Blog Archives - FordeFables

Song For Today: 31st January 2020

31/1/2020

BREXIT

Today we leave the European Union. Any view I hold upon the matter, matters not. However, it would be churlish of me to allow such an important day in the pages of British History to be turned without any acknowledgement of its passing. Whether you were a ’Leaver’ or a ‘Remainer’ at the Referendum stage no longer matters as much as being able to positively move forward as an individual, a community, a country, and a British person. The nation now needs to heal and not have salt rubbed into its wounds by constantly living in and dwelling on the past. As a Southern Irish citizen who has lived in England for 73 years of my 77-year life, I love this country which has given me and my family the best of lives, and I wish it well in its future as an independent nation. I worry not how Brexit regards my own future status as a Southern Irish citizen and a British subject, as my security comes from within me, not without. We all can be proud of our country without the need to wrap ourselves in its National Flag or desiring to never see our flag fly higher than half-mast.

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 30th January 2020

30/1/2020

I dedicate my song today to two Facebook friends, Rita Power, who hails from Portlaw (the village of my birth) and currently lives in County Waterford in Ireland, and Chris Brennan from Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Both Rita and Chris celebrate their birthdays today. We wish them both a very happy day and trust that they will leave room for lots of cake and suitable refreshments. Thank you both for being my Facebook friends. Bill x

Today’s song is ‘You’re So Vain’. This song was written in 1971 by Carly Simon and was released in November 1972. It is one of the songs that Carly Simon is most identified with, and upon its release, it reached Number 1 in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The song is ranked at Number 92 on ‘Billboard’s Greatest Songs of All Time’. ‘You're So Vain’ was voted Number 216 in RIAA’S Songs of the Century’, and in August 2014, the UK's ‘Official Charts Company’ crowned it the ultimate song of the 1970s.

The song is a critical profile of a self-absorbed lover about whom Simon asserts "You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you." The title subject's identity has long been a matter of speculation, with Simon stating that the song refers to three men, only one of whom she has named publicly, actor Warren Beatty.

The song was initially entitled ‘Bless You, Ben’. The first words were: "Bless you, Ben. You came in when nobody else left off." Simon felt dissatisfied with the lyrics and put the song away until she attended a party one night where a famous guest appeared. A friend told Simon the male guest entered as if he was "walking onto a yacht". Simon incorporated the words into the melody of "Bless You, Ben" as she was composing on her piano, and the song took on a whole new meaning.

Before the song became a hit single in 1972, Simon told an interviewer that the song was about ‘men’ of a certain type, not a specific ‘man’. In 1983, she said the song was not about Mick Jagger who contributed uncredited backing vocals to it.

Over the years Simon has teased the people attempting to identify the ‘men’ the song was referring to. She divulged ‘letter clues’ and has claimed that the subject's name contains the letters ‘A, E, and R’ In August 2003, Simon agreed to reveal the name of the song's subject to the highest bidder of the ‘Martha’s Vineyard Possible Dreams Charity Auction’. With the top bid of $50,000, (Dick Ebersol, president of NBC Sports, and a friend of Simon), won the right to know the name of the subject of ‘You're So Vain’. A condition of the prize was that Ebersol would not reveal the name. In a 2007 interview, Warren Beatty said, "Let's be honest. That song was about me."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Let’s face it, folks, the song is about every vain man on the planet. I know from my own personal life experience that it was about me during the entirety of my teenage years, and if I am entirely truthful, up until my early thirties. In fact, if I was to identify the most objectional character flaw which I possess, a lack of modesty would have to come out at the top of the list.

While I must praise my mother for most of any good qualities of character I possess, I also hold her personally responsible for promoting a baser side of me. Two months into my mother’s pregnancy with me (I was her firstborn of seven children), she was courting my father who lived in County Kilkenny; thirty miles away. My mother lived at the home of her parents in Portlaw, County Waterford (the house where I would be born). She was the oldest of seven children born to her parents. My father would cycle into Portlaw once a week to meet my mum, behind her parent’s back.

At the time, only mum knew that she was pregnant. She had planned to tell my father when they next met and because she wasn’t yet showing that she was an expectant mother, she had not told her own parents. She planned to tell my maternal grandparents after informing my father.

One day, while my mum was doing some chores at her parent’s house, my mother told me that a visiting Romany traveller knocked on the back door. She was in the house alone and the Romany was selling pegs.

To understand the Irish, one must first accept that they are a race seeped in superstition, religion, little people, and prophecy. One of their oldest superstitions is ‘never to turn away a true Romany visitor to one’s home empty-handed’. Whether the Romany was touting their fortune-telling talents or wanting to sell the house occupier wooden pegs for the washing line, not to buy their product or engage their service, is tantamount to inviting bad luck and ill health for seven years.

The travelling peg-selling Romany gave my mother the pegs she’d bought for a silver sixpence. The Romany then said to my mother, “For an extra shilling, missus, I’ll tell you about the special child that you’re having!”. Her knowledge of my mother’s pregnancy took mum off guard and naturally, she wanted to hear all about this ‘special child’ of hers. So, mum told me that she gave the Romany traveller her last shilling.

Mum’s account of what follows went like this. The Romany told her she would have seven children in total and that her firstborn would be a son. The Romany also prophesised that mum’s first child would be ‘a special child’. Mum was over the moon. Which mother to be wouldn’t be, I ask you? Show me the mum who doesn’t believe that her child is ‘special’ and I’ll show you a part-time mother who has yet to bond with her offspring.

My parents were duly married (prior to my birth of course), but over the following three to four years, they were often separated. Dad was a man born to a large family who lived in extreme poverty. Dad left school at the age of twelve to earn a living. His educational learning was severely limited, but what my father lacked in educational attainment, he more than made up for in his ability to play football (or soccer as the Irish call it). Over the latter years that my parents courted, followed by their early marriage, my father played soccer for County Kilkenny, and he later went on to play for first and second teams of the Irish National Squad.

When I was aged 4 years old, mum, dad, me and my two sisters migrated to West Yorkshire. The purpose was to have a more prosperous life. I must point out that during the late 1930s and early 40s, Irish footballers who played for their country did not receive any wage. They did it out of national pride and the only cash they received was travelling expenses. Hard to believe today that the glory of playing sport at the highest level then seemed reward enough, especially when current professional footballers earn the wages of successful film stars and business moguls.

When we arrived in West Yorkshire, my dad got a job at the coal face as a miner and we lived in a one-bedroomed tied cottage. After five years in West Yorkshire, we moved to a brand-new council house with three bedrooms, a ceramic fixed bath (instead of a tin tub), and an inside and outside lavatory which didn’t have to be shared with the neighbours. After giving birth to seven children, mum eventually stopped being a baby production factory to increase the Catholic population count.

Every day of my childhood and teenage life, my mother told me she loved me, and never a day went by without her reminding me that I was ‘a special child’. As time went on my mother told and retold the tale to me about the peg-selling gypsy who had foretold my birth and had gone on to pronounce that I would be ‘a special child.’ Now, there isn’t a boy on the planet who wouldn’t like to be told by their mother daily as they grew up, that they were ‘special’, and I was no exception. My mother believed I was indeed ‘special’ and never let me forget it. In time, the more my mother believed I was ‘special’, and told me so, the easier it was for me to believe the Romany’s prophesy also.

As I grew up, every unusual thing that I did or which happened to me, was because ‘I was special’. When I was knocked down and run over by a large wagon, and survived horrendous injuries, my mother believed I lived because ‘I was special’. Having been told by the medics that I’d never walk again after damaging my spine, and then being able to walk again three years later, was because ‘I was special’. When my Mensa test score came back as being 142 at the age of twelve years, my mother said it was because ‘I was special’ and when I became the youngest shop steward in Great Britain at the age of 18 years, that also was because ‘I was special’. Becoming a Mill Manager at the age of 26 years merely reaffirmed my ‘specialness’ in my mother’s eyes. Everything good I did from my childhood until the day she died in 1986, my mother believed it was because ‘I was special’.

What a lucky son I was. I knew I was much loved by my mother and I grew up believing that I was indeed ‘special’. My ‘specialness’ had been purchased by a peg-selling Romany fortune teller for the price of sixpence in Portlaw during the year of 1942.’ My ‘specialness’ had then been conferred upon me by my mother as a growing and impressionable boy, and everything good or unusual I did in my life thereafter was (according to my mother), because ‘I was special’. I’m only glad today that the travelling peg-selling Romany didn’t tell my mother that her firstborn would be a reincarnation of the Christ child!

For the first twenty-five years of my life, I truly believed that ‘I was special’ and this feeling of ‘specialness’ that constantly resided inside me led me to do what I now believe was ‘ordinary’ things in the most ‘extraordinary’ and ‘special’ of ways. The second twenty-five period of my life between 25 and 50 led to me reaffirming that I was indeed ‘special’ and that my mother was accurate in her belief, BUT SO IS EVERYONE ELSE SPECIAL WHO LIVES AND BREATHES! The past twenty-seven years of my life (50-77) has led to me doing everything humanly possible to persuade, convince and reaffirm all people whom I am capable of influencing of their own unique ‘specialness’.

When I became an author and had many dozens of books published, Sheila persuaded me to write some romantic novels after we met. While I have stopped writing novels now, I did write and have another fourteen novels published under the umbrella title of ‘Tales from Portlaw’. The last book I wrote (and probably the last book I shall ever write) told the story of the Romany traveller who foresaw my birth when my mother was two months pregnant with me, and who prophesied to my mother that I would be the oldest of seven children and that I would be a ‘special’ child. It is fitting that an event that was to shape my life should form the subject of my final published book. The book is entitled ‘The Postman Always Knocks Twice’ and can be purchased in either e-book format or hardback copy from Amazon (all sale profits going to charity in perpetuity). The full story can also be freely read from accessing my website below:
http://www.fordefables.co.uk/lsquothe-postman-always-knocks…

Over my lifetime, and until I entered my thirties, I was highly opinionated. I believed myself to be better than I was. I held myself in high esteem and displayed a degree of confidence and a constant air of arrogance which puffed me with pride. I obviously possessed enough good character traits that offset my less favourable traits, otherwise, I would have proven wholly insufferable to my friends and work colleagues. At the time, I put these unattractive characteristics of mine down to having too high a standard in my work ethic and too unrealistic a level of expectation in others to succeed. I now realise that my high work standards and high expectations of clients to succeed were a sword with a double-edged blade. While, on one hand, it produced better than the average success rates with my clients, it must have also produced a greater level of disappointment in the feelings of those clients who had unable to significantly change for the better!

Back to my father’s influence on me. When I was a growing boy, I too became a football fanatic before my accident which crippled me at the age of eleven years of age. Inside our lounge was a framed photograph on the wall which I must have passed thirty times daily without knowing what it represented. I never knew until my tenth year of life that the man in the centre of the photograph holding the football was my father. Dad had been the Captain of the Irish Second National Soccer Squad. Dad later went on to play for the First Team of his Country.

On the day I discovered that my father had been an exceptional footballer, I was going to school and I was looking forward to the school football game later that afternoon. The school had recently purchased a new football strip but the shirt cost each team member £2: 10 shillings. This was a great deal of money for a poor household and amounted to 25 per cent of my father’s weekly wage then. Naturally, the fact that my parents couldn’t afford to buy me the new school football shirt in green and white square pattern disappointed me, but I understood. I was about to leave the house when my father asked me to hang about a minute. Dad then went upstairs and returned with a man’s green football shirt that had a white collar. It belonged to the Irish National Soccer team which he’d played for as a young man in his twenties. That shirt swamped me and went down beyond my knees, but that afternoon there wasn’t a boy footballer in the whole wide world who was as proud as me running aground the pitch in the team shirt of the Irish Soccer Squad.

Four months after this incident, my dad went on a rare two-week holiday on his own to the home of the Brennans’ in County Kilkenny, Ireland. Micky and Ann Brennan had effectively reared my father during the teenage years of his development, and it was while living with Micky Brennan and his wife, Ann, that my father was selected to play soccer for the ‘Kilkenny County Soccer Team’. Not only did my father play for County Kilkenny, but he was regarded as one of the best soccer players Kilkenny ever had. Over a four year period, my dad progressed from playing for his county to playing for his country, besides holding down a fulltime job during the weekdays.

Two weeks after my father returned from his rare Irish break, we received a newspaper cutting from the Kilkenny press. It told of my father’s recent return to Kilkenny. The press cutting it rated my father as one of Kilkenny’s best-ever footballers and it also reported that my father’s arrival in Kilkenny was celebrated by a brass-band reception which met him off the coach and marched him up to the home of the Ann and Micky Brennan where he was staying.

During the first nine years of my life, my mother would sometimes speak about having been a football widow most weekends of her early married life but never elaborated on this by informing me that my father had played soccer for his County before going on to play soccer for his country. And as to my father, he never said a word either about his footballing past. In fact, when he came back off his Irish holiday with the Brennans, when asked by my mum how his holiday break had gone, his reply was a simple “Okay”. If Micky and Ann Brennan hadn’t sent across the newspaper cutting of his Irish stay with them, informing us of the brass-band welcome he’d received upon his arrival in County Kilkenny, we never would have known the hero’s welcome and reception that the dignitaries of County Kilkenny gave him.

My father was the most modest man I ever knew; a trait, he sadly never passed down to me. I often wondered how such a modest and humble man could have spawned a son with the conceit I possessed and was always willing to wrap myself in. Instead, I was left to my mother’s influences and until my mid-twenties, I believed that I was simply the bee’s knees when it came to romance, fighting in the streets, dancing, singing, or simply ‘being me’. There wasn’t a vainer teenager than I was in the whole of West Yorkshire when I got dolled up for the Saturday Night Townhall Dance! The clothes I wore were the most fashionable; they were bespoke suits that had been cut and tailored from the most expensive cloth. I’d bought my male wardrobe with my own hard-earned money and I wore each garment with the utmost pride. My white shirts would be ironed and perfectly creased down the sleeves, and my fine leather-soled shoes would be polished until they reflected my handsome face in them, looking back up at me wherever I strutted my thing.

And yet, there is nothing that I wouldn’t have given to have had a mere tenth of my dear father’s modesty, along with his football ability.

Have a good day, everyone. Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 29th January 2020

29/1/2020

I dedicate my song today to my dear friend, Bob Dudley, from Birstall in West Yorkshire and my Facebook friend, Nancy Maher, from Carrick-on-Suir. Both Bob and Nancy celebrate their birthday today. May their special day be memorable, and I hope that they leave plenty of room for lots of cake and suitable refreshments. Have a super birthday. Bill xx

My song today is ‘I’ve Gotta Get A Message to You’. This is a song by the ‘Bee Gees’ and was released as a single on 7 September 1968. It was their second Number 1 single on the ‘UK Singles Chart’ and their first US Top 10 hit.

The song is about a man who, awaiting his execution in the electric chair, begs the prison chaplain to pass a final message on to his wife. Robin Gibb, who wrote the lyrics, said that the man's crime was the murder of his wife's lover, though the lyrics do not explicitly allude to the identity of the victim. Robin said, "This is about a prisoner on ‘Death Row’ who only has a few hours to live. He wants the prison chaplain to pass on a final message to his wife. There's a certain urgency about it.

The song was written with Percy Sledge in mind to record it. Sledge did record it in February 1970 but ‘Atlantic Records’ did not issue his version in the United States at the time.

The song was the group's second UK Number 1 single and also went to Number 1 in Ireland and reached Number 8 in the United States. It was their first top-ten hit in the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ charts.

"I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You" has appeared in five versions all made from the same recording, but heard at three different speeds, faded out at three different points, and with different elements mixed forward.

In 2011, ‘The Soldiers’ recorded the song with Robin Gibb for the Royal British Legion's annual charity single. It was released on 23 October 2011 in the United Kingdom on iTunes and reached Number 75 on the ‘UK Singles Chart’. A music video to accompany the release of "I've Gotta Get A Message To You" was first released onto YouTube on 13 October 2011.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

As the author of over sixty published books, the title of this song has always intrigued me. The writing, postage and arrival of a letter offer so many opportunities within a novel, along with the failure of never writing or receiving a letter communication that could change your life.

Today, letter writing would rarely be the communication method we tend to use, especially when we have ready access to phones, mobiles, computers, and trains and planes which can cross the country in a matter of hours. No more do we have to sit down at the table and compose a letter that means what we say when we can say what we mean by means of skype across the world and face-to-face and say it within minutes. It may not be many decades away before mankind is able to say what they want to whomever they want to say it without even opening their mouths and sounding a word. All future communication in our ‘Brave New World’ will probably be achievable by thought transference.

After all, that is what one’s behaviour and response pattern is comprised of. The body pattern of communication is that we think, feel and do, in that sequence. In communication terms, that translates to ‘thinks, speaks and communicates’. I reckon that before the next century arrives, science will have discovered how to ‘cut out the middleman’, making all communication with another human possible by simply ‘thinking it’. No longer will mankind have the sanctum of their private thoughts.

When I was a growing teenager in the 1950s and I wanted to get a message to a girlfriend, I couldn’t do what teenagers today do. I had to spend time and use much thought and energy to get through to my latest girlfriend. No house in the land, apart from the mansions of the wealthiest and most powerful of people had their own landline, and mobile phones were decades away from being invented. The general public had to use the Public Phone Box; a red cubicle (of the Dr Who image type). This means of public communication would be located on street corners and would either have a queue of people waiting outside in the cold, while some caller inside with a pile of tuppences to hand, was being constantly hurried by those waiting outside to get in the booth to make their call. And that was when the public phone box was working and hadn’t been vandalised.

If I wanted to get a message to my girlfriend at a time when mobiles, landlines and computers didn’t exist for the ordinary boy or girl, I could do three things only.

I could agree upon a pre-arranged time with my girlfriend to be available outside a public phone box near to where she lived and hope that the booth was empty when I rang the booth number for her to pick up. This was an almost impossible operation to achieve unless one prearranged midnight as being the hour when the booth was called. If I wanted to speak with my girlfriend before we next met, the second alternative was to walk to her house with a good excuse prepared, and just hope that her father didn’t open the door and send me packing with a flea in my ear as soon as he saw me stood on his doorstep like a wet rag that wanted wringing. The most common way to communicate with one’s girlfriend in between dates was to go to one’s room and write her a letter, and hope she’d get it the next morning (presuming her parents weren’t the first to get it, read it and burn it). If my girlfriend received my letter, I could either look forward to receiving a reply the next evening (Please note that there were three postal deliveries daily in the 1950s, in the morning, at noon and in the early evening). If I was lucky and on to a good thing, I’d get back her letter splashed with perfume before she posted it. If my luck wasn’t in though and she’d met a better-looking chap since I last saw her and had dumped me, what the postman would deliver back would be the unopened letter I’d sent her, marked ‘Return to sender’.

Many young women who had soldier sweethearts in the ‘Second World War’ years and after, mostly depended on the written letter to communicate their love for each other back and forth. Very occasionally, a pre-arranged call through the Public Telephone Box was possible. Even then, censorship of the lover’s conversation might be listened into by a prurient telephone operator who might have wanted a boring work shift ‘spicing up’. When I went to live in Canada for a few years between 1963 and 1965, it was letters from home that enabled one to feel more or less homesick
.
When I was planning to return home from Canada in 1965, I promised a young lady that I’d deliver a message to someone in the Liverpool area. Her previous letters had not been replied to and she was extremely worried.

When I got back to my parent’s house, I wrote to the young man in question. The young man no longer resided at the address he used to, and the upshot was that my letter was returned unopened marked ‘Not here’. Having said that I would deliver the young girl’s message, I felt obliged to do whatever I could to keep my promise.

After many enquiries over the next three months, I eventually learned where the Liverpool contact ‘might be’ as I was aware of his occupation. When I eventually identified the firm he worked at, I caught a train and travelled the fifty miles to Liverpool one afternoon. I eventually spoke with the young man at his place of employment and delivered the message from his Canadian girlfriend. He thanked me for taking the time and effort of delivering the message personally but felt it was no longer relevant.

He and the girlfriend whom I met in Canada, had seemingly been going steady (against their parent’s wishes) for nine months when suddenly, her parents and their two daughters moved to Canada. The couple had been apart for one year when I was asked to deliver the message and there had been no communication between them for the last four months. The love-sick girlfriend wanted to know what had happened and feared he might have had some bad accident.

The young man didn’t go into too much of the circumstances with me (a total stranger) but did tell me that he never passed on his new address when his parents (with whom he still lived) also moved house. The reason was that he’d found a new girlfriend whom he loved to bits and intended to someday marry.

I felt obliged to write back to the girl in Canada and tell her what I’d discovered while acting as ‘go-between’, realising that there was no way her level of disappointment could be lessened by a third party. I never received a reply from her thanking me for my efforts, but who knows the fickleness of ‘love on the hop’; she too may also have got herself a new boyfriend since I’d left Canada? They do say that those Canadian footballers come in a much larger size than their British counterpart.

Delivering that message cost me a day of my time and a good few quid in train fare and expenses, but it illustrates that in the 1950s and 1960s, if you couldn’t communicate by public phone or letter, then the only alternative was to visit in person ‘to deliver the message’. My mother used to tell me, “Billy, if it doesn’t hurt or cost, it’s probably not worth bothering doing”.

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 28th January 2020

28/1/2020

I jointly dedicate my song today to two Facebook friends, Caroline D. Caz Astley from Bolton and Liz Divine from Leeds. Both ladies celebrate their birthday today. Have a good day, Caroline and Liz. May your special day be filled with much love, happiness…and…lots of cake and suitable refreshments. Thank you for being my Facebook friend. Bill xx

My song today is ‘Ain’t That A Shame’. This is a song written by Fats Domino and Dave Bartholomew. The record was released in 1955 and eventually sold more than a million records. Domino's recording of the song reached Number 1 on the ‘Billboard R&R’ chart and Number 10 on the ‘Billboard Pop Chart’. The song is ranked number 438 on Rolling Stone magazine’s ‘500 Greatest Songs of All Time’ list.

The song gained national fame after being re-recorded by Pat Boone. Domino's version soon became more popular, bringing his music to the mass market a half-dozen years after his first recording, ‘The Fat Man’. The song has also been covered by the ‘Four Seasons’ and John Lennon.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

‘Ain’t that a shame’ was one of those expressions that was very common during the ‘Second World War’ years and during my early development. It was eventually supplanted in the 1960s and 1970s with the expression, ‘Poor you’, which essentially meant the same thing. Then, as the years advanced to the 1990s and we approached the New Millennium era, the saying that supplanted ‘Poor you’ to echo the same situation as previous was a more coarsened version, ‘Tough shit’. By 2010, this saying had been replaced by the more observational and self-evident statement of, ‘Shit happens!’

In the above illustration of the generational changes to our language between 1945 and 2020, one can see how far away from the values and norms of our parents and grandparent’s age we have travelled. We have effectively shunned and discarded the values of our past in favour of a more coarsened, selfish and individualised ‘Me, me’ way of life.

Some may say, ‘It’s only words’, as if words don’t matter when they clearly do. Words matter much more than we could ever imagine. Words are the means of communication we use to transport and carry one’s emotions and true intent. In simple behavioural terms, we think, we feel and then we do, in that order. When we think positively, we feel positive and are more likely to act positively. Correspondingly, when we think negatively, we feel negative and are more likely to act in a negative manner. We effectively bring about our own successes and our own failures, and we influence our happy and sad moods by the way we think and the words we speak (especially our self-talk).

Just as our original saying of ‘Ain’t that a shame’ and ‘Poor you’ was specifically directed towards the feelings of the disappointed person, the later sayings of ‘Tough shit’ and ‘Shit happens!’ speaks not ‘to’ the disappointed person’s feelings, but ‘about’ the disappointment observed in the situation. There has been a distinct move away from ‘you’ to ‘me’; a move away from the ‘personal’ to the ‘impersonal’ and more ‘observational’; a move away from the ‘sensitive’ comment to the more ‘selfish’ remark.
As generations experience subtle language changes, each change is often so small at the time as to become discernible, and it is only farther on down the line, we discover that instead of society progressing in a right and proper direction, we’ve blindly used the intervening years pushing each other to hell in a handcart.

If ever you have engaged in the exercise of ‘Chinese Whispers’, you will readily see the huge distinction between the message given at both the start and the end of the process. ‘Chinese Whispers’ requires an audience plus two players at any given time. It starts by the audience presenter giving a brief statement to one of the two players. All the players receiving the message (except player one) are kept out of hearing distance until they come on stage. After the second player comes on stage, they receive the message verbally from the first player. The first player then leaves the stage and a new player comes on stage. The message received by player two is then communicated to player three, and so forth and so forth until a dozen people have received the message.

The initial message passed from player one to player two might be, “ I heard that in any group of five men and four women( all of whom are strangers to each other), that the chances of one of the couples ‘hitting it off’ together is less than 33 per cent, and that the chances of the couple who ‘hit it off’ being of lesbian, gay, bi-sexual or transgender (LBGT) status is 23 per cent.”

As the messages continue to be passed from one player to the next player, memory, misunderstanding, mistake, unconscious personal belief and all manner of human traits come into play; and despite the honest intention of all players to accurately convey the message to the next player due to receive it, subtle changes begin to appear each time the message is passed on. It may only be one word added here, missed there or slightly altered, but by the end of the exercise, the mistakes in each message passed on result in the final message being significantly different to the original message whispered in the ear of player one.

Many see the significant changes over the years as inevitable changes of ‘progression in the making’, but not I. I am not foolish enough to deny the true advancements society has made over the past century. We undoubtedly live longer and with fuller bellies and have access to so many new experiences we could not have dreamed of in the immediate post-war years. We undoubtedly have much more to live for today than we ever did, but too few of us appreciate what we have, along with the things we have lost individually, as a family, a community and a people.

There is undoubtedly a lesser sense of ‘community’ today, as the absence of any personal interaction and the deafening silence on a crowded tube train any day of the busy week will testify. Today, men and women going to high-powered jobs, dressed as fashion mannequins, will nonchalantly walk over and around prostrate bodies laid on the sidewalks without giving a second thought to the needs of the homeless, the vagrant, the refugee, the abused runaway teenager and the addict as they continue to speak on their mobiles and drink their costa coffee on the hoof.

Today, we are able to transverse the globe by plane in less than one day and put a man on the moon on a Wednesday and bring him back to earth before the week is out (240,000 miles), there are so many of our parents living in Care Homes whom we might visit only once monthly, just because we either have better things to do in our busy lives or cannot see the point in visiting a parent with advanced dementia who will never again know us as their child. A man or woman in the 1950s would simply have never thought of farming out the nursing of an aged parent who had lost their memory and mind. In the Irish community where I was born, the community considered the mentally incapacitated as ‘holy innocents’; people to cherish and protect. Such unfortunate people were considered as being people to love and not lock away from the eyes and ears of ‘civilised society’.

I will never forget hearing about the man who was asked why he continued to visit his wife who had Alzheimer’s in her Care Home daily, where he would talk to her as though she could understand him, especially when she could not recognise him as her husband of fifty years. His reply was, “She may have forgotten who I am, but I never will forget who she was”.

The more I think upon these changes in society that have moved from a ‘you’ to a ‘me, me’ response since I was born in 1942, the more I am inclined to think, ‘Ain’t that a shame!’

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 27th January 2020

27/1/2020

I dedicate my song today to my dear friend, Barbara Cross, who lives in Alicante, Spain. It isn’t Barbara’s birthday today; I just fancied serenading this beautiful woman who is now enjoying her 80s in the sun. Have a smashing day, Barbara. Bill and Sheila x

My song today is ‘Spanish Harlem’, This song was recorded by Ben E. King in 1960 for ‘Atco Records’. It was written by Jerry Leiber and Phil Spector, and was produced by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.

The song was King's first hit away from ‘The Drifters’, a group he had led for several years. With an arrangement by Stan Applebaum featuring Spanish guitar, marimba, drumbeats, soprano saxophone, strings, and a male chorus, it climbed the ‘Billboard’ charts, eventually peaking at Number 15 (R&B) and Number 10 (Pop). It was ranked at Number 358 on Rolling Stone’s list of the ‘500 Greatest Songs of All Time’. King's version was not a hit in the United Kingdom.

The version which Aretha Franklin released a cover of in 1971 outperformed the original in the charts, in which Franklin changed the lyrics slightly: from "A red rose up in Spanish Harlem" to "There's a rose in Black 'n Spanish Harlem. A rose in Black 'n Spanish Harlem.” Her version went to Number 1 on the ‘US Soul Chart’ for three weeks and Number 2 on the ‘Pop Chart’ for two weeks. Aretha Franklin's version earned a Gold Single for sales of over one million.

This song has been covered by numerous artists like Jay and the Americans: Cliff Richard: Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass: The Mamas and The Papas: Chet Atkins: Long John Baldry: Trini Lopez: Andy Williams: Led Zepplin, and Neil Diamond among many others.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

While I have never been to Spain, or personally had the pleasure of closely knowing a Spanish woman, it has always remained a great country in my mind. Any introduction to the many cultural assets that Spain has produced over the centuries, will include the important thinkers, artists, authors, and champions in most sporting fields.

Never having once been to Spain, the Spain I’ve known has been discovered in books, paintings, wars and the arena of politics and sport. I have long held artistic appreciation of their great artists, Pablo Picasso, Goya and Velaquez, but have never quite been crazy about the works of Salvador Dali. I will never forget being enthralled in the reading of ‘Don Quixote’ or reading Ernest Hemingway’s account of the ‘Spanish Civil War’ in his novel, ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’. Show me the golfer who can possibly forget the marvellous wins of Seve Ballesteros on the links, or the tennis fan who can but marvel at the grace and swiftness of Rafael Nadal on the tennis courts of the world.

As a lifelong student of British, European and American History and an avid reader of the history of these great countries, I present you a brief and potted history of this wonderful Mediterranean country.

1492 marks the beginning of Spain’s ‘Golden Age’ when Spain started expanding into the ‘New World’. The Kingdoms of Spain were united under Habsburg rule in 1516, unifying the ‘Crown of Castile’, the ‘Crown of Aragon’ and smaller kingdoms under one rule. During this period, Spain was involved in all major European wars, including the ‘Italian Wars’, the ‘Eighty Year’ War’, the ‘Thirty Year’s War’ and the ‘Franco-Spanish War’.

Until the 1650s, Habsburg Spain was among the most powerful states in the world. Over the following century, its power diminished, and it was not until 1931 when a democratic republic was proclaimed. Six years later, the country descended into the ‘Spanish Civil War’ between the Republican and National factions. The rebel victory in the conflict installed a dictatorship led by Francisco Franco, that lasted until 1975. The first post-war decade was particularly violent, autocratic, and repressive both in a political, cultural, social, and economic sense. The country experienced rapid economic growth during the 1960s and early 1970s. Only with the death of Franco in 1975 did Spain return to the monarchy; this time headed by Juan Carlos, and to democracy.

With a fresh Constitution voted in 1978, Spain entered the ‘European Economic Community’ in 1986 (transformed into the ‘European Union’ with the Maastricht Treaty of 1992), and the ‘Eurozone’ in 1999.

As great explorers in its past, one of the most popular of Spanish quotations is
‘Nunca serás capaz de cruzar el océano hasta que pierdas de vista la costa’. In English, this translates to: “You can never cross the ocean until you possess the courage to lose sight of the shore.”

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 26th January 2020

26/1/2020

I dedicate my song today to my friend, Silvija Klova, from Scarborough and my Facebook friend, Elizabeth Brennan, from Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary, Ireland. Both Silvija and Elizabeth celebrate their birthday today. Have a lovely day, ladies, and leave some room for lots of cake and suitable refreshments.

My song today is ‘Rave On’. This song was written by Sonny West, Bill Tilghman and Norman Petty in 1958. It was first recorded by Sonny West for ‘Atlantic Records’, which released his version in February 1958. Buddy Holly recorded the song later the same year, and his version became a hit; one of six of his recordings that charted in 1958. Holly is instantly recognizable as the artist: the record begins with a drawn-out "Well…" as stylized by Holly's distinctive hiccup ("A-weh-uh-heh-uh-ell…").

Holly's rendition of ‘Rave On’ is ranked Number 154 on Rolling Stone magazine's 2004 list of ‘The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.’

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

This record was released during my 15th year of life. Prior to the age of 11 years, I attended ‘St Patrick’s Roman Catholic School’ in Heckmondwike, and despite being unable to speak properly until I was 4 years old, I was a very intelligent young boy. My educational progress was advanced for my years; I always came first or second in my class at every subject taught.

Before my 11th birthday, I was encouraged by the Headmaster to take my 11+ examinations to go to the Grammar School, six months earlier than usual. I passed my Grammar School entrance examination but then declined to go. At the time, my working-class credentials combined with coming from a poorer family gave me an ‘inverted sense of snobbery’. I considered all grammar school pupils as toffs who dressed in posh clothes, whereas mine were either well worn or torn.

Having passed my 11+ almost one year earlier than the examination was normally taken, combined with my refusal to go to the grammar school after passing the examination, my Headmaster, Mr. Armitage, gave me the type of punishment that only a Catholic Headmaster could possibly devise. He removed me from a class of my own age and placed me in a class of 14 and 15-year-olds under the guise of ‘pupil promotion’ instead of ‘pupil punishment’. In one spiteful move, the Head had separated me from all my friends and peers and stated, “In future, Forde, you’ll learn in a class with pupils of your ability”.

I’ll give the Headmaster credit; he certainly taught me how to ‘damn with faint praise’. Under the eyes of all his staff and the parents of other pupils, he was able to exact his own particular form of retribution for me ‘having let the school down’ by declining to go to the Grammar School (plus lowering the 1953 equivalent of his school stats).

Within that year, I was to incur a horrific accident when I was knocked down by a wagon that ran over me, twisting my body around the drive shaft. I was received into hospital with multiple life-threatening injuries including damage to my spine, chest collapse (22 of my 24 ribs broken) and extensive damage to both my legs. I was to remain in the hospital for nine months and it would be over two years after my discharge before I was able to stand on my own two feet again and walk.

During this time, I’d missed over thirty months schooling, but one of my teachers (Mr. McNamara) got me tested by Mensa and I came out with a very high score (142). Please note, Mensa scores themselves are more indicative of the way a person thinks and not a level of knowledge/intelligence.

I returned to ‘St Patrick’s Roman Catholic School’ briefly to take an examination to attend ‘Dewsbury Technical College’, and I commenced there six months after all my other technical school classmates had started their first term. I was six months away from my 15th birthday and I was still at the hobbling-about stage, having spent the years 11-14 being unable to walk. I thought that I’d be able to catch up to the other class pupils, but having missed so much education (over 2 years) and now having to deal with subjects, we’d never been taught at my previous school, instead of coming first or second in my class at technical school (as I’d grown accustomed to since starting school at the age of five), I found myself in 10th or 11th place.

This ‘normal’ position in class came as a great shock to me, and it was at a stage in my life when I also started to resent being at school because my parents couldn’t afford a change of uniform or pay for any of the additional school equipment required to enable a pupil to fit in and not stand out from their peers.
I’d had enough with school life and more than enough of having ‘to do without’. I wanted to become a worker and earn some money to put some decent clothes on my back and good shoes on my feet. I was unable to play football or rugby with my classmates as I was still having to ungainly hobble around and was unable to run until a few years later when my balance and mobility had significantly improved.

So, on the very same day that the school was having its Christmas party, I gathered up all my textbooks and handed them into the Head’s Office. Officially, I should have stayed on at school a further six months until I was fifteen and a half, but I’d had enough and told the Head to report me to the authorities if he felt like it. The Headmaster had the same surname as me (but without the ‘e’). When Mr. Ford heard what I’d told him, instead of warning me to the contrary or threatening to have my parents fined after informing the ‘Department of Education’, he simply said. “Good luck, Forde. I wish you well. Merry Christmas”.

The following Monday, I started work in a mill in Cleckheaton, as a ‘bobbin collector’ for the princely sum of £2:15 shillings weekly. Over the next six years, I was to remain working in textile mills, where I advanced in position until I decided to emigrate to Canada at the age of 21 years to live for a few years. These six years in the textile mills were some of the happiest years of my life and I wouldn’t exchange one day if I’d to live my life all over again. I met folk in the mill who were unforgettable characters; friends who would give you their last penny, people who deserved to dine at the top of any table in the land instead of serving it for extra part-time income. These were my type of people, folk with whom I was at greatest ease.

My time in Canada, and immediately thereafter when I returned, witnessed me starting to significantly change. Essentially, my estimation of ‘self’ had increased during my Canadian interlude, along with my expectations. I now wanted more out of life and returned to working in a textile company as a ‘working foreman’. I then progressed to taking a job at another mill as an ‘under-manager’, before moving mills again and assuming the position of a ‘Mill Manager’ on nights. I was only 26 years old at the time. In just three years, I’d made a meteoric rise in the textile field, but that wasn’t enough for me.

Upon returning from Canada, I met my first wife-to-be, became engaged and planned to marry her after she’d concluded her teacher training course in Bradford. Without me being consciously aware of it at the time, my value structure, cultural enhancement, and aspiration level were being encouraged to change through my daily association with my fiancée and her family. Whilst being wary of moving outside my social class, (I had always been proud of having come from a working-class background), I was obviously more prepared to go along with my fiancé’s wishes more than I could ever have previously imagined.

I started regularly attending plays, musical productions, theatres, and even ballets, and became familiarised with all manner of classical music. I even started reading a library of ‘classical literature’ instead of the more historical books I’d preferred to read since my teens. I was then encouraged to go back to night school and complete the educational examinations I never took during my 15th and 16th years of life.

Before I married at the age of 26 years, I’d made a momentous decision to change the future course of my life. I took an ordinary worker's job in a Brighouse textile mill which earned me one-third of the wage I’d been previously earning as a night-time Mill Manager. I did this to free me up in my evenings. This would enable me to go to night school three evenings a week and get the ‘0’ and ‘A-level’ qualifications to gain me university entrance.

I now knew what I wanted out of life. I wanted a profession, not a job! I wanted a salary and not a wage! I wanted something vocational instead of occupational and which best-fitted the talents I could offer. I wanted to use my brain instead of my brawn! I wanted to help lawbreakers become law abiders, thieves to turn honest and to show violent and aggressive people how to lose their violent behaviour and make their body aggression work for them instead of against them. I strongly believed I could do this because 'I’d been there' and had 'walked in their shoes'.

At the age of 29 years, I trained to become a Probation Officer at Newcastle (then a Polytechnical College, but now of University status). I’d finally obtained the position in life that best fitted me, and although being a Probation Officer was then a profession filled mostly by middle-class university degree-holders, I was determined that my own life experiences allied to my working-class credentials and values (which I’d temporarily stood down but had never abandoned after returning from Canada), would be the strongest tool in my workbox. How right I was!

I found over the ensuing years, that my having been a poacher-turned-gamekeeper, and having been brought up in a large working-class family on an estate with the values to match, was to be my best assets for a job in which I naturally excelled, in both performance and personal satisfaction. Between becoming a Probation Officer and retiring from that post, I never lost sight of the fact that the clients who sat at the other side of the desk or stood at the opposite side of the prison bars to myself were ‘my people’. Because of this, I found that I was usually trusted by them.

Trust between worker and client is a prerequisite to being able to effectively help them at all; and being able to help people stop committing crimes and to become healthier, happier and more hopeful as a consequence brings any Probation Officer as much satisfaction as is possible.

My claim in helping clients is beyond question if not comparison. Throughout my career, I researched my own work and after completing a ten-year follow-up study with hundreds of clients (each having committed a wide range of grave and numerous offences) the national average figure at the time for ‘non-reconvictions’ two years after the original offence had been committed, was exceeded by myself at a 3:1 ratio. My study group involved over 300 people who had completed my twenty-four two-hour weekly programmes of ‘Relaxation, Assertion Training and Anger Management’. The national figures were taken on a two-year basis; not ten years, as was my study.

During my specialised ‘Behaviour Modification’ work, I discovered many surprising aspects of human behaviour, of which I mention but a few here. I learned that once a worker gains client trust and offers the client a positive programme of work ‘which accords with the client’s philosophy’, it is easier to get men and women who have committed 100 offences to stop offending than to persuade a person with two or three previous offences to stop offending by the more conventional treatment programmes of Probation Officer work! I also learned that with the use of ‘Relaxation Training’, men and women, can more easily break all their drug addictions. I helped over two hundred people who had been taking heavy medication for between 1-10 years (anti-depressants), to break their addictions and not return to their drug intake. I consider this aspect of all my work over a 26-year-old career to have been my greatest achievement as a Probation Officer. I found that where good health needed restoring, that it could never come about without establishing ‘good sleeping practices. In all the major considerations of changing behaviour, I found the most important aspect to a client’s good health and position of self-enhancement was learning how to express loving feelings, become more truthful in thought and deed and learning to forgive self and others. It sounds more like a Bible lesson than a ‘Behaviour Modification’ one, doesn’t it?

I was also very privileged to have learned from my own early years of uncontrollable anger and aggressive behaviour pattern during the early 1970s. I founded the process of ‘Anger Management’, and within a matter of two years, my principles of the Anger Management process had mushroomed across the English speaking world. The numbers of people helped globally through ‘Anger Management’ have been millions not dozens, of which I played a small but significant part by my contribution to the working process of the method.

Throughout my life, I have had significant career changes and life experiences that have satisfied me immensely. I have always adopted a pragmatic and positive viewpoint. I have never held the view that there is only one way to best help all people with similar problem behaviour. I truly believe that anyone who espouses or asserts this view is grossly mistaken.

I have never found any difficulty in ‘moving on’ from one phase of life to another, believing that unless one is forever prepared to change along with the changing circumstances of one’s life and environment, one’s emotions can never progress to full fruition and one’s dreams of being the ‘you’ that you were meant to be becomes ever more distant.

However, I’d have to say that the one constant in my passing years amid all this change, has been my love of singing, the distinctive pleasure of all forms of music, the sheer delight of dancing; and, in particular, being a part of the ‘rock and roll’ and ‘Bopping’. ‘Rave On’.

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 25th January 2020

25/1/2020

I dedicate my song today to my dear friend, James Power from Kilmeaden, County Waterford in Ireland who celebrates his birthday today. Have a super day, James, and leave room for lots of cake and ale. Make sure ‘The Duchess’ does her wifely duties and spoils you rotten today. If my next operation is successful, Sheila and I plan to spend several weeks touring Ireland this coming spring, so may pop in. Have a nice day. Bill

My song today is ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’. This is an American Negro spiritual and the earliest known recording was in 1909, by the ‘Fisk Jubilee Singers of Fisk University’. In 2002, the ‘Library of Congress’ honoured the song as one of 50 recordings chosen that year to be added to the ‘National Recording Registry’. It was also included in the list of ‘Songs of the Century’ by the ‘Recording Industry Association of America’ and the ‘National Endowment for the Arts’.

‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ was written by Wallis Willis, a Choctaw free-man in the old Indian territory in what is now Choctaw County, near the County seat of Hugo, Oklahoma, sometime around 1865. He may have been inspired by the sight of the ‘Red River’, by which he was toiling, which reminded him of the River Jorden and of the Prophet Elijah being taken to heaven by a chariot (2 Kings 2:11). Some historical sources claim that this song and ‘Steal Away’ (also sung by Willis), had lyrics that referred to the ‘Underground Railroad’, the freedom movement that helped black people escape from Southern slavery to the North and Canada.

Alexander Reid, a minister at the Old Spencer Academy, a Choctaw boarding school, heard Willis singing these two songs and transcribed the words and melodies. He sent the music to the ‘Jubilee Singers of ‘Fisk University’ in Nashville, Tennessee. The Jubilee Singers popularized the songs during a tour of the United States and Europe. Other singers to have recorded the song are many and include Bing Crosby: Kenny Ball: Louis Armstrong: Sam Cooke: Peggy Lee and Paul Robeson.

In 1939, Nazi Germany's ‘Reich Music Examination Office’ added the song to a listing of ‘undesired and harmful’ musical works.

The song enjoyed a resurgence during the 1960s Civil Rights struggle and the folk revival; it was performed by several artists. Perhaps the most famous performance during this period was that of Joan Baez during the legendary 1969 ‘Woodstock Festival’.
Oklahoma State Senator Judy Eason McIntyre from Tulsa proposed a bill nominating ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ as the Oklahoma State official gospel song in 2011. The bill was co-sponsored by the Oklahoma State Black Congressional Caucus. Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin signed the bill into law on May 5, 2011, at a ceremony at the Oklahoma Cowboy Hall of Fame; making the song the official Oklahoma State Gospel Song.

The song became the ‘England Rugby World Cup theme’ for 1991 and It reached Number 16 on the ‘UK Singles Chart’.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

During the 1970s after I first got married, half a dozen newly married couples moved into the same crescent of houses around the same time and we all became close friends. For around six years, before any children appeared on the scene, the group of us would socialise, party, go drinking, dancing, entertain each other in weekly rotation in our homes, and even holiday together.

One of the places we visited for around three years was a public house out in the wilder parts of Oxenhope. Although I only live about a good mile away from Oxenhope today, then, I lived in Mirfield, around twenty-five miles away. We frequented this Oxenhope drinking establishment every week because they always had a night of folk singing that we thoroughly enjoyed. One of the regular singers would always introduce his singing spot with ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’, which appeared to be his signature tune and all the pub joined in the singing. This was usually the one song that every patron knew by heart. I never realised at the time just how old this gospel song was.

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 24th January 2020

24/1/2020

I dedicate my song today to my dear mother who died at the early age of 64 years. Had mum not chain-smoked, and had she given birth to fewer than seven children and the hard life that went with rearing us all, she wouldn’t have been taken too early from this world. Had she lived longer, she would have been enjoying her 98th birthday today, and would no doubt have been downing as many rum and blackcurrant drinks as her children would buy her. The only thing which mum would have found intolerable today would have been just how antisocial in polite company, her chain-smoking habit would have made her.

Other birthdays of friends and Facebook contacts I jointly dedicate my song today to include Lorraine Blair from Perth in Western Australia: Angie Boback from America: Heather Walley from Stoke-on-Trent, and close friend, David Green, from Mirfield in West Yorkshire. I wish you all the happiest of birthdays and hope that you leave room for lots of cake and suitable refreshments. Have a nice day and thank you for being my Facebook friends.

Everybody I know loves their mum to bits, and I’m no exception to that rule. Where I may distinguish myself from many loving children though is that not only did my mother give birth to me and loved me, she was me and I am her. Her influence on me was so pronounced that from an early age, I willingly adopted her positive philosophy to life, along with her general belief that nobody is either better or worse than their neighbour.

The things I can remember most about my mother is her compassion, her charity, her capacity never to hold grudges from one old day to a new one, and her forgiving nature. Her most priceless quality, however, was her boundless love which she would liberally and unashamedly deliver to all and sundry. Not once in my entire life (until I left home), did my mother fail to tell me that she loved me. Her last words to me each day before I went to bed and the very first words she spoke to me on a morning when I got up were ‘I love you, Billy’. Whenever I complained that we were poor or for want of this or that which household finances could not furnish, she would instantly remind me, “Billy Forde, we may have no money to spare, but we are not poor. We have each other!” When she died, there was no material inheritance to bequeath to her children. The inheritance that my mother left me was my six brothers and sisters, along with the most precious of memories that she loved each of us, and told us so daily.

Mum was an intelligent woman, despite having to curtail her education and leave school early to help out at home as the oldest of seven children. Being the firstborn (and female) in a household where her father’s poor heart prevented him doing any manual work, mum (like many an Irish female firstborn) essentially acted the role of ‘little mum’ to all her younger siblings.

My mother was a romantic through and through; in thought, emotion and deed. She not only dreamed constantly, she believed in her dreams; a trait that was undoubtedly passed down to me, her firstborn. Mum never hid her true feelings from my father or any of her family or neighbours. She gave honest expression to her feelings at the moment of their birth, which meant she often acted before thinking. In her own way, mum appeared happily resigned to her natural disposition and was always prepared to renounce any embarrassment in exchange for the possibility of any excitement, and new experience. In short; she loved life and the living of it far to much to ever let it pass her by.

When my father and all my younger siblings were in bed on a night, I would often stay up chatting with mum past midnight as she ironed and darned and got ready for the next morning’s round of motherly chores. This was my most precious time of day that I will always cherish the memory of. We would talk about all manner of things, and not once did my mother refuse to tell me anything I ever asked of her. We shared a relationship that held no embarrassment and could be entirely open with each other. I now realise just how special and rare such a relationship is between a parent and a child, especially between a mother and her firstborn son.

I once recall asking my mother a question about the circumstances of my birth. It was a question that most boys would simply never dream of asking and most mothers would instantly shy away from answering. All my mates on the estate knew the place where they had been born, but I was the only 11-year-old boy I ever knew of whose mum (when directly asked by her son) told him precisely the location ‘where he was conceived’. When I asked mum, she said that it was in a farmer’s field by the ‘Metal Man’ in Tramore, County Waterford. I always revisit this famous tourist site each time I return to Ireland, and which the public cannot get officially close to anymore.

If any dishonesty resided in my mother, it lay in the many Irish tales she would tell me from the old country; tales wrapped in Irish superstition and stretched as far as the truth could be credited. I have not the slightest doubt that my becoming an author of over sixty books was a direct consequence of my mother’s vivid imagination.

After I had written and had published over fifty books for children, young persons and adults, I gave up writing books. Then, after I married my wife, Sheila, she persuaded me to take up the pen again. So, I decided to take the kernel of some of the stories my mother had told me as being Gospel, and after wrapping them in the clothes of Irish myth and a shroud of rustic superstition, I embellished them with a touch Irish artistic licence. I wrote an additional fourteen romantic books between 2011 and 2017. These Irish stories were written and published under the umbrella title, ‘Tales from Portlaw’(the Irish village where I was born in the front room of my maternal grandparent’s house).

All these ‘Tales from Portlaw’ books can be bought from Amazon or any established publisher in either hardback or e-book format, with all profits going to charitable causes in perpetuity (over £200,000 profit given to charity from the sales of my books between 1990-2005). Or, if you would like to read for free, please access my website and the section http://www.fordefables.co.uk/tales-from-portlaw.html

Of all the things my mum would do daily as she completed her housework would be to sing Irish songs. The only English songs she sang were Vera Lynn’s songs. Mum was a wonderful woman, who was also blessed with being beautiful in her prime. And yet, despite her love of singing, mum couldn’t sing for toffee. She couldn’t hold a note any longer than she could refrain from giving a beggar her last shilling. I never heard her sing one verse of a song without forgetting the lines or mixing up the words, and making up her own instead to fill in. Mum sang all day long, every day of her life, and like the late comedian and pianist, Lez Dawson, she always sang all the right notes, but unfortunately, in the wrong order. The only difference between mum and Lez Dawson was that he was a comedian who struck all the wrong piano cords deliberately to get a laugh out of his audience.

After berating my mother for her poor singing one day, mum replied, “Tell me or show me where it is written, Billy Forde, ( she would always add my surname whenever she was angry with me) that only good singers are allowed to sing? And until you can, get out of my way, boyo, because I’ve got lots of work left to do and lots of songs still to sing!”

There was never one day in my life as a child when I did not hear my mother sing, ‘The Isle of Innisfree’. This song was the background music and song to the 1952 film, ‘The Quiet Man’. This American romantic comedy directed by John Ford starred John Wayne as (character Sean Thornton) and Maureen 0’Hara (character Mary Kate Danaher) and Victor McLaglen (who played the part of Mary Kate Danaher’s bullying brother). Never did one Christmas go by without all the Forde Family watching ‘The Quiet Man’. Both mum and dad loved that film, and so it was only natural that all seven of their children grew to love it.

Mum’s favourite song of all was ‘The Isle of Innisfree’, and my father’s favourite film star was John Wayne. Dad admired all the film characters John Wayne played in his films so much that he would daily quote large sections from the films of his hero. Dad’s favourite quotation was ‘A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do!” He would quote this particular line to his children whenever expecting us to do that which we didn’t want to do.

For you uninitiated English film buffs who have so far gone through life without ever seen this marvellous film, here is a potted synopsis. In the 1920s, Sean Thornton, an Irish-born American from Pittsburgh, travels to his birthplace, Innisfree, in Ireland, to purchase his family's former farm. Shortly after arriving in Innisfree, he meets and falls in love with the fiery Mary Kate Danaher, the sister of bullying but prosperous landowner, Squire ‘Red’ Will Danaher. Will Danaher also wanted to buy the Thornton family's old cottage and land off the owner, Widow Tillane (whom he hankers to one day marry), and he is angered when the Widow Tillane (a woman not to be taken for granted by any man), accepts Sean's Thornton’s bid instead of Will Danaher’s offer. So when Sean Thornton and Mary Kate Danaher fall in love and ask Mary’s brother, Will, to give them his blessing to marry, he replies, ‘Never!’

When I started my daily singing practise over two years ago, in order to increase the amount of oxygen in my blood and improve my lung capacity, the very first song I sung I dedicated to my mother. It was the song of my childhood that my mother sang every day of her life. I sing that same song today in dedication to a mum whom I dearly loved and have missed every day since her death in 1986. Today, on the 98th anniversary of your birth, Mum, your firstborn sing you ‘The Isle of Innisfree’.

My mother loved this song and she loved the land of her birth, the Emerald Isle, a country where I too was born and shall have part of me buried. Like my mum, going back to Ireland for me is going back home. As soon as I see the Irish shoreline, my heart falls back in love with my country. But it is only when I am travelling that road from County Waterford towards Portlaw and catch sight of the Bridge that is positioned at the bottom of the village of Portlaw where I was born that I feel my spirits rise as my soul rejoices in restorative excitement. This song is for you mum from your firstborn, and for my six brothers and sisters. I love you mum. Billy xxx

As for the ‘Isle of Innisfree’, I recently looked up to see if there was such a place or whether it was a form of mythical Brigadoon. I understand that it is an uninhabited island within Lough Gill, in County Sligo, Ireland, near where Yeats spent his summers as a child. I will certainly check it out when we next tour Ireland.

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 23rd January 2020

23/1/2020

I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friend, Kay Walsh from County Tipperary in Ireland. It is Kay’s birthday today. Have a super day, Kay and thank you for being my Facebook friend. Bill

My song today is, ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’. This song was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. It was originally released by the ‘Rolling Stones’ as a double A-sided single together with ‘Ruby Tuesday’ in January 1967. The song has been covered by various artists, including David Bowie in 1973.

Released in the United Kingdom as a single on 13 January 1967, ‘Let's Spend the Night Together’ reached Number 3 on the ‘UK Singles Chart’ as a double A-Side with ‘Ruby Tuesday’. Both songs entered the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ singles chart on 21 January. However, by 4 March, ‘Ruby Tuesday’ reached Number 1, while ‘Let's Spend the Night Together’ stalled at Number 55. Due to the sexually charged nature of the lyrics, ‘Let's Spend the Night Together’ received less airplay. Other countries also considered ‘Ruby Tuesday’ to be more suitable for radio airplay and so it charted higher than ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’.

On ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ in America, the band was initially refused permission to perform the number. Sullivan himself told Jagger, "Either the song goes, or you go". A compromise was reached to substitute the words "let's spend some time together" in place of "let's spend the night together". Jagger agreed to change the lyrics but ostentatiously rolled his eyes at the TV camera while singing them, as did Bill Wyman. When the Rolling Stones, following their performance of the song, returned on stage, they were all dressed up in Nazi uniforms with swastikas, which caused Sullivan to angrily order them to return to their dressing rooms to change back into their performance clothes, at which point they left the studio altogether. As a result of this incident, Sullivan announced that the ‘Rolling Stones’ would be banned from performing on his show again. However, the ‘Rolling Stones' did appear on the show again and performed three songs on 23 November 1969.

In April 2006, for their first-ever performance in China, authorities prohibited the group from performing the song due to its ‘suggestive lyrics’.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I was aged 25 years when this song was first released and was engaged to be married the following year. I am not saying that I was ‘an angel’ where it came to observance of all the rules that were then expected of a young man intended to be married, but I did conform to the basic expectation of all British men who were engaged to be married; namely that you did not have full sexual intercourse with your intended bride until your wedding night.

However, I would have to admit to us having spent the night together in an hotel down in the Cotswolds, whenever we went to see one of the Shakespearian plays in Stratford-upon-Avon. We would usually stopover in the Cotswolds before heading for Stratford the next day.

When we first became engaged, we each had our own cultural interest. Mine was reading books and I would often get through two or three books weekly. My fiancée was a ballet lover and a keen patron of Shakespearian plays, which she introduced me to during our courtship. I confess that at school, Shakespeare wasn’t my favourite subject, although I did like the theatre. During our years of engagement and early marriage, we would attend all the Shakespearian plays at the Stratford-upon-Avon Royal Shakespeare Company twice yearly.

When I look back now, I’d have to admit to having been spoilt, as I was introduced to Shakespeare by watching some of the country’s finest actors and actresses at the start of their long and distinguished careers. I will never forget seeing a young Judy Dench strut the stage as though she owned it, and so many more great thespians, several of whom would help me twenty years later in my charitable work, including the great Dame Judy Dench.

Back to our stop-over at the Cotswold Hotel. My main recollection of the first time we stayed in an hotel together was how it came about. My fiancée asked me to book the room as she did not want her widowed mother to know any more than was necessary, and being a young man in my mid-twenties, I was naturally pleased when the only available room for that weekend turned out to be a double . I was still living at my parent’s house at the time and when the letter confirming our overnight hotel booking arrived (I cannot now recall how it came about), my father opened the letter and glanced at its contents. I was half expecting his stern Roman Catholic words of disapproval, but I surprisingly forgot that he was a man ‘as well as’ being a Roman Catholic.

Dad simply looked at me and said, “If you can get away with it, lad, what’s it got to do with me?” Given his strictness in almost all things under the sun, his response really took me off guard. Even being the age of 25 years during the 1960s, didn't allow one full adult liberty. When one still lived at the parental abode, parental rules and expectations were crossed at one's peril.

I cannot begin to even imagine how he would have responded had it been a ‘dirty weekend’ of one of my sister's letters he’d stumbled across? Anyway, it was this period in my life that today’s song reminds me of.

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 22nd January 2020

22/1/2020

I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friend, Yvonne Burgess who lives in Adelaide, South Australia. Yvonne celebrates her birthday today. Thank you for being my Facebook friend Yvonne and have a nice day. Bill x

Today’s song is ’What Becomes of The Broken Hearted’. This was a hit single recorded by Jimmy Ruffin and was released on the ‘Motown Records’ Soul label in the summer of 1966. It is a ballad, with lead singer Jimmy Ruffin recalling the pain that befalls the brokenhearted, who had love that's now departed. The song essentially deals with the struggle to overcome sadness while seeking a new relationship after a breakup.

The tune was written by William Weatherspoon, Paul Riser and James Dean. ‘What Becomes of the Broken Hearted’ remains one of the most revived of Motown's hits. ‘What Becomes of the Broken Hearted’ peaked at Number 7 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’, and at Number 6 on the ‘Billboard R&B Singles’ chart; as well as Number 8 on the ‘UK Singles Chart’. Eight years later, the song was reissued and surpassed its original chart position, reaching Number 4, and thus making it his highest-placed chart single in the UK.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Look across any road or down any street; go inside any home in any place at any time, and there you will find the ‘broken-hearted’. Not all of us are broken-hearted, and thankfully, nor are most of us, but each of us will know of someone who is. It is the most debilitating, depressing and destructive of human conditions that can befall any person. It essentially stops the person living any meaningful or pleasurable life and places them into a world of suspended animation where continuous hurt and unsettled emotions reign supreme.

For over one twenty-six years I was a Probation Officer who also trained and worked in the additional roles of Marriage Guidance Counsellor: Anger Management Worker: Relaxation Trainer and Bereavement Counsellor over a twenty-six-year career in West Yorkshire. By the time I retired, I had seen too much hurt and heartbreak and had worked with enough depressive, desperate and dispirited souls to last a lifetime.

Over my career, I have worked with people who have killed and thereby created heartache for others, as well as working with parents who’d had a child or another family member murdered. I’ve worked with families who’d lost a loved one through some tragic accident, and I’ve comforted and cried with a mother, who after several years and a number of miscarriages, gave birth to a baby who lived three hours before dying in her arms. I have sat with parents whose house had been burgled, and among the things stolen was the personal effects they had of their deceased and only child. The robber had stolen the items and then decided to burn the photographs to destroy the evidence of his theft. I have worked with young people who have been burnt out of their homes along with arsonists who burn for sheer excitement, whatever the risk to human and animal life. I once worked with a man who contracted HIV and who knowingly went on to deliberately infect others. This was at the start on that particular medical plague. I have worked with men and women whose inhuman torture and killing of domestic pets have witnessed them receiving no more than a fine at Court. I have worked with people who had their childhoods stolen and their adulthood left forever unhappy through the sexual molestation, rape, incest and physical hurt inflicted on them by fathers and brothers and uncles who were m t to love and protect them. I have visited people in prison, who allegedly committed crimes for which they were convicted of and never confessed to ( crimes I believe they never did), and I have known people who have committed terrible crimes for which they were never caught, convicted or imprisoned.

The author, Stephen King once said, “Hearts can break. Yes, hearts can break. Sometimes I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don’t.” I know of many people who would share his expressed sentiments even though I could not.

Hearts can be strong; they can be trusting and faithful, and hearts can burn with a passion that ignites the soul, yet sharp are their pieces if ever broken and deep is the pain when pierced through. Hearts are also the most fragile of human organs. Their condition is directly responsible for millions of premature deaths when we fail to listen to them. When broken by the loss of a loved one or the emotionally cruel actions of someone once loved (or even still loved), the heart can be a cold survivor of suffering for the once romantic, but now ice maiden. A broken heart can rip a human apart just as much as the broken wings of a butterfly kills a part of nature that can never be reborn.

Was I to try and identify, from the many examples of a broken heart I’ve seen in others, I would be unable to conclusively concur that it is better to have loved and lost than never loved at all! I know from my work with ‘broken-hearted clients’, that those hearts which took the longest to heal (from those hearts that did heal), belonged to all manner of people. They belonged to those people who had ‘loved and lost’ as well as those who never found the love they sought. I worked with so many good people who gave their heart (and body also), to another, only to have it broken through the unfaithfulness, dishonesty, rejection, desertion or ultimate betrayal of the other person in whom they’d placed their total trust.

There have been many men and women who essentially told me in their own words that they’d given their heart to another, only to have it returned to them in pieces. It may seem hard to believe that one person can love another so much, that if circumstances suddenly and inexplicably change and the other person deserts them, dumps them for another, stops loving them or perhaps says that they never did love them, all the ‘lost-out-lover’ can feel is an constant wanting to die.

Look on Facebook any day of the week and you can read the texts of the broken hearted in their hundreds. Their mouths may say “I’m okay”, their fingers may text, “I’m fine”, and their smiling photograph may suggest they are getting on with their lives, but behind their smile lies a broken heart that never mended, and behind that laugh of bravado, they are falling apart. Within their body ls a frightened soul fighting to get out and truthfully engage with life once more, but a lack of confidence in self and trust in others militates against them being prepared to invest their love again.

I don’t know if a heart was ever meant to be broken, or if indeed, it ever truly is. There is a divide between the fractured and the broken in which the degree of hurt cannot be measured; and just like an injured limb, a fracture can often prove more painful and complicated, and take much longer to heal than a clean break does!

A broken heart emotionally bleeds whenever the touch of another threatens to massage it and bring it back to life’. The thing never to forget, however, is this. If your heart beats, it is capable of loving, and if it continues to throb, life lives within it. The only long-term answer when you have been badly let down by another is to liberate the love of your heart and let it out once more. The more love you express, the more love will surely return. Allow your love to fly and land upon other hearts, and like a budding butterfly reborn inside the body of a caterpillar, you will fly to new experiences and know other worlds.

I once read that unless hearts were breakable, they would have no purpose. Perhaps hearts will never be made practical until they are made unbreakable? I would, however, like to believe that it is the heart’s capacity to give all when it is at its most vulnerable which designates it as the most important organ in our body, signifying its desire for life to go on.

Love and peace Bill xxx