FordeFables
Follow Me:
  • Home
  • Site Index
  • About Me
    • Radio Interviews
  • My Books
    • Book List & Themes
    • Strictly for Adults Novels >
      • Rebecca's Revenge
      • Come Back Peter
    • Tales from Portlaw >
      • No Need to Look for Love
      • 'The Love Quartet' >
        • The Tannery Wager
        • 'Fini and Archie'
        • 'The Love Bridge'
        • 'Forgotten Love'
      • The Priest's Calling Card >
        • Chapter One - The Irish Custom
        • Chapter Two - Patrick Duffy's Family Background
        • Chapter Three - Patrick Duffy Junior's Vocation to Priesthood
        • Chapter Four - The first years of the priesthood
        • Chapter Five - Father Patrick Duffy in Seattle
        • Chapter Six - Father Patrick Duffy, Portlaw Priest
        • Chapter Seven - Patrick Duffy Priest Power
        • Chapter Eight - Patrick Duffy Groundless Gossip
        • Chapter Nine - Monsignor Duffy of Portlaw
        • Chapter Ten - The Portlaw Inheritance of Patrick Duffy
      • Bigger and Better >
        • Chapter One - The Portlaw Runt
        • Chapter Two - Tony Arrives in California
        • Chapter Three - Tony's Life in San Francisco
        • Chapter Four - Tony and Mary
        • Chapter Five - The Portlaw Secret
      • The Oldest Woman in the World >
        • Chapter One - The Early Life of Sean Thornton
        • Chapter Two - Reporter to Investigator
        • Chapter Three - Search for the Oldest Person Alive
        • Chapter Four - Sean Thornton marries Sheila
        • Chapter Five - Discoveries of Widow Friggs' Past
        • Chapter Six - Facts and Truth are Not Always the Same
      • Sean and Sarah >
        • Chapter 1 - 'Return of the Prodigal Son'
        • Chapter 2 - 'The early years of sweet innocence in Portlaw'
        • Chapter 3 - 'The Separation'
        • Chapter 4 - 'Separation and Betrayal'
        • Chapter 5 - 'Portlaw to Manchester'
        • Chapter 6 - 'Salford Choices'
        • Chapter 7 - 'Life inside Prison'
        • Chapter 8 - 'The Aylesbury Pilgrimage'
        • Chapter 9 - Sean's interest in stone masonary'
        • Chapter 10 - 'Sean's and Tony's Partnership'
        • Chapter 11 - 'Return of the Prodigal Son'
      • The Alternative Christmas Party >
        • Chapter One
        • Chapter Two
        • Chapter Three
        • Chapter Four
        • Chapter Five
        • Chapter Six
        • Chapter Seven
        • Chapter Eight
      • The Life of Liam Lafferty >
        • Chapter One: ' Liam Lafferty is born'
        • Chapter Two : 'The Baptism of Liam Lafferty'
        • Chapter Three: 'The early years of Liam Lafferty'
        • Chapter Four : Early Manhood
        • Chapter Five : Ned's Secret Past
        • Chapter Six : Courtship and Marriage
        • Chapter Seven : Liam and Trish marry
        • Chapter Eight : Farley meets Ned
        • Chapter Nine : 'Ned comes clean to Farley'
        • Chapter Ten : Tragedy hits the family
        • Chapter Eleven : The future is brighter
      • The life and times of Joe Walsh >
        • Chapter One : 'The marriage of Margaret Mawd and Thomas Walsh’
        • Chapter Two 'The birth of Joe Walsh'
        • Chapter Three 'Marriage breakup and betrayal'
        • Chapter Four: ' The Walsh family breakup'
        • Chapter Five : ' Liverpool Lodgings'
        • Chapter Six: ' Settled times are established and tested'
        • Chapter Seven : 'Haworth is heaven is a place on earth'
        • Chapter Eight: 'Coming out'
        • Chapter Nine: Portlaw revenge
        • Chapter Ten: ' The murder trial of Paddy Groggy'
        • Chapter Eleven: 'New beginnings'
      • The Woman Who Hated Christmas >
        • Chapter One: 'The Christmas Enigma'
        • Chapter Two: ' The Breakup of Beth's Family''
        • Chapter Three: From Teenager to Adulthood.'
        • Chapter Four: 'The Mills of West Yorkshire.'
        • Chapter Five: 'Harrison Garner Showdown.'
        • Chapter Six : 'The Christmas Dance'
        • Chapter Seven : 'The ballot for Shop Steward.'
        • Chapter Eight: ' Leaving the Mill'
        • Chapter Ten: ' Beth buries her Ghosts'
        • Chapter Eleven: Beth and Dermot start off married life in Galway.
        • Chapter Twelve: The Twin Tragedy of Christmas, 1992.'
        • Chapter Thirteen: 'The Christmas star returns'
        • Chapter Fourteen: ' Beth's future in Portlaw'
      • The Last Dance >
        • Chapter One - ‘Nancy Swales becomes the Widow Swales’
        • Chapter Two ‘The secret night life of Widow Swales’
        • Chapter Three ‘Meeting Richard again’
        • Chapter Four ‘Clancy’s Ballroom: March 1961’
        • Chapter Five ‘The All Ireland Dancing Rounds’
        • Chapter Six ‘James Mountford’
        • Chapter Seven ‘The All Ireland Ballroom Latin American Dance Final.’
        • Chapter Eight ‘The Final Arrives’
        • Chapter Nine: 'Beth in Manchester.'
      • 'Two Sisters' >
        • Chapter One
        • Chapter Two
        • Chapter Three
        • Chapter Four
        • Chapter Five
        • Chapter Six
        • Chapter Seven
        • Chapter Eight
        • Chapter Nine
        • Chapter Ten
        • Chapter Eleven
        • Chapter Twelve
        • Chapter Thirteen
        • Chapter Fourteen
        • Chapter Fifteen
        • Chapter Sixteen
        • Chapter Seventeen
      • Fourteen Days >
        • Chapter One
        • Chapter Two
        • Chapter Three
        • Chapter Four
        • Chapter Five
        • Chapter Six
        • Chapter Seven
        • Chapter Eight
        • Chapter Nine
        • Chapter Ten
        • Chapter Eleven
        • Chapter Twelve
        • Chapter Thirteen
        • Chapter Fourteen
      • ‘The Postman Always Knocks Twice’ >
        • Author's Foreword
        • Contents
        • Chapter One
        • Chapter Two
        • Chapter Three
        • Chapter Four
        • Chapter Five
        • Chapter Six
        • Chapter Seven
        • Chapter Eight
        • Chapter Nine
        • Chapter Ten
        • Chapter Eleven
        • Chapter Twelve
        • Chapter Thirteen
        • Chapter Fourteen
        • Chapter Fifteen
        • Chapter Sixteen
        • Chapter Seventeen
        • Chapter Eighteen
        • Chapter Nineteen
        • Chapter Twenty
        • Chapter Twenty-One
        • Chapter Twenty-Two
  • Celebrity Contacts
    • Contacts with Celebrities >
      • Journey to the Stars
      • Number 46
      • Shining Stars
      • Sweet Serendipity
      • There's Nowt Stranger Than Folk
      • Caught Short
      • A Day with Hannah Hauxwell
    • More Contacts with Celebrities >
      • Judgement Day
      • The One That Got Away
      • Two Women of Substance
      • The Outcasts
      • Cars for Stars
      • Going That Extra Mile
      • Lady in Red
      • Television Presenters
  • Thoughts and Musings
    • Bereavement >
      • Time to clear the Fallen Leaves
      • Eulogy for Uncle Johnnie
    • Nature >
      • Why do birds sing
    • Bill's Personal Development >
      • What I'd like to be remembered for
      • Second Chances
      • Roots
      • Holidays of Old
      • Memorable Moments of Mine
      • Cleckheaton Consecration
      • Canadian Loves
      • Mum's Wisdom
      • 'Early life at my Grandparents'
      • Family Holidays
      • 'Mother /Child Bond'
      • Childhood Pain
      • The Death of Lady
      • 'Soldiering On'
      • 'Romantic Holidays'
      • 'On the roof'
      • Always wear clean shoes
      • 'Family Tree'
      • The importance of poise
      • 'Growing up with grandparents'
    • Love & Romance >
      • Dancing Partner
      • The Greatest
      • Arthur & Guinevere
      • Hands That Touch
    • Christian Thoughts, Acts and Words >
      • Reuben's Naming Ceremony
      • Love makes the World go round
      • Walks along the Mirfield canal
  • My Wedding
  • My Funeral
  • Audio Downloads
    • Audio Stories >
      • Douglas the Dragon
      • Sleezy the Fox
      • Maw
      • Midnight Fighter
      • Action Annie
      • Songs & Music >
        • Douglas the Dragon Play >
          • Our World
          • You On My Mind
        • The Ballad of Sleezy the Fox
        • Be My Life
    • 'Relaxation Rationale' >
      • Relax with Bill
    • The Role of a Step-Father
  • My Singing Videos
    • Christmas Songs & Carols
  • Bill's Blog
    • Song For Today
    • Thought For Today
    • Poems
    • Funny and Frivolous
    • Miscellaneous Muses
  • Contact Me

Song For Today: 31st May 2019

31/5/2019

0 Comments

 
Today’s song is ‘Teach Me Tonight’ that was a popular song that over the years has become a jazz standard. The music was written by Gene de Paul and the lyrics by Sammy Cahn. The song was published in 1953 and has been covered by dozens of well-known singers. My favourite version of it was by Brenda Lee. 

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The rights of passage from a child into a testosterone-driven teenager varies from society to society and tribe to tribe throughout the world. While there is a specific route taken towards manhood by some African societies that all young men follow, in the western hemisphere, young boys graduate to young men, who in turn mature into full-grown manhood by a variety of ad hoc learning means. The youth of western society essentially negotiate their sexual graduation of life with no formal ritual of maturation, and for most, they take their learning where they can.

It often begins alone in one’s bed when a new, strange and exciting feeling announces its presence beneath the sheets of shame and is next followed in acts of sexual exploration behind the bicycle sheds around the age of puberty. Next, one’s knowledge is extended through the teenage games that girls and boys engage in on an evening when school is done. This is where the first test of real character operates; a test that is grossly unfair on the female sex. It is a stage of life when male reputations are enhanced by being ‘bigged-up’ the more often they can persuade the girls to say ‘yes’, while the reputation of girls who say both ‘yes’ and ‘no’ often finishing up in the gutter of school gossip, ragged and ruined for either engaging in similar sexual behaviour to the boys or for not doing what many of the other girls have already done with the boys. Whatever the girls do or don’t do, they are either called and perceived as slags or sheltered nuns!

In modern-day Britain today, as well as across the globe, the visual turn-on that young lads used to get from leering at ‘Men’s Magazines’ off the top shelf of the newsagents or even secretly glancing through the pages of the John Lewis section that increased their sales by advertising women’s loungery and frilly underwear on beautiful and scantily clad women. Today, however, the imagination of young lads has become obsolete with the introduction of the internet, where the most graphic and intimate of sexual acts between any combination of women and men ‘at it’ can be downloaded in seconds by any young lad with a laptop or a smartphone.

Between the ages of 18 and 21 years, whether one goes straight into work or attends university, the prospect of finding a male or female virgin after the age of twenty-one arrives is less likely than Anna Soubry backing Boris Johnson for Prime Minister, and then accepting the cabinet position as Brexit Minister determined on pursuing a ‘No Deal’ as Boris drives her back home in his car following a boozy night out together on the town!

When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I was always a ‘ladies’ man’. I’d have to be honest and say that while I never did the dirty on any young woman, or for that matter older woman, I never left any consenting female in the slightest of doubt beforehand that it was sexual contact I wanted from our ‘brief relationship’ and not love or emotional commitment. I was a romantic young man of reasonably good looks and oozing buckets of confidence, and by the time I went to Canada in late 1963 at the age of twenty-one, I was up for anything that fitted into my confirmed bachelor lifestyle.

I’ll never forget the time that I started to enjoy and get more pleasure of going out on a date or meeting some more mature woman, older than myself, than drinking with the boys. While I do not intend to do a Tracy Emin by erecting a confessional tent that has the names of every female I have ever slept with embroidered on its inner canvas for the world to see, I am prepared to disclose two sexual relationships I once had, and which today’s song reminds me of.

The two women with whom I had a brief relationship that this song reminds me of were both older than me. There was the infant schoolteacher, Ann, from West Yorkshire and the haberdashery store manager, Annabelle Claudette, from Kentucky. The first woman was thirty-year-old divorcee, Ann who I met at a social gathering, and with whom I had a four-month liaison before I emigrated to Canada. Ann was unable to have children, a circumstance that at the time made our liaison more appealing.

My arrangement with Ann was perfect for each of us. Both of us required total discretion and neither wanted any emotional attachment to spoil any ongoing contact or interfere with our life plans. Ann’s boredom combined with my willing divergence into experiencing a sexual relationship with a more mature woman couldn’t have come together at a more opportune moment in each of our lives.

Whereas the divorcee, Ann, was the one who knew the ropes, I was still packing my ‘L’ plates in my old school satchel. With regards to showing me how much ‘I didn’t know’ about lovemaking, Ann was like the perfect ‘Mrs Robinson’ (Ann Bancroft in the film ‘The Graduate’) to the 21-year-old graduate, Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman in the 1967 film). Please note that my liaison with my Ann took place four years before the film ‘The Graduate’ came out on public release. In fact, I could so easily have written the film script, having already acted out a major part of it before emigrating to Canada. Come to think of it, for all I know, Ann (who did dabble at writing poems and short stories) probably did! Ann essentially required the loving of a young man to keep her ‘feeling young’, while I was happy to let her take the lead and learn whatever lessons she had to teach me in the bedroom.

The next woman who had a significant impact on me in the love-making department was in some ways, a natural progression from Ann to Annabelle. Annabelle Claudette was a woman in her mid-twenties who owned and managed a clothing and haberdashery store in Kentucky. We each knew (as one does) after five minutes of first meeting and exchanging those glances that require no explanation to understand their intent, that we were meant to meet, make love and move on with our lives, and that the time and place was here and now. It was as though Destiny had interrupted his day to introduce two compatible lovers to each other. Annabelle Claudette was a fetching woman who was somewhat bored with her routine life and wanted to spice it up. Never having learned how to refuse the advances of an attractive woman, I was more than happy to abandon my initial destination and reschedule the rest of that week in order to spend three nights and days in the company of the beautiful Annabelle Claudette.

‘Teach Me Tonight’ will be indelibly linked to these two unforgettable people and experiences in my life.

Love and peace Bill xxx
0 Comments

Song For Today: 30th May 2019

30/5/2019

0 Comments

 
Today’s song was initially released in 1949 in support of the ‘progressive movement’ and was first recorded by ‘The Weavers’, a folk music quartet. The song was written by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays and was released initially under the title of ‘The Hammer Song’. It was later titled, ‘If I Had a Hammer’. It was a Number 10 hit for Peter, Paul and Mary in 1962 and went to Number 3 in 1963 when it was covered by Trini Lopez. 

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

From everything that I have learned during my entire professional working life, along with every book I ever read, every academic lesson I ever attended, and every experience I ever shared with a problematic person; one learning curve remains prominent. It is what I refer to as ‘The Hammer Impact on human nature, human behaviour and human response’ (my reference label).

If I was taught and learned one incontrovertible truth about human nature/behaviour/response, it was this: In every person’s life experiences they will be ‘hammered’ in different ways, in numerous places, at the most unexpected time by the most unexpected thing! They may hammer out the behavioural bulge (their presenting problem) in their armour plate, but even when they smooth out the bulge, it will reappear elsewhere in the suit of armour.

The easiest way to grasp the concept I am talking about is to momentarily look at the process of ‘human addiction’. For instance, take smoking cigarettes or using hard drugs. Either addiction can be broken (the human bulge smoothed out), but the person who broke their smoking addiction will simply take up another addiction like over-eating fatty foods or developing a sweet tooth and a love for sweets and chocolates. The person who broke their hard drug addiction, however, may start depending on drinking too much alcohol or smoking too many cigarettes instead.

Whereas swapping one bad addiction for another bad addiction is common practice, all behaviourists and some psychologists and psychiatrists advise it to be far better to ‘choose’ one’s new addiction instead of automatically falling into the trap of finding it just happened unknowingly. They would advise that ‘conscious choice’ is always better than ‘unconscious imposition’. They would argue that if you ‘choose’ your new addiction, you can select a more socially acceptable and less harmful addiction (swap a bad addiction for a ‘good’ or ‘more favourable’ addiction).

A good example of such a swap might be a person who was so grossly overweight, that after experiencing their unsuccessful and shame-inducing attempt to sit in an airline seat and found that they couldn’t because their largeness took up the room of two average-sized holidaymakers on the aeroplane. There are so many accounts of this type of person where ‘shame’ has led them to exchange their bad-eating addiction and lifestyle for a good-eating addiction and a healthier lifestyle. Not only do they change their eating habits, but they also become exercise fanatics, spending every spare moment at the gym or preparing to run the next monthly marathon. Many of these former ‘losers’ become ‘winners in the Slimmer of the Year contest’.
When I was training up in Newcastle in 1970 to become a Probation Officer and was daily cramming my head with all manner of the most modern psychological, psychiatric and behaviour modification theories available, my thoughts were crystallised within a triad of thought. Specifically, I read many of the theories and working of three men who changed my view and practice of ‘problem-solving,’ leading to produce more reconciled behaviour.

The first was Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, a Victorian philosopher, cultural critic, composer and poet. This German-born Latin and Greek Scholar introduced my mind to the ‘hammer theory’ he expounded.

The other person to greatly influence my future thinking and working practices along adjacent and similar lines was R.D. Laing, who was a 20th-century Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illness; in particular, the experience of psychosis. R.D. Laing introduced me to the concept of ‘Reframing’ (the art of viewing a previous perceived problem behaviour and situation as now being a beneficial situation. Laing taught me through his writings, research and his lectures that any person can swap one psychosis for a more acceptable psychosis.

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist who was born in the Victorian era. He is the acknowledged founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst. His work on neurosis taught me that one neurosis could be swapped for a more acceptable neurosis.

The life workings and theories of these three great men converged in my learning and persuaded me to place much merit in the ‘hammer impact theory’, ‘the reframing method’ and the acceptance that ‘it is easier to exchange one psychosis for a less harmful and more acceptable psychosis than to seek to eliminate all psychosis (which is probably impossible)’. 
I successfully used this triad of knowledge, theory and practice to achieve much success in my many professional roles during the remainder of my working life.

In many ways, I have tried to live out the message in today’s song, and the song reminds me of these three influential academics in my life. The song also reflects the movement through the stages of my life. Through my work as a Probation Officer, I have used the ‘Hammer of Justice’ in my service to the Court and the criminal clientele with whom I worked. During my charitable work over thirty years and raising awareness of many disadvantaged causes and people across the world, I have rung the ‘Bell of Freedom’ at every opportunity. Finally, ever since taking up my daily singing practice just over a year ago, I have strengthened my lungs and have also moved closer to the breath of life; my living God. My choice of daily song has enabled me to choose the content of my message; allowing me to focus on all the very best of the Christian tenets like love, sharing, forgiveness, happiness etc., etc. In a way, I have mostly ‘sung about the love between my brothers and sisters all over this land’.

Love and peace Bill xxx
0 Comments

Song For Today: 29th May 2019

29/5/2019

0 Comments

 
(THIS LENGTHY POST IS TO BENEFIT PEOPLE WITH CANCER AND THEIR FAMILY AND FRIENDS) 
Today, my song is dedicated to all people, for whom cancer has become a part of their lives and ongoing consideration. I think foremost about all those who have recently been diagnosed with cancer; especially if the cancer is terminal or has been discovered too late and is now too far advanced to be treatable. Such is the kind of news that instantly send shock waves through one’s mind and body, and within a matter of seconds, one’s stable world has been turned upside down, disturbing all remaining jumbled thoughts struggling for attention at the forefront of one’s mind.

My dedication also includes those persons who are having chemotherapy, radiotherapy, regular blood transfusions and other treatment courses. It is my clear understanding that any of these treatments affect all people differently, and there are significant differences in the numerous types of individual reactions. Even when two people have been impacted with a similar level of pain, they feel and react differently; determined in large measure by their different body interpretations and their different pain-level thresholds they have established.

I also dedicate my thoughts and song to those many people who were diagnosed with cancer, and who were treated and have now been cleared of cancer, having been in remission for six months or more. Finally, I dedicate my song to those who are in the last stages of life and will soon die with cancer. I believe that most people who have learned to live with cancer automatically help themselves to die with cancer. Just as there is a happy and healthy way to live for each of us, I believe that there is also a happier and healthier way for each of us to die with dignity.

Whatever words I use in my post today or advice I may offer directly or indirectly through illustration, reference and inference, let me say from the start that no two cancers are the same, as are no two individuals. No similar cancer has the same impact on different individuals, and how a person chooses to respond to their own situation is what they feel to be right for them. I believe that we each live and die with cancer differently. I would like to round off this universal ball of individualism by likewise adding that there is no right or wrong way of living or dying with cancer, but unfortunately, I believe that to be inaccurate. I know from my own experience and the many people with whom I communicate weekly who have or have had cancer, there is a better way.
I know there are healthier and happier ways to live with cancer, and there are also healthier and more content ways to die with cancer. It is possible to have cancer as your constant companion without allowing cancer to preoccupy your mind, constantly disturb your emotions, control your day and define you as a person. You are the one who chooses the way you live your life or the way you prefer to end it! You are the person who puts purpose and satisfaction into your life through your quality of experience, the positiveness of thought and honest intent and healthy expression. You, and nobody else!

Please do not think that I am putting myself forward as someone who says, “Look at me! I have had five different cancers in the past seven years, and I am currently being operated on and treated for three separate cancers in three different areas of my body; a terminal blood cancer, malignant skin cancer and rectal cancer yet to be operated on”.

Indeed, I know that my body will have a new cancer year-upon-year for most of the remaining years of my life, as it is the nature of the blood cancer I have to eventually infect all the major organs of my body with cancer; provided of course, that my absence of any effective immune system doesn’t kill me off first with pneumonia or some other infection my body cannot fight off.

I have been as frightened as most people who have cancer. I have cried with the thought of losing contact with my loved ones. I have struggled with the uncertain timing of my death; not knowing if I will be alive in the autumn to eat the potatoes and other vegetables that my wife planted in our allotment in spring; or see the flower, I plant this summer bloom next year. I frequently fall into frustration with my ageing incapacity; the gradual demise in my agility and dexterity of hand. Weekly, I observe the deterioration in my mobility of foot and unbalance of body that makes me prone to falling. I dislocated my shoulder three months ago and required a full operation under a general anaesthetic (itself highly dangerous for me) to replace. The damage to muscle tissue was severe and I now have only half the normal use, with no prospect of further improvement. Don’t think for one moment that I don’t frequently express frustration with my inability to put on my own socks and shoes, shirt or other dress. Do not hold me as a person who never shouts at his knee to bend, calling it ‘Stupid leg’, or who doesn’t swear and curse when I have to jump out of bed in the middle of the night with severe painful cramp in both legs that can take an hour to wear off with constant movement.

Please be aware that I am no model of approbus, as I have my human failings and weaknesses in ample number also. But I have learned how better to both live with cancer and die with cancer?

Please allow me to be so bold as to give a few tips to cancer patients that I have found helpful over the past seven years. There are three aspects of lifestyle which I call the blessed Trinity that is essential to buttress and conceptually support the advice I offer below. This trinity of essential lifestyle considerations involves establishing a baseline maintenance of health, happiness and hope within you. These aspects can only be functional in the mind and body of a person with cancer if they give full and proper regard to rest and sleep, the type of energy used; how, when, and in what amount, along with the nature of food intake and the daily routines established.

(1) There will be days when your body does not feel strong enough to engage either physically or mentally. On such occasions when physical activity is very difficult and can hurt, it is important to rest the body. Paradoxically, it is important to remember that the worst possible thing you can do is ‘Do nothing!’ Instead of falling into total lethargy, engage in any sedentary activity such as reading, writing, doing crosswords, arranging flowers, listening to the radio or chosen music and talking with your partner, family or friends. Note, that when we are not strong enough to engage in ‘physical activity’, it is very important that we engage in ‘mental activity’. Conversely, when we are mentally drained, that is the best time to have a little walk and take in some fresh air. The secret is ‘always to be engaged’, either physically or mentally when doing both are not possible.

(2)Engage oneself in something you find pleasurable and satisfying as often as possible during your day. I have always found pleasure to be the prime source of persistent practice and routine maintenance.

(3) When you find the diet, the exercise regime, the daily pleasurable tasks, the most suitable time of going to bed and rising each morning ‘that best suits you’, make them your established routine to maintain your maximum health, happiness and hope.

(4) End of life stages are like all life stages: they are easier to face when they are lived alongside others than on one’s own. Anyone who has family, neighbours and friends who care for you, is wasting the most valuable human resource of all if you prevent them from caring and being alongside during times of greatest need. Just as most people have a basic need ‘to help’, the person with cancer serves their own basic needs better when they allow others to help.

(5) People differ in terms of being entirely open about their condition. Some are prepared to tell all to the world and his neighbour about their illness, whilst others are more reserved and private in what, when and how much they are prepared to divulge, and to whom they disclose. Some prefer to tell others on a ‘need-to-know basis’ at the initial diagnosis of cancer or during its progression and treatment stages. The only time we learn about some people with cancer is at their death. My only advice here is to at least choose one person you trust to openly confide in; preferably your partner, closest family member or best friend. It is foolish to face such struggles alone when other good people want to help you.

(6) In order to preserve your body as well as possible, enough sleep of good quality is required. We all seem to be able to get by on different amounts of sleep, and the amount can vary between as much as five and eight hours nightly, to prove sufficient to the person concerned. If you sleep soundly, then maintain your daily routines in exercise, food intake and pleasurable pursuits. There will be nights when you cannot sleep. Do not lie in bed alone and worry. Get up and do something that gives you pleasure. It is healthier to avoid comfort eating on such nights. I will never forget a prominent Scottish psychiatrist (R.D. Laing) speak about the time he dealt with a patient who couldn’t sleep at night. She could never get off to sleep until it was time when most people were waking up. His immediate response to his patient of being told about her problem was, ’How wonderful to be awake and alert when the rest of the world is asleep, and to be able to do what you want without human interference or interruption such as house visitors, pestering others or phone calls.’ The psychiatrist was teaching his patient how to ‘reframe their problem’ by turning it into an advantage. I have even known people change their working terms from day shift to night shift to get around this problem. Going to sleep should be the most naturally thing in the world for a tired body to do, but it is the hardest thing to do for an active mind. Never worry in bed; get up and do something pleasurable. Don’t forget that resting the body (night or day) is just as beneficial to health as being fast asleep. Learning to relax is also very helpful and is something I have done for the past 60 years.

I would always acknowledge the right for our parents, siblings and relatives to influence us in how we live our lives, but I would never concede that they have the right or the power to control it. Similarly; whereas I acknowledge that my cancer/cancers will undoubtedly influence me in how I live my life, I will never concede that Cancer has the right or the power to control it, and in the process, define my personality and body response or shape my destiny!

This Post has been specifically written for those who are living and dying with cancer, and especially, children with cancer; along with the partners, relatives and friends of those with cancer.
Love and peace Bill xxx
0 Comments

Song For Today: 28th May 2019

28/5/2019

0 Comments

 
I dedicate today’s song to my London-based Facebook friend, Lorna Gregory, whose love and regard for all things Jamaican run deep in her river of respect. Today’s song is one that Bob Marley introduced to England during his brief time living here. It is not as well known as many of his more famous songs, but I find it one of his loveliest and probably the hardest of all his recordings to sing. While maintaining the reggae beat, I wanted to sing it in a softer and easy-going style than Marley employed, and make it more suggestive of ‘a vocal seduction’ than ‘a lover’s request of his woman to maintain privacy.’ I have varied some of the original tune and have added a few of my own words in my interpretation of the song.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

This song brings to recall, a workmate of mine in a Cleckheaton Mill that I once worked at. He had been married three years and once told me that his wife had led a sheltered existence and was so shy about showing her naked body that she could never bring herself to disrobe in his presence. On a night-time, she would insist on going to bed first so that when her husband came upstairs to retire, she was already lying beneath the sheets in her night clothes. Before her husband undressed for bed, he would always dim the lights; a practice that his wife preferred.

Despite his wife’s reserved behaviour, he reported sex with his wife as being regular and highly satisfying. The only dissatisfaction my friend had with his wife, apart from her unwillingness to be seen nude, was her complete lack of spontaneity, Their sex life was reportedly regulated by the calendar and clock to occur on certain nights of the week and within a certain time span of ‘availability/accessibility’. In the absence of any sexual activity being instigated by him within the first half hour of entering the marital bed ‘on his night of agreed intercourse’, his wife would consider the remainder of the night forfeited for rest and sleep purpose only.

The more work I engaged in as a marriage guidance counsellor during my earlier years as a Probation Officer, the more I realised, the minefield I had opted to work in. One of the reasons that I loved every day of my Probation Officer career was that, in my day, Probation Officers carried out multiple roles of responsibility. The ‘Probation and After-Care Service’ provided a statutory service to the general public (like an early Citizen Advice Bureau), the Criminal and the Civil Courts of the land, H.M. Prisons, along with fulfilling voluntary roles within the wider Community. Such a variety of specialised roles required Probation Officers during the 1970s to be a well-trained and highly skilled ‘Jack-of-all-trades.

All Officers would be obliged to attend weekly and fortnightly courses twice yearly and those Probation Officers who carried out additional roles in the family and matrimonial courts, as well as the criminal courts and the prisons, would be constantly ‘trained-up’. I was in the second category and was very lucky to spend almost two years attending several days monthly being trained in my Matrimonial Guidance work at the 'Tavistock Clinic'.

Each couple of years, two Probation Officers from the West Yorkshire Probation Service would be selected and offered the unique experience of being trained part-time at the Tavistock. Such chosen officers were usually being fast-tracked for promotion within the Service, but my constant thirst for knowledge, and to become a better practitioner, never once tempted me to want to work anywhere other than at ‘the coal face’.

Today, that organisation is known as ‘The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust’. ‘The Tavistock’ is a specialist mental health trust based in north London. The Trust specialises in talking therapies. The education and training department caters for 2,000 students a year from the United Kingdom and abroad. The Trust is based at the Tavistock Centre in ‘Swiss Cottage’. The founding organisation was the ‘Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology’ that was founded in 1920 by Dr Hugh Crichton-Miller. It has long been regarded as a professional centre of excellence of international renown, in its application of psychoanalytic ideas to the study and treatment of mental health and interpersonal dynamics.

I despair when I compare the roles today and yesteryear of a Probation Officer. During later years, Probation Officers have unfortunately become little more than Parole Officers whose entire work and client base is criminally based. Like most professional workers today, they have become overworked underpaid and undervalued workers, and their frequency of face-to-face contact with clientele has been pared down so much that most clients of the Probation Service have become a five-minute monthly reporting tick-list statutory visitor to the office. Unfortunately, Probation Officers have become deskilled in the many roles they once carried out and which today few are given the opportunity to specialise in.

From all the past roles I worked in within the Probation Service, I would nominate my matrimonial guidance work as having been the most difficult, yet the most rewarding. Doing this kind of work afforded me to work better with the more serious criminal side of the coin; the murderers, the arsonists, the rapists, and the child molesters. Matrimonial Guidance Counselling did involve, however, the need to be specifically focused and direct in terminology whenever sexual behaviour was frankly discussed with the man and wife being counselled, and only the most experienced secretaries and typists were allowed to type up the verbatim interview accounts for recording purposes.

I’m afraid that the shy wife of my working pal in the Cleckheaton mill would have died had she been obliged to read some of the typed transcripts of some of the matrimonial work I did.

I dedicate today’s song to Lorna Gregory whose love of reggae and Bob Marley’s songs are firm favourites of hers.

​Love and peace Bill xxx


0 Comments

Song for Today: 27th May 2019

27/5/2019

0 Comments

 
Today’s song is dedicated to my sister-in-law, Denise whose birthday it was two days ago. I am so sorry that these greetings and song are belated, Denise, but too many medical appointments have kept my mind busy this week.

The song is appropriate in more ways than one, as Denise and her husband, my brother Michael, have had one of the highest mountains to climb ever since their son, Carl was paralysed beneath the waist many years ago following a tragic car crash. The three of them live in a specially adapted house in Gomersal where Denise and Michael act as the prime carers to their most independent son.

All of us will encounter struggles and strife at some stage of our lives and none will pass through without encountering obstacles to get around and mountains to climb. For a few, like Denise and Michael, and Carl, however, they will experience and endure much more. They will experience trials sent to torment, or physical pain that points towards the limits of human endurance. For those who are unfortunate enough to have found themselves in Denise and Michael’s position, where the parental reason for the happening and a sense of purpose for the future is hard to see, the situation becomes almost intolerable. There is not a loving parent among us, who, if given the option, would not choose to take the pain of their child unto themselves. Instead, they are left, in mental anguish to carry on with their parental lives the best way they can, often swimming in a whirlpool of tormented thought, adrift in a maelstrom of emotions that are difficult to accurately express, other than to say, ‘Why us? It isn’t bloody fair!”

Denise, please know that all the Forde Family love and admire you and all your family to bits for the ability to have positively got on with your lives. We wish you the happiest of birthdays which hopefully was filled with lots of happy memories, lots of presents… and …lots of cake and ale. Please accept this modest vocal gift in belated celebration of your special day. Love Bill and Sheila x

Love and peace Bill xxx​
0 Comments

Song For Today: 26th May 2019

26/5/2019

0 Comments

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

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

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

Love and peace Bill xxx
0 Comments

Song For Today: 25th May 2019

25/5/2019

0 Comments

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

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

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

Love and peace Bill xxx
0 Comments

Song For Today: 24th May 2019

24/5/2019

0 Comments

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

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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

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

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

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

Song For Today: 24th May 2019

23/5/2019

0 Comments

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

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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

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

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

Song for Today: May 22nd 2019

22/5/2019

0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love and peace Bill xxx
0 Comments

Song For Today: 21st May 2019

20/5/2019

0 Comments

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

0 Comments

Song For Today: 20th May 2019

20/5/2019

0 Comments

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

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

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love and peace Bill xxx
0 Comments

Song For Today: 19th May 2019

19/5/2019

0 Comments

 
Sunday May 19th ‘Now is The Hour’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love and peace Bill. xxx
0 Comments

Song for Today: 18th May 2019

18/5/2019

0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


0 Comments

Song For Today: 17th May 2019

17/5/2019

0 Comments

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

0 Comments

Song for Today: 16th May 2019

15/5/2019

0 Comments

 
Today’s song is ‘Any Way You Want Me’ that was recorded in their self-titled album by the group 'Bread' in 1969.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

I have always loved this song and I have enjoyed singing it along with the group record today. The song was released shortly after my first marriage and I would often hear it at the parties of friends we attended.

Love and peace Bill xxx
0 Comments

Song for Today: 15th May 2019

15/5/2019

0 Comments

 
Today’s song is ‘The Unicorn’; a song that I first heard sung by ‘The Irish Rovers’ in the late 60s. It is a song by Shel Silverstein and remains one of the best-known songs in ‘The Irish Rovers' long career. It sold 8 million copies worldwide and reached Number 2 in the ‘US Adult Contemporary Chart’, Number 7 in the ‘U.S. Hot 100’, Number 4 in Canada, and Number 5 in Ireland. It can still be heard regularly in Irish Pubs'

According to the song, the unicorn was not a fantasy, but a creature that literally missed the boat by not boarding the Ark in time to be saved from the ‘Great Flood’ described in the Bible. They are said to be the loveliest of all animals.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I dedicate today’s song to my good neighbour, Veron’ who is the ‘good wife’ to my good friend and allotment neighbour, Brian Moorehouse. Veron’ (whose Irish blood is green to the core) tells me that her Irish grandfather was the first person ever to see this wonderful creature.

It was reported to have been one Saturday night(or to be more precise at 2.30am Sunday morning) after a cracking night’s session in Murphy’s Pub, followed by a private ‘wake party’. Veron’ tells me that her grandfather had drunk six pints of Guinness and thirteen bottles of porter and had slumped over the bar. He was out for the count and Paddy Flaherty, the pub owner tried to usher the drunken man out of the door. Veron’ grandfather seemingly got his second wind while being pushed towards the door and into the street and fought his way back to his bar stool. He refused to go home and let Paddy Flaherty lock up his premises until he was served with another pint of Guinness. Paddy reluctantly agreed and pushed Veron’s grandfather through the pub door, slammed it shut and bolted it before his drunken patron could get back up off his arse as he lay in the road.

The bottom line is that the drunken man managed to get home, thanks to a passing unicorn whose back he rode home on. When he told his wife and neighbours the following day that he’d ridden a unicorn home from Flaherty’s Pub the previous night, this incredible first encounter any man had ever experienced with this marvellous creature was written up in the parish newsletter.

A few of the sceptics accused Veron’s grandfather of deceit, some non-believers charged him with blind drunkenness, and there were three villagers who swore it was Farmer Neven’s white Shire horse that the drunk rode home on! Most, however, accepted the account of Veron’s grandfather as being Gospel.

The strange thing is though, from all the people who have claimed to have seen a unicorn since the first sighting was reported by Veron's grandfather, and the ones who claim that unicorns are mythical and don’t exist, there is one major difference. The only people to have seen a unicorn has been Irish people!

Love and peace Bill xxx
0 Comments

Song For Today: 14th May 2019

14/5/2019

0 Comments

 
I dedicate today’s song to Janice Jagger who celebrates a 70th birthday. This special day for Janice is tinged with memories of the loss of Dad who died twenty-five years to the day and remains greatly missed.
Today I enclose two songs in tribute to the life and times of Doris Day who died at the age of 97 yesterday. Doris Day, born Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff in Cincinnati, Ohio in April 1922, became an actress and singer who portrayed an image of robust wholesomeness in films such as 'Calamity Jane'. In her youth, Doris had always wanted to dance but a car accident at the age of 15 years, injured her right leg and curtailed her prospects as a professional dancer. When that avenue was no longer open to her, she discovered she had a singing voice. Her mother was a music teacher and her father, a choirmaster, so, not surprisingly, music and sing were in her genes. Her parents separated in her early years as a young girl.
There is so much information on Doris’ background and career; enough to fill half a dozen good-sized books. At one time. she was the highest paid actress in Hollywood. Her life never ran smoothly and she was married four times. An interesting feature was that all her life she believed herself to have been born in 1924 and reported her age accordingly, but at the age of 95 years, the ‘Associated Press’ found her birth certificate, showing her birth to have been in 1922. Had Doris been telling a deliberate porky for 95 years before being found out?
Doris did many films in the romantic theme with the late Rock Hudson and James Gardner, but by the 1960s a new age was being ushered in that did not fit as easily with Doris’ wholesome image. She reportedly turned down the offer to play Mrs Robinson in the film ’The Graduate’ because of the obligatory nude scene.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

My personal memories of Doris Day are threefold. First, I will never forget her sterling performance in ‘Calamity Jane’; a film that I loved so much that I saw twice within the same year. Secondly, when her song, ’Que Sera, Sera’ was released in 1956, it became a firm favourite with me and my next two sisters in line. The saying itself (meaning 'what will be, will be') is known and used worldwide. Thirdly, when Sheila and I got married on my 70th birthday in November 2012, our wedding video was backed with the Doris Day song, ‘Secret Love’; a song that will always enjoin us in fond memory.
Today is the 70th birthday of my ‘Facebook Friend’ Janice Jagger, whom I dedicate these two songs to. May your special day be a happy one and that you are continued to be blessed with a happy disposition and a gentle spirit of kindness and consideration. Bill and Sheila x
Love and peace Bill xxx
https://youtu.be/gjhkpMiHuIc 'QUE SERA,SERA'
https://youtu.be/4J_MCxMjcP4 'SECRET LOVE'
0 Comments

Song for Today: 13th May 2019

13/5/2019

0 Comments

 
Today’s song is ‘(I Don’t Know Why I Love You) But I Do’. Written by Paul Gayten and Bobby Charles this Rhythm and Blues song was sung by Clarence ‘Frogman’ Henry. It was Henry’s biggest hit in the U.S. and reached Number 4 in early 1961.

The U.S. release record label was titled ‘I Don’t Know Why’ and the UK record release and the Australian record release labels were both titled ‘But I Do’. The UK version spent 19 weeks in the charts and peaked at Number 3 in May 1961. The song was made popular again after its use in the 1993 television commercial for Fiat Cinquercento and its appearance in the 1994 film ‘Forrest Gump’ and the 1999 film ‘Mickey Blue Eyes’.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I dedicate today’s song to my nephew, Marcus Thorpe whose birthday it is today. Marcus is one of two married sons of my sister-in-law, Jill Thorpe, the brother to Luke, the husband to Ellie and the father to son, Jaxon.

I was so pleased to be able to attend the wedding of Marcus and Ellie several years ago. At the time I was very ill with my blood cancer and had just got over a nasty infection that had almost killed me off. Under usual circumstances, there was simply no way I would have chosen to meet any humans, and I’d been medically advised to avoid being in any crowd. My terminal blood cancer had rendered me with no effective immune system to fend off even the slightest bug or mildest cold that would have instantly given me pneumonia (something I had caught from simple colds on four occasions, and which had laid me up in bed and confined me to the house for six months during four of the six previous years).

Anyway, I knew how important it was to Marcus and Ellie that their Uncle Billy attended their special day down in Stoke on Trent. Special arrangements were made for me and Sheila to sit in a more isolated part of the room on our own table, and immediately following the wedding meal we left to return home as I couldn’t safely mix with the other wedding guests. It might only have been a few hours of my time to give but we thoroughly enjoyed the good marriage send off Jill had given her youngest son and daughter-in-law.

I sing today’s song in dedication to my nephew Marcus Thorp's birthday. May your special day be a happy. peaceful and long remembered day, Marcus. Love Uncle Billy x

Love and peace Bill xxx
0 Comments

Song For Today: 12th May 2019

12/5/2019

0 Comments

 
Today’s song is ‘Ain’t No Pleasing You’. This song by Chas and Dave comes from their album ’Mustn’t Grumble’ and was released in March 1972. It entered the ‘UK Singles Chart’ at Number 62. The song stayed in the charts for 11 weeks and peaked at Number 2 in April 1982. It was also the duo's first and biggest hit in Ireland, peaking at Number 3 on the Irish Singles Chart’ in 1982.

With regard to its composition and original idea, according to Chas Hodges, the inspiration for the song came from his brother's account of his wife criticising his work putting up a curtain, to which he replied, "There ain't no f.. king pleasing you, is there?”

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

There is undoubtedly many a man and woman whose own experience with their marriage partners will echo the sentiment of this song as representing a reflection of their own relationship with an ungrateful partner. We have all heard of, and some have known, a person who never appreciates anything that is done for them. However much you do for them always seems insufficient and is never quite good enough.

After I came home from Canada at the age of 23 years, I returned to work at the textile firm of ‘Harrison Gardeners’ at Hightown (now closed) for one year before moving on to another job. When I left ‘Harrison Gardeners’ to go to Canada a few years earlier at the age of 21, I had worked as a vat operative in the main section of the dyeworks. I had also acted as the Shop Steward for the 400 plus men and women workers.

There was a bleaching shed in a section of the firm called ‘The White House’ which whitened and peroxided the hanks of yarn. This process of dying within the firm was probably the most specialised process within the entire dyeworks, and the man in charge of the four other workers in ‘The White House’ was called Keith. Although not on the staff or employed as an official foreman, Keith received a few pounds per week extra to compensate for his increased level of responsibility supervising the work of the other four men he worked alongside.

When it came to the process of bleaching yarn white, nobody in the firm knew half the knowledge that Keith had built up regarding bleaching, he, having worked in ‘The White House’ for longer than any other employee. However, between me going to Canada and returning, Mr Harrison’s youngest son had joined his father and older brother at the firm and had been given the prime responsibility of managing ‘The White House’. From the outset, the perfectly spoken and culturally reared David Harrison, just out of university, and the crudely mannered and ill-natured Keith jarred in personality and conduct. Young David Harrison quickly realised that the relationship between him and Keith was not working and would never work because Keith would never defer to his rank and status in the firm, and simply refused to be supervised by the boss’s son.

Hence; the decision to restructure the running of ‘The White House’ was taken and it was decided that a new person would be employed in the role of ‘Working Foreman’ over six men but under the direct authority of David Harrison. Keith was to become like the other ’White House’ operatives he used to supervise.

When I left ‘Harrison Gardeners’ to go to Canada, the textile firm was run by father, Mr Frank Harrison (referred to as ‘Mr Frank’) and the older of two sons, John Harrison. By the time I returned from Canada, the father had retired and the firm was now run by ‘Mr John’ while his younger brother (recently out of university), David Harrison was given charge of ‘The White House’ whose orders were increasing week by week and necessitating the employment of more workers to meet the extra demand in production required.

While I had no direct knowledge of bleaching yarn, because of the firm’s belief in my capacity to learn quickly along with my personal skills in managing workers, I was offered the role of working foreman of ‘The White House’. As my intention upon returning to England was my advancement in the textile industry, I accepted the role.

Needless to say that I knew absolutely nothing about the process of bleaching yarn peroxide white (never having worked in ‘The White House’ before), but David Harrison said that I could learn on the job as I went along and would have constant access to himself, along with the long experience of my workmate Keith, whose extensive bleaching knowledge I could constantly tap into. It was a great shame that nobody had asked Keith what he thought about me returning to the firm to take over his job, and in particular, how he might respond to his demotion from ‘White House Top Dog’ to being just another ‘White House Worker’ under my supervision?

The second week after I started working back at ‘Harrison Gardeners’, Keith Harrison decided to take a six-month sabbatical in a foreign country improving his dying knowledge and being familiarized with the new process of pressure-dying yarn black. Within 24 hours he had gone from ‘White House Manager’ to ‘Black Sabbatical Student’. I had literally been thrown in at the deep end, and what I had yet to learn about white peroxiding of yarn could only be learned from within the combined knowledge of the seven workers whom I was responsible for supervising, with the most knowledgeable about the process of peroxidising being Keith who’d worked in ‘The White House’ for the past eight years.

It will be of no great surprise to any reader that as far as Keith was concerned, I was persona non- grata; the prodigal son who had sowed my wild oats in Canada for the previous two years while he had effectively managed and run ‘The White House’, and who had now returned to take charge of his baby! Not only did Keith refuse to assist me in any way overcoming my learning curve, he deliberately set traps wherever and whenever he could that played on my lack of knowledge; traps that would lead to thousands of pounds of yarn being damaged, had another worker not spotted the pending disaster in the wings and pointed out the dangers to me.

I tried to do everything possible to make peace with Keith and acknowledge his working experience in relation to mine, especially where peroxidising whites were concerned, but whatever I did, it was never enough. Relationships became so fraught with Keith and his overall behaviour to all ‘The White House’ employees became more uncivil and obnoxious day. The more the other workers accepted my role as ‘Working Foreman’ the more Keith considered them all traitors and made his dislike of their cooperation obvious. He would never positively reply to a ‘good morning’ or ‘good night’ and did not acknowledge birthdays, Christmas greetings or even deign to congratulate one of his married workmates whose wife had just given birth to their firstborn. He effectively became ‘the workmate from hell’.

Being a relatively quick learner, I was able to get through with significant difficulty, but it wasn’t the best of atmospheres to be in charge of. The hassle did, however, prove to be good preparation for the next two textile positions that followed. Eight months after assuming the working foreman’s job in ‘The White House’, David Harrison returned from his extended sabbatical and within a day, he took back the management of ‘The White House’ and insisted that in future, all Harrison Gardeners’ employees call him ‘Mr David’. Six months later I was employed as a Finishing Foreman at another textile mill in Cleckheaton, and two years after that I became the Mill Manager at the same Cleckheaton firm.

While I had personally never done Keith any wrong, I can well understand what he did and why, without approving of his behaviour. Today, I can never hear ‘Ain’t No Pleasing You’ without thinking of Keith from ‘Harrison Gardeners’.

Love and peace Bill xxx
0 Comments

Song For Today: 11th May 2019

11/5/2019

0 Comments

 
Today’s song is ‘Portrait of My Love’ which was a song was written by Norman Newell and Cyril Ornadel. The English crooner Matt Monro released it in 1960. It became an international hit for Steve Lawrence in 1961. ‘The British Songwriter’s Guild ‘presented the ‘Ivor Novella Award’ to the co-writers of the song as being the ‘Outstanding Song of 1960’. The song has achieved many awards.

My own introduction to the song was the Matt Monro version. Matt was one of the most important crooners of my growing up years and seemed to be the natural successor to the great Bing Crosby who was still going strong. Matt became known as ‘The Man with the Golden Voice’ and during his 30-year career ‘All Music’ was to describe him as being “one of the most underrated pop vocalists of the 60s, who possessed the easiest, most perfect baritone in the business.”

His career included the UK Top Ten Hits: ’Portrait of My Love’: My Kind of Girl’: ‘Softly as I Leave You’: ‘Walk Away’: ‘Yesterday’ (originally recorded by The Beatles). Matt also recorded several film themes such as ‘From Russia with Love’ for the James Bond film of the same name, ‘Born Free’ for the film of the same name and ‘On Days Like These’ for the film ‘The Italian Job’. 

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

This song was released during my 18th year of life. This year probably represented the headiest year in the life of a teenager who thought he was God’s gift to all women; a young man who could turn on his Irish charm with ease, as well as being able to turn every female head in his vicinity by a mere look of interest from him. In fishing terminology, he considered himself the best catch any woman within fifty miles could possibly lay her hands on. Of course, this view of me by myself was over exaggerated, not grossly, but somewhat inflated I’d have to admit.

Apart from my ability to turn the heads of female beauties, I was determined to turn this unfair and unjust world on its head as far as improving the lot of my fellow working-class man and woman, whatever their skin colour or nationality. At the age of 18 years, I was elected Shop Steward of the Mill where I’d worked a couple of years and which employed 400 men and women. I made the national newspapers, being the youngest trade union shop steward in Great Britain. At the time (1960/61), England was a poor example to the rest of the world when it came to racial discrimination. This was a time when no black person could join a union, become a club member of any Working Men’s Club or rent a property. Landlords would place notices in their windows of ‘No Blacks: No Irish: And No Dogs’

Because of my earlier life experiences, I never held these national prejudices. As a 12-year-old, I had a traffic accident that left me with multiple life-threatening injuries, including a damaged spine which suggested that if I lived, I’d never walk again. My life was saved on the operating table by a West African surgeon at ‘Batley Hospital’ (long since closed). The surgeon had saved my life after my trapped body had twisted around the main drive shaft of the vehicle that ran over me; leaving me a mangled mess of broken bones in body torso, arms, legs and chest ribs. Following this experience, I vowed always to highlight and fight against racial prejudice wherever I encountered it.

Within one year of becoming a Shop Steward in a 140-year-old firm that had never previously experienced a worker’s strike, I called the firm’s first strike. I had been given the opportunity of dealing with three issues I thought strongly of at one go. A West African worker had applied for a vacancy but had been refused by the mill owners because of his origin and skin colour. I knew that there would be at least half of the workforce who would never go on strike for this cause, but I also knew that the whole workforce would go on strike for a rise in production rates (that benefitted all male workers) besides halving the pay-gap discrimination level which existed between men and women who operated the same drying machines and did the same job within Harrison Gardners.

By uniting all three causes into one worker’s demand, I eventually secured what I wanted, and so did the 400 plus men and women in the firm. The West African was offered a job but decided to turn it down. This was the issue that received the most media publicity, which at the very least drew the attention of West Yorkshire to the degree of racial prejudice and discrimination that took place daily in their county.

Whenever I hear ‘Portrait of My Love‘ by Matt Monro, my mind is instantly returned to those heady years before I emigrated to Canada in my early twenties. The ‘portrait of my love’ would contain all the beautiful young women in my life for many years thereafter, but it would also be a portrait of positive change in society that I might one day see become a reality. I hope that the day will eventually arrive when England becomes a more socially just society where character is more important than colour of skin, where the able-bodied and the crippled walk hand in hand, where man and woman, girl and boy enjoy equal rights and status and ‘being different’ equals 'individuality' and ‘diversity’ and not something questionable.

Since my 20s onwards, I have worked towards a fairer and juster society in my work, my actions, my writings, my involvement in charitable causes, my raising of awareness in all areas of discrimination; in everything I say and do. Anything good I have done would never have been done by me had that West African surgeon been unable to save my life at the age of 12 years.

In my wife, Sheila, who is more beautiful in face and heart than Mona Lisa herself, I have the most marriageable ‘portrait of my love’. I will, however, never abandon the image of a ‘portrait of my love’ I know I will never see. That portrait is the love by mankind towards all mankind. It is a portrait of love by all towards God’s people, creatures, nature and world. What a beautiful and heavenly image to behold.

Love and peace Bill xxx
0 Comments

Song For Today: 10th May 2019

10/5/2019

0 Comments

 
Today’s song is ‘Cradle of Love’ which I dedicate to my sister-in-law, Jill in celebration of her birthday today. ‘Cradle of Love’ is a rock song written by Billy Idol and David Werner for Idol's 1990 fourth studio album ‘Charmed Life’. This song became one of Idol's biggest hits in the United States, where it reached Number 2 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’. It was also Idol's first, and (so far) only No. 1 hit on the ‘Mainstream Rock Tracks’ chart in the U.S. In the United Kingdom it never took off and stalled at Number 34 in the charts. 
​
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I dedicate this song to my sister-in-law, Jill on her birthday that she celebrates today. Jill is the sister to my ex-wife. Janet. When I courted her older sister after returning from my ‘time out’ in Canada, Jill was but a child (10 years younger than her sister Janet). Jill was still being taught in Primary School. She wore pigtails and sported a spotty face. With her mother having been newly widowed but a short time earlier than me coming on the scene, I naturally did as much as I could to occupy both widow and youngest child when her oldest daughter (my fiancée) was resident at ‘McMillian's Teaching College’ in Bradford, training to become an Infant Teacher for three years of her life.

Little sister, Jill naturally formed a closer than usual bond with me due to having no other father figure to relate with, and I was only too willing to fill the emotional void wherever possible that the loss of her father at such a young age made. I would frequently take Jill and her widowed mother out at weekends in the car and would do odd jobs within my capabilities about the home that her dad would normally have done. Indeed, my relationship with her mother was never one that is customary between a young man and his future mother-in-law. Instead, she treated me more like a son. When Janet and I wed and had two children to our marriage, it was Dorothy who came to our house between 9.00am and 5.00pm daily to babysit her grandsons. This was a task she loved doing and her daily care cover enabled both me and my wife to hold down our full-time jobs.

During the 13 years of my marriage to her oldest daughter, my relationship with Dorothy (mum-in-law) grew from strength to strength. Even when it became obvious that my marriage to her daughter Janet wasn’t working out, (despite the birth of two lovely sons, James and Adam), Dorothy never commented adversely or offered the traditional unasked-for mother-in-law advice.

When the children were aged 4 going on 5, Dorothy was diagnosed with advanced cancer of the lungs. She was a smoker in her early 60s, and instead of going into a hospice (a place she would never have gone to spend her last month of life), I insisted that she return to my marital home to die. I took compassionate leave from work so that I might be with her during the daytime hours when her daughter was working as an infant teacher at the nearby school. It was somewhat difficult because the doctor had never actually told Dorothy that she was dying (she having been assessed by him as being someone who did not want to know of her imminent death). She was with us around one month and I stayed off work during this time to nurse her as she died in our house. It was during her last few days of life when she asked me to do something for her. I asked her ‘what?’ and she held my hand and said, “Promise me, Billy, that you will never change? Never stop being the person you are!” She might have asked all manner of things but instead, near the moment of her death, she acknowledged the love and respect she truly felt for me, God rest her soul.

After her mother’s death, my wife obtained a significant financial inheritance and insisted that we end our marriage, and over the next dozen years after our separation and divorce, my ex-wife refused me whatever access to our two children that she could. Through numerous court hearings that ran into the dozens (costing me tens of thousands of pounds I could ill afford in the process, but was nevertheless obliged to pay), the only person who was prepared to speak for me on my behalf in court was not any of our six close neighbours (who did know the truth, but would not say so in court because all their infant children were being taught by my wife, Janet at the school they attended ). The only person who knew the truth and who was prepared to testify to it in court was my wife’s younger sister, Jill. She was the one person who stood up for me in open court on several occasions and who financially also assisted me when I most needed it.

Jill, ever since you first came into my life, I have loved you for the good person you were then and still are. You ask for very little out of this life and expect even less, yet you give all. I have often thought (like the romantic films of my early youth would frequently show) that I ought to have waited another ten years for you to mature into womanhood and walk the youngest sister down the aisle instead of the older one! There is only one compliment worthy of paying you on this special day that celebrates your birthday, Jill. It is the very same compliment your dear mother paid to me on her death bed, “Promise me, Jill, that you will never change? Never stop being the person you are!”

A very happy birthday, Jill, and please accept my song today in celebration of your special day as a reflection of the love and respect I hold for you. Love Billy xxx

Love and peace Bill xxx
0 Comments

Song For Today: 9th May 2019

9/5/2019

0 Comments

 
Today’s song is ‘Down on My Knees’. I have looked on the internet for background information relating to this song but cannot find any details at all.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I became acquainted with this song during the 1980s.The group that sang it was ‘Bread’. I had just become separated from my wife and two children a month earlier. At the time, my wife told me that she no longer wished to be married, period. She did have the grace to say it wasn’t me that she didn’t want to be married to, but any man! We had been married for 13 years but the latter six years had been downhill all the way. When I look back on events, I can now see what I couldn’t see then; that she was an ill woman who was suffering from what we now know to be Post Natal Depression following the birth of our two sons.

Never showing any inclination to be involved in any way whatsoever with our two children after their birth, I put it down to the ‘Baby Blues’ as the condition was then generally known and did the only thing any father could do in the circumstances. When the mother of his infants refuses to breastfeed, bathe, nurse, cuddle, comfort, nappy change, put to bed, get up in the middle of the night with and dress and undress their offspring (for the first five years of their lives), I effectively played the roles of mother and father to our boys. I did it, in the belief that my wife had some form of mental/depressive illness I couldn’t explain.

My ex-wife was a teacher of five-year-olds; ironically a job she loved to bits. The teaching profession proved to be her only interest and life saviour (or so it seemed) as I worked as a newly-trained Probation Officer. The children were cared for during the working day by my widowed mother-in-law. I never made my marital circumstances public knowledge to family, neighbours, work colleagues or friends until my wife started leaving the children alone during my absence. After fearing she would commit suicide (as she had threatened to do a few times) if I did not leave her, an agreement was made between us to separate.

We would separate but not divorce. As she had never involved herself with our two children, I would have custody of them both. To facilitate this, I agreed to give up my Probation Officer work in order to become a full-time house parent until the children were old enough for me to resume a part-time job. My wife could see and have stay-over access with the children whenever and for as long as she wanted. In return, I would sign over our modern three-bedroomed house to her sole ownership (worth £40,000 then and with £900 remaining mortgage: due to an inheritance we both had at the start of our marriage). I would purchase a nearby property so that the children could continue to attend the same school where their mother taught.

Within a month of leaving her, and after full ownership of the marital abode had been transferred to her, she reneged on every fundamental aspect of our separation agreement. She pressed for amounts of child and wifely maintenance I could not afford, leaving me repaying solicitor's fees for almost seven years. She refused me custody of the children as promised, besides denying me any type of access to the boys over the following two years (defying court orders to the contrary that threatened imprisonment if she didn’t comply). There was simply no way that I could possibly apply to enforce the Court Order and have the children’s mother committed to prison in default.

For the following two years I only saw my children by chance as they played in their school playground. She didn’t even allow me to speak with them on the phone or correspond with them in any way. All the letters I wrote to them were returned unopened and even my birthday and Christmas presents to them I left outside their door were dumped or given away by her. Don’t get me wrong, although I believed my ex-wife’s actions to then be the actions of a truly wicked and evil woman, I have long ago accepted that they represented the actions of an ill woman who could not possibly have been aware of the tremendous degree of hurt she was causing me and the two boys.

For a full two years, I longed to see my children and to find out what was going on in their little lives. Every night for two years I cried myself to sleep. I hurt so much inside, I don’t know now however I managed to work during the day or remain emotionally undisturbed and stay sane. In moments of greatest desperation, I seriously contemplated abducting them from their school playground and taking them to Ireland where I was born. I knew that as an Irish citizen that I would be beyond the jurisdiction of the British Court there.

The loss of contact with my two children were two years out of my life and their little lives that can never be replaced. I was truly ‘down on my knees’ as today’s song reminds me. I do not know how I emotionally managed to survive those two years or how I managed to hold down my job? It is beyond my current comprehension how I managed to keep the law of the land and how I managed not to bite the bullet and give vent to my most angry feelings and have my wife committed to prison for her blatant and lengthy defiance of prior access orders of court? I don’t know how I emotionally got through this most emotionally difficult period of my life, but somehow, I managed it!

We will all most certainly get to be ‘down on our knees’ at least once during our life when circumstances and events knock us for a six when least expected and our feelings of separation, loss, bereavement or rejection has the power to lay us low and potentially keep us down. It is at such times in our lives we can only survive by standing up to what life throws at us again; and if another knockdown reoccurs, we need to stand up again, again and again. The only time our pride should allow us to stay down is when we are dead, and our body is nought but a corpse!

However, many knockdowns we experience, whatever the level of pain or the degree of hurt we feel, however many times we struggle back to our feet, whatever fete of strength and endurance it requires to stay standing, hear this clearly and believe it with every ounce of conviction you can muster: ‘THE MORE KNOCKDOWNS WE EXPERIENCE IN LIFE, AND THE MORE OFTEN WE SUCCESSFULLY STRUGGLE TO STAND BACK UP, THE STRONGER WE AUTOMATICALLY BECOME, AND THE EASIER IT IS TO STAND UP TO EVERY POTENTIAL KNOCKDOWN EVENT AND KNOCKOUT BLOW IN LIFE THAT FOLLOWS! ‘

Love and peace Bill xxx
0 Comments

Song For Today: 8th May 2019

8/5/2019

0 Comments

 
Today’s song is ‘Bobby Sox to Stockings’ This song was written by Russell Faith, Clarence Kehner and Richard DiCicco, and performed by Frankie Avalon. The song reached Number 8 on the ‘Billboard Top 100’ and Number 26 on the ‘R&B Chart in 1959’. 
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Please note that I originally sang this song for my niece Jessica's 18th birthday a few months ago, but it is an appropriate song for my message today. I have always regarded this song as a ‘coming of age’ which speaks to a passage of rights of the growing adolescent girl. These turbulent years between thirteen and sixteen are a time when no adult seems capable in the young girl’s mind of understanding her situation and truly knowing her needs like the new boy she is dating does. At a time when the young girl’s blood flows to reveal her change in status from ‘girl’ to ‘young woman’, all her body sensations intensify to the point that the thoughts in her head run the danger of mental explosion. Her brain appears to abandon all manner of reason, and nothing or no one who is incapable of seeing that ‘she is old enough to be in love’ will be listened to or conversed with.

It is, in many ways, not unlike an earthquake taking place inside the growing girl. The onset of her menstrual cycle mirrors a form of human earthquake taking place inside her mind and body. Seismic change starts to occur which shatters all former stability of parental advice and anchorage that once kept the girl grounded, and as the plates of parental/child resistance begin to rub against each other, potentially greater destructive forces are brought into play.

This is the stage in many young girl’s lives when they are more likely to go off the rails and engage in all manner of inexplicable behaviour. They can become overconcerned with body image, think themselves to be too fat, too spotty, too ugly, too unlovable etc. This is their most dangerous age to become anorexic, engage in drug experimentation, give too much consideration to what other school pupils think of them or say about them. Peer opinion comes to matter much more than parental advice. This is also the age when running away from home becomes a greater likelihood.

It is such times in your young daughter’s development when she requires a mother’s love and understanding more than ever before.

Whereas society tends to focus upon the physiological body changes taking place, too little attention is given to the mental and psychological shifts that are also occurring as she shifts from a girl into young womanhood.

At the most basic level, when adolescence arrives in a young girl’s life, this is a crucial stage where her involvement and quality of interaction with her mother assumes greater importance. Sensible mothers who can afford are well advised to take their adolescent daughter into town on a shopping spree. Her change in body status from girl to a young woman is deserving of being fitted out with a brand, new wardrobe.

This time, however, allow your daughter to select the store she shops in and the design of clothes she chooses to buy for wearing. This is a time for mum’s lips to remain tightly closed and her purse wide open as her daughter selects stylish shoes that look great even though they may not walk as smartly as other footwear do. This is the time when the mother does not raise her eyebrows as her daughter buys a fashionable dress with a higher hemline than previously worn. This is an occasion in her young daughter’s life when 'style' is permitted to trump 'common sense'.

The very first change of clothing wear the young girl will get her mother to buy will be stockings instead of the Bobby Socks, to denote that she is no longer a girl but is now in the season of budding womanhood.

Love and peace. Bill xxx
0 Comments

Song for Today: 7th May 2019

7/5/2019

0 Comments

 
Today’s song is ‘Claudette’. Very little has been recorded about this popular song that the Everly Brothers and Roy Orbison recorded in the late 1950s. I know that Claudette is the feminine version of the male name Claude. I have, however, despite being a lifelong fan of both Roy Orbison and the Everly Brothers always preferred the version of this song by Dwight Yoakam, the son of a gas-station owner who was born in Kentucky, and who moved to Los Angeles in 1977 with the intent of becoming a recording artist.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I have only known one female in my life called Claudette and that was her middle name that she never used as she hated it. This haberdashery woman from Kentucky initially introduced herself to me as Annabelle C. Crompton (it may have been either Crompton or Cropper as it is now over 50 years ago, and time has faded my memory to such particulars).

As is prone to happen, when a dashing young male traveller who has emigrated to Canada from West Yorkshire meets the eye-catching 25-year-old beauty from Kentucky who is bored with her life and just doesn’t know what next to do, close liaison is always on the cards. For the following three days and nights, Annabelle and I spent a large part of our time ‘getting to know each’ much better.

One late evening while walking together, I asked Annabelle what the initial ‘C’ of her middle name stood for. At first, she refused to tell me, and it was easy to tell that my mere reference to the ‘C’ had acutely embarrassed her. It later transpired that the ‘C’ stood for Claudette and that Annabelle was, in fact, the middle name that her parents had given her, and Claudette was her first name. She told me that she had been ridiculed so often between birth and her 18th year of life that when she left home and moved to Kentucky some five or six years earlier, she switched her first and middle names and effectively assumed an identity more to her liking. I asked her why she had then chosen to keep the memory of a name she disliked intensely as an initial between her Christian and surname and simply replied that while she hated the sound of Claudette, she was rather partial to hearing ‘Annabelle C. Cro……’. Her final word on the matter, “It has quite a nice ring to it, don’t you think, Bill?”

I suppose I’ll never know if this explanation was a Kentucky joke or an American poke at the Irish man from West Yorkshire, England where middle names were then as uncommon as a four-leaved clover. Now, whenever I think back on my brief stop-over in Kentucky in the year of 1964, it’s never Claudette I think about, but the fetching Annabelle; the American beauty who captured my mind and entrapped my body for three marvellous days and nights that only a good man would want to forget.

Love and peace Bill xxx
0 Comments
<<Previous

    Archives

    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012