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Song For Today: 30th April 2020

30/4/2020

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I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friend, Patrick Mullins, who lives in Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary, Ireland. Patrick celebrates his birthday today. Have a nice day, Patrick, and thank you for being my Facebook friend.

It would also be remiss of me not to mention today the 100th birthday of Captain Tom Moore from Bedfordshire who has been made an honorary colonel after raising almost £30 million for the NHS after walking laps of his garden. The man is an inspiration to us all. Have a happy birthday, Captain Tom.

My song today is ‘She’s Got You’. This is a country song written by Hank Cochran and was first recorded in December 1961 and released in 1962 as a single by Patsy Cline. Musically, the song is an upbeat pop song with country overtones to support it.

According to the Ellis Nassour biography ‘Honky Tonk Angel: The Intimate Story of Patsy Cline’, writer Hank Cochran remembers calling Cline and telling her that he had just written her next Number 1 hit. She told him to come over to her house with a bottle of liquor and play it on the guitar for her and friend Dottie West who was visiting that afternoon. Cline was emotionally moved by its lyrics and loved the song so much that she learned it that night, calling up her manager and producer to sing it to them over the phone. At her next session, she recorded it. This was a rare instance, as Cline and her producer, Owen Bradley, often disagreed with each other's choice of material. This time, they both agreed they had a hit.

The theme of the song revolves around material possessions of lost love:
I've got the records, that we used to share
And they still sound the same, as when you were here
The only thing different, the only thing new
I've got the records ... she's got you.

‘She's Got You’ was written as Patsy Cline's follow-up single to her two previous big hits of the previous year, ‘I Fall to Pieces’ and ‘Crazy’. "She's Got You" was released on January 30, 1962, and immediately went to Number 1 on the ‘Hot C&W Sides’ country chart. It also reached Number 14 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chart. The song also went to Number three on the ‘Easy Listening Chart’. ‘She's Got You’ marked Patsy Cline’s first hit single in the United Kingdom, where it reached Number 43. ‘She's Got You’ later became classic and was one of the songs to help jump-start Patsy Cline's career. The hit led to an appearance on ‘American Bandstand’ that February and led to Cline having her own show in Las Vegas in the following November.

‘She's Got You’ has been recorded by numerous artists, such as Dean Martin, Willie Nelson, Elvis Costello, Don McLean, and Loretta Lynn, plus many others. In 1977, the Loretta Lynn remake was a Number 1 country hit.

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This song was released when I was going on twenty years old. I was planning to go to Canada for a couple of years after my 21st birthday after an amount of compensation (awarded to me after a bad traffic accident when I was 11 years old) made it possible for me to travel abroad before I returned to England to marry and settle down.

It was during my two-year period in Canada when I first heard Patsy Cline and became an ardent fan of hers. Indeed, it was this American period in my life which introduced me to the genre of Country and Western songs to which I was instantly attracted and fell in love with. What I love most about C&W songs is that they all tell a meaningful story which resonates with many of life’s problems; dealing with difficult and extreme emotions that are most common to all our lives like birth, marriage, death, love, jealousy, infidelity, addiction to drugs, alcohol and other women, etc. The list is endless while the situations remain real-life ones.

‘She’s Got You’ deals with a problem that I have come across a few times in my life, especially when I worked as a Probation Officer in West Yorkshire between 1970-1995, specialising in marriage guidance counselling. My work in the marriage field frequently witnessed arguments between couples separating and divorcing who would fight like cats and dogs about the division of the spoils at the final stage of the County Court hearing when assets were decided upon by the adjudicating Judge.

It was half expected, where custody and access to child/children were concerned, that separating parents would enter into heated disputes at the divorce hearing stage, but quite another when it came to who got ownership of the family dog, cat, or goldfish! I was to learn, however, that the division of marital spoils always seemed more relevant to the divorcing couple whenever adultery was a major cause of the breakup. The divorce was always made worse when the marriage had broken up because of an extramarital affair by one of the parties, especially if one of the marriage partners had been left on their own to face the future while the other divorcee was planning a rosy life together with their new lover and next spouse. In these situations where one marriage partner lost out to another man or woman, their acquisition of marital property assumed a degree of importance any outsider just could not believe.

I have witnessed physical fights between divorcees. I have had to break up punch ups in the Probation Office and have often observed two squabbling divorcees pay their solicitor more in financial fees than the item they were fighting over cost. I recall a time when all people seeking a divorce were obliged by law to go through a ‘reconciliation process’ with a Probation Officer or Marriage Guidance Worker first before being able to proceed with their divorce in the County Court. In 99 percent of these ‘reconciliation’ situations were usually superficial. Neither party wished to attend these sessions but put on a false front for the benefit of appearing amenable in the eyes of the deciding court when the mediator reported back upon reconciliation success or its failure.

From all the items of ownership fought over that I found hardest to comprehend was the ‘honeymoon photographs’ of the divorcing couple. Initially, I just could not fathom why honeymoon photographs should be so important a thing to argue about so vigorously, especially when each of the two people getting divorced had acquired new dating partners after their marital separation. Photographs of an old honeymoon and images on the beach etc would have been the first thing to put on the bonfire as far as I was concerned, had I been in either of their positions.

For those of you whose mind is already telling you that the honeymoon photographs were too racy to be seen by others outside the marital relationship, that was not the case. This was during the 1970s, and it was highly unlikely then that couples might take sexually compromising photographs of each other. What militated against this practice of taking sexy snaps was the restrictiveness of the times. All photographs taken during the 70s were developed by a third-party photographic shop source. Had some sexual snaps been witnessed during the process of their development, the customer identity would have most certainly been immediately reported to the police, and the parties would have been instantly produced before a court of the land, prosecuted, convicted of taking immoral images and sentenced.

It eventually transpired that the much-fought over photographs revealed an excess of the bride’s ‘body fatness’ more than too much ‘sexual frontage’. When the bride went on her honeymoon, she was extremely overweight by five or six stones above her body mass index (BMI). Since her marriage, however, she had slimmed down to such an extent that she could have now walked any fashion parade as a model of slim build. Indeed, she was so proud of her present slim looks that she would have died with shame had the new man in her life seen a photograph of how grossly obese she once looked. She could not trust her ex 'not to do the dirty on her' if he got possession of their honeymoon snaps.

She believed her ex to be the most spiteful of men, and a man who would use the unflattering photographs of her to wreck her new relationship if they remained in his possession. She believed he would show her current partner how fat she was when she first married, and even taunt her new partner with the threat that she would remain (like all crash-dieters), prone to pile all her weight back on (and more besides) the very first time they rowed with him. She believed that her ex was vindictive enough to even falsely tell her new partner that she had yo-yoed between fat and lettuce leaf-size half a dozen times over their ten years of married life and was guaranteed to pile on the weight again. She believed that her ex would maliciously use her obese images on their honeymoon period to create the greatest amount of shame and maximum embarrassment and discomfort for her, if possible. She said that she would not put it past him to get dozens of copies of the offending photographs copied and post her fat image through the letterboxes of her new neighbours. All this and much more the divorcing wife believed to be possible.

Her husband’s fierce battle to retain their honeymoon photographs was eventually lost at the County Court hearing. I can safely guess what the divorced wife did with the offending photographs once she got her hands on them. They would have instantly been put on the largest bonfire of vanities ever witnessed in Huddersfield!

I remember as a boy seeing a film about two men who vied for the love and marriage of a beautiful woman. The woman in question loved each man but could not decide whom she loved most and would be happiest with, once married to. A situation was devised/contrived by her which separated the material wealth within the tripartite situation from the love to be gained from the woman in question. One man decided on his ‘love of the woman’ over that of ‘the power and wealth’ while the other man decided on staying single and instead, becoming extremely wealthy. I can recall the theme of the film as though it was yesterday when I saw it, but for the life in me, I cannot remember its title. I have had no luck with googling it either. It was a technicolour film. It wasn't a Jane Austin story, nor the Great Gatsby film, or any other period drama. It was more probably a western film from the 1950s.

How is this for a super prize for the one who can tell me the film which I am searching my memory bank for: I’ll sing you the song, ‘She’s Got You’, in a setting of your choice after the Coronavirus lockdown has ended? Or, alternately, if the winner of the contest is female, stuff the song; ‘She’s Got Me’ instead, to do with as she wants, as her first prize!

Love and peace Bill xxx


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Song For Today: 29th April 2020

29/4/2020

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I dedicate my song today to three ladies from West Yorkshire who celebrate their birthday today. They are Mags Dearden, Frankie Sherry and Maureen Sykes. Have a super day and leave some room for lots of cake and suitable refreshments. Thank you for being my Facebook friends. Bill xx

My song today is ‘I’m Alive’. This song was recorded by Canadian recording artist Celine Dion for her sixth English-language album ‘A New Day Has Come’ (2002). It was released as the album's second single on 9 August 2002 and was also featured in the film ‘Stuart Little 2’. The song was written and produced by Kristian Lundin and Andreas Carisson, who already worked with Dion in 1999 on ‘That’s The Way It Is’.

‘I'm Alive’ is an uplifting mid-tempo song, where Celine declares she is alive, fulfilled as a mother, and ‘in love.’ ‘I'm Alive’ became a worldwide hit, reaching the top ten in many countries. It was certified platinum in Belgium (50,000) and gold in France (250,000).

While working on the album, Celine commented, "I couldn't wait to go back into the recording studio. And, I loved the songs that people wrote for me on this album. Those songs became even closer to me because, the fact that I took two years off, they wrote songs for me that were even closer to my emotions. I had things to talk about. I had things to sing about. It was a fun adventure, no pressure, relaxed, smooth, powerful but controlled. I really had a wonderful time. And to see my friends again, it was great."

‘I’m Alive ‘is considered by the world of recording to be one of Celine’s best singles.

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The pleasure of being alive is brought into sharper and more meaningful focus whenever one needs to pay greater attention to staying alive. Not since the ‘Second World War’ years has ‘staying alive’ been a national priority as it is proving to be today during the Coronavirus pandemic.

In many ways, the three cancers I have developed over the past seven years (blood, skin and rectal), have focussed my mind on the pleasure of being alive each morning I open my eyes. Since I first contracted a terminal blood cancer during early 2013, despite having had two nine-month periods of chemotherapy, twenty sessions of radiotherapy, nine life-saving operations (six operations within the past 14 months), believe me when I tell you most truly, that during the past decade, I have been happier than I have ever been in my life!

How is this possible, I hear you ask incredulously? In 2010, I met my wife Sheila. We quickly fell in love with each other and married on my 70th birthday in November 2012. Sheila is 14 year’s younger than me and looks like she is another twenty year’s younger than her birth certificate purports her to be. We met at a time in life when neither of us was either seeking or expecting to meet someone else in our lives. The pleasure of having love descend upon us again was a blessing that neither of us expected but both embraced. Three months after our Haworth wedding, I was diagnosed with a terminal illness, with a life expectancy of three years average according to European medical statistics.

At a time when our happiness was at its highest and our hopes for many years of travel together offered us an exciting life to look forward to, fate struck us the cruellest of blows. An innocuous blood test for Shingles revealed that I had incurable blood cancer. Naturally, the news shocked us both and my children, and it took us a while to get our heads around the reality of the situation. I decided from the beginning that I would be upfront with everyone (children, family, friends, neighbours, and even strangers). I was a person who had been brought up to express his feelings at the moment of their birth, and I needed to remain true to myself and not start deceiving others by untruths or omission. This has proved to be right for me, my family, and my friends.

One of the worse aspects of my terminal blood cancer is that it creates other body cancers in me as my impure blood flows around the major body organs of my body; hence the skin cancer and rectal cancer I contracted in addition. Also, because my blood cancer robbed me of having an effective immune system, my overall medical condition carries additional health risks and implications for me. Should I contract a bug, germ, cold or infection from another person, its effect would be double dire for me. For instance, your cold (if caught by me) would instantly become my pneumonia and your mild germ could sound my death knell. In three consecutive years, I developed pneumonia (contracted from another person’s cold) and was confined to my bed, seriously ill, for months before I recovered. The only way I had to avoid such risks was to preserve a social distancing from all company, avoid kissing anyone except my wife and stop hand shaking completely, not mix with over two people at any one time without using a face mask, and to avoid all crowds. (Does this sound familiar to you?)

For the past seven years, my ‘continued life’ has been one of ‘continuous chance’. Each time that I have been within breathing distance of an infected person, shaken their hand or kissed someone on the cheek, I have literally risked my life. I have now played ‘Russian Roulette’ with my life for seven years; during which time I have had to miss attending large social gatherings, avoid close contact with very young children (including my very young granddaughter) and restrict my large extended family to visiting me at home (two at a time maximum). It has not been safe for me to travel on any form of public transport for three years and flying to another country (if ever restored to the remainder of the population), will never be experienced by me again.

My social contact risks over the past seven years have witnessed the first five of those years with me being in hospital (as either an inpatient or regular outpatient), in my sick bed or confined to the house for an average of nine months total each year. Indeed, despite the numerous operations I have had over the past two years (I forgot to mention a dislocated shoulder that could not be replaced without an operation under anaesthetic), the past two years has witnessed me feeling happier than I have ever felt.

Our combined trials within our marriage have seen Sheila and I grow as strong and as loving as it is possible for two people to become. Our relationship embraces and enjoins the emotional, physical and spiritual dimensions of humanity. Being honest about my medical condition with thousands of Facebook contacts has proved to be helpful for them and a blessing to me. Over the past seven years, I have had prayers said daily for me by hundreds of people I have never met and probably never will meet; I have had candles lit and masses celebrated across the world, and countless messages of support and goodwill constantly sent to me. I tell you truly; never has one man felt so loved by wife, family, neighbours, friends and even strangers.

Even were it possible, there is simply no way that I would willingly exchange the way I feel today (at this precise moment) with how I might have felt if I had never contracted cancer or illness of any description.

In a strange way, God has prepared me for the experience which so many people across the world are having to face today as the world battles this Coronavirus pandemic. It is, to put it bluntly, no new experience for me or any more than I have experienced for the past seven years! It is not nice, but it is bearable. It can be fearful but is also enlightening. It is restrictive in freedom of movement but opens-up and liberates one’s mind in ways and to all manner of things never previously thought of.

Once I got my head around the basic truth that my condition carried the prospect of no cure, and that the protection and prolongation of my ongoing health involved having a sensible diet, establishing a suitable exercise regime along with a helpful life routine, my response was effectively decided. It was easier for me to accept that maintaining my social distance from family, friends, children, social gatherings and crowds reduced the risks of me catching germs, colds and infections, and that staying inside (for me) essentially meant ‘staying alive’, it was a given!

Today, I sing a song daily for two reasons; to improve the capacity and efficacy of my lungs and to express my happiness at being alive. I feel love daily towards everyone I am in contact with because of my general happiness of ‘being alive’. I am naturally saddened by the many deaths this pandemic is taking and I openly cry for the bereaved families who have been lefty helpless during their most traumatic of times. I am grieved by the numerous loved ones which Coronavirus is killing; it sickens me to envisage the most horrible of deaths experienced without being able to have a loved one by one’s bedside. I find it impossible to contemplate the inevitable pain which is felt by families being unable to attend the funeral of their loved ones following their departure from this world. If bereavement is to retain any dignity of natural ritual, then surely seeing one’s loved ones buried is a basic requirement?

When we eventually emerge from this pandemic and believe me, we will, the world and each of our lives will never be the same again. I am not entirely sad that this is so, and I welcome the new opportunities which present themselves because of the inevitable changes that will come.

It is my hope that we will start to treasure all life more as the precious gift it is instead of devaluing it through warfare, starvation, exploitation, discrimination, colonisation and subjugation. I pray that we become much kinder to each other, and more tolerant and understanding of our fellow beings, and other creatures. I hope that we learn to work with the natural order of the Earth and Nature instead of constantly making it our adversary by robbing its resources: by depriving the ground of its essential nutrients: by spoiling our seas: by polluting our skies: by cutting down our rain forests: by melting our polar caps and producing global warming and by decimating the population.

By each and all these means, will mankind destroy our dearest dream? Through our ignorance, greed and insatiable appetites, we shall have changed our protective clouds that separates earth from the sky, leaving the whole earth defenceless from human destruction. We shall turn the creation of God into a manmade poisonous cesspool buried deep within a lunar landfill site. Our time will come to an end as time waits not for tide or no man.

Besides benefiting from a new world experience when the country’s lockdown eventually ends, we must beware of natural fears that this Coronavirus pandemic has promoted in its wake. We must not allow the social distancing to which we have grown accustomed, to prevent us from getting closer to the feelings, aspirations, fears, and doubts of others we daily encounter. Just as anything meaningful in our value system should never be ‘Only for Christmas’, let our new intentions and positive approach to any future life and living be for ‘all year round’ and not ‘just for Christmas.’

Tomorrow and every day thereafter, when you awake, look in the mirror, take a deep breath, smile, and tell yourself ‘I’m Alive’. Thank God. I’m alive’. I have been doing this for many years now and believe me, it feels so good. Let’s face it, folks, the real point of being alive is that we are able to evolve into the good and the whole person that we were meant to be.
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Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song For Today: 28th April 2020

28/4/2020

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I jointly dedicate my song today to Martin Griffin who lives in Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary, Ireland, and Amy Meares who lives in County Waterford, Ireland. Both Martin and Amy celebrate their birthdays today. Thank you for being my Facebook friend, Martin, and Amy, and enjoy your special day. Bill x

Having now recorded over one thousand videoed songs since I started my singing practice almost three years ago, even were I to die tomorrow or never be able to sing again, it would take over three years for my wife Sheila to post each song daily in rotation before enabling you to hear them again (that is unless you subscribe to my YouTube Video Customised Channel at no cost):
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxjICOAChRHvn9_M7aHPlQA

Having many followers who now listen in to my daily song, I am frequently messaged to sing favourite songs of theirs which I have previously sung on my daily Facebook page. Today’s song is one such song that I have had many dozens of requests to repeat. The song is ‘The Greatest Love of All’ that George Benson and the great Whitney Houston recorded. I cannot do this beautiful song justice as George or Whitney did, but in response to the numerous requests of Facebook contacts, here is my humble offering once more.

‘The Greatest Love of All’ was written by Michael Masser, who composed the music, and Linda Creed, who wrote the lyrics. It was originally recorded in 1977 by George Benson, who made the song a substantial hit, peaking at Number 2 on the ‘US Hot R&B/Hip Hop Songs’ chart that year, the first R&B chart top-ten hit for ‘Arista Records’.

The song was written and recorded to be the main theme of the 1977 film ‘The Greatest’, a biopic of the boxer Muhammad Ali. Eight years after Benson's original recording, the song became even more well known for a version by Whitney Houston, whose 1985 cover (with the slightly amended title ‘Greatest Love of All’) eventually topped the charts, peaking at Number 1 in the United States, Australia, Canada and on the ‘US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs’ in early 1986.

The song was written about the world-famous boxer Muhammad Ali, Michael Masser wanted us to know that there was a man who wanted to change his name and religion. Ali hadn't believed in the war in Vietnam and had refused to fight in it. He won that battle through the legal system. Still, he lost everything else, including his title which was forfeited. But Ali retained the most important thing of all; ‘his dignity’.

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I could, if I so wished, write volumes upon the subject of ‘Dignity’ which I have always believed as being part of a value system that I was raised with. My father was a relatively uneducated man who had to leave school at the age of 12 years to join the workforce because of his family’s poverty, and I can count on one hand the quotations/sayings he pronounced to me as a child and growing adult. Dad’s quotations included, “Billy, never believe any type of work to be too good for you and always keep your word. Never surrender your dignity. Die first! The only thing a poor man has to give is his word and his dignity. Give these two things up and you might as well be dead as you will be left with nothing of worth to live for!” These few quotations from my father represent the only quotations he told me throughout my life.

In this respect, I know my father to have been correct in his beliefs. I have always believed ‘dignity’ to be as essential to the wellbeing of human life as water, food, and oxygen. Dignity knows no compromise and the stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it to baser forces. Dignity signifies not the possession of status and honour but the deserving of such acknowledgment.

I will leave the final word on the matter to a man that Mohammed Ali and myself idolised as representing ‘the best of mankind’, the late President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela who once wrote: “Any man or institution that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose”.
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Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song for Today: 27th April 2020

27/4/2020

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I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friend, Pamela Hickson who lives in Wakefield. Pamela celebrates her birthday today. Have a nice day, Pamela, and thank you for being my Facebook friend.

My song today is ‘Y.M.C.A.’ This song was popularised by the American disco group ‘Village People’ when it was released in 1978 as a single from their third studio album, “Cruisin’”. The song was written by Jacques Morali (also the record's producer) and singer Victor Willis. The song reached Number 2 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ charts in early 1979. It is one of fewer than 40 singles to have sold 10 million (or more) physical copies worldwide.

The song remains popular and is played at many sporting events in the US and Europe, with crowds joining in on the dance in which arm movements are used to spell out the four letters of the song's title. ‘Y.M.C.A.’ appeared as the ‘Space Shuttle’ wake-up call on day 11 of mission ‘STS-106’.

In 2009, ‘Y.M.C.A." set a ‘Guinness World Record’ when over 44,000 people danced to Village People's live performance of the song at the 2008 Sun Bowl game in El Paso, Texas. ‘Y.M.C.A.’ is Number 7 on VH1’s list of ‘The 100 Greatest Dance Songs of the 20th Century.’

In 2020, ‘Y.M.C.A’ was selected by the ‘Library of Congress’ for preservation in the ‘National Recording Registry’ for being ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant’. In its official press release, the Library noted that "back in its heyday, 'Y.M.C.A.' was a hit around the world, going to Number 1 on the charts in over 15 countries, and its ongoing popularity is evidence that, despite the naysayers, disco has never truly died."

Brief History of the Y.M.C.A.is as follows. The initials of the organisation stand for Young Men’s Christian Association’. The Y.M.C.A. began building single room occupancy facilities in the 1880s to house people from rural areas who moved into cities to look for work. The typical Y.M.C.A. housing provides (as advertised in 2005) “low-income, temporary housing for a rent of $110 per week for stays that are typically three to six months long”. By 1950, 670 of the 1,688 YMCAs in the US provided single room occupancy (SRO) spaces, which made 66,959 beds available. By the 1970s, the typical Y.M.C.A. tenants were more likely to be homeless people and youth facing life issues, rather than people migrating from rural areas or simply passing through town.

Although the song did not reach Number1 in the United States, it became a Number 1 hit throughout the world and has remained popular at parties, sporting events, weddings, and functions ever since.

Taken at face value, the song's lyrics extol the virtues of the ‘Young Men's Christian Association’. However, in the ‘gay culture’ from which the ‘Village People’ stemmed, the song was implicitly understood as celebrating Y.M.C.A.'s reputation as a popular ‘cruising and hook-up spot’, particularly for the younger men to whom it was addressed. The initial goal of ‘Village People’ producers Morali and Belolo was to attract disco's gay audience by featuring popular gay fantasy in their music. Although co-creator Morali was ‘gay’ and the group was initially intended to target gay men, the group became more popular and more mainstream over time.

Conversely, Willis had said that he wrote the song in Vancouver, British Columbia and, through his publicist, that he did not write ‘Y.M.C.A.’ as a gay anthem, but rather as a reflection of the fun activities that young urban black youth experienced at Y.M.C.A., such as basketball and swimming. However, Willis has often acknowledged his fondness for ‘double entendre’.

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I have only used the Y.M.C.A. on one occasion for accommodation purposes. I had emigrated to Canada for a few years between 1963-65. After spending an initial period living in Quebec, Montreal, a few months later witnessed me living in Toronto. While I initially looked around for a suitable flat to rent, I had to live in temporary accommodation and so I checked into the Toronto Y.M.C.A. where I stayed for two weeks until I secured more permanent accommodation. As advertised, the space comprised of a spotlessly clean single room, with basic solid furniture and access to the recreational and dining section of the premises; all at an affordable price.

When this song was first released in 1979, England was entering the disco scene. ‘Pans People’ had been the country’s most popular dancers on television during the late 60s and early 70s, and the hippy communes which had mushroomed across America during the same period gradually gave way to the avant-garde (‘with it’) painters, artists and young entrepreneurs congregating and forming ‘Village’ communities. As these communities evolved, they were joined by many young men and women of the ‘gay’ lifestyle and alternative persuasion. The group ‘Village People’ was a natural product of this fast-changing era, and their song Y.M.C.A. became a favourite across the globe.

I had been married ten years and would often dance and gesticulate my arms into the air to the tune of Y.M.C.A., along with everyone else in the nation’s dancehalls.
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Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song for today: 26th April 2020

26/4/2020

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I dedicate my song today to my deceased mother who died on 26th April 1986 at the early age of 64 years. She was the wife of my father, Paddy Forde (who played soccer for Ireland in his early twenties) and the mother of seven children, William, Mary, Eileen, Patrick, Peter, Michael, and Susan. Her early departure from this life was both unexpected and a great loss to her family.

My mother was born the oldest of seven children (like me) and she lived for laughing, singing, and having a bit of fun wherever it was to be found. Only in a few respects were my mother and father similar in character trait; they had both been born into a hard life, lived a hard life and, despite their many rows and quarrels, they loved each other and their children.

Whereas both mum and dad were religious enough to observe ‘The Ten Commandments’ which were handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai by God, my father’s observance of religious principle went much farther than my mums ever did. Dad’s religious principles also extended to strict observance of Canon Law in the Catholic Church. Church Canon Law is a system of man-made laws and legal principles made and enforced by the hierarchical authorities of the Catholic Church to regulate its external organization and government and to order and direct the activities of Catholics toward the mission of the Church.

In short, dad believed that whatever came out of the mouth of the parish priest was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth! Every subject the parish priest expressed a view upon from the Sunday pulpit ‘was Gospel’ to my father; even if he was giving his parishioners a tip that the grey gelding, ‘Go With God’ was bound to win the Grand National the following Saturday afternoon! Thus, was the Pope’s ‘infallibility’ extended as far as our Irish parish priest’s mind was capable of straying. For all my father knew, our parish priest (who was probably as good a person as the next man in the bus queue) could have been either a happy saint or an unrepentant sinner! For all my father and the rest of the church congregation knew (because there was no mention of it in the weekly parish bulletin), the parish priest might have been abusing altar boys for decades; he might have been having a steamy and torrid twenty-year affair with a wealthy widow in the parish, or God forbid, he might even have secretly married his housekeeper during a Las Vegas holiday and have fathered a child that is being raised by Aunt Aggy (as its natural mother) in Arklow, Southern Ireland!

Dad would always be in his front pew seat at church half an hour every Sunday before the 10:00 am Mass started, giving him time enough to say the rosary; whereas mum (we lived 2 miles away), would get on her bicycle at 9:55 am, and always arrive in church ten minutes after the service had started. Mum would always sit near the back of the church so that she could nip outside to smoke a cigarette when the priest’s back was turned as he consecrated the sacrament, ten minutes before the Sunday service ended!

The parish priest loved the sound of his own voice too much and his weekly sermons were usually moral marathons; they just went on and on! Most Sunday services lasted almost an hour and a half. My mother’s bicycle journey to church was 2 miles downhill, all the way. I would naturally be left to push mum’s bicycle all the way back home, uphill! I once asked mum why she deliberately arrived ten minutes late for Mass every Sunday as well as leaving ten minutes before the service ended. She simply said, ‘I’ll give the priest one hour a week maximum to have his say, Billy, but not a minute longer. An hour’s long enough to listen to any man, whether he’s wearing a frock or making the sign of the cross.”

My mother was a good woman in every sense of the word but she had sufficient imperfections of character to make Saint Peter consider her suitability for heavenly entrance as being ‘probable’ as opposed to ‘automatic’, whereas my dad would have been hurriedly waved through the Pearly Gates without a second thought.

My mother was a traditional Irish woman in every sense of the word. She thought too much of herself to not write her own character reference. According to my mum’s imaginative account of her own background and development, she was the most attractive of catches for any female fisher in the whole of County Waterford. She said that she was a woman of high intelligence who was never afforded the opportunity to pursue a distinguished academic career because she had to leave school to enter the workforce before she was fourteen years old. She said she was the most beautiful woman in the village of Portlaw who could have had her pick of any man and chose dad before she knew him well enough and had given all the other male suitors a fair chance to win her heart. She described herself as being a virtuous woman who once considered becoming a nun.

Whatever I was prepared to believe as being accurate about my mother’s background, there was simply no way that I was believing ‘the nun’s story’. There was no way that my mother could ever develop the habit of living within high walls or willingly wearing a veil of feminine restraint and regret that did not show off the red lipstick she wore. Besides, my mum liked being in the company of men, hearing the sound of music, smoking forty cigarettes a day, and drinking her favourite tipple of rum and black currant juice far too much to ever seriously consider becoming a Bride of Christ.

What I did believe with 100 percent conviction was mum’s ability to tell a tale and to make it credible. I have not the slightest doubt that she provided the impetus for me becoming an author of over five dozen published books in my adult life. Mum was without a doubt, a born storyteller who could stretch the truth as far as a gigolo’s roaming eye might travel. I was never sure whether mum was speaking the truth when she gave me a personal account of a part of her life or whether she was simply telling a tale in the most believable and entertaining way she could.

Dad was a miner who got up for work each morning at 6:00 am. He would go to bed early on a night-time to compensate for his early rising the next day. Dad’s work would start at 6:00 am and end at 4:00 pm, whereas mum’s work as the mother of seven children was never done. I would sit up with her many a night past midnight as she got things ready for the next day and stitched and ironed any clothes needed for school.

I loved spending this private time with mum. It was the only time of the day that I could have her all to myself, and being her firstborn of seven children, our relationship was always close. It was during these wee hours of the morning that mum might reveal some family secret that I otherwise might never have learned of; some secret she had not even told another. She often told me about the peculiarities of village life in Ireland where incestuous relationships were not unheard of and where too few boundaries were never drawn between cousin and cousin and even uncle and niece. She used to laugh as she said, “All the Fannings and Lannings were much closer than their surnames suggested, Billy!” I often recalled my dearly departed uncles, Willie, Johnny and Tommy teasing each other mercilessly. Uncles Willie and Johnny would attempt to get uncle Tommy annoyed by joking that he had a different father to them. Of course, he didn’t (or I don't think he did), but having been born the youngest of seven children, he would have been the last one to know, even had his brother's jibes been true!

Mum was always able to talk about all manner of subjects to me and there wasn't anything which she considered taboo. I was never sure whether it was a liberalness of her nature or merely her tiredness of mind at midnight that loosened her tongue to reveal some secret family history more spontaneously. When I was a teenager, I once asked, “Mum, all my friends know where they were born but I don’t know anyone of them who knows where they were conceived! Where did I first happen, Mum?”
Having dared to ask, she told me that it was in a farmer’s field near the base of ‘The Metal Man’ in Tramore. Mum told me that when she was courting my dad (behind her parent’s back), that my father who lived 33 miles away in County Kilkenny would cycle across to Waterford and back twice weekly, and they would meet by the base of ‘The Metal Man’.

‘The Metal Man’ was erected in 1823; seven years after the transport ship ‘Sea Horse’ foundered in Tramore Bay. 292 men and 71 women and children perished. From the sea, the sheltered yet treacherous Tramore Bay can be easily confused with the traditional safe haven of the Suir estuary. After the sinking of the Sea Horse, its insurers, ‘Lloyds of London’, funded the building of piers and the erection of pillars on two headlands as a visual aid to prevent similar calamities from happening again. The pillars, three on ‘Newtown Head’ and two on ‘Brownstown Head’, were erected in 1823. The town's connection to the tragedy led to the image of a Seahorse being adopted as a symbol of the town of Tramore and later adopted as the logo for ‘Waterford Crystal’. in 1955.

It pleases me immensely, to know that a towering symbol which marked the tragic deaths of 363 men women and children almost two hundred years ago also heralded the life to come of ‘yours truly’ on November 10th, 1942.

Growing up as a war baby, I naturally formed an instant attraction about learning everything I could about British history thereafter. Indeed, during the very week that I was accepted onto a course in Newcastle-upon-Tyne to train to be a Probation Officer in West Yorkshire, I declined a university place at Bath to take an honours degree in British History.

There was none of the modern gadgetry during the 1950s that society is accustomed to today. Most households did not have a telephone and the only source of home family entertainment came from the wireless (the radio to all you youngsters). The family would nightly gather around the wireless to hear the news, listen to ‘The Archers’ soap serial daily, or listen to one of the many plays. All music that we didn’t hear being played by brass bands in the park on a Sunday afternoon came from the wireless.

There was, however, one singer who my mother would make us all be as quiet as church mice whenever she sang on the wireless. It was mum’s favourite singer, the nation’s wartime favourite and ‘Force’s Sweetheart’, Vera Lynn. Whenever Vera Lynn’s voice came over the wireless, mum would instantly hush us all until her song had finished.

If only my dear mother had known then, that within ten years of her own death in 1986, her oldest child would become good friends with Vera Lynn and remain friends with Dame Vera for over 30 years, she would have been so proud. She would have been proud of me and also proud of Vera reaching 103 years of age so far. (read about my contact with Vera Lynn below)
http://www.fordefables.co.uk/going-that-extra-mile.html

Today, I sing one of my mother’s favourite songs, ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’. Every country bordered by sea has its own recognisable landmark which represents a visible entrance to its shores and symbolises ‘coming back home’. Just as the Americans have the welcoming sight of their colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbour, the ‘Statue of Liberty’, and the people of Brazil have their ‘Christ the Redeemer’ statue towering above the skyline of Rio de Janeiro, so the English feel ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’ as symbolising ‘being back home’.

In this Vera Lynn song, there is a line, “...and Jimmy will go to sleep in his own little room again”. While I knew that these words in the song meant that things would return to normal after the war was over, I did not know who this ‘Jimmy’ was that the song mentioned by name. I asked my mum. I will never forget her answer, “Billy, 'Jimmy' is every boy and girl in England today, whatever they are called.”

Today mum, on the 34th anniversary of your early departure from this life, I remember you for your life with us, not your death. I remember how it never bothered you not being able to sing one note in tune or remember the lines of any song, and yet you remained determined to sing your songs all day long. I will never forget you telling me once after I had berated you for not being able to sing for toffee, that everyone who had a song to sing had the right to sing it! I will never forget you telling me, “Billy Forde, I sing for the very same reason as the birds sing. I sing because I have a song to sing!”

I remember your Irish tales of superstition and romance; many of which I borrowed from when writing my own novels. I remember you being a fearless, loving, compassionate, generous, fun-seeking woman who was as popular as a flowering buttercup who was able to brighten up anyone’s day by just being you. I remember you taking me and my sisters Mary and Eileen off on a two week’s holiday to Ireland on no more than a spontaneous Friday evening ‘I’m fed up whim’, with no money in your purse other than what you could borrow from the electric metre and hold back from the rent man and tallyman. I remember that we would arrive at my grandparent’s house in Portlaw with you telling Willie Low (the village taxi man) that you would pay him the taxi fare before you went back home. Poor Willie must have died with the weight of your debt! Then, we would stay with my grandparents until we had eaten them out of house and home. Meanwhile, you would be writing letters home to dad daily, asking him to send you more money asap, unless he wanted us to be left stranded on the wrong side of the Irish Sea.

I remember all these things mum and the most important thing I will never forget is that I never experienced one day in my life when you did not tell me that ‘I was special’. I never once got up on a morning, went out to either school or work, came back home, or went to bed at the end of the day, when you failed to kiss me and tell me, “I love you, Billy Forde!”

I love you mum and still miss you lots. Billy xxx
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Love and peace Bill xxx
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April 25th, 2020

25/4/2020

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I dedicate my song today to my wife, Sheila Forde. IT IS NOT HER BIRTHDAY; she just makes me happy to be alive.

My song today is ‘Sheila’. This song was written and recorded by Tommy Roe in 1960. The single reached Number 1 in the United States on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chart in September 1st, 1962. It remained in the top position for two weeks and peaked at Number 6 on the ‘U.S. Billboard R&B Chart’.

Roe originally conceived the song as being called, ‘Frita’, based on a girl from his high school days. The song was auditioned to a record producer from ‘Judd Records’, and while the response was enthusiastic, it was suggested that the name be changed. By coincidence, Roe's Aunt Sheila was visiting, which inspired the final title of ‘Sheila’. The original version of the song was recorded by Roe for Judd in 1960 but failed to make an impact on the charts. The ABC recording of the song is done in the style of the Liubbock sound which was made popular by ‘Buddy Holly and the Crickets’ in the late 1950s. The strumming pattern, tempo, and chords (both songs are in the key of A) bear a particularly strong resemblance to the Crickets' ‘Peggy Sue’, and Roe's vocals are similar to Holly's. The song became the title track of Tommy Roe's debut studio album, ‘Sheila’ in 1962.

In 1969, Roe was presented by the ‘Recording Industry Association of America’ with a gold record for accumulated sales of over one million copies.

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There is very little I can say about this song, apart from the fact that my wife and love of my life is called ‘Sheila’. The song was initially released when I was 19 years old, going on 20. It was in the hay day of my romantic adventures as a good-looking teenager brimming with self-confidence (especially in the area of female conquests). I must confess that over my lifetime (including every romance and female relationship I ever experienced), not once did I come across a woman called ‘Sheila’ who stirred my imagination and took my fancy before 2010 in Haworth.

I first met Sheila in Haworth during one cold December day of 2010. We had arranged to meet up for a coffee in a café on Main Street after having had a few conversations on the internet. Our combined interest in Relaxation Training initially proved a sufficient reason for the two of us to risk a face-to-face encounter. At the time, for my part, I felt that it might lead to a dalliance with a merry widow who looked very fit (she is a Yoga Instructor) and who was fourteen years younger than me.

It only took us a few meetings together for each of us to realise ‘that something significant had happened in our lives and that something was going on’. Within two weeks, Sheila professed her love for me. I am not saying that she had loving feelings for me before I had them for her (although she probably did), merely that she was the first to express them. Anyway, we married in Haworth on my 70th birthday on November 10th, 2012, and the rest is history.

Three months after our marriage, I was diagnosed with terminal blood cancer, and despite developing three cancers and one lymphoma since 2013, and having two nine-month periods of chemotherapy, plus twenty sessions of radiotherapy, plus having another eight operations (six of them for cancer removal during the past 14 months).

I truly tell you that since I met Sheila in 2010, I have never been happier in my life. Our first seven years of marriage revealed to me how lucky a person I was that we met. My illness has strengthened our relationship, moving from the physical and emotional that it always was to include the spiritual dimension also. Indeed, I cannot believe how fortunate I was to find such love towards my later years in life, and when it was not being sought for, to have it dropped from the lap of the Gods and the heaven above. I do not believe there to be a man alive who is as much-loved as Sheila loves me.

I have extolled Sheila’s virtues so often for readers of my Facebook page that there is no need for anyone who knows her or knows of her to hear them again. Instead, I will merely inform you of the result of my recent research into the name of ‘Sheila’, because, as an ardent believer in fate and destiny playing a big part in all our lives, I do not believe in ‘chance encounters’, particularly where the meeting and marriage between heavenly soul mates are concerned.

The literal meaning of ‘Sheila’ is derived from the Latin Caelia, which is a feminine form of the Roman clan name Caelius, meaning ‘heavenly’, or ‘of the heavens’. So far, nothing unusual or which wasn’t expected by me! I have always assumed my Sheila to have been heaven-sent.

A second meaning of the name ‘Sheila’ is to be found in the Irish form of the Latin name, ‘Cecilia’, who is the patron saint of music. Sheila literally translates to ‘pure and musical’. Sheila comes from a family who do not come any more musical and includes, one opera singer, two classical singers, two accomplished violinists, a flutist, and a concert pianist. They all performed at our wedding. I never realised when we first met that within two years, I would be marrying into the British equivalence of the ‘Von Trapp Family’.

Just in case any of you are wondering, any comparison or distinction between my name ‘William’ and my wife’s name ‘Sheila’ is nothing to write home or sing about. I love you, Sheila Forde, and as the Australians would say, ‘you will always be my Sheila!’

Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song For Today: 24th April 2020

24/4/2020

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My song is jointly dedicated today to three Facebook friends who are celebrating their birthday. I wish a happy birthday to Heather Jean Bates from Halifax, Georgina Tang from Liverpool, and Elisabeth Engelke Kingston from Morecombe. Thank you all for being my Facebook friends and don’t forget to leave some room for plenty of cake and suitable refreshments. Bill xxx

My song today is ‘Should I Do It?’ This song was composed by Layng Martine Jr, and in 1981 was a minor Country and Western hit for Tanya Tucker. It later became a Top 40 hit in 1982 for the ‘Pointers Sisters’. A chart disappointment for Tucker in the summer of 1981. Stalling at Number 50 C&W, ‘Should I Do It’ as recorded by the Pointer Sisters would reach the Top 20 of the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chart in early 1982 although it would not rank among the group's very biggest hits being a Top Ten shortfall.

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The subject and theme of this song by the ‘Pointer Sisters’ asks the question that every woman who has ever lived has to ask herself one day when the point of ‘no return’ appears on her love/relationship horizon. The age of the female answering this question, the length, and nature of her relationship with her partner, along with the circumstances of the moment when the question is seriously posed/entertained in her mind, can and often does determine how she will be viewed and responded to by her partner and others after the event.

I was born in 1942, and at that time, that question might have been answered much differently than say four years earlier, before the outbreak of the ‘Second World War’. From the Victorian Age onwards in Great Britain, very few well-bred girls would have engaged in full sexual activity with their boyfriend before their wedding night. All the young men would ‘willingly go with’ one type of girl ‘for a good time but would marry an entirely different type of woman. Having a virgin bride was always the expectation of marriageable men, and women who had not kept themselves intact were considered to be ‘soiled goods’. It is interesting to note the common phrase of ‘soiled goods’, which indicated that married women were still considered to be the exclusive ‘property’ of their husbands long into the 20th century.

‘The Second World War’ years brought about a significant change in the risks which a young female was prepared to take with her soldier sweetheart just before he was drafted for action overseas. Knowing that during these times of uncertainty that her soldier sweetheart might be killed in action, was often encouragement enough to persuade her against her usual judgment of ‘waiting for the wedding night’, and she might suspend her traditional moral upbringing.

Having been an ardent reader of British History since my teenage years, I've read many accounts where the young woman’s soldier sweetheart was subsequently killed in action on the battlefront and that she was literally left ‘holding the baby’ as a wartime souvenir of her past love. In such circumstances, the young woman concerned would invariably grieve in silence for the death of her soldier sweetheart, besides receiving little consolation from neighbours and society in general. Any offspring born as a consequence of her unmarried relationship would be usually adopted by a ‘respectable married couple’.

I recall whilst working as a probation officer in Huddersfield during the 1970s, being told by one of the older office secretaries that while many hardships were experienced during the 'Second World War' years, she had the best time ever with ‘the boys’ (American and British soldiers) on leave. She was essentially telling me that many a young woman who was brought up too strictly by their parents prior to 1939, used the war as an excuse to “let their hair and all manner of other things down.” She would tell us younger office colleagues about many wartime stories of daring-do ‘behind enemy lines’; a reference to kissing and cuddling (and whatever else) behind army barracks. She also told us what some British wives of serving soldiers fighting in France might get up to during their husband’s absence or would be prepared do to secure a nice pair of nylons from a GI stationed here. I will never forget her once telling me, “The war brought out the risk in a girl, Bill.”

Having been born in 1942, I can never forget living through the sixties. This was the age of rebellion where a third World War was feared if the bomb wasn't banned. In America, draft cards were being openly burned in public by young men who had been called up to serve and fight in Vietnam. It was a time of experimentation in all ways of life; living in hippy communes, exercising free love, joining cults, and breaking free from the chains of suburban restraint, long felt by the young.

Then came ‘the pill’. Once female birth control arrived on the scene and was placed in the hands of women and not men, the rules of the mating game changed forever. For the very first time in their lives, women began to sense the power they held over their own bodies. For the first time in their life, women started to exert themselves as individuals. Prior to the period of ‘the pill’ women had been regarded as being predominantly the property and sexual plaything of males. Just as the rebellious American men had burned their draft cards in public, the burning-bra feminists of the 1960s also took to the streets as they protested their equal rights. Before the 1960s, women were collectively seen solely by their husbands as being ‘housewives-mothers- baby machines-male sexual outlets’, and nothing else. This aggravated many women and made them feel grossly undervalued. They desperately needed to reform this stereotype, and the 1960s was the time to do this.

Beauty Contests were vigorously protested, and pornographic images that sexualised women on the top shop shelves of newsagents were deemed to degrade their individual worth and downgrade their contribution to society. This era witnessed increasing female protest against all sexual inequality in the areas of public office, political arenas, the church, and commerce.

Women were no longer prepared to be judged by different standards to their male counterparts. They vigorously started to question what precisely it was that denoted a young man as being a healthy ‘lad’ and a young woman being a ’slag’ for doing the same thing in similar circumstances? Women wanted the right to be sexual when they wanted to be, with whom, and in whatever way they chose to be.

Today, I must admit there is much confusion about the rules of courtship, what is allowed, and particularly who decides when to make the first move and in what manner such advances are considered permissible within relationships? In many ways, men have been overtaken and emasculated by modern-day legislation that places the power firmly in the hands of the woman within a relationship. Some men might even argue that the degree of power change that has happened between the sexes has effectively castrated all passionate spontaneity within all intimate relationships.

It seems to me that the question posed by today’s song, ‘Should I do it?’ applies just as much to the intended action of the male as it does the female in 2020!
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Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song For Today: 23rd April 2020

23/4/2020

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DEDICATED TO ALL PEOPLE WHO WANT A LOVING PARTNER TO SHARE THEIR LIFE WITH.

I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friend, Philip Ellis from Leeds, along with any of my Facebook contacts who spend their days and nights alone because they have no loving partner with whom to share their life.

Philip is having an emotionally difficult year during 2020. His dear father recently died in Hospital and Philip passed his 50th birthday landmark as a single man; a status he would willingly change if the right person came along. In the courtship-leading to marriage stakes, so far Philip is proving to be a non-runner. Ironically, such disappointment tends to come most to the nicest and kindest of people.

Like many men and women out there of single status who want to be settled down with a loving partner to return home to at the end of the day, being constantly on one’s own sucks! Ever since God created the earth and made man, He also found it necessary to create woman. Every Adam needs an Eve (or as our Gay friends might say ‘Every Sabastian needs a Steve’). The one thing that the overwhelming majority of us want in our lives is another to share it with; someone to love and who loves us in return. This human need is what places having a soulmate at the very top of our wish list.

Sadly, this essential need of most of us is not always available to some of us, and the only consolation the ‘reluctant singles’ can have is the knowledge that their disappointment of failing to get what they most want at least shows they are trying!

As a person who has never once had to spend either a day or night alone without another beside me (unless I chose to be alone), I know deep within that individual success in the ‘love stakes’ is wedded to positive expectation and individual confidence and has almost nothing to do with physical looks.

Only by ‘not trying too hard’ are we able to balance our expectations/needs/successful outcomes. It is true that while one ‘unsuccessful single’ may get closer to their objective through a gentle nudge in the right direction by a well-intentioned friend’s advice, there will undoubtedly be another ‘stubborn single’ who is hell-bent on continuing to do the wrong thing which they have done all their life in the hope of achieving the right result this time. A gentle nudge is wasted on the latter singleton; they need a kick up the Khyber Pass to get them to change track! It is unfortunately sad but true that even making the proper approach towards another can sometimes invite too harsh a rejection and unnecessary hurt. Some people can be very insensitive and cruel in their response whenever declining the appropriate advances of another. It is little wonder why Noah decided to fill his ark with animals instead of humans when he started his voyage of new discovery.

There are only two pieces of advice that I would deign to give any person seeking a partner and that is; first, you will never find any good person who is willing to be your lifelong partner if you persist in looking for him/her in bad company. Second, finding love comes easier to any person who has previously found it in themselves.

As a young man whose greatest fault was forever ‘falling in love’ with every young woman I dated, I now know why I needed to fall in love so often. It was a narcissistic part of me which ‘loved myself’. I wasn’t, in fact, falling in love with the beautiful young woman who I was dating; I was falling in love with who I was and what I felt like when I was with her.

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’She’s the One’. This song was originally recorded by the British rock band ‘World Party’. It was written and produced by Karl Wallinger for World Party's fourth studio album, ‘Egyptology’ in 1997’

The song won an ‘Ivor Novello Award’ in 1997. It was featured in the 1997 movie, ‘The Matchmaker’, and the 1998 movie, ‘The Big Hit’. World Party performed the song live on the British TV show, ‘Later with Jools Holland’ in 1998. In 1998, Robbie Williams also recorded a successful cover of the song.

The song went on to win a number of awards around the world, including a ‘2000 Brit Award’ for ‘Best Single of the Year’ and ‘British Video of the Year in 2000’. It also won a Capital Radio Award for Best Single.

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When this song was first released, I was 54 years old and had been prematurely retired for two years on the grounds of ill health from my career as a Probation Officer. An horrific traffic accident at the boyhood age of 11 years had left me unable to walk for three years after being wrapped around the main drive axel of the wagon which knocked me down and ran over me and mangled my legs badly. I needed over fifty operations over the ensuing years to correct them.

I was warned when I left the hospital in Batley after having been an inpatient there for nine months that, whether I walked again or not, I would always suffer from rheumatic and osteoarthritis in my legs and that even if I ever regained my walking functioning, a time would inevitably come in later life when arthritis would become so severe that I would be rendered unable to walk again. How accurate they were!

By the age of 53 years, I found myself being unable to walk even the smallest of distances and despite having two knee and hip replacements within the following seven years, my mobility remained permanently restricted to severe disability level.

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By the age of 15 years, I had started to improve my walking ability following my bad traffic accident. Gradually, over the following six years before I went to live in Canada for two years, I experienced a more normal teenage life. I was able to work, dance, drink, and fight with the best of my peers, and life was extremely good to me once more.

My parental genes had presented me with reasonably good-looking features, and I was popular with my peer group. I was highly confident in all I undertook and was also very competent in my work life, personal life, and overall capabilities. If I could place my natural modesty to one side for a minute, I’d have to say that I was a much sought-after young man to date by the young women who knew me. I knew that their mothers would have considered me a good catch, had their daughters been clever enough to ensnare me into marriage.

I was one of the most romantic teenagers who ever graced the arm of any fair damsel, but I was also proved to be a sucker if I ever witnessed one of them in distress. I cannot count the number of injuries from fights I notched up rescuing young women from the dangerous clutches of the arms of some other man who was not worthy of them!

My greatest fault in the courtship stakes, however, was that I was never interested in joining the field of non-runners. I was a teenager more interested in dating beautiful young women, not 'courting' them! To me, ‘courtship’ sounded too permanent the type of relationship to make it appealing to me, whereas ‘having a good date for the night’ was clearly more suitable for my one-way street of masculine thought.

Where I came unstuck most often, however, was that while I never intended to get married until my thirties (after I had travelled extensively and rid my mind and body of my wanderlust and all other forms of lust they held), I always felt this need to ‘be in love’ with whomever I was dating at the time as opposed to needing to ‘be loved’ in return. There was no each-way wager about the filly I was backing. It was a one-way bet; win or lose! I was, in short, a hopeless romantic, attempting to match the irreconcilables of physically being close to a beautiful woman while maintaining enough emotional distance from her to take her mind off marriage!

I must confess to having been aided considerably in this objective by two important things, being a good dancer and a good kisser.

Whether I took the dance floor or the deepest breath I could, I was capable of ‘turning them wild’. Being a popular young man on the dance and dating scene, I could turn the heads of many a young woman whenever I entered their range of vision. I could also spin them like a top when we bopped to the fastest rock and roll record out at the time. I could always 'turn them on' at the end of the night when I escorted them back home. Early on in my dating life, I discovered the power of the carefully chosen word whether it was casually recited in poetic prose or sung in a gentle serenade. Let’s face it chaps, there isn’t a woman alive (Ice Maidens included) who will not melt when the romantic heat of the night is turned up!

The song I sing today reminds me of one of my most common sayings as teenager who was approaching manhood. Whenever I saw a young woman who looked stunning, I would turn to my mate, point to the young beauty in question and confidently proclaim, “She’s the one!”

I would make this bold statement with a degree of arrogance that suggested all I had to do was to ask and she would come running! Those were the days…and the nights…and the mornings after!
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Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song For Today: 22nd April 2020

22/4/2020

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I dedicate my song today to Anthony Robert Allum, the late husband of my Facebook friend, Jacqueline Allum, who originated from Batley in West Yorkshire but has lived in St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada for a number of years now. Bob sadly died in November of 2008 with CJD and had he still lived, he would have been celebrating his 80th birthday, today. Wishing you a happy heavenly 80th birthday, Bob.

Apart from dedicating this song to Jacqueline's late husband, I jointly dedicate my song to every facebook contact I have who has lost a partner, lover, soul mate, spouse through bereavement in either the past or recent times.

To those among you, whose partner died many years ago, I pray that the burden of your bereavement since their death has lessened and that their loss from your life has stopped hurting as much; leaving you with happier memories of your good times together.

To those among you, whose bereavement and loss is more recent and the pain is still too raw to let go to the healing process, hold on tight to your good memories and when you feel the loss of their lives in your presence, derive comfort from the belief that 'they have never really left your lives and never will'. They will remain a part of what you think, say, and do for as long as you wish them to accompany you in spirit through your future life.

As regards to crying, our culture has a strange relationship with 'sadness'. Despite it being one of the most fundamental emotions that we experience, it’s something that is often not discussed, and rarely ever encouraged. A good number of years spent working in the role of Bereavement Counsellor led me to understand that our emotions, however, are never so simple,

The three physiological reasons we cry are Basal (the necessity to keep one's eyes moist each time we blink): Reflex Protection
(the need to flush out eye irritants such as wind, dust, smoke, onions), and Emotional (humans shed tears in response to a range of emotions. These tears contain a higher level of stress hormones than other types of tears).

Some people who are bereaved can and do cry buckets of tears while others do not. It is, however, healthier to cry whenever sadness overwhelms us. If we can cry, we will in time swim through our sea of sadness, but if we unhealthily bottle up our tears and do not express them, we are likely to drown in a sea of sorrows. So, if crying comforts you or reduces your pain or releases your pent up emotions which are unsettling you, then it makes good sense to cry as much as you want to.

The best thing of all, however, for all bereaved partners is to talk, talk and talk some more. This can be done with a trained counsellor, but why not save yourself the £40 per hour 'going fee' and talk to a trusted friend instead. And if you are the friend of a bereaved person, never worry about not having the correct things to say in reply to them, as your advice will never be one-tenth as important to them as your ability to 'listen' will prove to be.
Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song For Today: 21st April 2020

21/4/2020

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I dedicate my song today to my nephew, Luke Thorp, who is the son of my sister-in-law, Jill Thorp, and my Facebook friend, Loretta Milner, who lives in Leeds. Both Luke and Loretta celebrate their birthday today. May their special day be filled with much happiness and good cheer.

My song today is, ‘Sunny’. This is a soul-jazz song written by Bobby Hebb in 1963. It is one of the most performed and recorded popular songs, with hundreds of versions released. BMI rates ‘Sunny’ at Number 25 in its ‘Top 100 songs of the century’. It is also known by its first line: ‘Sunny, yesterday my life was filled with rain’. The song was covered by many groups including ‘Boney M’, one of the groups I enjoyed listening to during the late 1960s.

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During the early 1960s, I spent a few years living in Canada. I had always known that somewhere along the meteorological spectrum that in any place where it has started raining, there was also a place along the meteorological continuum where it must have stopped raining. I knew this to be the case but not being able to be in two places at one time, I never expected to witness this phenomenon.

I had obviously failed to recognise that one didn’t need to be in two places at one time to witness such an event, but merely at the right place (where two different places could be simultaneously observed).

On the day in question, I came out of the hotel in Toronto, Canada where I worked as a desk clerk. It was around noon and it was sunny. I looked across the road as I bathed in the warm glow of the sun and was amazed to see a crowd of people scurrying for shelter as it started to rain down heavily on the pedestrians on the sidewalk. I recall laughing at being fortunate for being on the ‘sunny side of the street’ during this rainstorm. This was the only occasion in my life that I have ever witnessed such a meteorological phenomenon.

I have, however, witnessed its allegorical representation on many occasions during my 77 years of life. I have often seen within the same look (on an identical time, date, and place), two entirely opposing sets of experiences in respect of similar life events.

Surely, you must have wondered from time to time how two people can share a similar set of circumstances and yet experience two opposing sets of results (emotional consequences). You will notice that I do not describe the seemingly same circumstances as being ‘identical’, and therein lies the human conundrum of why humans respond so differently to similar events(note that I say ‘events’ and not ‘experiences’).

I have long known that no person experiences ‘seemingly similar events’ the same as another. I have long known that we each perceive similar sets of circumstances differently. Take the bereavement of a loved one for example; no two people will experience (emotionally process) such a sad event in the same way. One bereaved person losing a parent may not stop crying for days, whereas another person (who is just as sad at their loss of a parent) may not feel able to cry at all.

Take, for instance, two people, both of whom are informed by the same consultant that they have been diagnosed as having the same type of terminal illness. In such circumstances, it is not unusual (and could realistically be said to be expected) for each individual to respond entirely differently. Such variance in our approaches and responses to every situation we ever encounter is uniquely peculiar to ourselves, and is governed and determined exclusively by ‘our belief-our expectations- our previous experiences- how we use and interpret our senses- our current experience and what we tell ourselves about that which we have just encountered (our self-talk).

I long since learned in my role as a Behaviourist Worker with problematic clients, about the human distinction which enables one person to respond entirely differently to an event in their life when compared to the response of another person in a similar situation. What defines the precise nature of any person’s response is how they see what they are looking at, how they hear what is said to them, how they feel when they touch something/someone or somebody touches them, what they smell when they sniff at something/someone, how they interpret the spoken words of another or what they tell themselves (their self-talk).

Our senses, and how we interpret our senses, determine whether we find something pleasurable or distasteful, harmful or safe, hurtful or soothing, threatening or challenging, repulsive or inviting (or any other opposing set of perceptions and experiences). How we interpret our senses and what we tell ourselves about the events which impact our body will determine the qualitative value of our experiences. It will determine whether we are happy or sad or experience any emotion in between through what we encountered.

Imagine being able to place oneself at precise equidistance to both opposing experiences. Such is a fact of life. As we each walk down the middle of the street, we might find it grey in the middle, and sunny on one sidewalk but raining on the other sidewalk.

Ironically, our lives tend to be filled with more 'grey' days as opposed to 'sunny' or 'rainy' ones. The true distinction between an 'optimist' and a 'pessimist' is that the optimist will be more likely to perceive more sunlight coming through the clouds of a grey day, while all that the pessimist expects to come out of the grey clouds they encounter is an outburst of rain!

We each possess the power to decide which side of the street we choose to cross over to and walk on! Whether we choose to cross over to the sunny side of the street or cross over to the rainy side depends entirely on how we use, interpret, and experience our senses and encounters within our daily lives. Alternately, we can stay rational in everything we ever do or use the kind of rationale (our reasoning and beliefs) which maintain our hope, enhance our health and increase our happiness experienced. The choice is yours!
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Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song For Today: 20th April 2020

20/4/2020

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My song is dedicated today to four people who celebrate their birthdays.

First is my son, James Forde, who lives in France with his wife, Elisa Forde and their two teenage children Sam and Jessica. Have a happy 46th birthday son.

Second is my Facebook friend, Elaine Kirkbright, who lives in Leeds. The third is Christina Fridström, who lives in Sweden. Last, but by no means least is the partner of my Facebook friend, Isabell Delgarno from Corby, who is 71-year-old Bill Brown.
Enjoy your special day, everyone and leave some room for lots of cake and suitable refreshments.

I wish all three birthday celebrants today a joyous occasion, and my message to all of you is crucial to your continued Hope, Health and Happiness:
"Never stop dreaming. Never stop believing in your dreams, however long you have held them. Never stop reaching out and doing things that bring your dreams one step closer to reality.
Never forget that if you can dream, there will always be a life of hope ahead of you and a rainbow of few regrets behind you."

My song today is one that Elvis Presley made famous, 'If I Can Dream'. My birthday wish is that all your dreams come true.

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‘If I Can Dream’ is a song made famous by Elvis Presley and was written by Walter Earl Brown. It is notable for its direct quotations of Martin Luther King, Jr. The song was published by Elvis Presley's music publishing company ‘Gladys Music, Inc.’ It was recorded by Presley in June 1968, two months after King’s assassination. The recording was first released to the public as the finale of Presley's 1968 ‘Comeback Special’.

The history of how and why the song was written is as follows. Brown was asked to write a song to replace "I'll Be Home for Christmas" as the grand finale on NBC's ‘Elvis’, from June 20-23, 1968 (now also known as ‘68 Comeback Special’). Knowing about Presley’s fondness with Martin Luther King, and about his devastation related to his then-recent assassination, he wrote ‘If I Can Dream’ with Presley in mind. When Presley heard the demo, he was known to have proclaimed "I'm never going to sing another song I don't believe in. I'm never going to make another movie I don't believe in." And he, in the nine short years remaining for his life to end, kept his promise.

The song was published by Presley's company ‘Gladys Music, Incorporated’. When Colonel Tom Parker heard the demo of the song sent by Earl Brown, he said: "This ain't Elvis' kind of song." Elvis was also there, and he countered Parker’s argument, then he pleaded: "Let me give it a shot, man." Earl Brown said that when Elvis recorded the song, he saw tears rolling down the cheeks of the backing vocalists. One of them whispered to him: "Elvis has never sung with so much emotion before. Looks like he means every word."

The song was released as a single with ‘Edge of Reality’ as the flip side in November 1968. It charted on ‘Billboard's Hot 100’ for 3 months and a week, peaking at Number 12. In Canada, the song peaked at Number 6 on RPM ‘Top Singles Chart’.
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Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Their dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination, and hard work. All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them and the heart to live them. Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life becomes like a broken-winged bird that cannot fly to its planned destination of settledness and peaceful refuge.

Dreamers do not come in a 'one-size-fits-all personality'. All people dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity they imagined; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men and women, for they act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible. The only thing that can make a dream impossible to achieve is a denial of hope allied to fear for the failure of tomorrow.

I once read of dreams being likened to excursions into the limbo of unmaterialised things; a mental search seeking deliverance from a human prison where the only bars preventing one breaking free are self-constructed. Dreams should be positive statements of fact; pictorial illustrations which our souls are imprinting on our brains and our brains instruct our bodies to act out.

I often encounter people who make statements like, "I too had dreams once, but they weren't to be......" before proceeding to indicate that changed circumstances and advancing age made them as redundant today as passed water under the bridge. Let me tell you that dreams never become redundant or outdated. Dreams are renewable! No matter what our age or condition, there are still untapped possibilities within us and new beauty waiting to be born.

Like an unnurtured flower on the brink of dying for lack of water and restful shade, dreams can be revived by becoming a kinder gardener to them. Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke off the life from them. But water them with optimism and nurture them with solutions and you will cultivate success.

When I was a boy, the one thing I knew my mother was and always had been was a dreamer. One of the many things she told me as a boy was, "Billy, those who dream most, do most with their lives!"

While I naturally hope that all you readers of this daily post of mine will take this advice that I genuinely offer on board, I entreat our three birthday celebrants today to do so. Please, recognise that our dreams are wishes of our heart and that they represent the safest risk we could possibly take to secure sufficient satisfaction, engender constant hope, promote better health and instil greater happiness in our life. So dare to dream, but do not dwell on dreams and forget to live in the moment during the process.

Love and peace Bill xxx
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Another Song for Today: 19th April 2020

19/4/2020

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I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friend, Helen Hogan, from Carrick-on-Suir. Helen celebrates her birthday today. I, along with all the people of Carrick-on-Suir, wish you the happiest of birthdays today, Helen. Don’t forget to leave some room for lots of cake and suitable refreshments. Thank you for being my Facebook friend. Bill xxx

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My song today is ‘Okie From Muskogee’. This song was recorded by American country music artist, ‘Merle Haggard and The Strangers’. Haggard co-wrote the song with drummer Roy Edward Burris. "Okie" is a slang name for someone from Oklahoma, and Muskogee is the 11th largest city in the state. The song was released in September 1969 as the first single and title track from the album ‘Okie from Muskogee’.

Haggard told ‘The Boot’ in an interview that he wrote the song after he became disheartened watching Vietnam War protests and incorporated that emotion and viewpoint into song. Haggard says, "When I was in prison, I knew what it was like to have freedom taken away. Freedom is everything. During Vietnam, there were all kinds of protests. Here were these [servicemen] going over there and dying for a cause that we don't even know what it was really all about. And here are these young kids, that were free, bitching about it. There's something wrong with that and with [disparaging] those poor guys."

He states that he wrote the song to support the troops. "We were in a wonderful time in America, and the music was in a wonderful place. America was at its peak, and what the hell did these kids have to complain about? These soldiers were giving up their freedom and lives to make sure others could stay free. I wrote the song to support those soldiers." In an interview with ‘American Songwriter’, Haggard called the song a ‘character study’, his 1969 self being the character

'Okie from Muskogee’ immediately broke into popularity when released in late September 1969. By November 15, it reached Number 1 on the ‘Billboard Magazine Hot Country Singles’ chart, where it remained for four weeks. It also became a minor pop hit as well, reaching Number 41 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chart.

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This song was released one year after I was first married. The song (unlike the protest songs of Bob Dillion and others who were wholly against the Vietnam War), was in support of all those American soldiers who were fighting for their country’s cause. The song also supported all the traditional American values about looking right, being right, and doing right. Haggard found it insupportable to ‘knock the country’s cause’, and hence wrote Okie from Muskogee’ to support his view.

It is not too different in many ways about the two camps that always line up in battle formation against each other and in conflict against the cause of the opposing camp. In Great Britain, there have always been those for and those against ‘this’ and ‘that’.

We can go back to the antagonism between the Romans and Christians : moving through the centuries to the religious conflict between Crown and Church when Henry V111 challenged the supremacy of the Pope: the Civil War between Crown and State between Cromwell’s Roundheads and King Charles 1’s Royalists : the commercial and moral crusade between those merchants who believed in the slave trade and those who protested politically against it: the irreconcilable opponents of worker and master during the Industrial Revolution: the constant fight between master and worker regarding the right of Trade Unions to exist in the workplace: the moral conscience of the soldiers and the conscientious objectors of ‘World Wars One and Two’: the protesters for and against ‘Women’s Suffrage’: the political differences between Labour, Liberal and Conservatory Political Parties and Policies: and present day, those who believe in maintaining the social isolation/ distancing/ lockdown policy of the Government and those who do not!

I suspect that somewhere along the lines that distinguish this range of opposing viewpoints, there will be times when we will find ourselves be in the rebel camp of opinion and other occasions when we will be natural allies of Crown, Parliament and Central Authority.

In short, there will be times in the life of every person when we become ‘Okies from Muskogee’.
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Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song For Today: 19th April 2020

19/4/2020

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DEATH OF MARK WALSWORTH: PARTNER OF WILLIAM FORDE’S NIECE, SAM SWALES ON 18TH APRIL 2020.

Yesterday afternoon, I received word that the 49-year-old partner of my niece, Sam Swales, tragically died in an Aberdeen Hospital with Coronavirus. Mark and Sam had been in a relationship for a couple of years and towards the latter part of 2019, they decided to move up to Aberdeen where they would start afresh living as a family unit with Sam’s two children, 13-year-old Millie, and 7-year-old Leon.

My niece’s Sam’s working life has been spent in the caring profession helping others, obtaining her qualifications at Bradford University to facilitate and advance her career in the Primary Care section. She is a kind and gentle person whose compassion is self-evident to all who know her, a loving daughter to my brother, Peter, and his wife, Linda, a good mother to Millie and Leon, and the closest of siblings to her sisters Emily Forde and Janie Foster and Kathryn Forde.

The death of any person one knows is hard and the death of a family member is much harder, especially when the person concerned is only in his late 40s and his departure from this world was so sudden and therefore, totally unexpected and all the more tragic. No person, male or female, should have to suffer so sad a loss of a partner at such an early stage in their life, and my heart goes out to Sam, her two children, Millie and Leon, and also to Mark’s parents and other family members from the few times we met, Mark instantly came across as being very friendly and amiable. He appeared to be an ideal partner for my niece Sam to accept as her soul mate.

The death of any person one knows is hard and the death of a family member is much harder, especially when the person concerned is only in his late 40s and his departure from this world was so sudden and therefore, totally unexpected. Such circumstances merely make Mark's passing all the more tragic. No person, male or female, should have to suffer so sad a loss of a partner at such an early stage in their life and relationship. My heart goes out to Sam, her two children, Millie and Leon, and also to Mark’s parents and other family members in their time of bereavement.

I recall the very last time I saw Sam and Mark. It was at their leaving do in the ‘Milnsbridge Working Men's Club’ in late 2019. They both looked so happy to be starting life anew up in Aberdeen. Sam, please know that as far as all the Forde Family is concerned that Mark was a much-liked man. Also, please know that you are a much-loved daughter, mother, sister, aunt, and niece.

While I understand that Mark did not have a job to go when you moved to Aberdeen towards the end of last year, you both carried a million dreams within your luggage that you shared, dreams about your future together and making a fresh start in a new place as loving partners and parents to Millie and Leon. I could sense in the brief time I spoke with you both that afternoon, you each exuded a degree of that excitement about experiencing a new life together that only a couple in love can hold. I believe that you'd both dreamt the same dream about the certainty of future happiness together, the like of which only soul mates dare to dream in an uncertain world of shifting times.

I am so sorry, Sam, that your million dreams were not to be realised with Mark, but I am nevertheless pleased that they were dreamt together and so proud of you and Mark for daring to dream them. From an old man, aged 77 years, and an uncle who has had his fair share of miracles dispensed to him throughout his lifetime, I only wish that I could have loaned yourself and Mark one of them at your greatest moment of need.

Sam, nobody knows why things happen in our lives, both good or bad, happy or hurtful. As though fate might have decreed it yesterday, I received a message from a lady called Eva Gaspar about half an hour before I learned of Mark’s death. Eva is a Facebook contact who is fast becoming a good friend. Eva told me of a song that she believed was meant for me to sing on one of my future Facebook posts.

She was so right with regard to both the song title and its message. I have only had half an hour to learn it before posting it today, but it seems highly fitting for this morning's post that refers to yesterday's tragic news concerning Mark's death.

I found it a most difficult song to sing from the show, ‘The Greatest Showman’ and is outside my comfort zone, but I needed to sing it today as my dedication to the brief life you and Mark shared as a loving couple. It is called, ‘A Million Dreams’. Please accept it in the spirit intended. It is sung with the love I hold for you and the pain I wish I could take from you at this sad time.
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Love and peace Uncle Billy, Sheila, and all the Forde Family xxx
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Song For Today: 18th April 2020

18/4/2020

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I jointly dedicate my song today to three Facebook friends, all who are celebrating their birthday today. They are Joan O Shea who lives in Piltown, County Kilkenny, Ireland: Anne-Marie McDermottt who lives in Dublin, Ireland and Julie Walsh who lives in London, England.

My song today is ‘People Will Say We’re In Love’. This is a show tune from the Rogers and Hammerstein musical ‘Oklahoma’ (1943). In the original Broadway production, the song was introduced by Alfred Drake and Joan Roberts.

In the plot, characters think, correctly, that Laurey (Joan Roberts) and Curly (Alfred Drake) are in love. In this song, they warn each other not to behave indiscreetly, lest people misinterpret their intentions. Neither wants to admit to the other - or themselves - his or her true feelings. Towards the end of the musical, the characters repeat the number after becoming engaged, saying "Let people say we're in love."
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I well remember seeing this film at the Picture House (cinema) around 1956, one year after its initial release. Having occurred a very serious traffic accident when I was 11 years old (which left me unable to walk for three years), I had just about started to hobble around during my 14th year of life.

I had also missed almost three years of my schooling through being in the hospital for a period of nine months, followed by a lengthy educational absence afterward that involved many leg operations. I had taken and passed my 11 plus examinations before my life-threatening accident (when a wagon ran over me) but declined to attend the Grammar School in Heckmondwike. I then took the necessary examinations in the hospital to enable me to attend ‘Dewsbury Technical College’ when I was able to do so, and after passing these examinations, this is where I attended when I was aged 14 years. I had missed three years of education due to my lengthy stay as a hospital patient, plus my many leg operations over the following two years after leaving the hospital.

I missed the start of the new intake for my first Technical College year at Dewsbury due to having another operation on my leg, and I started at the Technical College six months into the course year. Having started the course six months after the rest of the class, left me playing ‘catch up’ for the remaining lessons up to Christmas 1957.

I was a bright lad who had grown accustomed since starting ‘First School’ at the age of nearly 6 years, to always being the best or second-best pupil in whatever subject I undertook or class I was in. This remained the case until my accident at the age of 11 years. In those days, one was educated in a class year which matched the pupil’s academic ability, not their age, and although only 11-years-old, I was in the top class of 14-year-old pupils (my Mensa IQ score was assessed as being 142 when I was tested during my 11th year of life that I spent as a hospital inpatient).

When I eventually started my education again by attending ‘Dewsbury Technical College’, I discovered that I was no longer the brightest pupil in the class and that there were a dozen or more of my classmates cleverer than I was in the subjects being taught. I found this wholly new experience too much to handle and my ego led me to throw in the towel and to withdraw from the educational forum completely. On the day of the Christmas party in 1957, when the musical ‘Oklahoma’ was being performed on stage by other pupils, I quietly gathered together all my textbooks and handed them in at the Headmaster’s Office, saying, “I’ve had enough of school. I need to get a job and earn some money to put some good shoes on my feet and to buy some fashionable clothes!”

I was surprised when the Headmaster, Mr. Ford (the same surname as myself, but without the ‘e’) smiled and wished me good luck instead of berating me and threatening to prosecute me if I left the Technical College six months before my educational contract had expired. The following Monday morning I had started work in a Cleckheaton Mill for the magnificent wage of £2 and 16 shillings a week.

I will never forget as I left ‘Dewsbury Technical College’ that December noon, how happy I felt to be joining the nation’s workforce. I was over the moon at the thought of being able to earn some money soon. Under normal circumstances, I would have willingly been a part of the ‘Oklahoma’ school production as I knew all the songs by heart and could sing them as well as the person who was to play the lead of Curly. The reason that I never auditioned for the part, however, was twofold. First, the entire cast had already been selected two months before I joined my other classmates. Second, even had I not joined my classmates six months into the educational term and had started at the same time as they did, I still would not have applied to play in the cast because of my ungainly walk at the time. Although I attended school daily, I limped exceedingly badly and was excused sport due to my disability in movement.

What I do recall, however, as vividly as though it happened today, is me singing ‘Oh What a Beautiful Morning’ as I left school that final day with an empty satchel and happy at the thought of finally been able to get a job and earn some money. This is not the song I sing for you today from the same musical show, but one I shall sing for you at a future date.

Incidentally, years later in my late thirties, I returned to ‘Dewsbury Technical College’, the school I’d run away from as a pupil to teach an evening class of mature adults on a six-month course on ‘Assertion and Relaxation Training’. I had gained an Advanced Teacher’s Certificate to teach adult students during earlier years in my late thirties. Paradoxically, as I left the college following my first evening class as a teacher instead of a pupil, I cannot swear to it, but I was probably humming one of the songs from ‘Oklahoma’. It might even have been the song I choose to sing for you today.

Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song For Today: 17th April 2020

17/4/2020

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I dedicate my song today to my wife’s first husband, Anton Murray, who died thirteen years ago today on 17th April 2007 at the early age of 54, leaving Shelia a widow aged 50 years. God rest his soul.

I also dedicate my song today to Tracey Adamson from Leeds, West Yorkshire. Tracy celebrates her 50th birthday today. Have a nice day, Tracy and please don’t forget to leave some room for lots of cake and suitable refreshments. Love Bill and Sheila xxx

My song today is ‘Somewhere My Love’ which originated from the lietmotif ‘Lara’s Theme’. ‘Lara’s Theme’ is a name given to a leitmotif that was written for the film ‘Doctor Zhivago’ by composer Maurice Jarre. A leitmotif is a recurrent theme throughout a musical or literary composition, associated with a particular person, idea, or situation. Soon afterward, the leitmotif became the basis of the song "Somewhere, My Love". In 1967, "Somewhere, My Love" won a ‘Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Chorus’, and was nominated for the ‘Grammy Award for Song of the Year’.

While working on the soundtrack for ‘Doctor Zhivago’ Maurice Jarre was asked by director David Lean to come up with a theme for the character of Lara, played by Julie Christie. Initially, Lean had desired to use a well-known Russian song but could not locate the rights to it, and delegated responsibility to Jarre. After several unsuccessful attempts at writing it, Lean suggested to Jarre that he go to the mountains with his girlfriend and write a piece of music for her. Jarre says that the resultant piece was ‘Lara's Theme’, and Lean liked it well enough to use it in numerous tracks for the film. In editing ‘Doctor Zhivago’, Lean and producer Carlo Ponti reduced or outright deleted many of the themes composed by Jarre. Jarre was angry because he felt that an over-reliance on ‘Lara's Theme’ would ruin the soundtrack.

Jarre's esthetic fears notwithstanding, the theme became an instant success and gained fame throughout the world. By special request of Connie Francis, Paul Webster later took the theme and added lyrics to it to create "Somewhere, My Love". Connie Francis, however, withdrew from the project when the lyrics were presented to her because she thought of them as too ‘corny’. A few weeks later, Francis reconsidered her position and recorded the song nonetheless, but by then Ray Conniff had also recorded a version of his own, reaching Number 9 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chart in 1966. Conniff's version of the song also topped the ‘Easy Listening’ chart in the U.S. for four weeks. Despite Conniff's success, Francis also had her version released as a single, and although it failed to chart in the US, it became one of her biggest successes internationally, becoming one of the ‘Top 5’ in territories such as Scandinavia and Asia. In Italy, her Italian version of the song, ‘Dove non so’, became her last Number 1 success. Various other versions of it have since been released.

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I had returned from having spent a few years living in Canada when I first saw the film ‘Doctor Zhivago’. The scene that I most remembered the film for wasn’t the ravishing and rape of Lara by her mother’s lover, Victor Komaovsky but the journey by sleigh through the snowdrifts of the Russian winter backcloth, combined with the haunting tune of ‘Lara’s Theme’ playing in the background throughout the movie.

FILM SYNOPSIS: During the Russian Revolution, Yuri Zhivago (Omar Sharif), is a young doctor who has been raised by his aunt and uncle following his father's suicide. Yuri falls in love with beautiful Lara Guishar (Julie Christie), who has been having an affair with her mother's lover, Victor Komarovsky (Rod Steiger), an unscrupulous businessman. Yuri, however, ends up marrying his cousin, Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin). But when he and Lara meet again years later, the spark of love reignites.

This snow ride by sled in the film reminded me of my arrival in Canada during the winter of 1964. Meteorological records reveal 1964 was a particularly cold winter. During my initial month, I lived in Quebec before moving to live in Montreal. The Laurentian Mountains are a mountain range in southern Quebec, Canada, north of the St. Lawrence River and Ottawa River, rising to the highest point of 1.166 metres at Mont Raoul Blanchard, northeast of Quebec City in the Laurentides Wildlife. The mountains are so close to Montreal that you can easily go skiing for the day. In winter, there is also dog sledding and ice skating.

I will never forget the sheer exhilaration of sledding through the mountain snow. My only regret at the time was that I didn’t have a beautiful young woman like Laura by my side to keep me company. Instead, I had to make do with a Canadian sled driver who whipped the horses far too much for my liking which were pulling the sleigh. For one mad moment, I wished I’d been sitting alongside him. Had I been, he would have found himself being mysteriously jolted from the sleigh by the elbow of an animal-loving Irish man, recently arrived from England.
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Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song For Today: 16th April 2020

16/4/2020

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I dedicate my song today to the birthday of Blake ‘Eron’ Hite (son of my Facebook friend, Kitty Hite of California). Blake’s birthday is celebrated across the American and British time zones of April 15th and April 16th. I have never forgotten you when you used to eat at our house daily in Mirfield, Blake 'Enron' Hite and watch the television with your travelling buddy. Love Bill x

Today’s song is ‘You’re the One That I Want’. This song was performed by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John for the 1978 film version of the musical, ‘Grease’. It was written and produced by John Farrar. ‘You're the One That I Want’ is one of the best-selling singles in history, having sold over 6 million copies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France alone, with estimates of more than 15 million copies sold worldwide.
Synopsis:

Danny Zuko (Travolta), leader of the T-Birds, has recently started cross-country running to win back his estranged girlfriend Sandy (Newton-John). Unbeknownst to him, Sandy, who has been conflicted about her upright and proper etiquette in a school full of brash greasers, has herself transformed into a greaser queen to win Danny back. In the song, Danny expresses pleasant shock and arousal at Sandy's transformation, with Sandy responding that Danny must "shape up" to prove himself capable of treating Sandy the right way.

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All my life, when I saw something I wanted, I have striven to secure it. Even as a teenager onwards, whenever I saw a young woman I wanted, I pursued her to the point of her capture and the surrender of her heart. Please note, it was the surrender of her heart I predominantly sought, not the surrender of her virtue!

I had always been wary in my teens not to get trapped into a life of marriage and domesticity until I’d travelled widely, and being an avid reader, I was constantly aware of Socrates’ advice to beware of beauty. He once compared ‘beauty as being the bait which with delight allures a man to enlarge his kind’.

I had always been happy with my life and content in dreaming my dreams and awaiting their coming true. I loved life to the full and I found life to be an exciting business whenever lived for satisfaction, pleasure and adventure.

I recall as a teenager aged around 18 years, while I liked having a drink with my friends, I never found the practice of seeing how many pints one could down before puking up as ever holding any attraction for me. I had seen too many drunks in my time ever to believe that the answer to any of life’s problems or the search for any of life’s pleasures could ever be found in the bottom of a pint glass. I once remember hearing a friend of mine boasting of being able to drink ten pints on a Saturday night and get up on Sunday and do the same again. A nearby alcoholic heard the boasts of my mate and tried to advise him against the life of drink addiction he was in danger of pursuing. The alcoholic said, “Drink isn’t worth it, Lad. It’s the devil in disguise. I tried to drown my sorrows after my wife and children left me, but the bastards learned how to swim and they’re still there every time I look into the bottom of my empty glass”.

The stupidity of getting drunk for being drunk’s sake was never a priority of mine, and while I enjoyed the rough and tumble of being part of a group of young men who went drinking, dancing, fighting and dating together, I always preferred being embraced by a beautiful young woman and putting my hands around her waist before putting my hands around a pint glass.

I was always a proud young man and conceited in many respects. I believed myself to be as good a catch any female fisher wanting the company of a good man might be angling for. I was never told to ‘shape up’ by a young woman I was dating and quite frankly, I’m not sure how I would have responded had I been? I’d have probably left her presence promptly with a flea in her ear and asked another beauty nearby to take the dance floor with me.
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Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song for Today: 15 April 2020

15/4/2020

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I dedicate my song today to my sons, William, who lives in Australia and Adam who lives in Huddersfield. It isn’t either of their birthdays today. My dedicated song is merely to say that my thoughts are with each of them for entirely different reasons today as they face life head-on, in the belief that they will each win through.

My son, William (known as Will), has lived in Australia for around 15 years now. He is a man of very independent mind who works as a Yoga instructor and budding entrepreneur who travels all over Australia and beyond, living life in the simplest form he can, doing ‘this’ one day, and ‘that’ another day, often earning just enough to survive on his philosophy of love and his adamant desire to be unshackled by the conventional chains of society. Over the next 24 hours, he faces a problem which could change his life significantly, and which he doesn’t wish me to speak about beforehand.

My son, Adam, currently faces daily danger as he works double shifts in a Care Home which looks after several Coronavirus residents. Ever since leaving university many years ago, Adam has always worked in the Care Home profession undertaking many managerial positions. Over the past year, he has decided to work more on the front line of workers who deal face-to-face with the daily concerns and problems of their residents. Since February of this year, he has had to work with an increasing number of Coronavirus patients; invariably supplied with inadequate personal equipment (PPE) that fails to protect worker health and safety. He tells me that the more his colleagues take off work sick, the more he needs to double his shift hours in order to service the Care Home residents. He is one of the nation’s true heroes, and whose hourly wage does not begin to reflect the importance of the work he performs. I am proud of you, son, as I am sure your mother and other family members are also.

Today, both of my two sons mentioned face their own 'borderline of danger' that they need to safely cross in order to return to safer pastures. I love them both, in equal measure with all my five children. Hence, the song I choose to dedicate to them today is ‘Beyond the Borderline’.
Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song For Today: 14th April 2020

14/4/2020

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I dedicate my song today to my good friend, Joanna Clarke from Mirfield and my Facebook friend, Brooke Randi, from Los Angeles in California, USA. Both ladies celebrate their birthday today. Have a lovely day and enjoy your special occasion. Love Bill x

My song today is ‘I just Called to Say I Love You’. This is a ballad that was written, produced and performed by Stevie Wonder. It remains Stevie Wonder's best-selling single to date, having topped a record 19 charts. The song was the lead single from the 1984 soundtrack album ‘The Woman in Red’, along with two other songs by Stevie Wonder, and scored Number 1 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ for three weeks from October 13 to October 27, 1984. It also became his tenth Number 1 on the ‘Rhythm and Blues’ chart, and his fourth Number 1 on the ‘Adult Contemporary Chart. The song also became Wonder's only solo UK Number-1 success, staying at the top for six weeks, in the process also becoming ‘Motown Records’ biggest-selling single in the UK, a distinction it still holds as of 2018.

In addition, the song won both a ‘Golden Globe’ and an Academy Award for Best Original Song’. The song also received three nominations at the 27th Grammy Awards for ‘Best Male Pop Vocal Performance’, ‘Song of the Year’, and ‘Best Pop Instrumental Performance’. There was a dispute among Stevie Wonder, his former writing partner Lee Garrett and Lloyd Chiate as to who actually wrote the song. Chiate claimed in a lawsuit that he and Garrett wrote the song years before its 1984 release; however, a jury ultimately sided with Wonder.

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When I started my daily singing practice around thirty months ago at the age of 75 years, I hadn’t sung in public since the age of 21 years, with one exception. That exception was at a public house in Scarborough one weekend with my sisters, and when I was partially inebriated during the early 2000s.

For around two years after my divorce, I regularly stayed at an apartment on the Scarborough front with my three sisters and the occasional brother. We would spend the weekend talking about our childhood and teenage years growing up in the Forde family; about the good times and the hard years, we spent being one of seven children born to Irish parents who were as different as chalk and cheese. When those subjects weren’t being discussed, we would naturally gossip about any absent family member, besides following a rock and rock singer who regularly sang in the Scarborough pubs and clubs called Danny Wilde. We would usually have a merry weekend.

One of the pubs on the seafront had Karaoke all day long, and because my siblings were always talking about ‘Our Billy having been a great singer as a teenager’ I was frequently urged to get up and give them a song. Not having sung in front of an audience for over five decades, public singing had become so fearful a prospect to me, and I would always adamantly refuse. One evening, when in between the stages of being mildly fresh and bordering upon the verge of drunkenness, I threw caution to the wind and had a go on a Karaoke machine for the first time in my life.

The song I wanted and tried to sing was the Stevie Wonder number, ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You’. I had not sung in public since 1964 when I’d abandoned a singing career while out in Canada. At the time, I believed myself to be the best singer on the American continent, but after I discovered that I wasn’t and that there were some singers who were as good and a few even better than me, my ego couldn’t take it. So, having the character flaw I then possessed (that told me if I wasn’t the best, I would prefer to give up singing all together), I didn’t sing in public for another fifty-four years! Naturally, the more time went on over the next half-century, the more fearful I became of singing in public ever again.

My karaoke performance in the Scarborough pub went down as flat as a fart having the life slowly squeezed from it. I’d never used a Karaoke machine previously and was highly nervous as I took the stage. After a reasonable start, I forgot both words and tune halfway through. All the other pub listeners and my family didn’t give a tinker’s cuss about my performance, but I did. The end of my performance couldn’t come soon enough for me and when I sat down, I felt as though my ego had been flattened by the Forde Steamroller.

I was highly embarrassed. I’d never felt so humiliated, especially as I’d allowed false pride and foolishness to give way to my better judgment as my family in the pub chanted, ’Give us a song, Billy! Give us a song, brother!” To tell the truth, I felt a bit of a wimp having allowed myself to have been corralled back into the entertainment spotlight after a 54-year retirement break from public singing. None of the numerous prizes, trophies, and cash I’d won during my years growing up between the ages of 8 years and 21 years in regional and national singing contests, mattered one jot to me anymore. As far as I was concerned, all that I would be remembered for the rest of my non-singing life by my beloved family and friends who were present at the spectacle would be the apologetic performance and pig’s arse I’d made of our Scarborough Karaoke night out; and all because I couldn’t keep my big mouth shut and sup my ale quietly in the corner, silently remembering that I could once sing better than anyone that took the stage that night or probably any night that year.

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About thirty months ago, I was reading a newspaper article about the positive benefits of daily singing practice. The article indicated that a few hours of singing practise daily could significantly improve one’s lung capacity as well as increasing the level of oxygen in one’s blood.

Since 1982, I had experienced deteriorating health which had significantly reduced my lung capacity and the ratio of blood/ oxygen levels. Two successive heart attacks in 2002 had left me unconscious for four days, and when I recovered, my breathing capacity was much depleted as my damaged heart now operated on three arteries only instead of four. This extent of my heart damage, along with having smoked cigarettes heavily for fifty years since the age of 12 years, left me at the COPD and emphysema lung level.

While I hadn’t given up smoking cigarettes until the age of 61 years, I’d had to give up working ten years earlier at the age of 52 years when my walking mobility rapidly worsened. I frequently became breathless whenever I exerted myself above the walking pace of a snail or exercised the energy of a tortoise eating a lettuce leaf. In early 2013, I was diagnosed with terminal blood cancer, and since then, I developed and have been operated on for three more different cancers as well as being close to death three on four occasions.

So, I was naturally interested when I read the newspaper article about the huge health benefits that daily singing practice could bring. The newspaper article made a great deal of sense to me so I thought I’d nothing to lose by giving it a go! It also provided me with an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Being fearless for most of my life, my greatest fear since my teenage years had always been ‘fear itself’. My 54-year absence from singing in public had reinforced my level of fear year-upon-year of ever singing in public again, and if I died in the near future, I wanted to die as I’d lived the majority of my life; fearless. It was also in my obvious health interests to boost my lung capacity significantly.

As a professional worker who had helped many people reduce unhealthy fear levels for thirty years, I knew that there were two main methods of reducing fears; each being ideally suitable for different behavioural types. The first method was using a step-by-step approach for the Non-Assertive type of person. The second method was for who Psychologists defined as ‘Type-A’ clients. This second category was the one I belonged to and are usually known by Behaviourists as ‘Very Assertive- Types’. The method of fear reduction that best suits the ‘Type -A’ person is ‘swamping them’. ‘Swamping’ is akin to throwing them in at the deep end of the pool, if they are non-swimmers wishing to learn to swim, but too fearful to try!

So, like a smoker determined to break the habit or a dieter planning a crash diet, I publicised in advance what I intended to do, in order to incentivise me not giving up without the risk of me experiencing further public humiliation!
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Over the past thirty months, I am glad to say that my daily singing practice which I have made public from day one, (over 700 songs so far sung and video-recorded on my own ‘YouTube’ Video Channel’ has proved remarkably successful and has led to me achieving five main things:

(1) I have improved my lung capacity and oxygenation levels in my blood by 20 percent and have daily registered normal healthy readings for the past two years in blood pressure levels, body temperature and oxygen/blood mix ratio.

(2) I no longer have any public fear of singing and every morning I sing a new song which I daily post on my Facebook page.

(3) My willingness to try and sing a wide variety of songs in every singing genre going has enabled me to greatly improve my vocal range to a presentable level of competence for a 77-year-old man, besides restoring my self-confidence to ‘hold a tune’.

(4) Daily singing practice, apart from making me healthier, has also made me immensely happier. It is a very productive and satisfying way to remain socially isolated and stay housebound during the country’s lockdown with the COVID-19 pandemic. I have always been a positive and cheerful person who has fortunately never known one moment of depression in my life yet, singing every day has made me even happier than I was before I took it up again. It has even encouraged my lovely wife, Sheila (who has played both the organ and piano for many years) to take up the Ukulele and the Saxophone also. Her bedroom is presently full of musical regalia from wall to wall.

(5) Looking for new songs to sing daily, has enabled me to research the history of music and song over the past hundred years, and today, nothing gives me greater satisfaction than to find and sing a song that was first published a century ago, whilst the following day, to come across a song released a mere week ago. The greatest pleasure though has involved using my selection of daily songs to record a history of my own life and development in tandem. It is a kind of ‘musical blog’ taking the reader from my childhood days through to the present, and hearing the songs along the way which had a bearing and influence on my life.

These songs I daily sing engender memories of my childhood years. They remind me of growing into an arrogant and fearless teenager, brimming with self-confidence; a cocky young man who was determined to take on the world and beat it at its own game. The songs I sing today often remind me of my late teens and early twenties, and the years exorcising my body from its wanderlust as I travelled around Canada before returning to live back in England. Then, after becoming a Mill Manager at the age of 25 years, I decided to give up the high-wage job and become a Probation Officer in my thirties, effectively completing my character transformation from poacher to gamekeeper in a 15 year period.

The years 1970-95 saw me engaged in the extensive research of human response patterns, during which time I pioneered a new method of dealing with aggressive offenders called 'Anger Management' that mushroomed across the English-speaking world within a matter of years thereafter. I also became an author from 1990 onwards and had 64 books published which raised over £200,000 for charitable causes from their sales in West Yorkshire. Then, following my premature retirement on medical grounds, subsequent years witnessed me having knee and hip replacements, two heart attacks, contracting one terminal blood cancer plus three other body cancers and a carcinoma, plus having nine operations, 18 months of chemotherapy plus one month of radiotherapy daily. Finally, I learned to conquer my fear of singing in public again and to improve my lung capacity and increase my blood/oxygen ratio back to healthy proportions.

The strongest memory of my childhood years is my dearly departed mother who never went through a minute of any day she ever lived without a song in her heart. She literally sang as she worked. She sang, not because she was good at it but because she had a song to sing and it made her day happier for doing so. I sing today because my mum sang, because birds sing and because I have a song to sing.

I dedicate today’s song to my family. I submit today’s rendition as being a better rendition of the same song I tried to sing, but couldn’t sing fifteen years ago in that Scarborough Karaoke pub. Should you want to view or access any of the 700 songs I have already video recorded on my YouTube Channel over the past thirty months, please use the link below: http://www.fordefables.co.uk/my-singing-videos.html

You are able to subscribe to the channel at no cost and you will be automatically informed whenever I put up a new video song (which is daily, unless I am in hospital at the time).

Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song for Today: 13th April 2020

13/4/2020

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I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friend, Bernie Fogarty of County Kilkenny in Ireland. Bernie celebrates her birthday today. I have always had a soft spot for County Kilkenny. My father (Paddy Forde) was born in Kilkenny and when he was a young man in his early twenties, he played soccer for Kilkenny before going on to play for the Irish National squad. I also have long-established family friends, Kay Brennan and John Brennan, who live in Kilkenny. Kay Brennan is a presenter at 'Community Radio Kilkenny City'. Have a super birthday, Bernie and leave some room for lots of cake and ale. Thank you for being my Facebook Friend.

My song today is ‘You’ve Really Got A Hold on Me’. This song was written by Smokey Robinson and became a 1962 Top 10 hit single for the Miracles on ‘Motown’s Tamla label’. One of the Miracles' most covered tunes, this million-selling song received a 1998 ‘Grammy Hall of Fame Award’. It has also been selected as one of ‘The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll’. It was covered by English rock group the Beatles on their second album, ‘With the Beatles’. Many other musicians also recorded versions.

While in New York in 1962 on business for Motown, Smokey Robinson heard Sam Cooke’s ‘Bring it On Home To Me’ which was in the charts at the time and was so influenced by it that he wrote ‘You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me’ in his hotel room.

"You've Really Got a Hold on Me" has been covered extensively since its release. The most notable include ‘The Supremes’ (1964) and ‘The Temptations’ (1965), among many others.

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When this song was first released, I was less than one year away from emigrating to Canada. I had always wanted to travel before I settled down to getting married and raising a family. After incurring a bad traffic accident at the age of 11 years, when a wagon knocked me down and ran over me, I was awarded a substantial compensation amount by the driver’s insurers. This money made such travel possible for me when I attained the age of majority and could access the money (21 years of age).

One of my dreams was to become a professional singer. A second dream was to travel widely around the American continent. A third dream was to emigrate to Canada with four workmates from Harrison Gardeners Dying Company where I’d worked for six years. In short, five of us had planned to have ‘a lad’s outing’ that was to last at least two years before we all settled down to life and marriage back home in England. I’d held these dreams for several years, and it could be said that ‘they really got a hold on me’.

However, as the Scottish poet Robert Burns once quoted, “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry”. No matter how long and carefully a project is planned, something may still go wrong with it.

The five of us had provisionally agreed to emigrate to Canada in December of 1963. As a gesture, I had agreed to pay the passage of all five of us and they would repay me in Canada when we all secured work. Four of us were of single status and the oldest among us (25 years) had been married but was separated and in the process of getting a divorce.

In February 1963, after a Saturday night out dancing at the Cleckheaton Town Hall, one of the five made out with a young woman from Scholes. After they left the dance, my mate decided to escort his date for the night back home to her parent’s house in Scholes on the last bus. They went to Cleckheaton Bus Station, and like many courting couples at the time, they started kissing and cuddling behind the bus station until their transport arrived.

Behind the Cleckheaton Bus Station was the darkest place a courting couple might stand. In fact, it was so dark that the hidden row could accommodate three couples, none of whom would be able to see what the other two couples beside them were doing in the pitch darkness of the midnight hour; although they could hear them if they listened hard enough.

If couples positioned themselves properly, they could do whatever they wanted to do ‘out of sight’ of other bus passengers queuing out front for their bus. The only danger was when the bus made a ninety-degree turn into the bus station from Bradford Road. Because of the acute angle of its turning, when the arriving bus pulled into the bus station from Bradford Road, it would be without any warning to the courting couples kissing and cuddling behind the station. Being wholly engaged in whatever they were doing, the courting couples would be invariable caught with their pants down as the bus’s headlights would immediately reveal the sight of couples in a state of undress scrambling to save whatever dignity they had remaining.

On the night in question, one of the five potential migrants to Canada received an offer from the girl he was with that he couldn’t refuse. Finding himself unable to withdraw from the offer during the heated passion of the moment, he discovered three months later that he’d made the girl pregnant, and therefore had to withdraw from his planned passage to Canada with us and have a ‘shotgun wedding’ instead.

In the spring of 1963, another of the four remaining migrants dropped out of the Canadian excursion. He’d secured a job in Dewsbury and essentially started going out with another group of workmates. Having changed both job and workmates, he soon sopped being wedded to the idea of foreign travel as he’d once been, and before long, he also dropped out.

By the summer of 1963, there were only three of the initial five remaining; me, a married mate called Peter who was still seeking a divorce, and a workmate called Arthur.

Arthur and I both worked together. We’d been very close friends for many years and often dated in pairs. Over the years, we’d regularly picked girls up at the dance hall, cinemas and sometimes on weekend outings to Blackpool. I recall two young women we met at the seaside once were good enough company to warrant a further weekend visit to meet up with them in their hometown in Cannock Chase. In August of 1963, Artur had got a girl he was dating from Windybank Estate pregnant, and like all young couples of the time, the only honourable thing to do was to get married before the bairn started showing and the neighbours of the girl’s parents started gossiping. As our parents often said in such circumstances, “You’ve made your bed, lad. Now, lie in it!”

So, there were now only two of the original ‘famous five’ left to do the Canadian trip, but as life would have it passion struck once more.

Yes, you’ve guessed it! In late October of 1963, Peter reluctantly had a change of heart and dropped out before I purchased our tickets of passage across the Atlantic Ocean over Christmas 1963 and the New Year of 1964. I never found out the full tale about Peter’s change of heart, except to learn that although he’d been separated from his wife for going on two years, one weekend in late October while drunk, the couple had met up by accident in the ‘Hightown Heights Working Men’s Club’. Both parties finished up the worse for wear and at the end of the evening, they went back home together to their old matrimonial abode. Peter seemingly enjoyed the prospect of having a woman to sleep next to again and the morning after, he decided to reunite with Mary. Soon after, the divorce petition was called to a halt. A few years later, after my return to England from Canada, I sadly learned that Peter had been struck down by a deadly illness and had died prematurely.

‘The Famous Five’ had been whittled down to one, but I had dreamed of going to Canada for years and I’d no intention of changing my plans because my other four travelling buddies had dropped out one by one. I booked my ticket to sail from Liverpool to Nova Scotia during the third week of November, two days before President John K. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, USA.

I obviously held some trepidation about going to a strange country on my own. Travelling to a British Butlins Camp or seaside resort was the more usual thing for many a young man to do in 1963/64, but travelling to another country thousands of miles away was not!

All my anxiety was forgotten however, by the New Year’s crossing on the S.S.Sylvania. I was helped in large measure to place my homesickness to one side by a ship romance I had with a Chinese woman who was nine years older than me. That brief period we spent together on the crossing was passionate to say the least, and far too memorable for us ever to imagine that such a good thing was ever meant to last beyond our moment of ‘love on the high seas’.

We parted friends at Nova Scotia never to see each other again as we went our own ways. For many years during my late teens, I’d made a point of not getting emotionally involved with any young women I dated, as I knew I planned to travel before settling down to a life of domesticity. There was simply no way I was going to change my plans on a trans-Atlantic crossing, however attractive my Chinese romance happened to be.

My Chinese romance didn’t ‘have a hold on me’ and it would be a further year before my heart would be tempted along the path of true love once more.
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Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song For Today: 12th April 2020

12/4/2020

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EASTER SUNDAY: 12th APRIL 2020.
I dedicate my song today to my brother, Patrick. Patrick celebrates his birthday today. Have a nice day brother and leave some room for lots of cake and a glass of ale. Big brother Billy x

My song this Easter Sunday is ‘One Pair of Hands’. This song was composed by Carroll Roberson (born July 17, 1955). He is an evangelist, gospel singer-songwriter, and author. He founder and president of ‘Carroll Roberson Ministries’ in Ripley, Mississippi.

Roberson was born July 17, 1955, in Ripley, Mississippi. He read the Bible growing up but did not surrender his life to Christ until 1983. One year later, he was diagnosed with a cancerous growth on his throat. With no promise that he would be able to talk anymore, Roberson underwent thyroid surgery and was able to sing again within three weeks. Shortly after, Roberson devoted himself to full-time ministry. After serving as Minister of a Baptist church in his hometown for two years, Roberson organized ‘Carroll Roberson Ministries’ with a board of directors and went into full-time evangelism with his office stationed in his hometown of Ripley. Since 1987, he has been preaching at revivals and crusades and singing his music to millions of people around the world.

Carroll has recorded more than twenty-five albums and written over one hundred songs. He also hosts his own television program and has led several tours to Israel with his wife Donna.

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This song is ideally suitable for Easter Sunday as it essentially tells the story of Creation that God achieved with ‘One Pair of Hands’. If you believe in the Easter Message that the crucified Christ died on the Cross to save mankind and then three days later, he rose from the dead and instructed his apostles to go out and minister his Word to the world, You will never walk alone. You will be blessed with the love of Christ and crowned with his eternal compassion. Your heart will forever remain open, your mind will never be closed, your deeds will never be dishonorable, and your intent will always be wholesome and good.

In seven days, God created the heavens and the earth. He filled it with birds of the air, animals of the land and fish of the seas. He then gave life to the underworld and its creeping inhabitants. Then, He created all plant life and form of vegetation. When He had done all this, He then gave life to His most beautiful creation of all; you. It is you who are the living embodiment of God’s love.

After God had created the earth, He placed you on it and set it spinning in perfect harmony on an axis of love. God may have set the earth spinning on an axis of love, but through the free will God granted you to both do right and wrong, and good and bad, you possess the means which enables you to keep the world turning in perpetual motion. It is your love alone which possesses such power; the love expressed between one person to another which makes the world go around! Only through choosing right from wrong and doing good instead of bad can you keep the world turning on its axis of love.

Take one moment out of your life today and hold up your hands before your eyes. Look at your hands and know that what you do with these hands is essentially what you do with your life. You can use them to destroy or to build, to welcome or to fend away, to caress or to crush, to stroke or to strangle, to create or collapse, to love or loathe! The choice is yours alone to make. Please make the right one and become the good person your Creator intended you to be. Sheila and I wish you all a very happy Easter and God bless.
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Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song for Today: 11th April 2020

11/4/2020

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I jointly dedicate my song today to my youngest sister, Susan Fanning who lives in Huddersfield and works as an Area Social Worker and my Facebook friend, Margaret Doyle. Both Susan and Margaret celebrate their birthday today. Have a nice day, Sis and Margaret, and leave some room for lots of cake and suitable refreshments. Brother Billy x and Facebook friend, Bill x

My song today is, ‘Take These Chains from My Heart’. This song was sung by Hank Williams. It was written by Fred Rose and Hy Heath and was recorded at Williams' final recording session on September 23, 1952, in Nashville. The song has been widely praised and Williams' biographer, Colin Escott, deems it "perhaps the best song [Rose] ever presented to Hank”.

In the wake of Hank Williams' passing on New Year’s Day of 1953, the song shot to Number 1 and was his final chart-topping hit for ‘MGM Records’. Like his hit, “Your Cheatin’ Heart”, the song's theme of despair, so vividly articulated by Williams' typically impassioned singing, reinforced the image of Hank as a tortured, mythic figure.
Other artists to cover this hit song of Hank’s included: George Jones (1962): Ray Charles (1962): Al Martino (1963): Dean Martin( 1965): Marty Robbins with Chet Atkins (1968): Jerry Lee Lewis (1970) : Don Gibson (1971): Glen Campbell (1973) : Charlie Rich (1974) : Dolly Parton (1976) : Merle Haggard (2001): Daniel O’Donnell (2015) among many others; too many to mention.
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I was ten years old when Hank Williams released this song and can remember hearing it on the wireless (that’s the radio for all you who are younger than 65 years). I was one year away from incurring a life-threatening and life-changing traffic accident which was to immobilise me for three years. I was unable to walk until my 14th year of life, having been told by the hospital medics that my damaged spine would render me a cripple for the rest of my life.

This accident was to shape my life and mould my character and attitudes and beliefs thereafter. It paradoxically was to lead me twenty years later (while working as a Probation Officer in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire) to find a method of working with aggressive people called ‘Anger Management’. Within two years of establishing a systematised approach of how best to change aggressive behaviour in people’s response patterns which led to unhealthy and illegal aggressive acts (and to maintain and reinforce such positive change), the method mushroomed across the English speaking world and was soon to become common practice.

By the age of 32/33 years, I founded a method of systematised working that could be copied by other workers across the world to improve and change the unacceptable and unhealthy behaviour of hundreds of thousands/ millions of angry people. If I never achieved anything else in my life thereafter, I knew that I had significantly achieved something of significant value.

Unlike many pioneers before me who was to spend half a lifetime of dedicated and painstaking research before coming up with the truth of their discovery, I was to stumble across mine like a man in the dark.

The behavioural aspects which led to the foundation of more effective ‘Anger Management’ courses across the globe were to be found in my past. In fact, it could be truthfully said that the ‘secret’ was to be found by me in the aftermath of my past traffic accident at the age of 11 years. My accident crippled me and wound me in an angry ball of barb-wire resentment before binding me tightly by a chain of fear which inevitably led to the loss of love for myself and others.

Prior to my traffic accident, I was an 11-year-old highly talented footballer who played in a senior school football team with 14 and 15-year-old teammates. My dream was to one day play national football for the Ireland First Squad like my father had in his early twenties. Being unable to walk, with the medical prognosis that I never would again, effectively robbed me of my boyhood dream.

Having had my boyhood dream stolen from me through my inability to walk again left me very angry. I was angry with the person who had knocked me down in their wagon and had run over me! I was angry with the fact that my football career had ended before it ever began. I was fearful of living my future life as a cripple watching others play, run and dance from the seat of a wheelchair, knowing that I’d never walk again! Finally, I stopped loving others around me until eventually, I stopped loving myself.

Without explaining to you in detail all the ingredients involved in the ‘Anger Management’ process of work, all I need to tell you in order to help you understand better are the following details. I later discovered when researching how our behaviour is made up to form our response patterns, that three primary emotions govern their composition; fear, anger and the inability to express love for self and others (more commonly referred to a having low self-esteem).

These three emotions are the very same three emotions that ruled my unhealthy mind and body after my life-threatening and life-changing traffic accident as an 11-year-old boy, and it was how I successfully dealt with them over the next decade which led me to repeat that very same formula with others who displayed the very same emotional and behavioural problems as I did immediately after my boyhood accident.

It is no surprise that today that I no longer believe in accidents of life. I do believe in fate and destiny. I do believe that each one of us has their fate mapped out the day we are born. I also believe that the symbolic bullet which ends all our lives has a date inscribed upon it when it will be fired in our direction with deadly effect!

What my research into human behaviour led me to learn was the ‘sequencing’ of which emotion to work with first, which second and which third, in order to make any successful change in a person’s unhealthy behaviour achieved, 'stay unchanged'. I knew that many of my colleagues had often helped clients to change some of their unhelpful behaviours, but after a period of time (like an abandoned diet that significantly reduces the dieter’s weight) the old problematic behaviour always returned, making the dieter pile back on more weight than they had carried initially.

My research essentially told me that whatever problem behaviour a person has, any unhealthy levels of the three emotions of fear, anger and self-image will govern the nature and degree of their problematic response. If a person’s problematic behaviour pattern TO BE CHANGED FOR MORE APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOUR, AND TO STAY CHANGED IN THE LONG TERM than the worker must first address the problem of reducing their ‘Fear levels’, followed next by working to reduce their ‘Anger levels’ before finally working on improving their self-image in order that they can learn to love themselves; after which will automatically follow the love of others.

ONLY BY WORKING ON DEALING WITH THE PROBLEM AREA OF BEHAVIOURS IN THIS ORDER CAN ANY BEHAVIOURAL BENEFITS ACHIEVED BE REINFORCED AND MAINTAINED LONG-TERM.

It is identifying this 'sequencing' and its 'effect' in successful work programmes with aggressive behaviour that I will hopefully be remembered for.

Thousands of people have worked with angry people for thousands of years in helping them to manage their anger. What I founded during the early 1970s was the following four things:
(1) I founded the term ‘Anger Management’
(2) I identified the (theorised) three emotional components which make up a person’s problematic response pattern as being Fear, Anger and Poor Self-Image.
(3) I established the sequence of which emotional component to work with first, second and third, in order to reinforce and strengthen any behaviour and response patterns changed for the better, to remain changed in the long term and not revert to former problematic behaviour patterns of response in certain situations.
(4) I discovered that the enabling discipline that was required to make all the above three changes possible was teaching them ‘Relaxation Methods, Visual Imagery and Self-Hypnosis’. Without using these methods in tandem while working with the reduction of their fear, anger and poor self-image levels, these three emotional levels could not be positively changed for the long term.
(5) That is my accomplishment in the process of ‘Anger Management.’

It was only after I found out how to help myself at the age of 11 years by removing the chains of Fear, Anger and a Poor Self-Image that bound me, how to remove similar chains from others in later life whose emotions of inappropriate levels of Fear, Anger and a Poor Self-Image was keeping them imprisoned in their own problematic response patterns also.

Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song For Today: April 10th, 2020

10/4/2020

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I dedicate my song today to our friend,Graeme Cunningham from Haworth. Graeme attends our parish church and he celebrates his birthday today. Have a smashing day, Graeme, and don’t forget to leave room for lots of cake and ale. Much love and regards, Bill and Sheila Forde x

My song today is the hymn, ‘The Old Rugged Cross’. This popular hymn was written in 1912 by evangelist and song-leader, George Bennard (1873– 1958). George Bennard was a native of Youngstown, Ohio, but was reared in Iowa. After his conversion in a Salvation Army meeting, he and his wife became Brigade Leaders before leaving the organization for the Methodist Church. Bennard was a Methodist evangelist when he wrote the first verse of ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ in Albion, Michigan, in the fall of 1912, as a response to ridicule that he had received at a revival meeting.

Published in 1915, the song was popularized during evangelistic campaigns by two members of his campaign staff, Homer Rodeheaver (who bought rights to the song) and Virginia Asher, who was perhaps also the first to record it in 1921. ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ speaks of the writer's adoration of Christ and His sacrifice at Calvary. Bennard retired to Reed City, Michigan, and the town maintains a museum dedicated to his life and ministry. A memorial has also been created in Youngstown at ‘Lake Park Cemetery’. A plaque commemorating the first performance of the song stands in front of the ‘Friend's Church’ in Sturgeon Bay, WI.
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Some of my earliest memories involve hearing ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ being sung with gusto in Irish Catholic Churches and Irish pubs during celebrations on St Patrick Days and also at Easter time. Until I researched its background for this post, I would most certainly have assumed the song to have been Irish in origin as opposed to American, and Roman Catholic in composition instead of a mixture of Evangelical and Methodist.

My wife Sheila is the organist at the Catholic church we attend weekly in Keighley. Like all organists, it makes for good practice to introduce a new hymn to the congregation from time to time. Behind the front pew where I sit weekly is an older couple in their eighties called Michael and Teresa, and when Sheila introduces a new hymn to the singing congregation, I frequently joke with Michael and Teresa that “Sheila is ‘going off message again’ and is playing Methodist hymns instead of Catholic ones!” The simple fact is that many hymns sung in churches, chapels and places of prayer today are American Gospel and Methodist in origin. I’m afraid that the Roman Catholic religion has always been way behind the Evangelists and the American Gospel Churches when it came to ‘singing out the Lord’s praises loud and clear’ on a Sunday morning.

Let’s face it, folks, if today’s places of reverence want to attract larger Sunday congregations, then making their weekly services raise the rafters with singing is one way of putting more bums on seats.

We should never forget, however, that all prayers are powerful and meaningful, and praise to the Lord is just as welcome by Him when it is sung out loud as well as being spoken or whispered in silent reflection.

Attend any Church or chapel service where one has a rousing choir and enthusiastic singing congregation, and I’ll guarantee that when the congregation leaves the church building, people will feel like they’ve been to church, and will feel happier and more upbeat as a consequence!

It is no mere coincidence that since this pandemic virus has swept over us, sending the world into lockdown, thousands of new choirs have sprung up, formed over synchronised electronic laptops, along with thousands of individuals recording songs in the privacy of their own homes; activity designed to lift the spirit.

It matters not whether it is singing in the cotton fields as the enslaved sweated and laboured for their plantation masters hundreds of years ago, or in pubs and clubs on a Saturday night, or soldiers singing as their patrol exercises in vigorous march, or individuals in the privacy of the bath or their bedroom, or in community choirs or at religious gatherings on a Sunday morning.

I Iearned as a child the importance of song in one's life to uplift one's spirits, to lighten one's mood, to enjoin one's sympathies, values and beliefs as a group, to express one's feelings of celebration, rebellion, nationalism, sectarianism, to tell stories of past culture and times through folklore, ballad, country and western; and any other genre of music and song.

Today is the start of the holiest week of the year in the life of all Christians as we celebrate Easter, and today is in remembrance of the Crucifixion when Christ died on the cross to save the rest of mankind. Such an unselfish act is the most poignant of thoughts at a time when our nurses, doctors, medical staff and all essential workers are offering their lives up also in order to save the lives of the rest of us. They are truly following the example of Christ on this special of days, 'Good Friday'.

Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song For Today: 9th April 2020

9/4/2020

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CELEBRATE OUR NHS AND CARE STAFF, AND COMMUNITY HEROES

Over the past few weeks, we have witnessed each Thursday evening at 8:00 pm millions of people across the land open their doors and windows and collectively register their appreciation for our dedicated NHS and Care Home staff and Community associated workers. Each Thursday evening at the appointed hour, we demonstrate our support by clapping, cheering, singing and making 'we're with you' noises.

It is only right we give such grateful recognition to all these workers and dedicated public servants of our essential services, but it would be both remiss and hypocritical of us as a caring and thankful society when this pandemic crisis has passed if we forget the significant personal sacrifices made by these heroes in our daily lives.

From everything I have heard and read over recent months, it ha reminded me of the Chris Rea song, 'The Road To Hell'.Though all our lives have been turned upside down these past months, the only consolation that the citizens of the world can draw some comfort from is the knowledge that every country faces the same virus pandemic, and that they are not alone during their national struggles.

Similarly, comfort also comes for the individual in Great Britain through our awareness that we are not alone and that we fight this crisis together unless we lay down, give up and give in to it and don't fight it at all!

But if we stay together in our resolve to beat this pernicious virus that pervades and poisons our presence and way of life, we can be sure of one thing. We shall win through and will see and experience society being able to mix and socialise more freely with family and friends once more.

Like those before us in Great Britain, after the 'Second World War' was over, the initial celebration for those who lived through the battle will be more soberly followed by a pilgrimage of pathos; where sadness and fond remembrance will hold hands above the ground where the fallen lie buried.

Relatives who'd been unable to be at the side of their loved ones as they fell in struggle or attend their funeral service will experience a process of delayed grieving when they eventually visit their loved one's grave.

When the time arrives that this pandemic has been conquered, as it most surely will, we will need to make amends and suitable reparations as a society as a whole, to all those people who we wronged in the past by failing to value their essential contribution to our daily lives. It is crucially important that politicians and people truly continue to recognise their worth.

I speak of those NHS and Care Home staff and all those Community Workers who risked their lives daily during this crisis by going into work in order to save ours, at a time when we were confined to our homes! All of these essential workers played Russian Roulette daily as they worked in unsafe environments, not knowing if they would live out their work shift or die as a consequence, or whether they might bring home a deadly infectious virus to kill their own children and family members with!

First, Parliament should remove all future controversy about what constitutes adequate funding to fully resource our NHS and establishing suitable pay grades for its staff by removing the decision from the political football arena and placing it in the hands of an 'All Party Body of Members of Parliament'.

Likewise, a similar non-partisan political body should be established to decide how society is to pay for the elderly being cared for and nursed in Care Homes and to adequately fund and resource these establishments and its staff.

Community Care and Hospital Admission and Care Home Residency require 'joined-up' government policy that makes economic and health-enhancing and social sense. There should also be no distinction made between the resourcing of and access to Physical and Mental Health treatments.

All individual taxpayers should accept and be prepared to pay a higher rate from our weekly earnings in order to sustain our essential services at a higher level than we have been accustomed to previously, and without complaint.

I have always found that within every challenge that we face in life, however tempestuous the threat, there resides a rainbow of hope that emerges when the storm has passed. Such rainbows provide the opportunity for brighter days to come and the wiser and more seasoned a traveller through life we are, the more likely we are to find the crock of gold by following the rainbow to its more profitable end instead of foolishly chasing the storm we have just experienced.

Wherein lies this crock of gold, you might ask? The wealth of tomorrow will always lie within the wise investments of today.
The wisest investment of all is to never take for granted life itself.
It is a gift from God, not the right of the man.

We also grow richer when we learn to truly appreciate all those things we took for granted; those simple things like walking the streets, strolling the woods and meadows, talking with our neighbor on our doorstep, inviting them into the house for a cup of tea and a natter, having a pint of beer in the pub with our mates, taking our partners out for a meal, attending family gatherings, giving family, friends and loved ones a hug, a kiss, a fond embrace whenever we meet or say goodbye. Not to mention those important rituals that help us rejoice or grieve, like being a father observing the birth of their baby while they hold their wife's hand, attending the Christening services of family members, attending weddings and anniversary occasions, visiting our ill family and friends in the hospital, or being at the death bed of a loved one and attending their funeral service after passing.

Learning 'how big' in your life are such things we once considered 'small' and becoming aware that nothing we ever say or do is 'insignificant' or 'unimportant' are essential in making us feel wholesome, purposeful and meaningful. Things like being able to hear and see for the first time the true wonder of a baby's cry: a bird's song: the sheer enjoyment of hearing a child laugh with glee in their eyes as they kick leaves in the autumn wood or make a big splash as they jump in a rain puddle: hearing the raucous laughter of a silly joke being shared around a cafe table with close friends having a coffee morning. Learning to appreciate the presence of all these things in our daily life provides the bedrock of social cohesion and cements the bond we all need between self, others, God, animal life, and nature.

Tonight, when I go to my door at 8:00 pm to applaud the heroes of our time, along with all my Haworth neighbours, I know my thanks to them all will be heartfelt.
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Many of you will know of the health issues which have been my constant companion for the past seven years; the number of cancers I have had to deal with, the many operations I have had, along with one and a half years of monthly chemotherapy and a few months of radiotherapy. You will also know however, the importance I place in my belief in God, in self and in others, and in the power of prayer and love along with the positivity of thought. You know that what enables me to live my life and to play with the cards I've been dealt, is my love of life on earth and my belief in an even better life to come. With such a hand, God dealt me a 'full house' on the day I was born.

I, as much as most of you, have known the true worth and value of those NHS and associated health workers I will clap and cheer at 8:00 pm this evening, ever since the age of 11 years when I was admitted into hospital with life-threatening injuries that prevented me walking again for three years. When I lay awake on that adult hospital ward as a boy with intense pain and unable to sleep during the early morning hours, while men around men snored, farted, or died and were quietly removed to the hospital morgue before the day shift started and beds were made anew, it was during those dark hours of the night when I would be visited by an Angel of Mercy in a nurse's uniform who would hold my hand and whisper words of comfort and encouragement to me.

Yes! I'll clap and applaud you tonight as I have every night since the age of 11 years as a patient in the old Batley Hospital. Hospital nurses were my rainbow during the first storm of my life as a boy, and have remained my rainbow as a man ever since. I am so pleased that the rainbow is the image that has sprung up in windows as school children's response to the coronavirus outbreak and our NHS heroes. God bless each and every one of our nurses, doctors, surgeons, and associated medical and community care staff. We salute you!
Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song For Today: 8th April 2020

8/4/2020

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MY EASTER MESSAGE TO YOU ALL.

In a few day's time, Easter weekend will be upon us. Easter Sunday is the holiest time of the church’s year. It is a day when Christians worldwide celebrate the Resurrection of Christ. This year, Easter Sunday should be regarded as being a Holy Day and not a Holiday.

I very much suspect that this will be the strangest Easter Sunday we have ever experienced in our lives, however old we are. I suspect that the temptation to go out for the greater part of the day for many of us may prove too great to resist, especially if the sun refuses to stay in. I also fear that there will be a greater tendency of some folk operating on the premise 'while the cat's away the mice can play', so to speak. I fear that this coming Easter Sunday will witness the biggest breach yet of the social contract that appeared to be firmly established between our Government and its peoples, and I pray that I am so wrong on this count. I also pray for a speedy recovery of our Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, and his return to the ship's captaincy.

My Easter Sunday message is simple and clear: 'STAY AT HOME AND STAY SAFE. LIVE, LOVE AND LET LIVE.'

If you want to preserve life, you must keep the love of your fellow man at the forefront of your mind. This deadly virus that currently pervades our planet draws no distinction between who will live and who will die. It attacks us in the most pernicious of ways; by coughing the infectious virus into the air within the social space we share. Some of the infected will experience mild discomfort, some will become very ill and require hospitalisation, and sadly, many of the most vulnerable with pre-existing health problems will die. Chief among the people who most risk death through contraction of COVID-19 will be your aging mothers, fathers, grandparents, partners, and other family members of vulnerable status.

So, if any of you is considering breaking the Government’s Clear Instruction of ‘staying indoors for non-essential purposes’, please think again!

Please prioritise life by preserving the love of all humankind. As an individual who has had terminal blood cancer for seven years now, along with two other cancers, I don’t know if I will see another Easter Sunday next year, but I would like to believe that my children, my siblings, my wife, my family, my friends, and my neighbours will, along with yours.

The chances of maintaining the lives of these people are greatly increased if you focus on the love you have for them, and make this Easter Sunday a Holy Day and not a Holiday from your social responsibilities.
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Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song For Today: 7th April 2020

7/4/2020

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I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friends Vanessa Humphrey from Leeds and Dean Ryan from Carrick-on-Suir in County Tipperary, Ireland. Both Vanessa and Dean celebrate their birthday today. Have a smashing day and leave some room for lots of cake and suitable refreshments. Thank you for being my friend.

My song today is ‘Copperhead Road’. This song was written and recorded by American country music artist, Steve Earle. It was released in 1988 as the first single and title track from his third studio album of the same name. The song reached Number 10 on the U.S. Billboard ‘Mainstream Rock Tracks Chart’ and was Earle's highest-peaking song to date in the United States.

The song's narrator is named John Lee Pettimore III, whose father and grandfather were both active in moonshine making and bootlegging in rural Johnson County in Tennessee. Pettimore's grandfather visited town only rarely, in order to buy supplies for a still he had set up in a hollow along Copperhead Road. Pettimore's father hauled the moonshine to Knoxville each week in an old police cruiser he bought at a surplus auction. According to a family story, a ‘Revenue Man’ once confronted John Sr. on Copperhead Road, intent on apprehending him for his moonshine activities, but never returned. John Jr. himself was killed in a fiery car crash on the same road while driving to Knoxville with a weekly shipment.

Pettimore enlists in the Army on his birthday, believing he will soon be drafted, and serves two tours of duty in Vietnam. Once he returns home, he decides to use the Copperhead Road land to grow marijuana, using seeds from Colombia and Mexico. He resolves not to be caught by the DEA and sets up booby traps similar to those employed by the Viet Cong.
Copperhead Road was an actual road near Mountain City in Tennessee. It runs through an area once known to locals as ‘Big Dry Run, although it has since been renamed ‘Copperhead Hollow Road’, owing to the theft of road signs bearing the song's name.

The song also inspired a popular line dance, timed to the same beat, and has been used as the theme music for the ‘Discovery Channel’ reality series called ‘Moonshiners’.

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When I lived in Canada for two years from 1964-65, I worked in an hotel in Toronto called the ‘Glenview Terrace’. I was employed as a Desk Clerk at the hotel, and I worked alternate weeks on night shifts and day shifts. The hotel was the only hotel uptown in Toronto that was in a ‘dry area’. This was a part of the city where it was illegal to sell or buy alcohol. Our hotel was also the nearest to the airport and each time that either fog, snow or ice prevented the planes taking off (which occurred around six times a year), all the air passengers flying to the States and other countries out of Toronto would fill up every one of the hotel’s hundred-plus rooms.

Ron earned $1 an hour wage on the night shift as a Bell Hop (the man or boy who carried the cases of hotel residents to their rooms and dealt with their many requests), plus tips. I earned $1 and 75 cents an hour wages on the night shift, having a more responsible position as ‘chief welcomer’ to all hotel guests and fixer of their complaints. I was paid almost twice as much wage as Ron was by the hotel management, and at the end of the night, I would have earned the magnificent sum of $14 to Ron’s nightly wage of $8 plus a few dollars in tips for showing hotel guests to their rooms. Yet, although Ron was paid only $8 per night shift, he could easily pull in an extra $50 or $60 each time Toronto Airport had a foggy, snowy or icy night that produced hundreds of stranded passengers booking into the ‘Glenview Terrace’.

I was aged 21 at the time and Ron was in his mid-fifties. He had been married three times and was a ‘part-time’ alcoholic and a full-time gambling addict. Ron also held down a part-time day-time job in addition to his 8 hours nightly in the hotel. He had been brought up in ‘moonshine country’ and although he never had a proper education and couldn’t read the first page of a child’s book, he could read a bookmaker’s betting slip besides being able to accurately calculate his winnings on a multiple horse bet (minus the tax).

There are no prizes for guessing how Ron made up his additional income at the hotel we worked at. He would use up hundreds of dollars as an investment buying up bottles of the most popular alcohol and spirits (during one of his dry periods when he abstained from the hard stuff). Then, on fogbound nights when all the flights were grounded and we found ourselves full to the brim at the ‘Glenview Terrace’, when hotel clients discovered that the ‘Glenview Terrace Hotel’ was the only hotel in Toronto in a dry area of the city, what do you think they did?

Instead of going three or four miles to downtown Toronto to find themselves a bottle of alcohol or a woman for the night, they’d ask Ron if he could arrange such contraband on their behalf. Despite risking prison if he was found out, Ron had enough contacts to supply both booze or broads (an American term for a loose woman) at the end of a phone call. The amount or type of liquor mattered not; whatever the customer wanted Ron supplied; all at a greatly inflated price of course! While all the bottled whiskey, rye, and bourbon was the genuine stuff and wasn’t of the moonshine variety that Ron grew up around, Ron made an additional profit by the judicious watering down of his sales or the removal of a thimble full amount from each bottleneck, before re-bottling. No customer was ever the wiser to Ron’s inventiveness and I never learned of his illegal activities taking place on my watch during my first six months in the job, working alongside Ron nightly.

Ron was one of those alcoholics who would have periods of complete abstinence followed by a month of absolute drunkenness, drinking non-stop. During his dry spells, instead of drinking whiskey, he would sell it exclusively to hotel residents; watering it down to increase his profit margin. For a couple of months, Ron would work extra shifts at the hotel and build up a kitty of $1000. Once he had his $1000 kitty, he would put it all on one horse to win. If the horse lost, he would stay off the alcohol until he’d built up another $1000 gambling stake, but when his horse won, Ron would drink and celebrate for the next month until his drink and money had run out.

When Ron won on the horses, he always won big. He would finish out his week at work and then fill his station wagon up with crates of booze and go out into the wilds where he would drink himself silly and fish all day at a favourite spot. At night, Ron would drink himself to sleep under the stars and remember the deceased love of his life. He would stay off work until all his money and booze had run out. Then, he’d return to work and go back on the wagon while he built up another $1000 horse betting stake. I don’t know how he got away with this working pattern, but the hotel management never complained to me whenever he was absent from his employment.

Ron once told me that he met the second of his three wives while out in the wilds where he did his fishing. She seemingly was his soul mate; the one wife he loved. She was a woman who sadly died after she’d adopted the alcoholic lifestyle of Ron during the early years of their marriage. He even said that the very first time he saw her, she was bathing nude in a river stream, standing between the river boulders as she splashed the cool water over her head and breasts. Ron thought she would instantly take fright and run away as soon as she realised that she wasn’t alone, but added that instead, she simply started wiping herself down inside a towel as the couple continued to introduced themselves to each other. I got the impression that Ron’s boozing and unusual pattern of life was largely due to him still grieving his wife’s loss, especially as he would always return to the exact area they first met during his drinking and fishing month away from his hotel work when he won on the horses.

Although it was almost 55 years ago since I worked alongside Ron and it was less than one month ago when I first heard the ‘Copperhead Road’ song I sing for you today, the words of the song immediately reminded me of him and the moonshining background which Ron grew up in, and the bootlegging practices he continued within the ‘Glenview Terrace Hotel’ as I watched on nearby at the reception desk; unsuspectingly.

Ron was, without a doubt, the highest-earning Bell Hop ever to come out of the Canadian and American backwater. He was the kindest and most sociable of souls and during the short time I knew him, I grew to love him dearly. God bless you Ron. Given our thirty-year age difference, I guess that by the time your kidney function ran out on you, your horses were still running.

Do you know, if I possessed a wealth of such enormity that I could give away a £million here and a £million there without batting an eyelid, one of the things I would most certainly do is to pay for the exhumation of Ron's body, and the body of the wife he loved, and have both corpses flown to the riverside spot they first met in the wilds. There, in their special place, I would arrange to have hem buried together between the river boulders where the water and the fish could splash over them for eternity.
​
Love and peace Bill xxx
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