Blog Archives - FordeFables

Song For Today: 30th April 2019

30/4/2019

Today’s song is ‘True Love’ that wonderful song that Grace Kelly and Bing Crosby duetted in their film ‘High Society’, the 1956 comedy musical remake of the 1940 film ‘The Philadelphia Story’.. The song was written by Cole Porter and was published in 1956. ‘True Love’ was nominated for the ‘Academy Award for Best Song’, and it also peaked at Number 4 in the U.S.A. as well as reaching Number 4 in the United Kingdom.

Kelly's contribution on the record is relatively minor, duetting with Crosby on only the final chorus. Nonetheless, the single is co-credited to her and became her only gold record. It was Crosby's 21st gold record.’

‘True Love’ is the name of a yacht on which two of the characters honeymoon in the play ‘The Philadelphia Story’, on which the musical is based. Bing Crosby later owned a 55-foot Constellation yacht which he named the ‘True Love’.

Other versions of the song were covered by Jane Powell, Richard Chamberlain, Nancy Sinatra, George Harrison, Shakin’ Stevens, Elton John and Kiki Dee, Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson The Everly Brothers, Patsy Cline Connie Francis and the short-lived band of the 80s, Oasis.

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When I first saw Grace Kelly and Bing Crosby duet this song together in their film ‘High Society’ in the 1950s, I was awe struck by the combination of having the most beautiful woman in the world duet with the most beautiful crooner of all time. That was the moment I fell in love with Grace’s face and Bings mellow voice. I recall thinking then, “How magical it would be to be able to sing with the beautiful Grace in my arms, gazing lovingly into my eyes”.

But that was then, in the mid-50s, when there were no such things as mobile phones, computers, and lap tops with inner microphones and a station called ‘You Tube’ which could be used by any imaginative old man to conjure up whatever backing music or even famous singer to sing along with!

So, today, Bing can sit this little number out while Bill and Grace explain the meaning of ‘True Love’ together.

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 29th April 2019

29/4/2019

Today’s song is ‘Here in my Heart’. I dedicate this song to Francesca Sherry whose birthday it is today.

This is a popular song that was written by Pat Genaro, Lou Levinson and Bill Borrelli. The song was published in 1952." A recording of the song by Al Martino made history as the first Number 1 on the ‘UK Singles Chart’ on 14 November 1952. ‘Here in My Heart’ remained in the top position for nine weeks in the United Kingdom, setting a record for the longest consecutive run at Number 1.

It remained a record which, over 50 years on, has only been beaten by six other tracks : Bryan Adam’s ‘(Everything I do) I do it For You’ (16 weeks) : The Wet, Wet, Wet version of The Troggs ‘Love is All Around’ (15 weeks) : Drake’s ‘One Dance’ (15 weeks) : David Whitfield’s ‘Cara Mia’ (10 weeks) : Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’ (10 weeks) : Whitney Houston’s version of ‘I Will Always Love You’ (10 weeks) : Frankie Laine’s ‘I Believe’ (spent a total of 18 weeks at Number 1, but not consecutively, instead totalling 18 weeks across several runs at the top).

By staying at Number 1 until 1953 in the UK, Martino secured for himself the record of being the only performer to have a Number 1 hit in the entire year of 1952. No subsequent act has ever dominated the top spot so entirely in any later year.
Other versions of this song were recorded by Vic Damone, Tony Bennett and Mario Lanza. In 1963, the non-singing film star performed this song in his film ‘This Sporting Life’.

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This song has always held a special memory for me, and today I dedicate to my dear friend Francesca Sherry on her birthday. Francesca always reminds me of the little Shirley Temple lookalike girl who grew up into a beautiful young woman with a heart of gold. Francesca, who is an excellent artist kindly painted the Madonna statues in our home and in the religious grotto in out allotment. Whenever I pray there now, I always add a little prayer for the future happiness of the beautiful Francesca. Happy Birthday from Bill and Sheila. xxx

his song was first released when I was aged 10 years old and I remember it well as being one of the songs that I once won a singing prize for. They do say that competitors should never enter any talent contest where other competitors include children and animals. I must say that there were several adult singers whom I beat in talent contests when I was a young boy.

It would be almost 10 years later when I emigrated to Canada for a couple of years before the tables were turned on me. I entered a talent contest on the ship I crossed the Atlantic in over the Christmas voyage of 1964, only to come second to a 10-year-old Shirley Temple lookalike with a sugar-coated voice that melted the hearts of every mum and dad on board ship.

Her mere presence won her the contest without any need of every opening that mouth of hers. As soon as she came on stage with her childlike finger in her innocent mouth, feigning a look of shyness and coquettishness that her mother had perfected in her little angel over hundreds of hours of practice.

I really tried hard to be as charitable in thought as much inside as I appeared outside.
But deep down, I must confess that the thought that kept echoing around my brain was, ‘You’ve been robbed Bill, by a bit of parental eye candy’. Believe me, I wasn’t simply being a bad loser. In total objectivity, I'd have to say, 55 years later, that the 10-year-old girl was good but ‘here in my heart’ I just know that I was better!

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 28th April 2019

28/4/2019

that was written by Edith Lindeman (lyrics) and Carl Stutz (music). The song was published in 1953. The best-known recording of ‘Little Things Mean a Lot,’ was by Kitty Kallen. This recording reached Number 1 on the ‘U.S. Billboard’ chart in 1954. It also reached Number1 on the ‘Cash Box’ chart the same year. Billboard ranked it as the ‘Number 1 song of 1954’. In addition, the track climbed to the top spot in the ‘UK Singles Chart’ in September of that same year.

The song was covered by Alma Cogan: Dana: Cilla Black: Patty Duke: Cliffe Richard: and many others, but none got anywhere close in ranking to that of Number 1 by Kitty Kallen in 1954.

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I remember first hearing this song on the radio after I’d been discharged from a nine-month stay as a patient in the old Batley Hospital, following a serious traffic accident I incurred that left me unable to walk for the following three years.

Of all song content, none can be truer than the words in this song. Of all the things in life that can make a person feel happy, wanted, purposeful and content; and where no material cost is incurred and requires only the smallest amount of effort, it is those ‘little things’ that matter most.

A gentle smile, a charitable thought, a softly spoken word, a look of understanding, any kind act or supportive gesture; each and all of those ‘little things mean a lot’. Just as my dear old mum used to tell me,” Billy, watch your pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves”, if we never forget the smallest of things in our dealings with others, so will we humans increase from childhood into adulthood in wisdom and all-round goodness as our morals are moulded, our lifestyles shaped and our characters are indelibly formed.

When we do all those crucial ‘little things’ mentioned above, we are in the process of being much more than ourselves in any situation we find ourselves in. We now constitute a greater whole of human goodness and add up to much more than the total of our own parts.

Anyone who has ever felt lonely, fearful, sad, hurt, emotionally unsettled, misunderstood, mentally confused, unwanted or unneeded, put down, humiliated or outcast; all can benefit enormously simply by your presence and the smallest yet most important of actions from you. We can, through our words and actions, prevent the lonely from feeling desolate, stop the sad from feeling depressed and woeful, stop those who feel to have lost their way from feeling isolated, help the fearful from growing terrified, console those who have been hurt from feeling more wounded. A few simple things are all it takes to stop a person from feeling unwanted, unneeded and unloved. Sometimes, one’s silent presence alone is sufficient and is all that’s needed to show the other person they are not alone.

And from all thoughts, words or deeds at our disposal to employ, none can ever be more powerful or uplifting than telling or showing a person ‘they are loved’. I have witnessed too many occasions during my working career when dealing with the problem situations within family and couple relationships, when I have heard a parent or partner say, “He/she knows I love them without me needing to say it.” The simple answer is ‘No they don’t!” And were one to even to suppose that they may suspect you love them, ‘THEY STILL NEED TO PHYSICALLY HEAR THE WORDS SPOKEN FROM TIME TO TIME’.

Anyone who ever felt loved is a person who was frequently told ‘I love you’ by significant others. I never experienced one day in my whole life before my mother died when she failed to tell me and all her children that she loved them. Never one morning before leaving the house or one night before going to bed, did she fail to say, ‘I love you, Billy Forde’. Note how her adding of my name to the sentiment personalised it and made it more meaningful for me.

So many times when counselling a married couple who had stopped talking to each other, it was essential to get the two of them back to being able to re-engage in gentle touch, softer look and more positive speech in our work sessions, but it was crucially important that if they wanted their words to be heard with more receptive ears, it was advisable that they prefixed them by starting with the other person’s name. Thus, telling their marriage partner, ‘ Sheila/Bill, if only you did this or that it would be so much easier to understand‘ WILL ALWAYS SOUND MORE SINCERE AND PROVE FAR MORE EFFECTIVE than saying, ‘If only you did this or that……………to understand’ (without any name prefix).

Between 1989 and 2005 I held two thousand special assemblies in Yorkshire schools (Mostly primary schools of which over 100 schools had annual visits). Never once in these special storytelling assemblies did I finish the assembly without asking the children, “If you could give your mum and dad the best present in the world today, would you?” After the assembly of young children had yelled out ‘Yes’ I would tell them, “Tonight when you go to bed, look into your mother or father’s eyes, smile and say, ‘I love you’. If you do this, you will see a sight of happiness on their face that you will never forget”.

Around 2007, I had occasion to meet and speak with the Barnsley mother of a young boy who had attended one of my storytelling assemblies in 1992 when he was aged 7 years. The woman thanked me profusely and said that she will never forget that very first night when her 7-year-old boy cuddled her and told her he loved her before going to bed. She told me that she cried with happiness, but can also remember replying, ‘And I love you too, …’

It was only at that precise moment when the boy’s mother realised that it had been several years since she had told her son she loved him at bedtime and that he had probably taken the lead from her of no longer speaking words of love to her at the end of the day when he went to bed. She had told him infrequently at other times, but never at bedtime. Her son was reportedly an overactive boy who would become aggressive and shout when told by his mother daily that it was bedtime.

Her husband had left her and his son when the boy was 2 years old, and the boy’s behaviour had gradually worsened through the absence of an adult male in his life ever since. Getting him to bed had created too many unpleasant scenes that often the boy’s mother would relent for the sake of peace and quiet and allow her son to watch the television longer than was advisable.

I was pleased (no, proud) to learn that school assembly fifteen years earlier in the young boy’s life had left an indelible impression on him. Not only did his mother’s face light up when he told her, ‘I love you, Mum’ on that first night following the assembly that morning, but so did his face when his mother replied in identical sentiment. The Barnsley woman told me with maternal pride that never once since that morning assembly has either left the house without a cuddle or saying, ‘love you!’ (her precise words were the informal-sounding ‘Love you’ of a Barnsley born and bred woman and not ‘I love you’).

So please remember that ‘little things do mean a lot’ and saying, ‘I love you’ means more than anything else in the world. Every time these three words are sincerely spoken, God smiles down on the orator and brightens up His rainbow of hope and human aspiration.

Love and peace. Bill xxx

Song for Today: 27th April 2019

27/4/2019

Today’s song is ‘The Last Thing on My Mind’. This is a song written by American singer-songwriter and musician, Tom Paxton in the early 1960s and recorded first by Paxton in 1964. The song was released on Paxton's 1964 album ‘Ramblin’ Boy’. The song remains one of Paxton's best-known composition

The song has since been recorded by dozens of artists including Chet Atkins: Joan Baez: Harry Belafonte: Pat Boone: Chris de Burgh: Glen Campbell: Johnny Cash: Mary Hopkin: John Denver: Hank Snow: Charley Pride: Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner to name but a few.

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I first came across this song when I was training to be a Probation Officer up in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1970. It was the very first day for the course of mature students who had decided to enter the Probation Service or become a Social Worker. This was a course that invited older and more mature students, and on the course, we had all manner of previous occupations represented; my best friend was an ex-miner. This was the very last course in the country which provided the necessary qualifications to do the job within a 1-year crammed academic course at Polytechnic plus a two-year period ‘on the job experience’ to follow. All courses to become a Probation Officer after my year of academic training was for graduates only who had to undergo a 3-year academic course plus a one-year probationary period on the job.

Our first evening on the course involved an ice-breaking party of getting to know one another, during which everyone on the course had to contribute in some way. I will never forget ‘The Last Thing on my Mind’, a song which most people present (except me) were familiar with. During later years, I was prone to attend many nights where the singing of folk songs was all the rage, and where this song was a strong favourite for which requests were frequently made.

I do know the last thing on the mind of everyone alive or who ever lived was the very last thing they ever thought about. Whatever is in your thoughts are being instantly planted in your mind and are taking root in your memory bank as soon as you think the thought! In many ways, only by being able to influence ‘the way you think’, are you able to determine ‘what you think’ and with what degree of a positive outcome.

Without getting too complicated, our ‘thinking’ not only forms patterns of the mind from which our responses are shaped, and our behaviour is formed, but ‘thinking’ is solely responsible for reinforcing whatever type of prominent behaviour we display. How one ‘thinks’ is the mightiest reinforcer of both ‘good’ or ‘bad’ behaviour, and ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy behaviour, and ‘rational ‘or ‘irrational’ behaviour. The sayings, that ‘nothing is so unless you think it so’ and ‘there is nothing that is good or bad that thinking will not make it so’ could not be truer.

As a Probation Officer for 25 years who specialised in the disciplines of ‘how behaviour is formed, weakened and strengthened, and how behaviour patterns can be changed’, I can tell you that if you could look into the mind of any addict of drink, alcohol, food, sex (or whatever), ‘the very first thing on their mind’ and ‘the last thing on their mind’ will be whatever their source of addiction is and how they can next satisfy their needs.
People who find it difficult to socialise and make friends are often people who would dearly love to have a boyfriend or girlfriend or partner to come home to. Ironically, all they ever want is to be and feel wanted. This is the first, last and only thought which preoccupies their mind (I want to be wanted), as this is the one thing in their mind that validates their existence.

I frequently wonder what a person with dementia last had on their mind. Also. given the fact that they cannot recall what they ate for breakfast today but can remember the exact colour of what they wore at their wedding 60 years ago, does it matter? Or will they simply re-think the same thought over and over?

I do feel that over the years since my childhood, that society has most certainly hardened in its attitude towards certain groups of people, in what it wants and the lengths we are prepared to go to satisfy our desires. There is, I feel, less of an inclination to think of the other person’s needs before one’s own. To think of another before self isn’t being saintly, it’s simply being sensitive to their situation in the most empathetic of acts. I frequently need to remind myself that God is watching from a distance how we deal with our fellow man, our friend, our neighbour, the stranger, the vagrant, indeed anyone who stretches out their palm towards us or looks at us with eyes of desperation crying out for help. I know that we cannot help and do for everyone in need, but if we could try harder to do so for ‘just one person daily’ in our lives, such an action would be a significant start to making the world spin more happily on its axis of love.

The first and the last thought every day I wake up and go to bed is ‘Today is going to be a good day’ and ‘Today has been a good day’. The first and last person on my mind is the same person; it is either God who I give thanks to or my wife Sheila whom I am eternally grateful for being a part of my life. The first physical activity for the day is to text all my children and siblings to say, ‘Good morning’ and to end my message with ‘I love you’. In many ways, one could say that God, family and Sheila are the human addictions that I cannot live without.

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song for Today: 26th April 2019

26/4/2019

Today’s song is ‘Every Breath You Take’. I dedicate this song to my son, Adam.

This is a song by the English rock band the ‘Police’ from their album ‘Synchronicity’ (1983). Written by Sting, the single was the biggest US and UK hit of 1983, topping the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ singles chart for eight weeks (the band's only No. 1 hit on that chart), and the ‘UK Singles Chart’ for four weeks. It also topped the ‘Billboard Top Track’ for nine weeks.

At the ‘26th Annual Grammy Awards’ the song was nominated for three ‘Grammy Awards’, including ‘Song of The Year’, ‘Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals’ and ‘Record of the Year’; winning in the first two categories. For the song, Sting received the 1983 British Academy's ‘Ivor Novella Award’ for ‘Best Song Musically and Lyrically’.

The song is both the Police's and Sting's signature song and in 2010 was estimated to generate between a quarter and a third of Sting's music publishing income. In the 1983 Rolling Stone critics' and readers' poll, it was voted ‘Song of the Year’. In the US, it was the best-selling single of 1983 and fifth-best-selling single of the decade. Billboard Hot 100’ ranked it as the Number 1 song for 1983 The song ranked Number 84 on the Rolling Stone list of the ‘500 Greatest Sons of All Time’.

The background to the song provided reams of copy for the world’s press. Sting wrote the song in 1982 in the aftermath of his separation from Frances Tomelty and the beginning of his relationship with Trudie Tyler. Their split was controversial. As ‘The Independent’ reported in 2006, "The problem was, he was already married, to actress Frances Tomelty, who just happened to be Trudie's best friend (Sting and Frances lived next door to Trudie in Bayswater, West London, for several years before the two of them became lovers). The affair was widely condemned." In order to escape from the public eye, Sting retreated in the Caribbean. He started writing the song at Ian Fleming’s writing desk on the ‘Goldeneye Estate’ in Oracabessa, Jamaica. The lyrics are the words of a possessive lover who is watching "every breath you take; every move you make".

Sting later said of the song, “I woke up in the middle of the night with that line in my head, sat down at the piano and had written it in half an hour. The tune itself is generic, an aggregate of hundreds of others, but the words are interesting. It sounds like a comforting love song. I didn't realise at the time how sinister it is. I think I was thinking of ‘Big Brother’, surveillance and control.”

As a fitting legacy, in 1999, ‘Every Breath You Take’ was listed as one of the ‘Top 100 Songs of the Century’ by BMI. In 2003, VH1 ranked the song the ‘Number 2 Greatest Break-up Song of All Time’. As of 2003, Sting was still taking in an average of $2000 per day in royalties for the then 20-year-old song.

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I strongly suspect that when my son Adam was growing teenager, like many other teenagers of his day, many hours would have been spent in the privacy of his bedroom doing and getting up to all the things that teenagers get up to when they haven’t got the prying eyes of their parents on them. And if ever a parent deigns to enter their room (even after knocking on their door before they enter and not as they enter) the eyes of their untrusting child will always betray the words of their inner soul, “What are you wanting now. I’m almost 14 years old and you’re always watching me!”

When my son, Adam was growing up, he would play this song repeatedly in his bedroom; so much that initially, I got fed up of the song. I wasn’t sure at the time whether he just loved the song to bits or whether he was making the usual teenage protest to parents that all teenagers make as they accuse them of ‘always watching them’. Because it is a part of my own experience, I decided to learn this song that I have never sung before, and which I dedicate to my son Adam.

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 25th April 2019

25/4/2019

Today’s song is ‘Georgia on My Mind’. This is a 1930 song written by Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell and first recorded that year. It has often been associated with Ray Charles who recorded it for his 1960 album ‘The Genius Hits the Road’. In 1979, the State of Georgia designated it the official state song.

It has been asserted that Hoagy Carmichael wrote the song about his sister, Georgia. Frankie Trumbauer had the first hit recording in 1931 when it reached the top ten on the charts. Ray Charles, a native of Georgia, recorded a version that went to No. 1 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’. On March 7, 1979, in a symbol of reconciliation in the aftermath of years of activism and national legislation resulting from the ‘Civil Rights Movement’, Ray Charles performed the song before the ‘Georgia General Assembly’. After this performance, the Assembly adopted it as the state song on April 24.

In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine named the Ray Charles version of ‘Georgia on My Mind’ the ‘44th Greatest Song of All Time’. Willie Nelson’s recording of the song in 1978 as a single also peaked at Number 1. A year later, Nelson won a ‘Grammy Award’ for Best Male Country Vocal Performance for his version.

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The State of Georgia is sandwiched between the States of Alabama and South Carolina (to its east and west) with the State of Tennessee to its north and the State of Florida to its south. I once managed to get to see a small part of the State of Kentucky which is a couple of States north and had provisionally planned to visit Georgia but managed to get side-tracked after popping into a haberdashery store to see if I could get a zip repair on a pair of trousers.

The manageress of the haberdashery was a 26-year-old divorcee whose passion for making money was pushed into second place when it came to making love with an Irishman who had a Yorkshire accent.

The upshot was that Annabelle shut up shop early that day and after she had cooked us a hearty supper (she obviously didn’t want to be seen as being stingy in the hospitality department), she insisted I stay overnight and resume my travels the following morning.

I never did manage to make the trip to Georgia as initially planned. For the sake of brevity and decency, let’s say that I had other things more tempting than Georgia ‘on my mind’. I stopped over at Annabelle’s house for the next three days. She was obviously taken with me as she shut up her store two hours earlier (at three pm) over the following three afternoons, and showed me much more of what Kentucky had to offer than any chance traveller/passer could possibly dream of.

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song for Today: 24th April 2019

24/4/2019

Today’s song is ‘California Dreaming’. This song was written by John Phillips and Michael Phillips and was first recorded by Barry McGuire. However, the best-known version is by the ‘Mamas and Papas’ who sang the backup on the original version and released it as aa single in 1965. The song is Number 89 in Rolling Stone’s list of ‘The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time’.

The lyrics of the song express the narrator’s longing for the warmth of Los Angeles during a cold winter in New York City. The song became a signpost of the ‘California Sound’ and the arrival of a subculture era. This is a time when the mores of one set of people substantially differ from values and norms of behaviour to those of mainstream society; often in opposition. ‘California Dreaming’ was certified as a ‘Gold Record’ single in 1966 and was inducted into the ‘Grammy Hall of Fame’ in 2001.

The song was written in 1963 while John Phillips and Michael Phillips were living in New York City. At the time, John and Michelle Phillips were members of the folk group the ‘New Journeymen’, which evolved into the ‘Mamas and the Papas’.

The single was released in late 1965 but was not an immediate breakthrough. After gaining little attention in Los Angeles upon its release, a radio station in Boston broke the song nationwide. After making its chart debut in January 1966, the song peaked at Number 4 in March on both the ‘Billboard Hot 100’, lasting 17 weeks, and ‘Cashbox’, lasting 20 weeks. “California Dreamin'” was the Number 1 single of 1966 in ‘Billboard hot 100’. It also reached Number 23 on the UK charts upon its original release and re-charted and peaked at Number 9.

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There are few teenagers growing up who do not dream of travelling to different shores and experiencing warmer climates. I certainly was no exception and will never regret to take two years of my life out between the ages of 21 years and 23 years of age to live in Canada and to travel extensively around Canada and many different parts of America.

Such extensive travel was made possible by two factors. Having had a serious accident at the age of 11 years, I received a ‘not insignificant’ amount of compensation when I reached the majority age of 21 years. The amount of compensation amounted to what a grown man on good wages would receive in a two-year period. After giving my parents part, I decided to take the opportunity of having two years out. I suppose in many ways it was a sort of extensive ‘gap year’ I took between 1963/65.

Being financially secure, I only needed to take any job that enabled me to pay my weekly board and keep; thereby always having enough ‘money in the bank’ if I ever needed a ‘get out of jail card’ that wasn’t free. This financial security allowed me to try my hand as a professional singer in Montreal; a career I dropped after a few months and the discovery that I was a good singer but not the best singer in the world. Having a personality flaw at the time that told me if I wasn’t the best at what I did, I no longer desired to do it, I abandoned my singing career and went to work in a menial, low-paid job on the ‘Canadian Pacific Railway’ as a waiter.

While earning barely enough to live upon, the great advantage this job gave me was the opportunity to go on long-distance train journeys across the wide expanse of Canada (3000 miles) and visit different parts of America that I would never have seen otherwise. I will never forget seeing the wide-open places as the train crossed from Montreal to Winnipeg in the winter months and seeing Ghost Towns where mines had once flourished and supported the structures of a town community before the mines had been worked out. I saw thousands of perfectly habitable empty houses which became unsalable and were abandoned to the elements by their owners. During winter months, I saw communities in the wide-open prairies where houses were covered in twenty/thirty feet snow drifts with their occupants stranded for up to a month indoors. Most magical of all though was travelling through ‘Calgary’ which is known as Gods’ Country for its natural beauty. Famous for the ‘Calgary Stampede’ that is held every July. The ten-day event, which calls itself "The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth," brings over one million visitors every year and has the world's largest rodeo. It also has a large parade, numerous rides, side stage shows, concerts, farming games and racing. People from Calgary also begin wearing cowboy hats and other cowboy gear in spirit of the event. The stampede began as a farming fair in 1886 and turned into the Calgary Stampede in 1923. The train I worked on stopped at Calgary a number of times when I worked on the C.P.R. but it was only to drop off and pick up passengers. I never did get to see the famous rodeo, merely ‘pass through’.

One of the places I would have loved to have seen in the U.S.A. was California, but sadly it was never to be. I heard a lot about the place however from many residents of the Toronto Hotel I was later to work at. As far as California was concerned however, the only images I ever captured of the place was in magazines and in my dreams.

Love and Peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 23rd April 2019

23/4/2019

Today’s song is ‘Leaving on Your Mind’. This is a famous Country/Pop song written by Wayne Walker and Webb Pierce. The song was popularised by Joyce Smith in 1962.

Patsy Cline stated that she was in Owen Bradley’s office one day, heard the record Smith made, and immediately wanted the song for herself. According to Cline, Smith said, “No you can’t have it. I’m going to see what that Canadian gal does with it.” Cline apparently said ‘pretty please’ but Bradley and the label wouldn’t back down. Smith’s single, released in 1962, didn’t crack the top-40 but sold more than 100,000 copies, a major hit for a first record and enough that the Canadian gal recouped the considerable studio expenses and made a little money in royalties. Patsy Cline wound up recording the song and releasing it in 1963. It didn’t make the hit parade, either. It was her last single before she died in a plane crash in March of that year. Unlike her earlier hits ‘Crazy’ and ‘I Fall to Pieces’, ‘Leaving on Your Mind’ was an unfortunate failure on the pop chart, where it stalled at Number 83. However, the song today remains a classic in Country music.

Due to be released on her next album, that album was never released due to the tragic event that ended her life; a plane crash that March. The album was to be released at the end of March. Instead, the album was released on a double compilation album called ‘The Patsy Cline Story’. This album featured all of Cline's big hits, starting for her first in 1957 to 1963. The album was a huge hit and is still being sold today.

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During my own life as an individual and as a Probation Officer for 26 years, I experienced numerous people who found themselves in unhappy relationships. There inevitably came a time when they realised that something had to be done, and from that moment of decision only one thought preoccupied them; 'they had leaving on their mind’ as the only logical response to preserving their sanity, emotional stability and peace of mind.

Where the relationship is without children, some ease of pain is undoubtedly saved at the point of separation but when children are part of the family equation, the decision to stay or go, separate or divorce becomes much harder; especially if the person one marriage partner is leaving has a strong bond with the children to the union.

There have been so many husbands or wives who stayed in a failed marriage ‘because of the children’s sake’. So often, has the decision to leave an unhappy and failed relationship been postponed (often ten or fifteen years) until the children of the union have become older or have negotiated some important next phase of development. The person will often perceive their unselfish action as being no less than simply representing the demonstration of parental duty, whereby sacrificing their own happiness ‘for the sake of the children’ appears to be the only responsible course of action open to them. Often, they may tell themselves or their reprieved partner, ‘I’ll leave you when the children have done their school examinations… or have gone to university… or left home!”

When the threat to leave is ‘put on hold’ until a more suitable time in the lives of their children is made in an unhappy relationship between husband and wife, an uneasy peace prevails between the couple. When, however, the children have left, that is when the person making the threat must declare their hand. They either leave as threatened or decide to stay; leaving them feeling that either their bluff has been called in the marital stakes or they have simply thrown in their hand and stayed at the marriage table.

If you are a person who has ‘leaving on your mind’, whether the leaving pertains to a relationship, affair, marriage, job or any organisation or body, the sooner you come to a decision that meets your needs and which you can emotionally become reconciled with, the better for all concerned’

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 22nd April 2019

22/4/2019

Today’s song is ‘I Have a Dream’ which I dedicate posthumously to both my mums, my birth mother and Etta Denton (the woman who became my adopted mother after the death of my birth mother). God bless you 'Mums'. If there is a heaven, then I know for certain that you will both have your place in it.

This a song by Swedish pop group ‘ABBA’ It was featured on the group's sixth studio album ‘Voulez-Vous’ and released as a single in December 1979. The single became a big hit, topping the charts in many countries and peaking at Number 2 in the UK over the Christmas week of 1979. Twenty years later, Irish pop group ‘Westlife’ released a version of the song which reached Number 1 in the UK over the Christmas week of 1999.

The song was written by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus and Anni-Frid Lyngstad sang the lead vocals. The recording is notable for being the only ‘ABBA’ song to include vocalists other than the four band members; the final chorus features a children's choir from the ‘International School of Stockholm’. In the UK,

Irish boy band, ‘Westlife’ released a cover of ‘I Have a Dream in December 1999, twenty years after ABBA's original release. The song became the group's fourth UK Number 1 single.

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I have always been a dreamer ever since my early childhood years as the firstborn in a family of seven children from Irish parents. If there is one fact in life, it is the old Irish saying that every dream begins with a dreamer. My mother was the queen of dreamers, so it was only natural that I would also dream and make the seedlings she planted in my mind the fruit of my future reality. Mum walked in the enchanted footsteps of Irish wisdom and her greatest asset was her capability of turning the question ’Why?’ into the exclamation ‘Why not!’ Once her mind engaged in the possibility of something happening, she just carried on with her life believing it would happen. No restraint was ever applied to any possibility of becoming a probability. Where power of positive energy was employed, nothing was held back.

My mother’s philosophy was that it is by our dreams we grow great and it is through our self-belief in our capacity to do and achieve we get anywhere at all worth arriving at. She believed that all big men and women are dreamers. She held the view that too few of us follow through with our dreams whilst most do not. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nurse, nourish and protect them until they come to fruition.

I must confess that because my mother always believed and told me daily that I was ‘a special child’, I too came to believe such to be true and acted in a special way from time to time during my development. It would have been so easy for me to believe that I was simply living my mother’s dream by being a ‘me’ that accorded with her view of me, but I quickly had it reinforced in me that anyone who was prepared to be ‘normal’ would never acquire the confidence to do amazing things!

The more I think back since my mother died many years ago, the more I am content to conclude that my mother dreamed with eyes both wide open and shut. Indeed, she never stopped dreaming between the moment of her birth and her death. Thus, it is a fact that we do not dream in equal measure. Some people I believe are endowed with the capacity to first dream the impossible, then seemingly improbable, before finally being able to dream the inevitable.

Some ten years after my mother died, fate brought me and Etta Denton together. Etta was a woman in her mid-80s when I first met her. She had never married and never had any children. She had missed out on her teenage years when her mother became an invalid. Etta devoted her whole life to looking after her bedridden mother and keeping house for the family. When her mother died, she looked after her father and then, when he died, she kept house for her older brother,

Etta was in her mid-sixties before she could exercise the freedoms enjoyed by most adults. Her secret soldier sweetheart, Bill had died in the 'Second World War' and not being married, she could not mourn him publicly. The upshot is that from first doing her garden for Etta, I became the son that she and her soldier sweetheart never had and she effectively became my adopted mother. We were mother and son for ten wonderful years before Etta died aged 94 years.

Etta was a keen Baptist and regular churchgoer whose every bone was Christian and whose every thought was always the most charitable. She often told me that she knew she would be going to heaven when her time came to leave this life as she had dreamed of being in heaven many times since her 80s.

Etta and my birth mum were two great influences in my life; one in my earlier years and the other in my later years. I dedicate today's song to both mums of mine with love and fond memories.

Why not follow your dream for once instead of chasing it in circles and getting nowhere?

Love and peace. Bill xxx

Song For Today: 21st April 2019

21/4/2019

Today’s song is ‘From A Distance’. His song is most suitable for me to sing this Easter Sunday of 2019 as it reminds each and all that there is nothing we ever think, say or do that goes unwatched in the eyes of God. I dedicate this song today to my dear Facebook Friend, Joseph Newns.

The song was written in 1985 by American singer-songwriter, Julie Gold. Nancy Griffith was the first to record the song for her 1987 album, ‘Lone Star State of Mind’.

The song was covered a number of times, with the most successful being a version by Bette Midler which became a major hit in 1990. With regard to the song’s interpretation, Julie Gold has stated that she believes in an imminent and beneficent God, and also thinks that people have a right to interpret the song any way they want, as with all art. She has stated that the song is about the difference between how things appear to be and how they really are.

The song became an international commercial success after it was recorded in 1990 by Bette Midler for the album ‘Some People’s lives’. ’From a Distance’ reached Number 1 on the ‘Adult Contemporary’ chart and peaked at number two on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’. The song went on to win a Grammy for ‘Song of The Year’ in 1991. The song also won a ‘3 Million Airs Award’ from ‘Broadcast Music Incorporated’.

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Today’s song is dedicated to my Facebook friend, Joseph Newns on this holiest of days in the Christian churches’ Calendar, Easter Sunday. Joseph is a far better man than I am or could ever hope to be, and whereas I feel able to view emotional events ‘from a distance’, Joseph’s feelings and emotions place him closer to the shared experience, thereby making my experience less painful than his.

How this distinguishes us both can best be described in terms of ‘closeness’ and ‘identification/empathy’ and ‘the degree of pain felt’. I strongly suspect that because Joseph literally feels the pain of other’s suffering more than I do, he is automatically closer to the ‘Cross of Christ’ than I will ever be. For anyone thinking that I am being less charitable to my own character than I ought to be, please believe me when I say I know I am ‘a good man’, but I also have the eyes, heart and soul to know when I am in the presence of ‘a better man’.

We cannot be close to God without identifying with the pain and suffering that so many people experience across the world, but therein lies the distinction between empathy and shared pain. Also, there is no point in being close to one’s God unless one can feel the warmth and unqualified love that pours forth from His sacred heart.

In the Bible, I always feel that Joseph gets far less of a mention than he deserves. Whereas Mary was appointed the Mother of Jesus Christ, to the best of my understanding, there is nothing written to suggest that there was anything pre-ordained about choosing Joseph as her husband and the Step-Father to Jesus. Joseph played his part in the life of Jesus over 2000 years ago, just as my dear friend Joseph Newns plays his part in promoting the thoughts and actions of Jesus Christ today and every day. I feel doubly blessed to call Joseph my friend.

Have a happy Easter everyone, especially Joseph and all his family.
Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 20th April 2019

20/4/2019

Today is my oldest son James’ 44th birthday. James lives in France with his two children and his beautiful wife. I recently got a surprise visit from him last week and Sheila and I enjoyed an evening meal with my sons James and Adam. I dedicate today’s song to James.

Today’s song is ‘When You’re in Love with a Beautiful Woman’. This song was an international successful single by Dr Hook. It was written by Even Stevens and first appeared in 1978. Riding the ‘disco wave’ in 1979, it belatedly became an international hit, reaching Number 6 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ singles chart in the U.S.A. It did even better in the U.K. where it spent three weeks at Number 1 in the ‘U.K. Singles Chart’ in November 1979.
Recorded at ‘Muscle Shoals Sound Studio’, Alabama the song was an international hit and hit peaked position in the different country charts:
Australia: Peaked at Number20
Austria: Peaked at Number 14
Belgium: Peaked at Number 2
Canada: Peaked at Number7
Holland: Peaked at Number 2
Germany: Peaked at Number 8
Ireland: Reached Number 1
New Zealand: Peaked at Number 2
Spain: Peaked at Number 11
United Kingdom: Reached Number 1

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I have always gone out with and been attached to beautiful women in my life since my teenage years, and while I do not consider myself as being the jealous type, I must admit that having a beautiful partner on one’s arm has been known to create all manner of difficulty for some couples. And this applies whether one’s beautiful partner is either male or female.
On ever so many occasions, numerous women (including my mother) have indicated that if women are wise, they will steer well clear of the Adonis six-pack type when selecting partners. Being so beautiful in face and body, such men have a long-established reputation for being unfaithful as a partner and forever having a posse of women in hot pursuit. (There is always the occasional exception of course).

Where beautiful women are concerned, some are selected by powerful and wealthy men as desirable ‘trophies’ they carry around on their arm, some are selected for appearing to be sensuous beings, and some are selected because of the inner beauty they possess. Let me say from the start that the reasons behind my choice to be with the women in my life have usually been in the latter category.

Those women who were chosen in the category one bracket, when their good looks fade and disappear, so will their ‘Sugar Daddy’. By the time they reach 40 years of age, their man will have exchanged them for a couple of twenty-year-old beauties. Those women in the second category of male choice will either have demonstrated their sexual prowess or not within a few months of the start of the relationships. If they are found wanting, they will soon be cast off in preference of someone more sexually alluring, and if they come up to satisfaction, the bulk of their next twenty-five years will be spent exercising at the gym three hours daily, doing a 10 kilometre run weekly, and learning to eat and digest all manner of obnoxious-tasting foods that is the standard diet of stick insects. As for the odd gin and tonic; forget it darling as it’s no good for the female figure according to ‘Sugar Daddy’.

As a Probation Officer for almost thirty years, I often witnessed over possessive and extremely jealous men who kept so a tight rein on their partner's movements and activities, that the lives of the women were ruined. Such control freaks would go to extreme lengths to check that their wives were not cheating on them when they happened to be outside their company.

I even recall one young woman who had been left her mother’s bungalow after her mum had died. She and her jealous partner eventually moved into the bungalow to live, so that they could save on rental outlay they otherwise would have spent. The savings turned out to be extra drinking monies for the male partner who controlled her to the extent that (being a bungalow with a normal size window inside the loo), the woman was never allowed to close the door whenever she was on the toilet, just in case she tried to make a run for it by jumping out of the window!

I knew of another woman whom a Probation colleague supervised and visited in prison. She’d been in cohabitation with a man whom initially persuaded her he would be good to live with but once he got his feet over her doormat, she quickly discovered him to be a highly jealous partner who became a ‘control freak’.

Initially, he falsely accused her of making eyes at other men when they were out together, so confined her to the house. He then became physically and emotionally abusive and would regularly hit her with his fist (usually after drinking a large amount of alcohol). After she had been in the relationship for one year, she became too scared for her own safety to try to leave it.

The one occasion she drummed up the courage and left her partner, he followed her across three counties and when he eventually tracked her down, he cornered her and mercilessly beat her. He threatened to kill her if she ever left him again and being terrified that he would, she dare not run away ever again.
He wanted children to their union and although she seemed to go along with his wishes, she secretly took the birth control pill; not wanting to have any child to such a vicious brute of a man.

After two years of continuous sex between the couple, often against her expressed will, when the woman failed to conceive, he beat her and blamed her for being the infertile one. He knew he wasn’t infertile as he’d already fathered a child to a Manchester schoolgirl when he was 16 years old and she was only 14 years old. That child was taken into Care and he was charged with Unlawful Sexual Intercourse with a Minor, for which he was sent to Borstal for two years.

Eventually, the battered woman was too scared to leave him but had also become too scared to stay living with him. So, she took the first opportunity that came her way to rid herself of this monster. She killed him one night when he came home drunk and fell fast asleep on the sofa. Her choice of weapon was a kitchen knife which she plunged repeatedly into his chest; and as the Mad Monk, Rasputin who refused to die immediately after being poisoned with cakes and wine and shot multiple times, it took the battered woman several knife stabs to finish him off. She was eventually sentenced at Crown Court to two years imprisonment but was at last free of the brute.

Fortunately, in most instances when a man or woman has a partner of beautiful face and body, any prevailing jealousy is usually taken care of by the ‘watchful eye’ and the removal of any social temptation that may occasionally stir up fond memories of that single woman feeling; like attending a friend’s hen party in Dublin or Amsterdam.

It would seem that there are no lengths that some men (and occasionally women), will go to whenever they are ‘In Love with a Beautiful Woman’.

Love and Peace Bill xxx

Song for Today: 19th April 2019

19/4/2019

Today’s song is ‘Bad Moon Rising’. This song was written by John Fogerty and was performed by ‘Credence Clearwater Revival’. It was the lead single from their album ‘Green River’ and was released in April 1969, four months before the album. The song reached Number 2 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ in June 1969 and Number 1 on the ‘U.K. Singles Chart’ for three weeks in September 1969. It was Credence Clearwater Revival's second gold single.

The song has been recorded by at least 20 different artists, in styles ranging from folk to reggae to psychedelic rock. In 2010, Rolling Stone ranked it Number 364 on its "500 Greatest Songs of All Time’ list.

The inspiration for its composition was explained when Fogerty reportedly wrote, 'Bad Moon Rising’ was inspired by a scene in the film involving a hurricane and the song is about the apocalypse that was going to be visited upon us".

The song has been used in many films such as: ‘An American Werewolf in London’: ‘My Fellow Americans’: ‘Twilight Zone’: ‘Howling 111’: ‘The Marsupials’: ‘Blade’: ‘Sweet Home Alabama’: ‘My Girl’: ‘Man of the House’: ‘Operation Avalanche’: ‘Mr Woodcock’: ‘The Big Chill’: ‘Kong- Skull Island’; along with being used in numerous television shows, even on video games.

The song has become notably popular in Argentina as a soccer chant, sung by fans at the stadium to support their teams during soccer matches. Different versions of the lyrics exist for different local teams, and even political parties!

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Several years before I trained to become a Probation Officer in 1970, I worked in a textile mill in Brighouse. I had given up my job as a Mill Manager on nights in a Cleckheaton dye-works and finishing firm to take up a relatively modest role in another mill. This dramatic change in job role witnessed my monthly salary of £240 (a very high salary for 1967) reduced to a weekly wage of less than £20. However, the upside to this apparent downsize in my career prospects was that I no longer worked nights and could, therefore, return to night-school studies three nights weekly for three years to obtain the necessary ‘GCE-A’ and ‘O’ level grades I needed to enrol on a course to become a Probation Officer at Newcastle. I had effectively changed occupations to pursue a career I was better suited for and which I felt deep down that I was destined to follow.

Whilst working at the mill in Brighouse, I met and became close friends with many different types of people. My new workmates were mainly good, honest people who worked and played hard and took whatever happiness life offered them with a sense of gratitude for their good health. There was, however, one man in his mid-50s called George. George was a single man who lived alone (no doubt the basis of many an uncharitable thought or word was spoken about George by his workmates). Overall, no other description would be accurate than to say that George was an unhappy man who never had a good or kind word to say about man or beast. It mattered not what George experienced, when, where, how and who with? Whatever the nature of his experience, the quality remained constantly pessimistic and depressing!

I always found that being in George’s presence for any length of time was like having a toothache that one wanted to be rid of as soon as possible. It was like being forced to swallow a bitter pill. I had been reared by a happy and positive mother who sang all day long as she worked about the house for her large family of seven children. Mum saw goodness in everything she viewed, often to the annoyance in her growing firstborn, who would sometimes notice the obvious badness of a thing or person.

Nevertheless, with my mother being an eternal optimist, I was always brought up in a positive environment, always told to look for the sunny side of the street. Just as a slice of bread and jam will nearly always fall onto the floor with the jam side downwards, my mother’s said to me when I inquired why this was, “ Billy, if you weren’t so greedy and didn’t put too much jam on your bread in the first place, who’s to say it wouldn’t have fallen sticky side up?”

I don’t know how my mother might have reacted had she been faced with working alongside George all day long in the mill. I wonder if he would eventually have worn her down also as he did so many others. George and my mother were essentially opposite sides of the same coin; whereas George would spot the difficulty in every opportunity, my dear mother would instantly see the opportunity in every difficulty. Whereas mum would see a doughnut as being a wholesome thing to eat, George would see nothing other than the hole in it and complain that the baker had short-changed him.

Before I left my millwork and went off to study as a trainee Probation Officer in Newcastle, my workmates at the Brighouse mill arranged a party send-off night for me. Much to my surprise, George attended along with thirty or forty others. I recall one comment from a good work mate when he saw George turn up wearing his usual face of glumness, ‘Good God, Bill! Surely you haven’t asked old misery guts to attend. He’ll put a damper on things.” To sum up the group consensus of party attendees regarding the attendance of George at the party, most believed that the only reason George had bothered to come to the pub do was to spoil the occasion.

That night, I was surprised to see George get fresh as he continued to knock back any free drinks that were on offer. At the end of the night, George was as drunk as a skunk and fearful that he might not get home safely if left to his own devices, me and workmates Trevor, Barry and Terry ordered a taxi and took him home. Upon arrival, being legless, it was necessary to open his door and see him inside while the taxi waited outside with metre running of course. Upon entry, we were instantly struck with an overpowering aroma of ‘cat’ smells.

Fortunately, George lived in a bungalow that required no climbing of stairs to put him to bed fully clothed. We eventually managed to lay the unconscious George on top of his bed in what we later learned was his inheritance. The bungalow had once belonged to his deceased mother as did the sofa he still sat at, the table he ate from and all the chairs that furnished the house; even the bed he slept in. It would have been easy to have added ‘slept in alone’, but such a statement would not have been true, as it seemed that George shared his bed nightly with seven cats. We tried to shoo the cats off the bed to make room for George on it, but they refused to shift and defiantly hissed their displeasure as they showed their claws.

I later learned that all his life, George and his mother had been as close as any mother and son could possibly be. This bond with his mother strengthened after his father deserted them when George was a mere three months old. He never saw or heard from his father again who reportedly worked the fairgrounds. Never a person who mixed easily, George’s social life thereafter became non-existent. It essentially involved going to bed, rising and going to work, returning home at the end of his working day, having tea and watching television every night with his mother until bedtime, and sleep once more. Such a pattern had seemingly been George’s life until the age of 46 years when his mother suddenly died from either a stroke or a heart attack (I cannot recall which it was).

After mum’s death seven years earlier, George had bought a cat for companionship. He discounted all notion of getting a dog as that would have involved regular walks and the increased likelihood of having to meet and speak socially with people he passed on his travels. On the subsequent anniversary of his mother’s death annually, George would get another cat from the Animal Refuge Centre for stray and unwanted cats. This fact reminded me that we all readjust to dealing with our grief in different ways.

I made a point of inquiring about George some years later when I’d joined the Probation Service and two former workmates suggested we meet up for a drink in Weatherspoon’s of Brighouse to chat about old times. During our reunion night out between me, Barry and Terry that night, George came up in conversation. About six months after I left, he seemingly left his job, sold up the house and went to Wales. Naturally, he didn’t inform a soul about the reason behind this sudden change in life apart from saying to one persistent workmate who was determined to repeatedly ask him where he was going, who with and why until he received an answer from George?

For the first time, anyone had ever observed at first hand, George simply smiled and replied, ‘Because it’s time to go as there’s a bad moon rising’. Typically, George’s last comment to them was in keeping with all their expectations of him being a confirmed pessimist. That was the last I ever heard of George, but I can never go to any part of Wales without looking out on the off-chance that he may be somewhere near me. Given that it is 45 years since I last saw George, I’ll just keep my eye out for a small chappie walking his 52 cats behind him like the ‘Pied Piper of Pontepridd'.

Love and peace. Bill x

Song For Today: 18th April 2019

18/4/2019

Today’s song is ‘Speak to Me Pretty’. This song was written by Dunham and Henry Vars. It was performed by Brenda Lee. The song featured on Brenda Lee's 1961 album, ‘All the Way’. Not chosen to be a single in the United States, the song was selected by Lee's U.K. record label as a single and reached Number 3 in the ‘U.K. Singles Chart’ in May 1962, which made it the highest-placing chart single Lee ever had in the U.K. The single also made Number 57 on the overall U.K. sales chart for 1962. ‘Speak to Me Pretty reached Number 8 in the Norwegian charts in 1962 also.

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When I was a teenager and a gang of lads would go out dancing twice weekly between Batley, Cleckheaton, Dewsbury and Halifax, for some unknown reason I always finished up dancing with the beautiful girl on the dance floor while the partners that my mates were dancing with could accurately be described as being ‘Okay’ at best. I was a good dancer and could bop with the best of the rock and rollers, and although I was a handsome young man, there were some in our group who were far better looking than me.

For many months I tried to figure out what I was doing right and where they were missing out. I was discussing this situation with my mother one evening and she gave me the answer in one brief sentence as to why I always finished up with the best-looking girl on the dance floor. Mum looked at me and said, “It’s because you ask, Billy, and you expect!”

In a later conversation with my dancing mates, I enquired as to why, when three or four of them approached a group of four or five girls, they never asked the best-looking girl in the group to dance. The prettiest always seemed to be overlooked in favour of one of the others. One of my mates called George said that he always asked the least good-looking (he avoided saying the word ‘ugliest’) because she was the one who was most likely to say ‘Yes’ to his invitation to dance. Another friend called Peter indicated that he always went for a girl whom he'd be more than likely to get farther with in the heavy-petting stakes at the end of the night. He presumably believed that the more fetching and stunning a young woman was, the less likely she'd be prepared to give up her 'crown jewels' without the promise of a happy marriage to come and a life of roses thereafter. All my mates had their different reasons as to their choice of dancing partner, but the upshot was they reckoned they had more to lose and less to gain by asking the most beautiful girl to dance.

This rationale, believe me, was rubbish! I rarely got refused when I asked the most beautiful girl to dance, and neither did I ever find the most beautiful women to be too prim and proper when it came to indulging in a bit of hanky panky when the lights went low.

I remember asking a beautiful young woman at the 'Ben Riley' dance club in Dewsbury to dance one night. She agreed and after the dance, we sat down at a table, had a drink and talked (as one naturally does). My six mates had previously asked six of her group to dance while I was at the toilet and I came back to see them all on the floor while also noticing that not one of them had invited the best-looking of all the girls to get up and dance with them. Ironically, the most beautiful girl was acting in the role of ‘wallflower’, sitting it out at the side of the dance hall floor as she watched her six friends dance with my six mates.

During our conversation, I referred to this fact and my dancing partner smiled somewhat ironically. She essentially told me that being regarded as 'beautiful' or ‘stunning in the looks compartment’ was a curse more than a blessing for any woman. She indicated that whereas being handsome nearly always worked in a man’s favour, it was more often than not likely to work against a beautiful looking woman. My dancing partner put this down to the very same reasons that my mates had come up with after I'd asked them why they never asked the most beautiful girl in a group to dance. All I could think was “That’s their loss and your gain, Billy Boy!”

I will admit that when a young man walks across the dance floor and asks a girl to dance with him and she declines, he then has to make that embarrassing long walk of shame back with his raucous mates at the other side of the dance hall chanting ‘Wanker’ at the top of their voices or calling him some other kind of ‘loser’(that is if he doesn’t make a convenient detour to hide out at the bar or in the toilets for the next five minutes).

Whenever I hear today’s song, ‘Speak to Me Pretty’ I always think about those Town Hall and other Dance Hall choices we made as teenagers ‘on the pull’ and why? So, please take my mum’s advice that you get nowhere unless you ask and expect a positive outcome.

Love and peace. Bill xxx

Song For Today: 17th April 2019

17/4/2019

Today’s song is ‘Twilight Time.’ The lyrics to this popular song were written by Buck Ram, and the music was by ‘The Three Suns’ (Monty Nevins, Al Nevins and Artie Dunn). Ram said that he originally wrote it as a poem, without music, while in college.
Les Brown's version of ‘Twilight Time’ which was recorded in November 1944 and released in early 1945 as the B-side of ‘Sentimental Journey’, was the first recording of that song. While the A-side featured Doris Day's vocals, ‘Twilight Time’ was instrumental. The first vocal version of the song on record was released, also in 1945, by bandleader Jimmy Dorsey with Teddy Walters on vocals.

It has been recorded by numerous groups over the years. However, the best-known version of the song was recorded by the ‘Platters’ and became a Number 1 hit on both the pop singles and ‘R&B Best Sellers’ charts in 1958 in the United States. The song also reached Number 3 in the United Kingdom. In 1963, the Platters recorded a Spanish version of the song entitled ‘La Hora del Crepúsculo’, sung in a rhumba-style tempo.

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During the ’70s when the ‘Platters’ released their recording of this song, I had just joined the ‘West Yorkshire Probation Service’ and I was imbued with much more than a vocation to follow; it was more of a lifelong quest I perused. I possessed the strongest of convictions that my work for humanity would one day change the world I was a part of. Believe me when I tell you that it wasn’t particularly an arrogance in the belief that I then expressed, but I just knew that I was meant to be where I was and doing what I was doing, and with the types of people I worked with at the time. Everything inside me provided me with a conviction so strong, that the more difficult the problem behaviour I faced in a client who wanted to change their response pattern for the better, the greater was my level of enthusiasm that responded to the challenge and the more I was convinced that change for the better would be the result of our work.

readily and non-modestly acknowledge the importance of the pioneering work and research that I was engaged in. The particular areas of my specialism included those in the areas of uncontrolled anger- the involuntary expression of irrational fears- the emotional disturbance created by life-changing events and how one’s interpretation of such traumatic event determined the degree of emotional stability and instability. I needed to research the above areas in order to find and access a route to the brain via one’s imagination, relaxation and auto-suggestion that enabled one to change involuntary problem behaviour to non-problematic voluntary behaviour. However; I am equally in no doubt that it was the strength of my belief and conviction in carrying out this process that probably increased the likelihood of that work proving successful from the usual 10 per cent rating to around 40/50 per cent. I was essentially operating as a ‘hope provider’ and a ‘belief reinforcer’.

The people with the most problematic behaviour that often proved harder to change and improve were not the arsonists, the rapists, the robbers, the thieves, those who committed physical, psychological, mental. And sexual abuse on their victims; nor the hypochondriac, and those of limited social skills who found all manner of human interaction alarmingly frightening.

No! The most problematic behaviour that I found most difficult to successfully work with were people with depressive symptoms and people whose marriages had ended in divorce, whose partners had dumped them for another or who had experienced the protracted and unhealthy bereavement of a loved one.
All these people had one thing in common; they couldn’t sleep properly. Invariably they would be the ones for whom ‘the twilight hours’ were the saddest hours of the day. It was during these hours they mostly cried with feelings of loss and loneliness and sometimes bitter regret. Such sleep loss left them devoid of energy when tomorrow’s dawn arrived, and the repeated cups of coffee and smoked cigarettes that helped to keep them awake during the night to mentally remonstrate with themselves and remind themselves of sad things were again used to continue the process of continuous grieving during daytime hours also.

It was working with this group of people which eventually led me to invest in the production of my special relaxation tape, ‘Relax with Bill’. This tape was designed in pace of beat and rhythm to precisely mimic the rate of heartbeat one has at the point of ‘dropping off to sleep’. Key words used and auto-suggestive imagery are employed to mirror the sensations of ‘warmth’ and ‘heaviness’ that body muscles have during the stage of deep sleep. Consequently, use of the tape helps the listener and practising trainee to go to sleep, to sleep easier, longer and more productively.

The ‘Relax with Bill’ tape was freely given to thousands of people whom I taught to relax in individual and group training sessions over twenty-seven years as a Probation Officer and Group Worker, and up to 10,000 tapes were freely given out by me between 1970-2000. For the past twenty years, the 'Relax with Bill' tape has been freely accessible from my website, along with details of the types of people for whom it is unsuitable and the kind of situations in which it is dangerous to use.

Please bear in mind that though it was produced to the highest quality of its day initially,(costing £2000 to produce in 1972) that almost 50 years have passed since it was initially recorded. It is still used by many hundreds of people throughout the world who have converted it to more modern usage.

If you would like to use the tape, please follow the contra-indication instructions. The tape should not be used by pregnant women, people with a brain disorder or abnormality, or anyone whose blood pressure is usually too low (as repeated practice will significantly reduce blood pressure levels farther and too low a blood pressure level is as dangerous as too high a blood pressure level). Also, the tape should never be used when driving a vehicle or doing any precision work that requires full concentration for safety reasons.

To hear the tape freely, which can be downloaded and converted to more modern means of usage, simply access: http://www.fordefables.co.uk/relax-with-bill.html

The next time that you are tempted to get up during the twilight hours, why not try a practice with the tape then. Better still, get into the habit of going to bed with the tape, listening to it in bed and going to sleep with the words and images in your ears. This is self -hypnosis safely working, and at its most productive. Three months of daily/nightly practice should set you up and make you competent in relaxation for the rest of your life. In ratio to the investment of practice time, the benefits to a trainee’s health, sleep and performance level are enormous.

I have used the said tape daily for the past fifty years and while my sleeping hours usually exceed 8 or 9 hours each day, sometimes my high pain levels will wake me up and necessitate my sleep being taken in two chunks of time. It is important to also learn how to switch off mentally whenever relaxing. Most people of high energy levels who are capable of maximum output take 'power naps' of five minutes daily to recharge their mental and physical batteries. I also use the image of the tape to mediate my high pain levels that my body has experienced most of my life, along with using the imagery with any operation I have from time to time under a local anaesthetic. The tape is also helpful with ‘Anger Management’ and ‘Fear Reduction’ methods in establishing a state of homeostasis in the mind and body (equilibrium and stillness control).

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song for Today: 16th April 2019

16/4/2019

Today’s song is ‘You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me’, made famous by the West Hampstead singer, professionally known as Dusty Springfield who received an O.B.E. before her death in March 1999. Born Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O’Brien, Dusty was a pop singer and record producer whose career extended from the late 1950s to the 1990s. With her distinctive sensual mezzo-soprano sound, Dusty was an important singer of blue-eyed soul music and at her peak was one of the most successful British female performers, with six top 20 singles on the US ‘Billboard Hot 100’ and sixteen on the ‘UK Singles Chart’ between 1963 and 1989. Dusty was inducted into the ‘UK Music Halls of Fame’ and international polls have named Springfield among the best female rock artists of all time.

Her image, supported by a peroxide blonde bouffant hairstyle, evening gowns and heavy make-up, as well as her flamboyant performances, made her an icon of the ‘Swinging Sixties’.

Dusty’s singing career began at her home along with a family who enjoyed music immensely. She joined ‘The Lana Sisters’ in 1958, and two years later formed a pop-folk vocal trio, ‘The Springfield’s’ with her brother, Tom Springfield and Tim Field. They became the UK's top-selling act. Her solo career began in 1963 with the upbeat pop hit, " I Only Want to Be with You’. Among the hits that followed were Wishing and Hoping’ (1964), ‘I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself’ (1964), ‘You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me’ (1966) and ‘Son of a Preacher Man’ (1968).

As a fan of US soul music, Dusty brought many little-known soul singers to the attention of a wider UK record-buying audience by hosting the first national TV performance of many top-selling Motown artists beginning in 1965. Partly owing to these efforts, a year later she eventually became the best-selling female singer in the world and topped several popularity polls, including ‘Melody Maker’s Best International Vocalist’. Although she was never considered a ‘Northern Soul’ artist in her own right, her efforts contributed a great deal to the formation of the genre as a result. She was the first UK singer to top the ‘New Musical Express’ readers' poll for ‘Female Singer’.

To boost her credibility as a soul artist, Springfield went to Memphis Tennessee to record ‘Dusty in Memphis’, an album of pop and soul music with the ‘Atlantic Records’ main production team. Released in 1969, it has been ranked among the greatest albums of all time by the US magazine ‘Rolling Stone’ and in polls by VH1 artists, ‘New Musical Express Readers’ and Channel 4 viewers. The album was also awarded a spot in the ‘Grammy Hall of Fame’. Despite its current recognition, the album did not sell well. After its release, she relocated to America where she experienced a career slump for several years. However, in collaboration with ‘Pet Shop Boys’ Dusty returned to the Top 10 of the UK and US charts in 1987 with "What Have I Done to Deserve This?’. Two years later, she had two other UK hits on her own with ‘Nothing Has Been Proved’ and ‘In Private’. Subsequently, in the mid-1990s, owing to the inclusion of ‘Son of a Preacher Man’ on the film’s soundtrack of ‘Pulp Fiction’ interest in her early output was revived.

We must remember that Dusty (who was Gay) had always avoided questions relating to her sexuality and private life when she was a British household name with her own television show and regular appearances. The era for Gays coming out of their closets had not yet become the norm and many careers would have been placed at risk through outright honesty. By the start of the 1970s, although a major star, Dusty’s career was declining. Along with being a Gay who wished to live out her life more openly without risk of reproach, this is probably the reason why Dusty went to live and work in America where she could live with her partner, Norma Tanega. After she and her partner split up, Dusty’s life became more stressful and she ended her career singing in lowly establishments that she once would never have entered.

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My closest contact with Dusty herself was a brief note I got from her during the 1990s when I was in contact with numerous celebrities and famous names due to my charitable work and the publication of my children’s books that dealt with themes that children and adults found hard to emotionally cope with. My initial contact had been with the Secretary of her British Fan Club, Patricia Rhodes of Palo’s Green, London.

At the time I was approaching numerous celebrity artists and authors to donate a signed copy of their work for one of the many Charity Auctions I arranged between 1990 and 2000. This was one avenue of fundraising that was very popular and profitable, and which (along with the sales of approximately 200,000 of my published books that raised £200,000 profit for charitable causes) proved to be a winner. One week prior to the Charity Auction and a mere five months before her death, I received a signed LP and a brief note from Dusty via her Fan Club Secretary (because Dusty was said to be in America at the time). The note which authenticated the signed record of Dusty’s was auctioned off with her recording of ‘You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me’ and fetched a few hundred pounds if I recall correctly.

I later learned through a phone conversation with her fan club Secretary that the last few years of Dusty’s life had been far from happy ones. I will always cherish my memories however of that soulful voice that became loved by her worldwide audience of Gays and heterosexuals’. Dusty, I know that your song said, ‘You don’t have to say you love me’ but, take it from me, girl, ‘We do, and we always will”.

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 15th April 2019

15/4/2019

Today’s song is ‘Way Down Yonder’. Today’s song is a popular song with music by John Turner Layton Jr and lyrics by Henry Creamer. First published in 1922, it was advertised by Creamer and Layton as "A Southern Song, without A Mammy, A Mule, Or A Moon", a dig at some of the ‘Tin Pan Alley’ clichés of the era.
It was performed at ‘The Winter Garden Theatre’ in New York in Act 2 of the Broadway musical production ‘Spice’ in 1922. Early successful recordings of the song were by the ‘Peerless Quartet’, Blossom Seeley and Paul Whiteman. The song has been recorded numerous times from the early 1920s into the 21st century. It reached Number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100’ chart in early 1960. The song was performed by Harry Connick Jr. in a September 2005 NBC Katrina fundraiser, ‘A Concert For Hurricane Relief’, that raised over $50 million.

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While I have heard this song many times as I was growing up during the 1950s, I became re-acquainted with it during my few years when living in Canada during 1964/65. For six months, I worked as a Hotel receptionist on the night shift at an uptown hotel in Toronto. The hotel was in a ‘dry area’ and although my standard wage was half as much again as the older Bell Boy (the only other hotel worker between 8.00 pm and 8.00 am) who took the guests to their rooms and carried their cases when they checked in, and likewise to their cars on check out, the Bell Boy ‘Ron’ usually made three times my earnings each month without any more significant effort than I would carry out my job.

There were two main reasons for this. The first was that being British, I always wholly unacquainted with the concept of a person taking tips for having provided a service that his employers were paying them for anyway. Consequently, and much to the annoyance of many hotel guests, my refusal to take tips was essentially unheard of. Secondly, the bulk of Ron’s earnings came from his business on the side he had going for him. You see, Ron had been twice married, was an alcoholic and a gambler on the horses. He was either in large debt to his creditors or stuffed with money.

He had three jobs in total and ran a ‘black market empire’ in the hotel on a night time; especially when crammed to the rafters with grounded flight passengers in the Toronto fog. Each month, Ron would work double shifts, totally abstain from alcohol consumption and then place $1000 on a horse to win. If he lost, he would work extra hours during the following month to meet his financial commitments, but if he won, he would take a week off work and travel to the mountains in part of the USA where he would indulge alone in his two favourite past times, clear water fishing in mountain streams and drinking all night and day long until his money ran out.

This had been his pattern of life for five years before I knew him. It was a way of life he had no desire to change. He even met his second or third wife bathing nude in a clear water stream and she jokingly told him, “Now you’ve seen everything I’ve got, Honey, you’d better make an honest woman of me!” The gentleman he was, Ron married the woman.

To finance his addictions and lifestyle, Ron was obliged to make as much money from his extra-curricular activities at the hotel as he could. Hence, Ron knew where to obtain the two most illegal and sought-after commodities that guests from another country who were stranded overnight in a strange city always enquired about; the purchase of liquor and female companionship (and sometimes male) for the night. The hotel was situated in a part of town where the municipal law prohibited all local hotels and restaurant establishments from selling alcohol. Each month, Ron would outlay around $200 purchasing booze and liquor from contacts he had dealt with for years, which he would then sell to guests for a greatly marked-up price whenever asked for. The ‘Glenview Terrace Hotel’ was situated close to the Toronto airport. It was a frequent occurrence for flights to America to be grounded due to fog conditions and whenever this happened, the 300-roomed hotel would be filled to bursting point with stranded USA travellers, eager for female company (away from home) and alcoholic beverages. I was particularly surprised to learn of the 10 per cent ‘introduction commission’ Ron had arranged with a local prostitute pimp; an agreement that was mutually beneficial to both parties.

During quieter periods of the nightly shifts, Ron and I would chat, and smoke and he would always play his favourite music. His favourite song of all was (you guessed it!) ‘Way Down Yonder in New Orleans’; a place he always swore that he would visit the first time a horse wager paid enough dividends to indulge his pleasure.
God Bless you, Ron, wherever you may be situated today.
Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today; 14th April 2019

14/4/2019

Today’s song is ‘I’m So Excited’. This song is performed by American recording artists ‘The Pointer Sisters’. Jointly written and composed by ‘The Pointer Sisters’ in collaboration with Trevor Lawrence, it was originally released in 1982 (reaching Number 30 on the ‘US Singles Chart and saw a remixed re-release in 1984 (reaching Number 9 on the ‘U.S. Singles Chart’). ‘Billboard’ rated the song Number 23 on their list of ‘100 Greatest Girl Group of All Time’. The song was also featured in the film ‘Summer Lovers’ (1982).

A controversial aspect of this song was the music video that was made in 1984 when a remixed version of the song was released. The video was directed by choreographer Kenny Ortega. In the clip, the sisters are seen getting ready for a formal party at a high society club. Anita Pointer is shown dressing and applying make-up; Ruth Pointer is wearing nothing but a nightgown and is shown rolling around on her bed and throwing her garments around, and June Pointer is wearing nothing at all and taking a bubble bath As she stands up, she reveals too much of her lower regions. ( https://youtu.be/8iwBM_YB1sE )

Once the sisters arrive at the club, they are photographed, attracting the attention of the other party goers. By the video's end, they have the club on its feet jamming to the song.

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It is simply impossible to put any other meaning on this song or place any other memory around the words and sentiments expressed in it than describing the height of sexual intercourse and arousal. Whereas the words of the song were explicit enough, their notoriety is exceeded only by the explicit music video of Kenny Ortega. But what a song to dance and move to! I remember it well. Three songs would be guaranteed to get us all up dancing, ‘Brown Sugar’, Maggie May and ‘I’m So Excited’.
Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 13th April 2019

13/4/2019

Today’s song is ‘Ferry Across the Mersey’ (sometimes written ‘Ferry ‘Cross the Mersey’). This song was written and sung by Gerry Marsden of the band, ‘Gerry and the Pacemakers’. It was recorded and released in late 1964 in the United Kingdom and in 1965 in the United States. It was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic, reaching Number 6 in the United States and Number 8 in the United Kingdom. The song is from the film of the same name and was released on its soundtrack album. In the mid-1990s a musical theatre production also titled ‘Ferry 'Cross the Mersey’ related Gerry Marsden's Merseybeat days. It premiered in Liverpool and played in the UK, Australia, and Canada.

‘Mersey’ refers to the ‘River Mersey’ in northwest England; a river that flows into the ‘Irish Sea’ at Liverpool. The ‘Mersey Ferry’ runs between Liverpool and Birkenhead and Seacombe on the Wirral. In May 1989, a charity version of ‘Ferry Across the Mersey’ was released in aid of those affected by the ‘Hillsborough Disaster', which claimed the lives of 95 Liverpool fans the previous month. The song was recorded by Liverpool artists ‘The Christians’, ‘Holly Johnson’. ‘Paul McCartney’, ‘Gerry Marsden’ and ‘Stock Aitken Waterman’. The single held the Number 1 spot in the UK chart for three weeks and the Irish chart for two weeks.

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This song was recorded during a time when I lived in Canada. It was a period in musical history when Liverpool was the musical capital of the world and all the artists coming out of Liverpool spawned a generation of musical success, the like of which hadn’t been seen outside Detroit’s Motown Music scene.

Liverpool and its dock had always been important to the Irish immigrants coming to England to start a new life. My parents and their first three children of seven made that crossing during the 1940s. Indeed, whenever we went back to Ireland for holiday breaks in our growing up years, we would always catch the cheapest ferry out of Liverpool. This was colloquially known as the ‘Cattle Boat’ (because it often carried a cargo of live cattle on the bottom deck) with the paying passengers on the upper deck.

The cheapest ferry across the Irish Sea always set off at midnight. It was always crammed to the rafters, and any stowaways would have to sleep with the cattle below deck. The ferry would be overfilled with patriotic passengers who quickly lost their English intonations and slang one minute after stepping onto the ferry, falling back into the daily idioms of their mother tongue and expressing themselves in the Irish brogue of a Belfast banshee. Passengers would drink wildly and sing loudly in celebration of the land they all claimed to love with their dying breath, but which they couldn’t get out of quick enough years earlier once they got word of the better life to be had across the sea in England. The journey would take 8 hours to reach Dublin and the sleeping quarters were on top of a few suitcases or on the crowded floor laid on an old coat among too many drunks to count. I recall when I saw the film, ‘Titanic’ and the migrants travelling to America from Ireland on the lower deck, it reminded me of my passage on the ‘Cattle Boat’ crossing from Liverpool to Dublin as a young boy.

At the beginning of ‘The New Millennium,’ I recall seeing a performance by ‘Gerry and the Pacemakers’ in a night club called ‘The Ritz’ in Brighouse. We danced away to all their popular songs. I have to say that despite the advancement of years, apart from having lost a bit of hair here and there, Gerry hadn’t lost that distinctive voice of his I’d grown up listening to. It was a voice that made Liverpudlians as proud as punch and it also left Doddy and all the Knotty Ash people tickled to the end of their days. Long live Gerry and the Pacemakers.

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 12th April 2019

12/4/2019

‘Today’s song is dedicated to my brother, Patrick whose birthday it is. Patrick is 70 years old today.

Today’s song is ‘Secret Love’; a song composed by Sammy Fain (music) and Paul Francis Webster (lyrics) for the 1953 musical film’ Calamity Jane’ in which it was introduced by ‘Doris Day’ in the title role. Ranked as a Number 1 hit for Day on both the ‘Billboard’ and ‘Cash Box’, the song also afforded Doris Day a Number 1 hit in the UK. ‘Secret Love’ has subsequently been recorded by a wide range of artists, becoming a hit for Slim Whitman, Freddy Fender and Kathy Kirby.

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Sheila and I married on my 70th birthday and it was this song sung by Kathy Kirby that was played as background music on the video made of our wedding. It has always been a favourite song for both me and Sheila, even before we knew each other, though we'd have to admit that we prefer the Doris Day version of the song.

It is also an appropriate record to dedicate to my brother Patrick today in celebration of his 70th birthday. Without going into Patrick’s history too much, his most emphatic trait is certainly one of ‘secrecy’.

Whatever is going on in Patrick's life, he never lets on; even to his brothers and sisters. I also strongly suspect that he only tells his wife, Elaine, whatever he has withheld from telling her, only when she learns by other means and seeks confirmation of the fact, and he is unable to withhold it a moment longer. And as far as his brothers and sisters are concerned, he never tells us a thing about his life!

Indeed, he could be deciding how to spend the £10 million he won on the lottery seven years ago and has kept quiet about to all and sundry ever since! Or he might even be separating or divorcing from his lovely wife, Elaine for all we know, It is not beyond the realms of possibility that he could have a terminal illness that he is keeping secret from all his family and be in the process of dying. Were this the case, we wouldn’t know until we’d attended his funeral! If ever Patrick has to go into hospital, we never learn the nature of his illness, and we never know about his hospital admission until a month after his discharge date. Indeed, the only thing I have ever heard Patrick tell one of his siblings is “Get the next round in, it’s your turn!”

I have long had my suspicions about the secret life of my brother Patrick, and my best guess would be that he has probably worked for MI5 or MI6 for most of his life, For all his family know, he could even be a spy working for Moscow as his socialist credentials have always been extreme in view. On the other hand, he might be a bigamist living a double life between Windybank Estate and Wigan as he tries to juggle his family responsibilities between two wives and three children at each side of the Pennines. That explanation would at least make sense of his weekly absence every fortnight as he continues to share himself fairly between both unsuspecting households. And then, there is always the likeliest reason why a person aged 70 keeps secrets that he takes to his grave; the clandestine affair he has conducted with a widowed lollipop from Liverpool for the past thirty years.

Enjoy your day, brother and I hope it is filled with much love, happiness…and… lots of cake and ale. From your older brother Billy, who is the opposite to you insomuch as I still possess a full set of teeth and wear my own hair which has never seen a bottle of Grecian 2000. Also, I am someone who has less chance of keeping a secret and telling an untruth than you have of even finding it unwrapped in an honesty box and recognising it for what it is. By the way, brother Patrick, it was lovely seeing you and all my brothers and sisters last Sunday for a few drinks in Cleckheaton to celebrate the joint birthdays of yourself and sister Susan in advance of your special day.
I will end this post with a secret of mine, Patrick. You have always been my favourite sibling, but whatever you do, I'm sure that I can rely on you not to tell the other five brothers and sisters. Mum's the word. The next round is on you. Love Big brother Billy x

https://youtu.be/4J_MCxMjcP4

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 11th April 2019

11/4/2019

Today’s song is ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ which I dedicate to my youngest sister Susan who celebrates her birthday today.

‘Whiskey in The Jar’ is a traditional Irish song set in the southern mountains of Ireland, often with specific mention of counties Cork and Kerry. The song is about a highwayman (rapparee), who is betrayed by his wife or lover. The song is one of the most widely performed traditional Irish songs. Go into any Irish pub or place where Irish men and women are gathered together on St. Patrick’s Day in March and you will hear the song sung loudly from the rafters as spirits and porter is liberally drunk. Indeed, along with ‘Danny Boy’ this song, ‘Whiskey In The Jar’ is guaranteed to make any Irish man and woman on American or English soil momentarily homesick as their thoughts drift back to their green Isle off the Irish Sea.

The song has been recorded by numerous professional artists since the 1950s. The song first gained wide exposure when the Irish folk band ‘The Dubliners’ performed it internationally as a signature song and recorded it on three albums in the 1960s. In the U.S., the song was popularized by ‘The Highwaymen’ of ‘Michael Rowed the Boat Ashore’ fame, who recorded it on their 1962 album ‘Encore’. Building on their success, the Irish rock band ‘Thin Lizzy’ hit the Irish and British pop charts with the song in 1973. In 1990 ‘The Dubliners’ re-recorded the song with ‘The Pogues’ with a faster rocky version that charted at Number 4 in Ireland and Number 63 in the UK. The American metal band ‘Metallica’ brought it to a wider rock audience in 1998 by playing a version very similar to that of ‘Thin Lizzy's’, though with a heavier sound, winning a ‘Grammy Award’ for the song in 2000 for ‘Best Hard Rock Performance’. In 2019 Canadian singer, songwriter Bryan Adams performed another cover of this song through his album ‘Shine A Light’.

‘Whiskey in the Jar’ is the tale of a highwayman, who, after robbing a military or government official, is betrayed by a woman; whether she is his wife or sweetheart is not made clear. Various versions of the song take place in Kerry, Cork, Sligo Town, Killarney and Kilkenny, and other locales throughout Ireland. It is also sometimes placed in the American South, in various places among the Ozarks or the Appalachian Mountains, possibly due to Irish settlement in these places. Names in the song change and the official can be a Captain or a Colonel, called Farrell or Pepper among other names. The protagonist's wife or lover is sometimes called Molly, Jenny, Emzy, or Ginny among various other names. The details of the betrayal are also different, being either betraying him to the person he robbed and replacing his ammunition with sand or water, or not, resulting in his killing the person.

The song's exact origins are unknown. Several its lines and the general plot resemble those of a contemporary broadside ballad ‘Patrick Fleming’, an Irish highwayman who was executed in 1650. At some point, the song came to the United States and was a favourite in Colonial America because of its irreverent attitude toward British officials. The American versions are sometimes set in America and deal with American characters. One such version, from Massachusetts, is about Alan McCollister, an Irish-American soldier who is sentenced to death by hanging for robbing British officials.

The song appeared in a form close to its modern version in a precursor called ‘The Sporting Hero’, or, ‘Whiskey in the Bar’ in a mid-1850s broadsheet. The song collector Colm O Lochlainn in his book ‘Irish Street Ballads’, described how his mother learnt ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ in Limerick in 1870 from a man called Buckley who came from County Cork. When Ó Lochlainn included the song in ‘Irish Street Ballads’, he wrote down the lyrics from memory as he had learnt them from his mother. He called the song ‘There's Whiskey in the Jar’, and the lyrics are virtually identical to the version that was used by Irish bands in the 1960s such as the ‘Dubliners’. The O Lochlainn version refers to the "far fam'd Kerry mountain" rather than the Cork and Kerry mountains, as appears in some versions.

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I dedicate my song today to my sister Susan on this special day of her birthday. As the seventh child in a family of seven, Susan and myself were born at the opposite ends of the family spectrum. Being my parent’s firstborn, I was naturally nearer the trunk of parental opinion, and like all older brothers in the family tree, I have always held protective instincts for my little sister (the family twig) who has too often found herself on the outer branches of family thought.

Like all Forde family members, my sister Susan has always been a rebel within any establishment she has found herself a member of. Her greatest fault is that she has always been and will remain a rebel until the day she dies. The song has gathered thousands of more listeners amongst the Southern Irish than it otherwise might have done because of its irreverent attitude toward British officials, and it fits nicely into my sister Susan’s frame of mind.

Whatever characteristics Susan possesses, being forthright in speech and fearless in opinion are traits she holds up front. She does not suffer fools and has an instant disregard for sexist authority bossy superiors and officious line-managers. She never courts popularity and would want to be the last person ever to be regarded as being ‘part of the crowd’. Susan works as an Area Manager in Social Work and I often view her as being too much of a ‘loner’, and far too independent and proud to ever ask for help or assistance unless it was a life-threatening situation. She is a good sister, mother and grandmother who loves being in the company of her sisters and brothers and she is known to like a good sing-song (especially if the songs, company and whiskey are of Irish extraction). She is undoubtedly at her happiest and wickedest after she has had a few drinks in carefree and cheerful Irish company, where the background noise is the refrain of a good old Irish ballad or the rebellious song of Irish martyrs who were killed during the Easter Rebellion of 1916 in Dublin.

Indeed, although she wasn’t born in Ireland like me and her two older sisters, She is fiercely proud of her Irish heritage. Susan is immensely proud of her Irish and rebel family roots; so much so that after her divorce, she legally changed her married name of Brown (not back to her maiden name of Forde), but to the name of her Maternal grandparents, Fanning.

Here’s wishing you a happy birthday, Susan Fanning; little sister. May your special day be filled with much happiness, love and peace…and… lots of cake and Irish whiskey. Know that our mum and dad are proudly looking down on their youngest child today to toast your health and continued wellbeing, and to place their Irish hand of destiny on your shoulder. Listen, Susan! Can’t you hear all of the good Irish people that you have been blessed to know in your life utter their eternal blessing to you in the background of your special day, as they say, the Irish phrase, ‘ céad míle fáilte’ (a hundred thousand welcomes).

Love from your big brother Billy; the farthest sibling away from you in age, but the one who is the closest to you in enduring affection, mutual respect and love of the Emerald Isle. Not only do we revere and deeply respect Irish ground and Irish tradition, but we breathe and live life through the Irish lungs and pulsating heart of our Irish parents and siblings. Love from Billy xxx.
Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 10th April 2019

10/4/2019

Over the past few weeks, Brian Cunningham has been in the hospital and his condition has obviously concerned his wife Jean and their son Graeme. Happily, Brian was discharged home yesterday much to the relief of his wife and son. It is his son’s birthday today; thereby giving cause for a double celebration. I dedicate today’s song to Brian, Graeme, and Jean and hope they have as enjoyable a day as is possible.

Today’s song is ‘Since I Don’t Have You’. This song was written and composed by Jackie Taylor, James Beaumont, Janet Vogel, Joseph Rock, Joe Verscharen, Lennie Martin, and Wally Lester. It was a 1958 hit single for the group, the ‘Skyliners’ on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’. It was recorded by Barbra Streisand in 1974. Country music singer, Ronnie Milsap had a hit with the song in 1991. ‘Guns and Roses’ also had some success in 1994 with their top ten hit cover on the ‘UK Singles Chart’. Don McLean’s 1981 rendition reached Number 23 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ and is the cover version to come closest to the success of the ‘Skyliners' original in the USA. It was a major Adult Contemporary hit, reaching Number 6 in the U.S. and Number 2 in Canada.

As a testament to its longevity, it is frequently played on the radio and the song was featured in the films ‘American Graffiti’: ‘The Age of Adaline’: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai’: ‘Lethal Weapon 2’: ‘Shag’: ‘Mischief’: and television shows such as ‘Happy Days’, ‘American Hot Wax’ and ‘Outcast’.

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This song is essentially about the breakup of a relationship and ‘the emptiness’ which is felt by the person who has been walked out on by their loved one. This song reminds me of the self-evident truth that when a person invests all they possess in another; along with every emotion they have, they are inevitably devastated and doomed to experience prolonged misery, in the event that they are left by the other person.

I have often told the many people I have worked with over the years that happiness comes from within oneself if it is to remain lasting. It may occasionally seem to be found within another, but that simply means it is felt within oneself, whenever one is in the presence of a significant other. One may drink happiness from the loving cup, but when such happiness is wholly dependent upon the presence of another in one’s life, the loss or removal of that person from your life will also take away your sense of happiness and wellbeing. The ‘well’ in your enduring sense of wellbeing involves you ‘being’ able to be happy with yourself and within yourself.

I have known too many rudderless people in life who genuinely put any negative feelings or emotions they may have down to being on their own and not having a partner. Such assessments couldn’t be farther from the truth. No other person in the world is capable of producing lasting happiness in you except yourself. It is true that being in the company of certain others can seem to make you happy, but whenever your happiness depends upon the presence of another solely, it only remains present in your life if the significant other does also.

If there is only one thing I would like you to take from my words today, please let it be this: “I acknowledge that I make me happy or sad! Not you, not anyone else, but I!”

If there was ever an untrue and damaging sentence of words it is the sentiment expressed in this song that says: “I don’t have anything, if I don’t have you!” However good or bad relationships become in life, never overestimate the importance of another in your life or forget your own importance regarding the presence and maintenance of your own happiness and sense of wellbeing. That is why two people coming together in a romantic alliance; each of whom has found happiness in themselves before having met each other, are destined to make each other happier when they unite in ‘true love’. Conversely, any unhappy person can never know the reassurance that only ‘true love’ can bring. Being with a happier person may bring one half of a newfound couple snatches and glimpses of greater contentment, but such brief experiences are determined by the presence of the other person in the relationship and never oneself.

Imagine two people meeting for the first time on a date, having had a previous unhappy relationship breakup and only having re-joined the dating scene after years of loneliness and depressive symptoms. The woman is looking forward to a good night out for a change instead of putting up with her own company in front of the television. She is wanting to experience an enjoyable night out, have a bit of fun and light-hearted banter.

Now, imagine that the man she is meeting on the date is still stuck in an angry past; someone who is still bound up in bitter resentment and carrying too much emotional baggage around with him that he uses every opportunity to offload in conversation with his date. All through their date, he insists on making his sole conversation about nothing else except the horrible way his ex-wife treated him before deserting him and depriving him of all access to his three children and enough money to live on after he has paid his extortionate level of monthly child maintenance.

The lady expecting a fun night out might as well forget about having an enjoyable experience with her date disaster. This couple is undoubtedly on a collision course from the start of their date, and the inevitable consequence of their meeting will be a social car crash!

For anyone in a similar position, who sadly separated from their former partner, and after a few depressive years of their own company decides to re-join the dating scene, please bear this important message in mind. When a person drums up enough courage to throw their hat in the ring again and rejoin the dating scene, please realise that they are hoping that a happy, go-lucky person will turn out to be their companion for the evening and not a 'miserable moaning Minny' who carries a sick bag instead of a sympathetic ear. A man or woman going out on their first date in years are fragile carriers of hope. While some may unrealistically hope to meet the love of their life, most are simply wanting an enjoyable night out, a laugh if possible and some light-hearted and pleasurable conversation. Please give them what they want; a pleasurable night to remember and not what the type of depressing conversation they've probably had too much of in their past relationship and want to forget!

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song for Today: 9th April 2019

9/4/2019

Today’s song is ‘The Sound of Silence’. This was a song by the American music duo ‘Simon and Garfunkel’. The song was written by Paul Simon over a period of several months in 1963 and 1964. Released in October 1964, the album was a commercial failure and led to the duo breaking apart, with Paul Simon returning to England and Art Garfunkel returning to his studies at ‘Columbia University’.

In the spring of 1965, the song began to attract airplay at radio stations in Boston, Massachusetts and throughout Florida. The growing airplay led Tom Wilson, the song's producer, to remix the track, overdubbing electric instruments and drums. Simon & Garfunkel were not informed of the song's remix until after its release. The single was released in September 1965 and the song hit Number. 1 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ for the week ending January 1, 1966, leading the duo to reunite and hastily record their second album, which Columbia titled ‘Sounds of Silence’. to capitalize on the song's success.

The song was a top-ten hit in multiple countries worldwide; among them Australia, Austria, West Germany, Japan and the Netherlands. Generally considered a classic folk-rock song, the song was added to the ‘National Recording Registry’ in the ‘Library of Congress’ for being ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically important’ in 2012 along with the rest of the ‘Sounds of Silence’ album.

Simon and Garfunkel had become interested in folk music and the growing counterculture movement separately in the early 1960s. Having performed together previously under the name ‘Tom and Jerry’ in the late 1950s, their partnership had since dissolved when they began attending college. In 1963, they regrouped and began performing Simon's original compositions locally in Queens’. Other famous artists to have covered the song have included ‘The Bachelors’ and ‘Mercy’.

Garfunkel once summed up the song's meaning as "the inability of people to communicate with each other, not particularly internationally but especially emotionally, so what you see around you are people unable to love each other.”

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I have practiced Relaxation Training and meditation since the age of 11 years and have been a Relaxation Training Instructor for over 50 years. Working in numerous work environments with thousands of anxious people over the years has merely emphasised the importance of initially preparing the body by slowing down all mental and physical activity. In order to help those who display problematic behaviour to clarify their thoughts, reduce their tension levels, settle emotional disturbance and lower irrational fears, it is a prerequisite that a state of complete quietness and stillness is produced as a starting base. Hence, ‘the sound of silence’ is the only permissible audible distraction allowed into the process of meditation and progressive relaxation.

As a young boy who incurred a horrific accident at the age of 11 years and was unable to walk for 2/3 years after my hospital discharge, I needed to become very competent at closing down my mind to moments of complete rest, both to assist me to regain my walking ability and secondly, to cope with the large amounts of body pain that have remained in both of my legs and lower body ever since.

For a good year after I had regained the use of my legs (after 53 operations of breaking and resetting my legs at the knee), I have been plagued with the constant torment of osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis in my legs, thighs, and pelvic muscles. While this pain has been with me constantly since the age of 11 years, since my 50s, it has hit me with a vengeance and caused me to retire from my job at the age of 52 years on medical grounds as my mobility rapidly lessened.

When I regained my walking mobility at the age of 14 years, I frequently walked daily to ‘Bluebell Woods’ (weather permitting) about one mile in distance from Windybank Estate. Once in the wood, I would make my way towards its centre where I would lay beneath a large oak tree. For about an hour daily, I would totally relax my mind and body.

Within ten minutes of starting the relaxation process, the complete absence of humans and the ‘sound of silence’ would be gently broken as I started to experience the blending of my body with the ground I sank into beneath me. The sounds of Nature around me would become a part of me; my breathing would synchronise with the gentle breeze and my blood level pressure would quietly flow like the passage of the nearby woodland stream. My heart would pulsate with the steady beat of woodland life as I became more and more relaxed. I would hear the twitter of the birds in the tree branches above, sense the scurry of a furry animal racing through the leaves on the ground, and smell the bark of the trees along with the pungent scent of the woodland fern. The heart of Nature could be heard from this ‘sound of silence’ base.

This image became so important to my walking and relaxation improvement that a few years after I joined the Probation Service in 1971, I outlaid £2000 of my own money (an extremely large amount at the time) to have a ‘Relaxation Tape’ professionally produced in a recording studio over a two-week period. The tape had been specifically produced so that the words I spoke in accompaniment to the original music score describing the woodland scene as well as providing instructions to follow that automatically reduce tension, were spoken at the precise breathing rate that a person displays when they drop off to sleep.

This tape is a form of self-hypnosis and was so effective that I was offered £10.000 to sell its copyright, which I declined. I have never sold this tape and since 1973, I have freely given between 5000 and 10,000 copies away to Group members in my relaxation training classes and across the wider community.
The tape is excellent in helping people to relax, to reduce high blood pressure levels and in helping stressful people get to sleep easier and with once asleep to sleep more beneficially so they wake up refreshed. People who should not use this ‘Relax with Bill’ tape include PREGNANT WOMEN: ANYONE WITH A BRAIN DISORDER OR DAMAGE: ANYONE WHO NORMALLY DISPLAYS VERY LOW BLOOD PRESSURE LEVELS (as the relaxation exercises will lower blood pressure further and too low a blood pressure level is as dangerous as too high blood pressure levels). THIS TAPE SHOULD NEVER BE USED WHENEVER DRIVING A CAR OR DOING PRECISION ACTION OF ANY DESCRIPTION THAT REQUIRES FULL ATTENTION.

Anyone freely accessing this tape from my website is advised (if possible) to practise every night in bed before going to sleep (unless your attention is required elsewhere) and once during the day for the next two months. This should become nigh-time practice when you retire to bed for the day as only practise makes perfect. I have practised this scene nightly and most days over the past 64 years. Half an hour practice sessions are enough to send you off to sleep after a month or two. Please bear in mind though that while the Relaxation tape was high tech for its time, it was made 48 years ago!

I still use the imagery that was a part of my daily walks as a boy, especially to cope with high pain levels I get often. I always use this scene to mediate pain whenever I have any operations under local anaesthetic. But please observe those contra-indications I stated earlier regarding the types of people for whom this tape should not be used. It will help with those areas I mentioned and enable you to benefit from ‘The Sound of Silence’.

http://www.fordefables.co.uk/relax-with-bill.html

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 8th April 2019

8/4/2019

Today’s song is ‘You Raise Me Up’. This song was originally composed by Irish-Norwegian duo ‘Secret Garden’. The music was written by ‘Secret Garden’s Rolf Loveland and the lyrics were by Brendan Graham. After the song was performed early in 2002 by the ‘Secret Garden’ and their invited lead singer, Brian Kennedy, the song only became a minor UK hit.

The song has been recorded by more than a hundred other artists including Josh Groban, who popularized the song in 2003. His rendition became a hit in the United States. The Irish band ‘Westlife’ then popularized the song in the UK two years later. On 29 November 2018 Icelandic Composer Jóhann Helgason filed a lawsuit claiming that the song is a copy of the 1977 song Söknuður

The song was originally composed as an instrumental piece and titled ‘Silent Story’. Some have claimed there is a strong resemblance to the traditional Irish tune ‘Londonderry Air’ to which Løvland has commented: "There are similarities but no plagiarism. When I made "You Raise Me Up," I asked myself - what is the inner essence of Irish music?" Løvland later approached Irish novelist and songwriter Brendan Graham to write the lyrics to his melody, after reading Graham's novels.

The song was made by and for Løvland himself and performed for the very first time at the funeral of Løvland's mother. He noted, "there's something about the song people are embracing; something which becomes emotionally strong. I believe people think of it as a song they use for their own purposes." The originally designated vocalist was Johnny Logan, himself also from Eurovision fame, who recorded a demo with an orchestra. However, a desire to distance the album from the ‘Eurovision Song Contest’ led to a change in vocalist.

Although the original version did not chart internationally, the song has now been covered more than 125 times, with the most successful covers being by Josh Groban, Westlife, Daniel O’Donnell and Brian Kennedy. In 2004, the song was played more than 500,000 times on American radio. In late 2005, there were over 80 versions available in US alone, and it has been nominated for ‘Gospel Music Awards’ four times, including ‘Song of the Year’. On 21 September 2006, ‘You Raise Me Up’ became the first song to have sold over 76,000 copies of the score on the popular sheet music.

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None of us achieves anything remarkable in this life without having benefitted from the help of significant others along the way. We all get to where we are on the backs of others. Through their encouragement, help and moral support; through them being there for us when most needed, believing in us and doing the things they did for us, we are all advanced in this life in some measure. Through these contributions by significant others in our lives, ‘We are raised up to more than we can be’.

All of us have had that teacher who believed in us. In my case, it was a Mr Paddy McNamara who was the sports teacher at St Patrick’s Catholic School in Heckmondwike where I attended between the ages of 5-13 years of age. Mr McNamara saw my potential as a budding footballer at the age of 10 years and put me in the big boys’ school football team playing alongside 13-15-year-olds.

I attended a Catholic Secondary School at a time when pupils were streamed according to ability and not age. Teacher, Mrs Brennan saw my educational potential then and encouraged me to take and pass my 11 plus exam at the age of 10 years (although I chose not to go). Instead, at the age of 10 years, I was taught with the class of 13-15-year-olds.

When I was laid up in Batley Hospital at the age of 11 years for 9 months, Mr McNamara got me Mensa tested and I did very well. The 140 plus score I received was both a curse and a blessing for me as I came from a poor family and needed to work at the earliest opportunity as the oldest of seven children.

At the age of 10/11 years, despite my youth, I was a hopeless romantic and I wanted to impress my school girlfriend, Winifred Healey, by giving her a proper diamond engagement ring to signify our love union and my intention to marry her when we were older. At the time, I frequently had my tea at my best friend’s house, Peter Lockwood. Peter’s parents were lovely people and apart from their son Peter, they also had a 20-year-old daughter called Margaret. Margaret was engaged and due to be married the following year. During one meal at the Lockwood house, I took the opportunity to steal Margaret’s engagement ring that she’d left on the sideboard while she washed the dishes. The next day I gave the ring to my school girlfriend, Winifred who proudly showed it off to all and sundry. Three days later, the police came to my house and I was taken to the Cleckheaton Police Station and given a stern caution.

The upshot was that Peter Lockwood remained my best mate, his sister Margaret split up with her fiancé shortly afterwards and forgave me, and instead of banning me from mating with her son and visiting their house, Peter’s mother and father still invited me to eat at their table thereafter as often as they had previously.

When I was 15/16 years, I stole for the last time. I was passing a green grocer’s shop owned by Mr, Northrop on Windybank Estate and seeing some tasty red apples in crates outside his shop, I stole a couple of apples and ran off. Mr Northrop saw me from his shop window and shouted my name after me as I ran away from the shop. As he knew me (I lived a mere 20 yards away from where his shop was located), I lived in fear that he would tell my father. About a week after my theft, I saw Mr Northrop approach our house as I looked out of the window. My mother was out but my father was in. When dad opened the door, Mr Northrop smiled and politely said, “Your wife asked me last week if I could give Billy a Saturday morning job in my shop to keep him out of mischief as well as providing him with the opportunity to earn a few shillings. I can set him on next Saturday and will pay him 2 shillings and sixpence for 4 hour’s work. All he will have to do is to weigh out bags of potatoes in the back of the shop.” I was stunned and my father replied on my behalf, “Thank you, Mr Northrop. Billy will be glad to take the job!”

I worked on Saturday mornings at the grocer’s shop for two years, mostly packing and weighing out potatoes for the first year. When Mr Northrop learned that I was clever at arithmetic, he allowed me to serve on the counter; a move that was greatly resented by the full-time worker, a 19-year-old teenager who had worked there since leaving school four years earlier. Almost two years into my Saturday morning work, money started to be stolen from the till on Saturday mornings; always on days when I was allowed to serve the customers alongside the full-time worker. Mr Northrop was obliged to ask each of us about the missing money and both of us denied that we had taken the stolen £5. I left the grocer’s shop about six months later, and on leaving I said to Mr Northrop who’d given me my ‘second chance’ when I most needed it, ‘It wasn’t me who stole the money! I stole your apples, but I’ve never stolen since.” He simply shook my hand, wished me well and replied, “I know it wasn’t, Billy. I know it wasn’t!”It was around six months later when the fulltime worker got sacked from stealing from the shop till.

My brains were fortunately put to better use in the mill than in any university I might have attended, and because over 200 men and women at 'Harrison Gardener's Dyeworks' believed in my ability to serve their interests and protect their working conditions, I became the youngest Trade Union Shop Steward in Great Britain at the age of 18 years.

At that time, I was also the youngest paid Youth Club Leader in Great Britain at the age of 18 years and that was down to the Youth Leader Harry Field. Harry had made me his unpaid deputy at ‘St Barnabus Youth Club’ at the age of 17 years but when he had an accident that laid him up for six months, he invited the Church board to appoint me to stand in for him as Leader and to pay me also. This was unheard of at the time and special permission from the council was required. They also expressed their belief that I could do the job. I felt very privileged.

These people who believed in me were essentially responsible for so much that happened to me in my life thereafter. It was they who helped to shape my character so much that at the age of thirty years, I decided to become a Probation Officer in order that I too might be one day become responsible for giving a person 'a second chance' at a time in their life when they might take advantage of it, as I did. It was such people who essentially believed in me that ‘Raised me up to more than I could be’.

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 7th April 2019

7/4/2019

Today’s Song is ‘Angels’ which was originally recorded by Robbie Williams. It was written by Williams and Guy Chambers, based on an earlier version by Ray Heffernan. The song was released as a single in December 1997. It is Williams' bestselling single and was voted the best song of the past 25 years at the ‘2005 Brit Awards’.

‘Angels’ has been covered by many artists and has been recorded in Spanish (as ‘Ángel’) by Mexican singers Yuridia and Marco More, and in Italian (as ‘Un Angelo’) by Patrizio Buanne. Robbie Williams also recorded a Spanish version of the song. In a 2005 poll, Britons voted ‘Angels’ the song they most wanted to be played at their funeral. Live performances. In 2009, Robbie Williams performed ‘Angels’ at the final of the sixth series of ‘The X Factor’ with Olly Murs. On 14 June 2018, Williams performed ‘Angels’ with Russian soprano Aida Garifullina at the ‘2018 FIFA World Cup Opening Ceremony’ held at the ‘Luzhniki Stadium’ in Moscow, Russia.

According to Williams in 2011, he wrote the song with Chambers in 25 minutes about his aunt and uncle. By his account, he and Chambers were sitting outside a cafe watching a water fountain which inspired them to write the chorus. In 2016, Williams said: "It was the first of our songs that we wrote together. We could tell and hoped and prayed that we got something incredibly special. After we wrote the song ... I hailed a cab down. [The taxi driver] played it and said,’that is great, that is, Robbie, 'that is gonna be number one', and you know what: it never was number one." Williams has expressed irritation that some assumed Chambers was the sole author, saying: "It pees me off because everyone thinks Guy penned ' Let Me Entertain You’ and 'Angels', but they're my songs."

Irish singer-songwriter Ray Heffernan asserts that he wrote the first version of ‘Angels’ in Paris in 1995 after his partner had a miscarriage. According to Heffernan, he met Williams in a pub by chance in Dublin. He showed him an incomplete version of the song, and later that week the two recorded a studio demo. Williams confirmed that he had recorded a demo with Heffernan but said he rewrote the song significantly with Chambers. When Heffernan learnt that a version of ‘Angels’ would appear on ‘Life Thru a Lens’ he accepted an offer from Williams's management to buy the rights for £7,500.] In 2017, Williams said: "We could have gone to court, and it all would have been down to whether what way the judge wakes up that day out of bed ... So, I gave him some money, and he went away”.

In term of chart performance, the song was the 38th best-selling of 1997 in the UK, and the 26th of 1998. It was the 34th best-selling single of the decade. Despite only reaching a peak of Number. 4, it is Williams' biggest-selling UK single and according to ‘Official UK Charts Company’ figures, it passed the million sales mark in June 2009, with a combination of both physical and download sales. It has sold 1.2 million copies in the UK as of November 2012. It was released in 1999 in the US, after Williams' debut there with ‘Millennium’. ‘Angels re-entered the ‘ARIA Top 100’ at Number 91, on 5th May 2008. Due to download sales, the song has re-entered the UK Charts on a number of occasions in recent years.

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It is surprising how many people believe in ‘Angels’ of one sort or another. It seems to matter not whether they are guardian angels, it provides comfort in thought to believe in the presence of these spiritual beings in our lives.

I will restrict this mornings’ post upon angels to cite only a few quotations, plus those things and sayings my dear mother told me as a child. I suppose that the two tangible characteristics we hold in our minds whenever we think of an angel are wings and radiant light. The Talmud states that angels shine from within by the light of God and this Jewish holy script reminds us that every blade of grass has its own angel whispering in its ear ‘Grow, grow’.

When I was a growing and inquisitive child living in an Irish Roman Catholic household, much of my learning outside the classroom was from my prime teacher, my mother. Through largely what she told me and presumably led me to believe, angels exist to assist us in all manner of wonderful ways. My mother indicated that they come to us in many guises. Sometimes we see their heavenly shadow, brightened by light and mystical radiance. On other occasions, we cannot see them but are able to sense their presence as we feel their nearness guiding our thoughts, eyes, hands and feet in a particular direction. Sometimes, we feel something brush past us as a guardian angel whispers a thought in the breeze that floats into the forefront of our mind. And then, there are the angels that are hidden in places we would never dream to look; shaped and constructed in the form of flesh and bone; humans in our midst, who look no different to ourselves. My mother led me to believe that angels are like butterflies insomuch as they can undergo changed appearance from angelic creatures to humans who walk among us (Metamorphosis). Sometimes, angels are just ordinary people who help us believe in ourselves again and in the miracle of all life form.

I will never forget saying to my mother when I was aged around 8 years of age when she once called me ‘her angel’, “I can’t be an Angel. I’ve got no wings to fly, Mum.” Knowing that I was fascinated by the book illustration of the pilot on the ‘Biggles’ books, my mother replied (I can’t remember her precise words but recall her meaning clearly), “You learn to fly by learning to love, Billy. That’s how we all earn our wings that take us to heaven”. It was only in my adult years that I came to understand that we each have one wing of love and whenever we meet another person with one wing of love also, only then through mutually embracing can we both fly as one perfect human being in the eyes of God.

I have often thought upon my mother’s words and their meaning. Just as the butterfly lives but a brief span of time, it enjoys its life to the full whilst here for its short time on earth. The entire body of a butterfly is lighter than a feather because it carries no burden as it flies from one nectar source to another. Being a pollinating creature of nature, the butterfly spreads life and happiness wherever it goes.

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 6th April 2019

6/4/2019

I dedicate my song today to my beautiful wife and soul mate, Sheila.

Today’s song is ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’. This song was by the Irish rock band U2 and was released from their 1987 album, ‘The Joshua Tree’. The song was a hit, becoming the band's second consecutive number-one single on the US ‘Billboard Hot 100’ while peaking at Number 6 on the ‘UK Singles Chart’.

The song originated from a demo the band recorded on which drummer Larry Mullen Jr. played a unique rhythm pattern. Like much of ‘The Joshua Tree’, the song was inspired by the group's interest in American music. ‘I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For’ exhibits influence from Gospel music and its lyrics describe spiritual yearning. Lead singer Bono’s vocals are in high register. Adding to the Gospel qualities of the song are choir-like backing vocals
'I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For' was critically acclaimed and received two nominations at the ‘30th Annual Grammy Awards’ in 1988, for ‘Record of the Year’ and ‘Song of the Year’. It has subsequently become one of the group's most well-known songs and has been performed on many of their concert tours. The track has appeared on several of their compilations. Many critics and publications have ranked ‘I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For’ among the greatest tracks in music history, including ‘Rolling Stone’ which ranked the song at Number 93 of its list of ‘The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time’.

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Many of us spend a large part of our lives with a feeling that there is something that is missing from our life; something important that stops us from being the completely wholesome person we strive to be. Sometimes, the missing thing is plain to see and can be a partner, a certain type of job we are more suited to than the one we currently have or some material object that would make a significant difference to us, like our own house or a more secure tenancy.

On many occasions, however, we are unable to put our finger on what it is that’s missing from our lives, apart from knowing that all is not there. When we have such feelings, which are far from uncommon, they can either represent physical, mental, psychological or spiritual aspects of something we inwardly need and desire.

The physical aspects we may not have are usually the lore easy ones to discern as they concern the more tangible things which may be missing from our lives. The mental ones are usually those that represent peace of mind, clarity of focus and a settledness of emotions. Psychological absences are usually accounted for by ‘a sense of purpose and identity’.

One of the most difficult aspects of our life that are frequently found wanting is ‘an absence of spirituality’. This is an area of my life that I wasn’t aware as being missing before I met my wife Sheila. All my life I have believed in God and have generally stayed faithful to my religion. All in all, (at least since adulthood), I have conducted myself truthfully, faithfully, sincerely and with courtesy and consideration and sensitivity in all my dealings with others; and in the main, I believe that I have managed to achieve a level of integrity befitting an overall good person.

And yet, despite my positive and happy approach to life, my full and satisfactory involvement in life, along with the happiness that my relationships with numerous others have brought me, until my late sixties, there was always a part of me, something that I was looking for.

Like many Irish Catholics, (especially firstborn children) there was a time during my twenties when I had lived life to the full and was finally ready for settling down when I even considered joining the priesthood.

Much of my life between 7-15 years witnessed a propensity towards theft. I was never quite sure whether it was the inherent danger and the risk of getting caught that I enjoyed most or the taking of the stolen object. After a serious traffic accident at the age of 11 years, which left me unable to walk for the next three years, I made a promise to God during a period when I was critically ill and was slipping in and out of consciousness, that if He spared my life, I would thereafter put it to good use. He kept His promise and I pulled through against all medical odds. Ever since I have tried to keep mine. Often, I failed; particularly during my teenage years when I remained wild, roguish, stubborn, defiant, rebellious of authority and far too permissive sexually for my age. I continued to steal until my 15th year of life and required ‘second chances’ dozens of times before I finally came good.

Between the ages of 18-21 years, I had developed a social conscience far in excess of my years and by the age of 18 years, I had become the youngest paid Youth Leader and the youngest Trade Union Shop Steward in Great Britain. I also spent some of my leisure hours visiting the terminally ill in a Cleckheaton Cheshire Home as a member of the Catholic St. Vincent and St. Paul Society of our parish church. It was during this period that the priesthood as a possible vocation for me was seriously considered. I was soon to discover though that I was never likely to be able to abstain from close and sensual relationships with the opposite sex long enough to even negotiate the training stage without being excommunicated. I subsequently decided to devote my passion elsewhere and after I had spent a couple of years living in Canada, I returned to West Yorkshire and started to look for what I needed in my life.

After a few years as a working foreman, followed by a mill manager on nights, I decided to put all the considerable learning I had gleaned as a thief in earlier life and become a Probation Officer. I was effectively a thief turned poacher, and I discovered that these credentials were the best I could possibly possess in the vocation I had entered. During my 26 years as a Probation Officer and many other specialist roles I engaged in, I achieved much more than any worker needs in a lifetime’s career to be fully satisfied. I found my working-class background to be a real asset in this middle-class profession, and I knew deep down that part of what made me a good Probation Officer was the ease in which I identified with many of the clients I worked with. I rarely considered myself different than the vast majority of men and women I worked with, and I knew that had I not received ‘second chance’ many times in my earlier life, I would not have been sitting on the opposite side of the desk to my clients offering them a ’second chance’. It was during those years when I discovered that when one goes to sleep satisfied with the work one has done today; one is never worried about tomorrow.

During later years towards the end of my Probation Officer career, I became an author and hopefully, through the themes of my many children’s books, I helped many children to make sense of their negative emotions in addition to being able to reconcile their unsettled emotions during stages of separation, loss and bereavement. I allowed the £200,000 profit I made from the sales of my books in 2000 Yorkshire schools storytelling assemblies to go to charitable causes, and to enable thousands of children to feel special, I was able to persuade over 850 national and international celebrities and famous names from the fields of royalty, politics, film, stage, screen, sport, art, artic exploration, space exploration, church, state and other institutions to become celebrity storytellers in school assemblies between 1990-2000.

My life was as full as any man had a right to expect and yet, I sensed that there was still some vital ingredient missing from it. I didn’t know precisely what it was, and I would probably have never known had I not met Sheila, fell in love with her and married her on my 70th birthday.

Despite having contracted a terminal blood cancer three months after we married and having had to deal with three more separate cancers since via operations, blood transfusions, hospital admissions, bed and house confinement, these past eight years since I first met Sheila, have been the happiest years of my life. Since knowing Sheila and bringing her into my life, I have found that one elusive thing that had been missing from mine previously and which I secretly sought since the age of twenty.

Previously, I had found physical, mental and psychological happiness in my relationships with the women in my life whom I had loved. With Sheila, however, it was different, it was better. When I met Sheila, ‘I still didn’t know what I was looking for’, but once I found Sheila, I also found ‘what I’d been looking for’. I found the missing piece of the personality puzzle that made me complete; I’d found a spiritual connection with the woman I loved!