero or heroine to focus upon the central theme, but it is the characters who surround them which bring the story to life who I have always found the most interesting. I simply love all the country characters he fills his pages with and how he contrasts their ways, language and attitudes to the gentry and the town people.

In Great Britain today, there is undoubtedly a housing shortage which is unhealthy for the homeless and wasteful for the economy of the country. Most workers earning good salaries are pushed out of the housing market due to inflated house prices and many thirty-year-old singletons who cannot afford to get married are still waking up in the bedrooms of their childhood. Being a small overcrowded island, it must only be a matter of time before all green-belt planning laws restrictions are gradually removed and houses are erected upon green fields, meadows and any pastured land which provide eternal vista and panoramic spectacle to all nature lovers and patriots of Jerusalem.

So enjoy the countryside while ye may children before it becomes a thing of your past. Never forget that God made England and its countryside, but man made the town." William Forde: January 10th, 2016.

https://youtu.be/6S-AOFgb59A

January 9th, 2016.

9/1/2016

Thought for today:
"No matter where you travel in this world or wherever you go, you'll always yearn to come back to the place you know; the place you sprang from. The reason is simple; one can find no strangeness in the home where you were born, in the place where you belong.

I remember emigrating to Canada in the cold winter of 1963. This was the very first time I left home and I didn't know if I'd ever be back. My father had gone off to work earlier that morning as he was never one for saying goodbyes and my mother cried buckets as I stepped into the taxi and looked back. Her last words to me that frosty December morning were the most comforting and reassuring ones any mother could ever tell one of her children leaving home for the first time : ' I love you Billy. I'll be here when you come back.'

Call me a sentimentalist if you must, but I love the thought of coming home to someone I love. In fact, I love coming home period! Even when I am away for the weekend or on a fortnight's holiday, however posh the place may be, I have never found a bed I can sleep in more soundly than my own bed. The food may be great, but it still isn't a patch on the fare that my fair Sheila serves me daily.

I suppose I'm just a homing bird who will never forget his roots or his way back home; a parochial pigeon of fanciful flight. I include below a favourite song of mine that always reminds me of home when I'm away." William Forde: January 9th, 2016.

https://youtu.be/1vrEljMfXYo

January 8th, 2016.

8/1/2016

Thought for today:
"In every living thing there is the desire to love and be loved in return and the strongest and most lasting of all love is the love which is not afraid to show its vulnerability and demonstrate its fragility. When we love, we reflect the best we have to offer and can more readily recognise oneself in another.

Finding love is nothing less than life's treasure chest revealing its dearest contents. I learned very early on in my life that without having someone or something to love in this world, that nothing seems to make sense or is born of purpose. Knowing that you are loved by someone gives you constant strength to do all that requires doing, while loving another gives you the courage to face all that life brings your way.

Love is often best when it lands on you unexpectedly from someone whom you never considered friend or close companion. When I first met my wife Sheila, I neither found her attractive of face nor saw in her the woman with whom I would gladly spend the rest of my life. For her part, though she found me interesting, she was naturally concerned about the 14 year age gap between us, especially as she had found herself widowed in her early 50s. We can honestly say that it wasn't love at first sight, though there was a strange sense of feeling that touched both of us which wouldn't let go when we parted. Only one day apart from that first meeting between us, and each knew that we had met someone whom stirred our emotions in such manner that they would never settle again until we next met.

Unknown to each of us during that first meeting, we secretly fell in love and we both smiled because we knew it to be so. We inwardly knew that love heals the broken bark of all past hurt and bruised emotions. We instinctively knew that love is brave and when you love back, it is also beautiful. It was the rarest of feelings we had ever known; it was love in the making and it happened in Haworth on December 15th, 2010. We suspended all doubt and placed our faith on a higher plane that neither of us had previously dared to reach out for. We dared to love a love that was more than love; we dared to live a life full of love, of physical, emotional and spiritual dimension which offers much more satisfaction than any creature needs to feel fulfilled.

It was in that moment that I realised that love never happens in an instant; that cupid never strikes within that first exchange of glance. Love creeps up on you when your emotions are least guarded and turns your life upside down before you know it's happened. It warms all waking moments, lightens the heaviest of potential problems, it opens wide your capacity to dream and makes all manner of things possible that you previously thought impossible. You start to feel what it's like to walk on clouds and you begin to see colours and shades of personality and positivism which outshine any rainbow hitherto seen.

But the greatest of love always brings with it a sweet agony; the time when the physical presence of your sweetheart departs this life before you and leaves you with nought but happy times of reflection and fond memories to keep your affections warm in the coldness of winter. It is at this time when you least care about the present that the spiritual dimension of the love you shared with your dearly departed gives you sustenance for the future and the prospect of eternal reunion with your soul mate." William Forde: January 8th, 2016.

January 7th, 2016.

7/1/2016

Thought for today:
"First, thank you so much for your support yesterday. I was overwhelmed by your gratitude and messages of good will and am pleased to say that I feel much better today after my recent blood transfusion. I spent a large part of my day reading yesterday in the hospital and I decided to make that activity the focus of this morning's 'Thought for today.'

Reading is one of those few pleasures which is capable of temporarily taking you out of your world for a brief period and placing you in another. While I have been with many beautiful women in my life, none who didn't keep a book close by would ever interest me long enough to want to know her better. People who never read scare me with the scale of their loss. Just show me what you read and I'll tell you who you are.

Ever since I was laid up in hospital for nine straight months as a 12 year old boy, books entered my life and have always stayed in it. Reading gave me someplace to go at a time when I was compelled through injury to stay where I was in my hospital bed.

Through his character of Robin Hood in his book, 'The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire' penned in 1883 by the American writer, Howard Pyle, I first came across the concept of the possibility of being 'both thief and good man' before my twelfth year of life. Being a budding thief at the time, this book became instrumental in helping me not to write myself off as a sinner without redemption.

Next, came one of the books that was to probably influence my life more than any other, Victor Hugo's 'Les Miserables.' When I became introduced to Hugo's hero character, Jean Valjean; the noble peasant imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread who later became an escaped convict and Mayor and the most respectable and honest citizen in his town, I knew that 'reformation' for all mankind was possible whatever one's past. It was most probably this story that led me to become a Probation Officer for over twenty five years in life's twist of poacher turn gamekeeper. I never deceived myself why I was a better than the average Probation Officer, despite not having a degree at the time. It was my background that made me a good Probation Officer and not my brain. I learned more quickly to help people because we came from the same side of the track. You see, in the Probation Service, staffed mostly from the university ranks of the middle classes, they were never 'clients' to me. We may have sat at opposite sides of the desk, but never once did they stop being 'my people.'

Another influential book which shaped my attitude and life ever since first turning its pages was 'The Power of Positive Thinking' by the minister and author from Ohio, Norman Vincent Peale who was to blend psychology, psychiatry and religion in a manner that I found highly applicable to my life, then and since.

When I think back upon the sixty five books I have had published since 1990 for children, teenagers and adults, my ideas have sprung mostly from the fragmentation of the many book characters I have read about while my inspiration, themes and story lines have been nought more than the scribblings of my own life experiences, both good and bad.

One of the most common questions I have been asked as an author is undoubtedly, 'I'd love to write a book, but if I did, what would I write about?' My answer has never varied or ever would: 'Write what you know best about; yourself and your own experiences.'

One of the best moments one can have reading is when you come across something; a description, thought, feeling, attitude, belief, a way of looking at things which previously you had considered special and partculiar to only you. It is as though we read to learn that we are not alone. Suddenly you find your most special and secret thoughts written down by another person whom you've never met. They may have even been dead centuries before you were born and yet it is as though yours and their thoughts have transcended time, place and purpose as their hand comes out of the past to firmly shake yours as a new friend found among the pages.

Welcome to the world of books, the land of wild imaginations and cradle of dreams." William Forde: January 7th, 2016.