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    • 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
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      • 'Growing up with grandparents'
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Song for Today: 31st October 2019

31/10/2019

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I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friend Nick Kirkby who lives in Lafayette in Tennesee, U.S.A. Yesterday and today, are extremely difficult days for Nick to get through. They hold sad memories for Nick, and this dedication is simply to say, we are with you at this difficult time, Nick.

Today’s song is ‘Everybody Hurts’. This song is by American rock band R.E.M. and was originally released on the band's 1992 album ‘Automatic for the People’ and was also released as a single in 1993. It peaked at Number 29 on the US ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chart and reached the top ten on the charts in Australia, Canada, France, Iceland, the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom.

Much of the song was written by drummer Bill Berry, although as R.E.M. share song-writing credits among its members, it is unknown how much he actually wrote. Commenting on the making of the track, guitarist, Peter Buck said, "’Everybody Hurts’ is similar to ‘Man on the Moo’. Bill brought it in, and it was a one-minute long country-and-western song. It didn't have a chorus or a bridge. It had the verse... it kind of went around and around, and he was strumming it. We went through about four different ideas and how to approach it and eventually came to that Stax, Otis Redding, ‘Pain in My Heart’ kind of vibe. I'm not sure if Michael would have copped that reference, but to a lot of our fans, it was a Staxxy-type thing. It took us forever to figure out the arrangement and who was going to play what, and then Bill ended up not playing on the original track. It was me and Mike and a drum machine. And then we all overdubbed.”

In 1995, British emotional support listening service ‘The Samaritans’, in response to the high suicide rate but low-crisis-service take-up amongst young men, launched a UK press advertising campaign consisting solely of the lyrics to ‘Everybody Hurts’ and the charity's hotline number. Warner Bros. placed the song on R.E.M. ‘In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988-2003’ in 2003’.
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Never was there a saying so true as ‘Everybody hurts, sometime’. There are many ways a person can be hurt, whether physically, mentally, psychologically or emotionally. Just as everyone pains differently, so it is where ‘hurt’ is concerned also. Whether one is hurt by the actions of another person deliberately or by accidental means or by unusual and unexpected events and circumstance, there is no time span that a person’s hurt may remain with them.

As a Probation Officer for 26 years in West Yorkshire, I have worked with and have seen first-hand, the hurt that is felt by an individual whose person has been deeply wounded. I have worked with people who have both committed or had committed to them the most horrendous of deadly assaults or who have experienced the most unspeakable abuse imaginable. I have worked with individuals who witnessed terrible events or have attempted suicide on many occasions. I have seen people attend the hospital bedside of a relative who was dying with cancer or who has had to bury a child or grandchild of theirs or view the corpse of a family member in a cold mortuary. I have worked with men and women who hurt with the pain of a broken heart at the ending of a relationship when the other person has betrayed, deserted, divorced or dumped them. I have also worked and known of many elderly people who live on their own, and who rarely step outside their front door or have a visitor step inside their house. I have known family members refuse to speak to one another for years and years; indeed, for so long that neither party can remember precisely what caused the initial rift and why they fell out!

Then, there is all the unnecessary hurt experienced by millions of people across the globe that is daily visible when we turn on the television. There is all the hurt that is caused by internal strife in war-torn countries, civil unrest, world food shortages and famine caused by failed crops, mass migration of individuals and families crossing dangerous waters in unsafe crafts in search of a better life or dangerously stowed by traffickers in the fridges of continental lorries. Add to all this suffering, the daily struggles of individuals sleeping rough in the doorways and on the streets of England, families who are dependent on food banks and sub-standard, cramped accommodation to live in and persons of ill-health who cannot get the medical treatment they require to be pain free: add all this hurt throughout the world and feel the destructive forces of human desperation in its wake.

There is so much ‘hurt’ all around us that I would have to conclude that ‘hurt’ is a natural part of life, however unwelcome it may be and in whatever form we might experience it. If the experience is used in its most positive way instead of focusing solely on its destructive elements, it can strengthen us instead of weakening us, and make us more able to withstand and endure future ‘hurt’ we might experience.

As a person who has had to cope with physical pain since the age of 11 years, after a wagon run over me down and left me with multiple life-threatening injuries, I know that pain can represent both a good thing as well as a bad thing in one’s life. My injuries included a damaged spine that led the doctors to tell me and my parents that I’d never walk again as I had no feeling beneath the waist. I didn’t walk again for three years after my accident, but for those three years, I did engage in a number of meditational activities, along with visual imagination exercises. I knew that my damaged spine had left me without any movement or feeling beneath my waistline. I knew that my legs wouldn’t enable me to walk again until I could feel pain in them again. For me, ‘feeling pain in my legs again was feeling life in my legs again’. When eventually I started to feel the pain return to my legs, I knew that I would walk again. For whatever reason, my nerve passage from brain through to the spine and to legs had reconnected.

Over the immediate years following my accident as a young boy, my legs were broken and reset over fifty times. All my life I experienced pain in my legs and had to retire at the age of 53 years on the grounds of immobility. All my leg breaks and operations left me with severe osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis which had gradually worsened over the past twenty-four years since my early 50s. My legs have always given me pain that increases in intensity year-upon-year. I know that it is the constant presence of pain in my legs since my childhood which has given me a high pain threshold level. The pain in my legs also act as accurately as any barometer and my legs tell me in advance to the television weather forecasts, when the weather is changing and will be damper and colder.

Of all the different ways that pain hurts, I can tell you that a broken arm or leg hurts infinitely less than a broken heart and heals much faster. I can tell you that pain created in the mind is just as physically painful as pain produced by breakage of bones or infection of the body. I can tell you that the loss of a loved one through death, divorce or desertion can hurt every bit as much as the loss of a limb. I can tell you, that not being told as a child by one’s parent that you are loved creates a hurt that never heals.

Of all the hurts one can ever experience, the greatest hurt of all is ‘to feel unloved’. Look to your nearest and dearest at the earliest opportunity and tell them, ‘I love you’. Do not let your children go to bed tonight (whatever their ages are) without telling them that you love them. Do this one thing and you will deny them of the greatest hurt they could ever feel.

I dedicate my song today to Nick Kirkby of Lafayette in Tennesee, America, for whom Halloween is certainly no treat. If you look at the ‘Introduction Section’ of Nick’s Facebook page, the very first words one reads are, “I don't do Halloween anymore. My Dad died on Oct 31 and my Mom died on Oct 30. It just depresses me.”

I hope that you can get through this Halloween period, Nick, in the knowledge that there are many people who are spread near and far, all over the world who love you. ‘Everybody hurts sometime’ as the song says. Please know that the hurt you feel at this time of the year is borne from the love you felt for your parents when they lived and will be shared alongside you today by many people from your Facebook Family whom you may not know or ever meet. Bill x
Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song For Today: 30th October 2019

30/10/2019

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I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friend, Betsy Holley from Syracuse, New York.

Today’s song is ‘Bette Davies Eyes’. This song was written and composed by Donna Weiss and Jackie De Shannon, and was made popular by American singer, Kim Carnes. De Shannon recorded it in 1974. Carnes's 1981 version spent nine weeks at No. 1 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chart and was Billboard’s biggest hit of 1981. The song was also a big success on the ‘Dance Chart’ and won the Grammy Awards for ‘Song of The Year’ and ‘Record of the Year’. The song was also a Number 1 hit in 21 countries and peaked at Number 10 in the United Kingdom. It was also high in the charts of many countries outside the 21 countries it reached Number 1. The song was ranked at number 12 on ‘Billboard’s Hot 100’, in the first 50 years of the Billboard chart.

After the song’s release, actress Bette Davis (then 73 years old), wrote letters to Carnes, Weiss, and De Shannon to thank all three of them for making her "a part of modern times," and said her grandson now looked up to her. After their Grammy wins, Bette Davis sent them roses as well.

Those ' Bette Davis eyes’ which were the actresses most famous trademark could have been indicative of a medical condition known as Graves' disease, which is a serious thyroid and immunological disorder. This disorder causes an inflammatory response in the muscles around the eyes which makes them swell. In my estimation, however, they will forever remain beautiful ‘come to bed eyes’, and the only possible medical suggestion to me would be their unfailing inducement to all-male admirers towards the condition of ‘love sickness’.

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I first became aware of this song when it was covered by Kim Carnes in 1981, although it had originally been recorded and released in 1974.

When this song was first released, I was 32 years old and had commenced my new career as a Probation Officer in West Yorkshire, one year earlier. In those ‘good old days’ before the austerity that is common today, every Probation Officer in Huddersfield had their own office, their own personal secretary that took shorthand notes for all our dictation and typed the contents into the files on our clients. We were also allocated a certain number of clients to work with and specific duties to undertake; then left alone to get on with it. Nobody concerned oneself how many hours a week an officer worked or how many days they compressed their work into, or which method of preferred discipline they chose to follow in carrying out that work PROVIDING IT WAS DONE TO A HIGH ENOUGH LEVEL OF PROFESSIONAL SATISFACTION. The only estimation of success was if the client stopped offending; anything else was superfluous.

How different the job is today! Almost every condition of work currently militates against job satisfaction and Probation Officers are cooped in open office spaces liked crammed chickens penned between Easter and Christmas, unable to roam outside the earshot and eyesight of their supervising cockerel. The only officer in the entire Service to have their own office and personal secretary today is the ‘Chief Probation Officer’; the top dog.

The working offices we occupied in my day even had the colour of carpets we chose every seven years, and we could personalise our wall space to make it homely and relaxingly conducive to us.

Among my office wall space, (which tended to reflect my own cultural/historical/political interests) were posters of Stratford and Avon Theatre productions that I visited four times annually between 1970-1976, along with a few political/historical posters such as a poster of ‘The Jarrow Marchers’ of the 1930s and also a bloody scene depicting ‘The Peterloo Massacre’. These posters; one of which depicted a young woman in her debut at the Stratford Theatre who was to become one of our greatest actresses (Judy Dench) would have been worth many hundreds of £s today, had it not been lost when I moved offices to the Batley area.

Chief among all my wall posters that eased my mind and satisfied my senses whenever my eyes rested on them, was one that must have seemed totally incongruent to any observer who thought that they knew me. It was a large poster with a faceless pair of eyes looking out at me. They were the eyes of Bette Davis. This facial feature of the film star had enthralled me ever since I used to collect bubble-gum cards with the pictures of film stars on as a growing boy.

That look in those eyes represented a changed meaning for me as I grew from 7-year-old boy to 14-year-old teenager. The difference in seven years growth from boy to teenager essentially moved from a look of untrusting ‘sinister’ to that of invitingly ‘sensual’. Those eyes had taken on a ‘come-to-bed-eyes’ representation for me.

I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friend, Betsy Holley from Syracuse, New York. You don’t know this Betsy (until now, that is), but whenever I look at your Facebook page, I readily discern you as being a serious woman who concerns herself with important issues of the moment.

If I could wave a magic wand and do one thing, Betsy, I would willingly place your beautiful ‘come-to-bed-eyes’ inside the face of the ‘Statue of Liberty’ that stands in New York Bay as a universal symbol of ‘freedom’ and ‘welcome’ to all. These two qualities are what your eyes truly represent to this 77-year-old man who admires them today. Thank you for being my Facebook friend. Bill x

Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song for Today: 29th October 2019

29/10/2019

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I jointly dedicate my song today to four Facebook friends, each of whom celebrates their birthday today. They are Denise Gibson from Oxenhope, West Yorkshire, Robin Wegman from Waterville, Ohio in America, Wendy Dunlop who lives in Northampton, Northamptonshire, and Eva Flavin from Portlaw, County Waterford in Ireland. Happy birthday everyone and have a smashing day. Thank you all for being my Facebook friends.

Today’s song is ‘Love Hurts’. This song was written and composed by the American songwriter Boudleaux Bryant. It was first recorded by the Everly Brothers in July 1960 and the song is also well known from a 1975 international hit version by the Scottish hard rock band, Nazareth. It was also a top-five hit in the UK in 1975 by the English singer Jim Capaldi

The most successful recording of the song was by the hard rock band, Nazareth. They took the song to the U.S. Top 10 in 1975 and had a Number 1 in Norway and the Netherlands. In the UK the most successful version of the song was by former Traffic member Jim Capaldi, who took it to Number 4 in the charts in November 1975 during an 11-week run. The song was also covered by Cher in 1975 for her album ‘Stars’. Cher re-recorded the song in 1991 for her album of the same name. Rod Stewart recorded the song in 2006 for his album ‘Still the Same-Great Rock Classics of Our Time’ which was Number 1 on the ‘Billboard 200 Chart’. Roy Orbison covered ‘Love Hurts’ in 1961 and issued it as the B-side to Running Scared’. While ‘Running Scared’ was an international hit, the B-side only picked up significant airplay in Australia. Consequently, chart figures for Australia show ‘Running Scared’/’Love Hurts’ as a double A-Side, with both sides peaking at Number 5. This makes Orbison's recording of ‘Love Hurts’ the first version to be a hit.

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I was in my early thirties and working as a Probation Officer in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire when this song was first released. Over my 26-year Probation-Officer experience, I don’t think there was one day when I didn’t witness or experience the hurt of one individual or another. Sometimes I could help alleviate their hurt in some measure but often the best I could do was to understand it and share it empathetically with them.

We all experience hurt over our lifetime and the one thing I have learned about love, as the song says, is that ‘Love Hurts’. Love can hurt by being ‘too little’, leading one to feel unloved and inadequate. Love can also hurt by being ‘too much’, that it becomes overpowering and too controlling to the recipient of it. Love can hurt when distance separates the couple; especially if such distance is enforced like army service call-up for instance or working away from home with one’s occupational duties. Love will hurt when love is lost as a result of one side betraying the other through an act of unfaithfulness. Love hurts when bereavement leads to a more permanent separation. Love used to hurt so many men and women of homosexual nature before same-sex coupling was accepted by society. At a time, when to show such love led to imprisonment, their love was kept concealed from the rest of family and society. Love of one’s religion can also hurt the individual when it leads to discrimination or being ostracised by one’s family, friends or community. Love of a favourite sport, pleasure, occupation or any activity that preoccupies both one’s time and attention will almost certainly hurt the loved ones who frequently feel less loved by the absent one. Love hurts if one cannot find a loving partner, despite all of one’s efforts to secure a lifelong mate.

When the norm in society is to have several attempts in securing a satisfactory, loving and lasting relationship before one hopefully gets it right, not being able to have at least one stab at it can seem grossly unfair. When you are a person who has never had a steady boyfriend or girlfriend because something about you lacks the right currency to strike a purchase in the marriage market, you start to doubt your own sense of worth.

There is no doubt that something so valuable as feeling love for someone and being loved in return is simply ‘as good as it gets’. It ought to be of no surprise, therefore, that if one ‘never gets’, they instinctively know they are missing out on the greatest feeling of all; and just as love for some people can hurt, the absence of love for others hurts far more.

I jointly dedicate my song today to four Facebook friends, each of whom celebrates their birthday today. They are, Denise Gibson from Oxenhope, West Yorkshire (very near to where I currently live) : Robin Wegman from Waterville, Ohio in America ( a place I have never been but was in nearby Chicago in the American Midwest once) : Wendy Dunlop who lives in Northampton, Northamptonshire (where I once spent the most enjoyable of romantic weekends with a total stranger) and Eva Flavin from Portlaw, County Waterford in Ireland (the village where I was born). Happy birthday everyone. I hope that you all have a smashing day. Thank you all for being my Facebook friends.

Love and peace. Bill xxx
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Song for Today: 28th October 2019

28/10/2019

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I dedicate my song today to my only living uncle, Tom Fanning of Cleckheaton whose birthday it is today.

My song today is ‘When I Fall in Love’. This popular song, written by Victor Young (music) and Edward Heyman (lyrics). It was introduced in the film, ‘One Minute to Zero’ and Jeri Southern sang on the first recording released in April 1952. The song has become a standard, with many artists recording it; the first hit version was sung by Doris Day in July 1952.

A 1996 cover by Natalie Cole included a ‘duet with her father Nat King Cole, by way of vocals from his 1956 cover, won 1996 Grammys for ‘Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals’ and ‘Best Instrumental Arrangement with Accompanying Vocals’. The song has been covered by too many famous artists to name but is mostly associated with Nat King Cole, whose recording reached Number 2 in the ‘UK Singles Chart’ in 1957.

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My mother was the eldest of seven children, as I am also her firstborn of seven. Her youngest sibling was her brother Tom. I was born in the front room of my Maternal Grandparent’s house in Portlaw, County Waterford. So, Tom and I were probably born in the same bed and bedroom, but on different mattresses. When I was born, Uncle Tom was 7 years old.

As the oldest child, It was the chief task of my mother to always keep an eye on her older siblings, and no doubt she was charged by her mother (as was I) that this responsibility was lifelong and didn’t end when one got married and set up their own home. Ireland was short of work during the late forties and fifties, and the only prospects a young married couple had of a better life was across the sea in England. So, my father got a job as a miner in a West Yorkshire colliery and for the first two years, me and dad stayed with his sister, Eva, who lived in Bradford, while mum and two younger sisters stayed with my mum in Ireland.

When dad got a one-bedroom tied-cottage with his job, mum and my sisters, Mary and Eileen followed and family life started in England. There was only room for one double bed and my parents and her three children slept in it top to tail for five years.

About five years after migrating to England, we were fortunate to get a brand new three-bedroomed council house on a new estate nearby, Windybank Estate. I’d only been given my own bed in my own room for a few months when my mother’s brother, Willie. decided to migrate to West Yorkshire. Naturally, he came to live at our brand-new council house with his older sister and her family. Poor dad agreed until Willie got set up elsewhere. It took Uncle Willie four years until he found alternate lodgings in London!

I had forfeited my own bedroom to an uncle I hardly knew. Meanwhile, my mother continued with her increased breeding of the Catholic child factory and a few more siblings of mine were born. She stopped when there were seven children in total. The trouble was that when Uncle Willie left our house, after four years of free lodging, Uncle Johnnie caught the next ferry over, and he took his older brother’s place in my bedroom. Uncle Johnnie stayed for three years until he married. Just as I was about to get a good night’s sleep as a sixteen-year-old teenager, Uncle Tom caught the ferry and arrived on my mother’s doorstep. Mum put her youngest brother up until he wed two years later.

The one thing that I will never forget about Uncle Tom was that he was always a good singer; probably the best singer in his family. I recall that his favourite song was ‘When I Fall In Love’; a song he sang by invitation on many a night out in later years. He married and lived down Cleckheaton and had two sons, Nigel and Russell.

One week ago, Uncle Tom had a stroke that left him speechless and placed him in Calderdale Hospital, Halifax, where he still is. Since being in the hospital, Uncle Tom has had another stroke and is seriously ill. His wife, Aunty Kathleen has Alzheimer’s for a while now and their son, Nigel has recently flown from Australia to be by his father’s bedside.

It is Uncle Tom’s 84th birthday today; a factor he will probably be unaware of in his hospital bed and wholly unable to celebrate in any meaningful way. The most loving thing I can do for my only surviving uncle is to sing him his favourite song, the song he sang every day when he lived with us., shared our family house and took my bed. Happy birthday, Uncle Tom. Although you may not be aware, despite all past disagreements between us, I love you, we all love you and pray for your recovery. Your nephew, Billy x

Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song for Today: 27th October 2019

27/10/2019

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I dedicate my song today to Lizzy. Lizzy is the daughter of my lifelong friend, Tony Walsh and his wife, Lily, who lives in Carrick-on-Suir. It is Lizzy’s birthday today.

Today’s song is ‘Caledonia’. This song is a modern Scottish folk ballad written by Dougie MacLean in 1977. The chorus of the song features the lyrics “Caledonia’, you're calling me, and now I'm going home", the term ‘Caledonia’ is a Latin word for Scotland. The song became the most popular of all MacLean's recordings and something of an anthem for Scottish folk singers and nation lovers. ‘Caledonia’ has been covered by a great number of artists.

MacLean wrote the song in less than 10 minutes on a beach in Brittany, France, as he felt homesick for Scotland. He said: “I was in my early 20s and had been busking around with some Irish guys. I was genuinely homesick. I’d always lived in Perthshire. I played it to the guys when I got back to the youth hostel where we were staying and that was the final straw – we all went home the next day." He adds: "It took about 10 minutes but sometimes that’s how songs happen. I'm still amazed at how much it has become part of common culture. There’s not a pub singer, busker or pipe band that doesn’t play it."

‘Caledonia’ has been covered by a great number of artists. Most of these covers have been by artists from either Scotland or Ireland, and it has been popular amongst artists specialising in Celtic music. There have also been some adaptations by non-Celtic performers

‘Caledonia’ was first recorded by MacLean and published in his 1979 joint album credited to Alan Roberts and Doug MacLean that also carried the title ‘Caledonia’. The song is very similar in its sentiments to a much earlier song called ‘Jean and Caledonia’.

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It doesn’t matter where one was born, grew up in early childhood, lived as adult, or where one died; our birthplace and homeland will always retain a special place in our heart. My own national flag never needs hoisting to know that my blood runs green through my veins, as what dear old Ireland stands for it is ever-present in my values, religious faith and belief system. Our homeland forms the core of our character, the backbone of our beliefs and the dreams of our destiny. It was here where it first began, and it will remain there until one’s last breath expires on our death bed.

All my life, I grew up with the traditional telling of jokes that commenced, ‘There was an English man, Irish man and Scots man……….’ As I grew up on Windy Bank Estate in West Yorkshire, England, all the English lads always made the English character in the joke the clever and sensible guy, the Irish character was always the dumbo and the Scottish chap would be the meanest drunk on the face of the earth! Not surprisingly, these character assassinations would correspondingly change, depending on the nationality of the person telling the joke.

We all discriminate to some measure and our motherland often influences the measure and kind of discrimination we practice through our belief systems and automatic response patterns. A person born in a predominantly Protestant country is more likely to find a joke about the Pope more acceptable than somebody who was born in a Catholic country. Similarly, a person born in Germany would be less appreciative about any joke pertaining to the two World Wars of 1914-17 and 199-45, than say an Englishman.

If there is one thing I know, it is the importance of one’s home base, wherever that place is located. Where does one look to when one is in greatest need? It is more likely to be one’s family. Where is one likely to feel the more comfortable in times of greatest hurt? The answer is ‘back home’. With perhaps, the exception of a cruel and unhappy upbringing, home is where all our hearts belong. When we first pack our suitcases and leave home, we never pack our hearts but leave it under our bed.

That is probably why every couple starting married life together aspire to one day owning their own house. Most newly married couples will want to have a family and this and that. All these wants collectively are represented in their concept of ‘a home’.

It is no surprise therefore that families living in one-roomed bed and breakfast accommodation of low standards and high rent feel trapped in their poverty. They know that with ten-year waiting lists for a council house, they will never be able to aspire above street level. They feel as though they are abandoned by the state and have been left ‘homeless’.

Every few years I like to travel back to Ireland and revisit my country and the place of my birth. I always make a pilgrimage see the house in which I was born in William Street, Portlaw almost 77 years ago. It then belonged to my maternal grandparents, Willie and Mary Fanning; who parented seven children, of whom my mother was their firstborn, and I hers.
To tell the truth, it is inaccurate to say, “I like to’ travel back to spend a week or two in the country and place of my birth”; far more truthful to say, ‘I need to’ return periodically. Going back home to Portlaw in County Waterford spiritually revives and rejuvenates me for the year ahead. Being in a place where I feel that I naturally ‘belong’ is refreshing, relaxing and recuperative in every sense.

About one mile from Portlaw (the village of my birth) I know I am close to the village when I spot the tree in the road fork. To the left of the forked road the sign indicates ’Portlaw’ and to its right is signposted the neighbouring community of Carrick-on-Suir.

I never pass this spot without recalling one year, while on holiday in Portlaw, myself and best mate Tony Walsh each cycled the road to Carrick-on-Suir (about six miles farther on) with two young girls on the back of our tandem bicycles. The young colleens no doubt thought they were onto ‘a good catch’ with myself and Tony, but the sun was beating down, we were 14 years old, and it wasn’t a bit of skirt that Tony and I were after but a bit of gas (Irish meaning fun). We all dismounted the bicycles for a pretend rest after we had travelled three miles. The young girls beamed with pleasured anticipation (no doubt believing that their time had come to be sent to Heaven and back) but as soon as they got off the tandems, Tony and myself laughed out loud and rode off to Carrick-on-Suir.

Each time I see this tree, I remember my childhood years and the many times my mother took us on a holiday to my grandparent’s house in Portlaw. Mum always did things on the spur of the moment. It wasn’t unusual for her to be cleaning the house one minute and then the next, be packing our suitcases. An hour later, Mum and three or four of us would be on the train for Liverpool and by midnight, we would be aboard ‘the Cattle Boat’ (so-called because the bottom of the vessel was filled with cattle being shipped across the Irish Sea). This was the longest sea-crossing available; lasting seven hours, but it was also the cheapest steerage cost.

We would travel all day by bus to County Waterford (12 miles from Portlaw). Once in Waterford, my mum would phone up the Post Office, who would, in turn, send a messenger down to Willie Low’s house, with the message that Portlaw born Maureen Forde (Nee Fanning) and her children were in Waterford wanting a taxi. Willie (who was the only man in Portlaw with a car, so he was the only taxi driver), would collect us from the Waterford Tower Clock and bring us to our grandparent’s home. Mum never had any money with which to pay him and always promised to ‘see him right’ later. I never knew what ‘see him right’ meant and I never asked! Mum would knock on 14, William Street (the only red door up the entire street) and when m grandmother opened it mum would say, “Get that kettle on. We’ve come to see you for a few weeks. I’ve no money though as Paddy hasn’t been paid yet, but he’ll post me a few pounds across at the weekend!”

Now, I must explain, that we were never able to afford holidays of any description, and until I was in my late teens, my mother would always get the family groceries ‘on tick’. We grew up as a family of seven children, with this week’s food being paid for out of my father’s next week’s wages. However, mum was not the kind of mother to allow little incidentals get in her way. She would raid the gas meter of every shilling in it, and instead of leaving the two week’s rent money out for my father to give the rent collector (one week’s rent, plus one week’s rent in arrears), mum would pocket that for the fare across to Ireland.

My dad would arrive home from a hard day’s work on a Friday evening, expecting a warm meal to be ready for him to eat. Instead, he would find a note from mum on the table which read,” Gone to see my parents with the children. They might be dead next year, and I’ll always regret it if I don’t go now. Tea is in the oven to warm up. Have borrowed the rent money so dodge the collector for a few weeks until I get back”.

There would always be a PS that said, “Paddy, send some money across next week. Love Maureen x"

As I head for the village of Portlaw past the fork in the road, I know that the final landmark I will cross as I turn the corner to enter the village will be the bridge of my childhood. Once the bridge has been crossed, only then do I consider myself as ‘being home’. This is my ‘Caledonia’. This place is where lies my roots, my heart, and one day, my ashes on my grandparent’s grave, in the graveyard of St Patrick’s Church to the left of the bridge.

I dedicate my song today to Lizzy. Lizzy is the daughter of my lifelong friend, Tony Walsh and his wife, Lily, who lives in Carrick-on-Suir. It is Lizzy’s birthday today. I don’t know how olds Lizzy is but I would guess it couldn’t be a day over twenty-one. Have a smashing birthday, Lizzy and give your parents fondest regards from me and Sheila. Billy Forde x

Love and peace. Bill xxx
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Song For Today: 26th October 2019

26/10/2019

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I dedicate my song today to Chand Mahtani who lives in Singapore and who is a very good friend of mine and Sheila.

Today’s song is ‘Let Me Go, Lover’. This song was written by Jenny Lou Carson and Al Hill, a pseudonym used by Fred Wise, Kathleen Twomey, and Ben Weisman. It is based on an earlier song called ‘Let Me Go, Devil’; a song about alcoholism.

'Let Me Go, Lover' was featured on the television programme ’Studio One on November 15, 1954, and caught the fancy of the public. The episode was a murder mystery that revolved around a hit record and a disc jockey. Producer Felix Jackson asked Columbia Records' Mitch Miller for a recording to use in the show, and Miller provided Joan Weber’s version of ‘Let Me Go, Lover’. Miller took advantage of the recording's exposure on national television and sent copies of the record to 2,000 disc-jockeys, who began to play it on their radio stations.

Weber was pregnant when she recorded the song. A result of the program was to illustrate how efficiently a song could be promoted by introducing it to the public via radio or TV production. The recording was released by ‘Columbia Records. Mitch Miller stocked national record stores the week before the program and because of its availability the record sold over 100,000 the first week of its release. It first reached the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chartm on December 4, 1954. By January 1955, Weber's record of the song had hit Number 1 on all the Billboard charts (the Disk Jockey chart, the Best Seller chart, and the Juke Box chart). The song reached Number 16 in the ‘UK Singles Chart’ and was awarded a gold record.

It was also quickly covered by several other singers, including Lucille Ball: Patti Page (1954): Peggy Lee (1954): Hank Snow (1955): Dean Martin (1955): Kathy Kirby (1964) and Billy Fury (1983), shortly before his death.

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As someone who primarily worked with people’s problem situations and inappropriate behaviour all my life, one of the problems that was capable of producing deep and disturbing emotional upset and unbalance was seen in the response pattern of a person who had loved someone profoundly, lost them through either relationship breakup, bereavement or other circumstances beyond their control, but who remained ‘emotionally frozen’ in progressing their life because of their unwillingness and inability to ‘let them go’.

When the person one ‘first loves’ or ‘best loves’ deserts you, the hurt that one feels is magnified ten-fold and one’s world seems to fall asunder. The dumped lover often acts in a bereaved manner and becomes overcome with a sense of loss and falls into a state of depression. It is as if their lover has died on them instead of having dumped them. It is not unusual in these circumstances; particularly where the ending of the relationship was wholly unexpected, for the abandoned person to experience an emotional shock that stuns them into a kind of emotional stagnation where they genuinely believe that they will never trust another man or woman again with their heart that has been broken. Many still hang on to the forlorn possibility in delusional desperation that their lover will eventually see sense and return to them. I have witnessed people with a ‘broken heart’, pine for a loved one for ten years or more.

Then, there are those loving relationships between two lifelong soul mates whose relationship ended when one of the couple sadly died or was taken from them in tragic circumstances. It need not be the relationship between two adults of the opposite or same-sex in a happy marriage but can also be a relationship between a mother and child or between two siblings or best friends.

I have known one twin of two close siblings die, and the remaining twin describes their experience as having a vital limb missing from their body. I once heard of two elder residents in their 80s in a ‘Old Folk’s Home’ whose ‘personality clash’ was evident from the very first day they bumped into each other in the dining room, and which gradually grew over the next decade into something resembling a full-blown vendetta which, ironically, would only end in in the death of one of them.

The staff of the home had to repeatedly separate them when their daily arguments started to become more aggressive and unsettling for other residents. The two old men would often engage in threatened fisticuffs and although a punch was never thrown, they slung insults, curses and the occasional plate at each other like confetti going out of fashion. Neither of the two adversaries ever had a good word to say about the other and would be happy to laugh and jeer at any downfall the other experienced.

The time came when one of the two adversaries caught a cold that confined him to bed. The other seemed to rejoice at the prospect of not seeing him for a week. The cold, however, turned into pneumonia and after three or four days the old man died. The upshot was that on the day of his adversary’s funeral, he went to his room and thereafter refused to leave it. It was as though he’d lost all sense of purpose in life since he no longer had ‘his friend’-‘his enemy’ to daily argue with. It is reported that he also died three months later. The resident doctor said he had died a natural death, but the residential staff believed that a ‘broken heart’ and a ‘profound loss’ was the cause.

A prostitute and mother to three children I once worked with, had her children taken into care during an unstable period of her life. She had left her three young children unattended one night while she walked the streets trying to pick up a punter. During her absence, the oldest child (aged 7 years) started playing with matches and burned down the house. All three children were immediately taken into care.

Over the next three years, I helped Hazel to stop drinking, give up prostituting herself and prepared her to get her three children out of care. I will never forget the look of happiness on her face the day her children were returned to her. For around six months, Hazel was happier than I’d ever seen her. She stayed off the alcohol and became a good mum to her children. She moved to new accommodation in a different area to make a fresh start, and everything seemed rosy.

About four months after Hazel and her family had moved to a different house, her life was once more to witness so much hurt and heartache. A man who had murdered a prostitute in Hong Kong when he’d been a serving soldier, twenty-two years earlier, was released on Life Licence and returned to live with his widowed mother in Almondbury, Huddersfield. Both Hazel and her family lived in the same area as the Life Licensee.

Two months after the man had been released on life licence, he killed again. On the afternoon of the murder, he was completing a jigsaw puzzle with his mother in their front lounge. His mother went to make a pot of tea and realised they were out of milk, so she asked her son to go to the shop for her, which he did. On the way back, the man passed a green park area where he spotted a young boy aged around ten-years-old, playing on his own. The man on Life Licence dragged the young boy to some bushes, sexually assaulted him and then strangled him to death; before returning to his mother’s house with the bottle of milk he’d bought.

Three hours later, whilst making murder enquiries, the police visited his mother’s house. They found both mother and son completing their giant jigsaw puzzle and the man was nonchalantly eating a sandwich and drinking tea. When put to him, he didn’t even deny the murder (which suggested that he’d been inside prison for so long that he could no longer live on the outside of a prison cell).

The young boy killed was Hazel’s 10-year-old son. I recall visiting her home as soon as I learned of the tragic event. Hazel was naturally distraught, couldn’t talk and just sat there sobbing uncontrollably alongside her other children. She was too sad to yet express her outrage and anger. That anger stage was not to come until a few months later.

I attended her son’s funeral and unashamedly cried for the rest of that day. It rained down buckets as we stood around the small graveside. “Oh why, oh why does it always have to bloody rain heavily whenever somebody is being buried?” I asked myself as the coffin was lowered into the wet ground.

For months, Hazel hardly ate a morsel or slept a wink. She started to look like an inmate who’d been confined in ‘Belson Concentration Camp’. She was in fact confined in her own mental and emotional prison, and not surprisingly, Hazel then bordered on an emotional breakdown. She was probably saved from an emotional breakdown by all the anger she had inside her that was bursting to erupt.

When Hazel entered her ‘anger’ stage of the bereavement process, she rediscovered her aggressive behaviour of old. She was angry with the world and all around her and was literally dangerous if argued with. Every sentence would be littered with curses, threats and swear words. Years before I knew Hazel, her records showed that she had scarred her violent partner on his shoulder with the red-hot iron she was using. She had aimed for his face but had fortunately missed, or else the three month’s imprisonment she received would have been three years!

For years after her son’s murder, Hazel dare not let her remaining two younger children out of her sight. I will never forget her telling me, “It has robbed me of all future happiness, Mr Forde. If I am in a café today or at the bus stop and I hear someone laughing, I feel like screaming at them to ‘fucking shut up!’” (Forgive my relating Hazel’s words as precisely as I can remember). Whatever I was able to achieve with Hazel, getting her to refrain from cursing was never to appear on my success card. I did include Hazel in a six-month ‘Anger Management Group Course’ I held for two hours weekly at the Huddersfield Probation Office. Hazel’s turned out to be a star pupil and her progress probably placed her the category of in some of my finest work.

Hazel eventually moved to the Manchester area, and she met a man whom she married. He seemed to act as a good father to her children and the family appeared to taste happiness again. But Hazel could never be the same as she’d been before her son’s murder. The absence of her oldest son from her life had left a huge hole in her heart which could never be healed.

From all the group activities, Hazel engaged in, learning to relax, helped her more than any other. She no longer lost control of her anger and was able to convert her previous thumps to mere curses. The greatest compliment that Hazel paid me, I was to see inside her car. She once proudly showed me Inside the driver’s door. Hazel pulled down the sunscreen visor and there was a photograph of my face she had cellotaped to the inside of the visor. She told me, ‘If ever I swear at some other car driver for cutting me up, Mr Forde, instead of jumping out and punching him, I just look at your photo and remember my breathing exercises. That mug shot of yours is a lifesaver for me!”

I have known and worked with many a bereaved marriage partner who seemed to be emotionally stuck in the past. Many bereaved widows and widowers stay emotionally unattached through ‘choice’ because they know that no other partner could ever match up to the love they lost. Other bereaved partners might like to meet someone else; for either companionship or even marriage, but still find it very hard to re-join the dating scene and emotionally ‘move on’ with their life. Others seem to spend the remainder of their life doing good works and busying themselves daily with all manner of voluntary and good-neighbourly tasks, to the extent that they haven’t time to think and dwell upon what they once had and lost. Some bereaved people find the reliability and the unqualified love of a pet in their lives invaluable in getting themselves out of the house and feeling alive and worthwhile again. When one loses someone they love, helping a pet from a refuge centre is often the precursor to helping a person, and then to helping oneself move on with life.

Whatever the circumstances of the loss, for many people it is virtually impossible for them to ‘let go’ of the person they loved, and for others, it would be intrinsically wrong for them ever to ‘let go’.

I dedicate my song today to Chand Mahtani who lives in Singapore and who is a very good friend of mine and Sheila. A recent Facebook post of Chands on the 11th October 2019, reveals a story, not too dissimilar to the theme of this post. It is about a woman who adopted a kitten after a family tragedy. The bereaved woman eventually concluded that if she could be happy through helping a kitten then imagine how happy she could become through helping people. Have a good day, Chand. Much love from me and Sheila x

Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song For Today: 25th October 2019

25/10/2019

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I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friend, Loretta Milner and her husband, Peter on their 33rd Wedding Anniversary. I also jointly dedicate my song to my cousin, Lynne Ford from Milford Haven, Wales, Marion Donnelly from Hastings, East Sussex, and John Paxman from Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire; all of whom celebrate their birthday today.

Today’s song is ‘Love is All Around’. This song was initially recorded by English rock band the Troggs, featuring a string quartet and a 'tick-tock' sound on percussion, in D-major. It was written by lead singer Reg Presley and was purportedly inspired by a television transmission of the ‘Joy Strings Salvation Army Band's’ song ‘Love That's All Around’. The song was first released as a single in the UK in October 1967, peaking at Number 5. On the ‘Billboard Hot 100’, the record entered at Number 98 on 24 February 1968, peaked at Number 7 on 18 May 1968. It was on the chart a total of 16 weeks and ranked Number 40 for all of 1968.

‘Love Is All Around’ has been covered by numerous artists, including R.E.M., with whom the Troggs subsequently recorded their 1992 comeback album ‘Athens Andover’. Wet Wet Wet’s cover, for the soundtrack to the 1994 film ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ was an international hit and spent 15 consecutive weeks at Number one on the ‘UK Singles Chart’.

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This song was first released during my 26th year of life when I was first married. Life was extremely busy for me at that time. I had been working as a Mill Manager on nights at a Finishing Works in Hunsworth, Cleckheaton. I was extremely fortunate to have obtained such a position at my young age, but my textile knowledge and experience were extensive, and I had been promoted from Finishing Forman to Night Mill Manager within a two-year period in time. I only held the position for a good year around my 27th year of life when I decided I wanted a career change. I realised that I was sacrificing my life on the altar of material acquisition and felt that was not what I was meant to be doing. It was hard giving up a job that was salaried and earned me almost four times the average weekly wage of a semi-skilled mill hand, but I knew in my heart of hearts that I hadn’t been born to do this. At the end of the day, being a Mill Manager was a job but it wasn’t a vocation!

Although I’d always been a bright scholar, coming from a large family of modest means, I had left technical college without sitting my examinations and was eager to enter the field of work and get some money in my pocket, some decent clothes on my back and regular fashionable shoes on my feet that had a sole in them. I knew that I was clever enough to sit my examinations at Night School classes and get myself onto a University Course if I tried. My biggest obstacle was that, as a Mill Manager, I worked through the night, every night, supervising dozens of male workers. So, I gave up my £80-per-week Night Manager’s job in Hunsworth, Cleckheaton and took a £20 per week job as a finishing worker in a Brighouse mill. The Brighouse mill job freed me up on an evening to go to evening classes at Night School in Cleckheaton, three times weekly. I did this for three years to gain enough academic examinations to go to university as a mature entrant.

At the time, I didn’t know if I wanted to obtain a History degree and become a History teacher or if I wanted to work with disadvantaged and difficult young people and adults in a Social Work capacity. So, I applied to both professions. I was accepted on a master’s degree in history at Bath University three months before I was due to enrol. Three weeks before taking up my place at Bath University, I received word from the National Probation Service that I’d been accepted on a 1-year course at Newcastle-on-Tyne Polytech (now a university) to train as a Probation Officer. I had previously unsuccessfully applied for this course but seemingly, my married status now made me more acceptable than my single status had done when I first applied a few years earlier. I also received a part salary whilst on the 12-month course.

So, I took the Probation course on offer and thereafter made reading historical books one of my lifetime’s pleasures instead. The rest is history and I had a very happy and successful career working as a Probation Officer in West Yorkshire.

I have been blessed throughout this life of mine to have always been in love with life and the living of it. I have had a positive attitude since childhood that has served me well, along with the constant and loving support from my parents and family, and many other significant people in my life who have always ensured that I’ve constantly been surrounded by love. My meeting with and marriage to my lovely wife, Sheila, complete my circle of love. Like the song I sing today, ‘Love is all around’. That is true for each of us who care to look, feel and care as we pass through our daily life.

I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friend, Loretta Milner and her husband, Peter on their 33rd Wedding Anniversary. I also jointly dedicate my song to my cousin, Lynne Ford from Milford Haven, Wales, Marion Donnelly from Hastings, East Sussex, and John Paxman from Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire; all of whom celebrate their birthday today.

Loretta and Peter Milner live in Leeds. I hope that your 33rd anniversary is a memorable occasion full of love and happiness for you both and that there are many remaining years to enjoy as a loving couple. Thank you for being my Facebook friend, Loretta.

Lynne, Marion and John, enjoy a happy birthday today and leave room for a bit of cake and some refreshments. The father of Lynne’s husband, John, and my own dear father were the closest of brothers throughout their lives. Thank you, Marion and John, for being my Facebook friends.

Love and peace. Bill xxx






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Song for Today: 24th October 2019

24/10/2019

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I jointly dedicate my song today to my Facebook friends, Jackie Peggy Hartley and Joan McDonald, both of whom celebrate their birthdays today.

Today’s song is ‘Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)’. This song was by Edison Lighthouse and was originally recorded by Jefferson. The single reached the Number-1 spot on the ‘UK Singles Chart’ in January 1970, where it remained for a total of five weeks.

‘Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)’ was written by Tony Macaulay and Barry Mason. Essentially, they were a studio group with prolific session singer Tony Burrows providing the vocals. When the song became a hit, a group needed to be assembled rapidly to feature the song on ‘Top of The Pops’, a popular TV show. Mason and Macaulay found a group called ‘Greenfield Hammer’ and brought them to Tony's auditions a week before their appearance on ‘Top of The Pops’. Once chosen and rehearsed, they appeared on the show as 'Edison Lighthouse' to mime to the fastest climbing Number 1 hit record in history. Burrows sang the song on the programme during his third appearance on the same show with three different groups.

‘Love Grows’ reached Number 5 on ‘US Pop Chart’, Number 3 in Canada, and Number 1 on the ‘UK Singles Chart’ for five weeks in January and February 1970. It reached Number 3 in South Africa in February 1970. Edison Lighthouse entered the US Billboard Hot 100' top 40 charts at Number 28 on 28 February 1970.

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This song used to be a favourite song of a young woman who was a client of mine in the mid-70s when I was a Probation Officer in Huddersfield. She was in her early 20s, married with a child but very unhappy with her life. Rosemary had been brought up in Care ever since her mother abandoned her in childhood. She had gone through numerous foster home placements and had been a resident of at least one dozen Children’s Homes; most of which she had run away from at least once and the majority in which she claimed that she had been sexually abused by workers.

Rosemary could never initiate contact with either her mother or father as nobody knew who or where either of her parents were. I will always recall her crying in my office once as she tried to describe what it felt like to be of orphan status. She said, “It’s like having no country; no place to belong!”

As many children raised in Care during the 1950s and 60s, the degree of sexual abuse that took place between the Care Workers and their child charges is simply unbelievable. She told me that she was first abused in Foster Care and was then systematically sexually abused by a Worker or a resident in every Children’s Home she had resided in between the ages of 11 and 16 years when she finally ran away and finished up in Scotland making beds in an hotel.

Rosemary eventually came to equate sex as being no more or less than a human commodity that was given, exchanged or sold in either the flesh markets of the community or within the bond of marriage. She said that her husband had also been brought in in Care of the Social Services and had been a resident of Barnardo Homes. Rosemary was exceptionally good looking in every shape and form; something that proved more of a curse to her in Care more than a blessing it would appear. She had an uncanny likeness to that of the film star, Marylin Monroe, but I could always see a cold loneliness in her eyes that seemed to beg attention from whomever she was looking at. She said she liked her husband and said he was a good man and father to their young child but added that she could never love him. Her most haunting of revelations to me wasn’t the long string of periodical sexual abuse she had endured at the hands of men who were paid by the state to look out for her, help her and protect her from all harm, but how such experiences had affected her. On one occasion, she told me, “I can’t love anyone, Mr Forde. I never could. I have no love in me!”

I’d like to say that I was able to significantly help Rosemary, but I wasn’t. I knew her for about nine months before she suddenly left her husband and child and ran off to another part of the country half-way through her period of Probation Order Supervision. I don’t know if another man was involved but her husband always suspected so. I never heard of her again. I had been able to give her a present though, about three months after I had started supervising her. It was a cassette of the song ‘Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes).

I jointly dedicate today’s song to my Facebook friend, Jackie Peggy Hartley who lives in Dewsbury in West Yorkshire. Jackie celebrates her birthday today. I also dedicate my song to Joan McDonald who hails from Halifax in West Yorkshire but who now lives in Sidney in Australia. Joan is also celebrating her birthday today. May you both have a super birthday that is filled with love, happiness…and…lots of cake and suitable refreshments. Thank you, Peggy and Joan, for being my Facebook friends. Bill x

Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song for Today: 23rd October 2019

23/10/2019

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I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friend, Rose Pradeep from Bangalore, India.

Today’s song is ‘Lay Lady Lay’. This song was written by Bob Dylan and originally released in 1969 on his ‘Nashville Skyline’ album. Like many of the tracks on the album, Dylan sings the song in a low croon, rather than in the high nasal singing style associated with his earlier (and eventually later) recordings. The song has become a standard and has been covered by numerous bands and artists over the years, including the Birds: the Everly Brothers: Melanie: the Isley Brothers and Duran Duran to name but a few.

'Lay Lady Lay' was originally written for the soundtrack of the movie ‘Midnight Cowboy’ but wasn't submitted in time to be included in the finished film. Dylan's recording was released as a single in July 1969 and quickly became one of his top U.S. hits, peaking at Number 7 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’. The single did even better in the United Kingdom where it reached Number 5 on the ‘UK Singles Chart’.

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While I have always liked this song, as the years have passed, I have, like many males had to review my own attitudes to women. Being 77 years old next month, I was brought up in the age where the prejudice of society was certainly against womanhood which displayed any sense of individuality. There was no doubt about the pinnacle of a young girl’s ambitions immediately post ‘Second World War’ years; it was to have feminine manners, wear feminine clothes, behave like a female was supposed to behave, and prepare for the day when some man might do you the honour of asking you to marry him, assume his surname and bear him his children and heirs. As for grown women ‘who had caught their man’; having netted their fish, their job was to cook it, and serve it up to the satisfaction of the head of the household.

I still have an old advertisement from the 1950s that shows a white-collar worker arriving home from work in his suit and tie. After entering the lounge, the man sits in front of an open fire and his wife lights up his pipe before lovingly removing his shoes and gently putting on his cosy slippers to relax and feel more at home. In an adjacent scene, is the family table, set out ready to serve the evening meal when the man of the house is ready to eat it. The strong and clear message of this advertisement was ‘to show 'woman her place’: it was in the home, serving the head of the household and seeing to his needs and the needs of all his family. In my younger day, there was no point looking for any equality between the sexes, because there wasn’t any!

Like so many of my male sex and age range, I naturally grew up with inbred discriminatory and sexist attitudes, and it took many years to slowly eradicate them. It may be that centuries of any prejudice cannot be realistically eradicated in mere decades, however willing the convert, but I genuinely do welcome the advancements that have been made in my life towards the eradication of all discrimination, especially that of inequality between the sexes. Much has happened over the past 70 years, but still not enough!

All one has to do in order to appreciate that women are still seen largely as ‘sex objects’ by many men is evident in the 'masculine' discussion and description of many a chap in the pub with their mates. Rarely will you overhear any bloke ask his mate whether this woman or that woman was ‘a good electrician’ or ‘a good neighbour’ or ‘a good partner’ or ‘a good mother to her children’ or ‘a good person?'. But you will often hear some man assess and define a woman's worth by any physical attributes he finds pleasing to the male eye. He may even ask another man if they thought that a certain woman would make ‘a good lay!’

So, although I love the melody of this song and was brought up with it, the words and message of the song merely reflect the sexist prejudices of the time that still, unfortunately, prevail in large measure.

I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friend, Rose Pradeep from Bangalore, India. A quick glance at the Facebook page of Rose reveals her to be a sensitive and humorous person. Have a nice day, Rose and thank you for being my Facebook friend. Bill x

Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song for Today: 22nd October 2019

22/10/2019

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I jointly dedicate my song today to three people; all of whom celebrate their birthday today. My first joint dedication today is to my Nephew, Lee Brown of Kirkheaton, Huddersfield. Secondly, I jointly dedicate this song to my dear friend, Lynne Green (previously Lynne Dransfield) of Mirfield. Thirdly, I jointly dedicate today’s song to Jackie Fitzsimmons of North Chill, New York, U.S.A.

Today’s song is ‘You and I’. This song was a song written by Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb and was recorded and performed by Kenny Rogers from his 1983 album ‘Eyes that See in the Dark’. Despite not being released as a single, it’s constant radio play has witnessed it become one of Kenny Roger’s most popular songs. Barry Gibb sings background vocals on the intro, chorus, interlude (between the first chorus and second verse). The performer of the song sometimes credited to 'Kenny Rogers and the Bee Gees' because Barry used his falsetto.

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Released during my 40th year of life, I never heard this song until recently, when I accidentally came across it on YouTube. At that stage of my life, my first marriage was on the rocks and my mind must have been preoccupied elsewhere.

The title of the song, plus the three lines below says it all:

‘As long as I’ve got you,
As long as you’ve got me,
As long as we’ve got you and I.’

I jointly dedicate my song today to three special people; all of whom celebrate their birthday today. My first joint dedication today is to my Nephew, Lee Brown of Kirkheaton, Huddersfield. Secondly, I jointly dedicate this song to my dear friend, Lynne Green (previously Lynne Dransfield) of Mirfield. Thirdly, I jointly dedicate today’s song to Jackie Fitzsimmons of North Chill, New York, the U.S.A.

Have a super day, you three special people. May your special day be filled with lots of love and happiness…and…lots of cake and suitable refreshment. Love Bill xxx

Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song for Today: 21st October 2019

21/10/2019

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I jointly dedicate my song today to my Facebook friend, Christine Lowe who celebrates her birthday today. I also jointly dedicate today’s song to Deborah Ives of Leeds, whose birthday it isn't, but who is the biggest David Bowie fan this world has ever seen.

Today’s song is ‘China Girl’. This song was written by Iggy Pop and David Bowie during their years in Berlin, first appearing on Pop's debut solo album ‘The Idiot’ (1977). The song became more widely known when it was re-recorded by Bowie, who released it as the second single from his most commercially successful album, ‘Let’s Dance’ (1983). The UK single release of Bowie's version reached Number 2 for one week on 14 June 1983, while the US release reached Number 10.

Paul Trynka, the author of David Bowie's biography, ‘Starman’, explains the song was inspired by Iggy Pop's infatuation with Kuelan Nguyen, a Vietnamese woman, as a metaphor for his Stooges career.

Nile Rodgers, the producer of David Bowie's 1983 version of the song, imagined his own meaning: "I figured China Girl was about doing drugs ... because China is ‘China White’ which is heroin, girl is cocaine. I thought it was a song about ‘speedballing’. I thought, in the drug community in New York, coke is girl, and heroin is boy. So, then I proceeded to do this arrangement which was ultra-pop. Because I thought that, being David Bowie, he would appreciate the irony of doing something so pop about something so taboo. And what was really cool was that he said, 'I love that’”.

The music video was shot mainly in the Chinatown district of Sydney, Australia. Bowie described the video as being a "very simple, very direct statement against racism”. The video consciously parodies Asian female stereotypes. It depicted an interracial romance. The original video release includes a couple lying naked in the surf (a visual reference to the film ‘From Here to Eternity’). Unedited versions were banned from New Zealand and some other countries at the time. The song was regularly included in Bowie's live shows for the rest of the 1980s and appeared on concert videos in 1983 and 1988.

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Ever since my first romantic relationship with an oriental woman, lasting a mere ten days during the winter of December 1963 aboard the S.S Sylvania as I sailed from Liverpool to Nova Scotia, I have always liked Chinese women or women of Chinese origin.

I cannot recall the lady’s full name as 55 years of water has since flowed beneath my bridge of recall, but I distinctly remember that this relationship, although brief, was one of the most intense and bewildering relationships ever experienced by me. I remember that Yu Yan was part of her Chinese name and she indicated it meant she had a happy face.

I would say that this brief relationship came about purely by circumstances throwing us both together at a certain moment in time. We were essentially two lonely people, each of whom was romantically unattached, who naturally gravitated towards each other and enjoyed the briefest of ‘coming together’ experiences. This romantic escapade was over a Christmas period at sea during the coldest winter months I have ever known.

Perhaps her full name escapes me because the physical side of the relationship we shared was too good to ever exchange fuller details than was necessary. She was a divorcee, around ten years older than myself, but in truth, that was a part of the attraction for me. We each knew that when we docked at Nova Scotia, we would both be going our own separate ways towards different Provinces of Canada and would never see or communicate with each other again. She was returning to her parent’s house in British Columbia, on the border of the Yukon. Her father had died two months earlier, and being divorced herself and without children, she intended to live with her widowed mum who’d reportedly been in ill health since her marital bereavement. God bless you, Yu Yan.

It is not lacking in any coincidence that the love of my life, my beautiful wife, Sheila, who I was to marry in 2012, is of oriental background. Although she was born in London, she lived for most of her younger life in Singapore. Her mother was born in Macau and her father was born in Ceylon. Unlike my sea-voyage romance, Sheila is fourteen years younger than me and our relationship will last for the rest of my lifetime. Our first fortnight of intimacy was equally as memorable for me.

I jointly dedicate my song today to two Facebook friends, Christine Lowe and Deborah Ives.

Christine Lowe celebrates her birthday today. I hope you have a lovely day, Christine and thank you for being my Facebook friend. Bill x

I also jointly dedicate today’s song to Deborah Ives of Leeds, who is the biggest David Bowie fan this world has ever seen. Deborah, like myself, loves the music of the 60s onwards and I frequently listen to the medley of pop songs she puts up on her Facebook page most weekends. In fact, her own musical taste and my own collide in so many ways. Thank you for being my Facebook friend, Deborah. Bill x

Love and peace Bill xxx
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Bill's Song for Today

20/10/2019

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I dedicate my poem and song today to Kaye Brennan of County Kilkenny, Ireland and my Facebook friend, Angie Heard of Forrest City, Arkansas, in the U.S.A. who celebrates her birthday today.

Instead of singing you my usual daily song, today I will recite you a poem called ‘The Meeting of The Waters’ by Thomas Moore. This poem is followed by the beautiful singing and Irish lilt of Maureen Hegarty.

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This poem and song refer to the Vale of Avoca, a village in County Wicklow, Ireland. The Avoca (IRISH: Abhainn Abhóca) is its main river. It is contained completely within the county. Its length is 35 miles (56.3 km).

The Avoca starts life as two rivers, the Avonmore (IRISH: Abhainn Mhór, meaning ‘Big River’) and the Avonbeg (IRISH: Abhainn Bheag, meaning ‘Small River’). These two rivers join at a spot called the ‘Meeting of the Waters’ (Cumar an dá Uisce) in the Vale of Avoca, which is considered a local beauty spot. This place was celebrated by Thomas Moore in his song of the same name.

“There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet,
As the vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet;
Oh, the last rays of feeling and life must depart,
Ere the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart. ”
(Thomas Moore extract).

The River Avoca flows into the Irish Sea at Arklow, where it widens into a large estuary, giving Arklow its Irish language name an t-Inbhear Mór (the big inlet).

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Mary Hegarty (sometimes known as Maureen Hegarty) is an Irish opera soprano singer who was born in Fermoy, County Cork. She studied singing at the Cork School of Music with Maeve Coughlan, representing Ireland at an early stage at the ‘Cardiff Singer of the World festival in 1985’. She went on to study at the ‘National Opera Studio’ in London and gave her Covent Garden debut in 1988. She also sang at ‘Opera North’ and numerous other theatres and festivals across the British Isles. She is perhaps best known for film projects such as ‘Match Point’ and Jonathan Dove’ television opera ‘ ‘Buzz on the Moon’.

Between 1990 and 2004, my charitable work and numerous children’s books I wrote and had published were read by over 800 national and international famous names in Yorkshire schools. One such celebrity who publicly read for me on four occasions in Yorkshire schools was the Queen’s cousin and his wife, the Earl and Countess of Harewood. Sadly, the Earl of Harewood died in July 2011, but for a decade earlier, we became good friends. During this period, both the Earl and Countess helped me out in a number of ways that assisted with my charitable works such as public readings in schools, and inviting myself and a busload of disabled children and their carers to look around their marvellous dwelling at ‘Harewood House ’and also visit their aviary in the grounds free of charge.

On one occasion I was helping a budding opera singer who worked in the mills in Slaithwaite, Huddersfield. He was called Paul and he had a magnificent untrained operatic voice. At the time, I had arranged a charitable Concert at the world-famous City Varieties which I was presenting. Prior to the presentation of this concert by myself, the management at Leeds City Varieties had never previously allowed any Charity Concert to be presented by an ordinary citizen such as myself. I got to be the first person to do this because of my connection with the Earl and Countess of Harewood, both of whom agreed to be Royal Guests of Honour on the evening in question.

As I was promoting Paul’s singing of opera at the time, (along with promoting the general spread of opera in our West Yorkshire schools and wider community) he was a major artist on the bill and as the Earl looked impressed by Paul’s voice, I asked the Earl a favour. I wanted him to use his operatic connections to help Paul's singing career.

Between 1929-47, the 7th Earl of Harewood was a British music director and author. He served as the ‘Director of the Royal Opera House’ (1951-53 and 1969-72). He was also ‘Chairman of the Board of The English National Opera’ (1986-95); ‘Managing Director of English Opera North’ (1978-81), as well as holding many other offices connected with opera. He was in short, probably the leading authority on opera in the world and most certainly the foremost opera authority in Great Britain. The author of three world-famous books on opera, ‘Kobbes Complete Opera Book’ made him a world accepted authority on the history of opera.

After the Charity Concert for ‘Holly Bank School of Disabled and Young Persons’ I presented at the ‘Leeds City Varieties’, the Earl of Harewood agreed to give Paul an introduction to Opera North, where he had an audition and was offered a place following two years brush up on the Italian language.

It was during this time that the Earl said, “If ever you get the opportunity, Bill, look up an Irish opera singer called Mary Hegarty.” I forgot about this reference until after the death of the Earl, but when I did look up her work and heard her beautiful singing voice, I was forever captive to her musical charm.

I jointly dedicate my song today to the wife of an Irish Cousin of mine from County Kilkenny, Kaye Brennan. Kaye is the radio presenter for ‘Community Radio Kilkenny City’ and is a lover of all music, especially Irish songs. I just know you and your husband, John will enjoy both song and poem of ‘The Meeting of The Waters’ Kaye. Bill x

I also jointly dedicate my song today to Angie Heard of Forrest City, Arkansas, USA who celebrates her birthday today. May your day be filled with much love and happiness. I am also sorry for your recent loss. Thank you for being my Facebook friend. Bill x

Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song For Today: 19th October 2019

19/10/2019

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I jointly dedicate my song today to my great-nephew, Leon Swales from Aberdeen, Scotland and my Facebook friend, Jacqueline Allum, from St. Thomas in Ontario, Canada, both of whom celebrate their birthday today.

Today’s song is ‘Feeling Good’. This song (also known as ‘Feelin’ Good’) was written by English composers Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse for the musical ‘The Roar of the Greasepaint- The Smell of the Crowd’. It was first performed on stage in 1964 by Cy Grant and by Gilbert Price in 1965 with the original Broadway cast on a UK tour.

The song has been covered by numerous singers including, Nina Simone: Michael Buble: John Coltrane: George Michael: Billy Eckstine: Sammy Davies JR. and many others. It has been described and regarded as ‘a booming song of emancipation’ during its original stage version days.

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When this song was first released, I was living in Canada for a couple of years. I was enjoying life tremendously as I travelled around much of Canada, along with being able to visit several States in the U.S.A. I was able to do this because of two major aspects. When I was first in Canada, I got a job on the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), and although I worked in the modest role of catering server on the trains, the job enabled me to travel on three-day train journeys across Canada and see some wonderful sights along the way (free of charge of course). I was also financially independent as I had received a large amount of compensation which had been kept in trust for me between the ages of twelve and twenty-one years of age, arising from a bad traffic accident I incurred during my childhood. Consequently; I had enough financial independence to do what I wanted to do and see the places I wanted to go. My only financial need was to earn sufficient money monthly to eat and pay for my accommodation so that I didn’t drain my emergency resources unnecessarily. During these years of freedom and fascinating exploration, my mood could be best summed up in today’s song I sing as ‘Feeling Good’.

I suppose when I think back, I’ve been blessed by the fact, that for the most part, I have always felt good about myself and the people who surrounded me, especially my family and significant others. While I may not have truly appreciated just how important each significant person in my life was to me at the precise time of their presence, they each left an indelible stamp on my personality, and collectively, all crafted the character of the man I was to become. They are in short, as forever close to me as is my shadow, and are ever-present in my sunniest of days; ensuring that they walk the same path as myself, and giving me a sharp tug on my coat tails if I need it, keeping me on the path of righteousness and preventing me deviating from a worldly walk of wholesomeness.

These important people who helped form my earliest memories and who went on to shape my future and determine my character are not only a part of any good thought, feeling or action I have ever experienced or executed, but they are an intrinsic part of me today; just as if they still lived! The good things they taught me about life course through my veins with the vibrancy of healthy blood flow. They prompt my mind with all manner of wise and positive thoughts. Their presence in my life, now as then, pulsate my heart with the regular flow of unqualified love they shared with me, and my fond memory of them reproduces an air of constant freshness in an often stagnant world. They may be dead and have ‘passed on’ to the rest of the world, but to me, their influence on me will never die. They, along with all the other influential people in my life currently, are the reason that every day I awake and 'feel good’.

I jointly dedicate my song today to my great-nephew, Leon Swales. Leon and his family recently moved up to start a new life living in Aberdeen in Scotland. Have a smashing birthday, Leon and may you ‘feel good’ throughout your special day and on every day of your life thereafter, because all days are special. Love Great Uncle Billy x

I also dedicate today’s song to my Facebook friend, Jacqueline Allum who lives in St. Thomas, Ontario, and whose birthday it also is today. I lived in Toronto, Canada for a couple of years, 55 years ago and although I never went to St.Thomas, I did once spend a day in nearby Hamilton, about 80 miles south of Toronto. Jaqueline’s Facebook page entries reveal her to be a thoughtful and sensitive person. Thank you for being my Facebook friend, Jaqueline and I hope you have a smashing birthday. Bill x

Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song For Today: 18th October 2019

18/10/2019

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I dedicate my song today to my great-niece, Katie Jo who lives in Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire whose birthday it is today. I also posthumously dedicate my song to Gladys Spencer, the mother of my Facebook friend, Steven Spencer, whose 85th birthday it would have been today. Gladys was a keen Elvis fan

Today’s song is ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love with You’. This is a 1961 song recorded the singer Elvis Presley for the album ‘Blue Hawaii’ (1961). It was written by Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creratore and George David Weiss. The melody is based on Plaisir d’amour’, a popular French love song composed in 1784 by Jean-Paul Martini. The song was initially written for a woman as ‘Can't Help Falling in Love with Him’, which explains the first and third line ending on ‘in’ and ‘sin’ rather than words rhyming with ‘you’.

‘Can't Help Falling in Love’ was also featured in Presley's 1961 film ‘Blue Hawaii’. During the following decades, it has been recorded by numerous other artists, including Bob Dylan and the British reggae group UB40, whose 1993 version topped both charts in the United States and the United Kingdom.

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When this song first came out I was an 18-year-old romantic teenager who thought that he was God's gift to women. The more beautiful and socially out of reach the young woman was, the more appealing they often were in my eyes. The more likely she would not even look twice at a mill hand with a questionable reputation, and who was one of seven siblings living on a council estate, the greater I thought the challenge.

I was at that age when anything and everything in the world seemed possible for someone with the appetite to want the world and second helpings into the bargain!

The simple truth was that I have always been a sucker for a good-looking woman of independent mind and a confident attitude. She didn't have to be a 'stunner' to my male eye to initially attract my attention and hold my interest long enough to ask her out on a date. She did have to have a beautiful character that shone through the homogeneousness of the crowd. Her beauty would be reflected, not in a bonny face, big bust, slim waistline or shapely leg, but in her differences to other young women. She needed to be different; interesting enough in personality to have an opinion of her own without being afraid to voice it and sassy enough to jump in puddles with me for no other reason than the sheer hell of it!

Whenever I came across such spirited females, I knew I'd found a young woman who would always stimulate me (mentally, emotionally, physically and psychologically) and not bore. Such was the young women I always fell in love with. Indeed, I'd have to say that such was the young woman I couldn't prevent myself from falling in love with. The only problem as far as the young lady was concerned, was that I was not the 'settling down' type and didn't intend to marry anyone until my mid-thirties. My falling-in-love phases would, therefore, last only two or three weeks before I'd found someone else to fall-in-love with!

Today's song is dedicated to my great-niece, Katie Jo who lives in Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire and whose birthday it is today. I also posthumously dedicate my song to Gladys Spencer, the mother of my Facebook friend, Steven Spencer, whose 85th birthday it would have been today. Steven informs me that his mother, Gladys, was a keen Elvis fan. Have a lovely day, Katie Jo and God bless Gladys. Bill x

Love and peace Bill xxx

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Song for Today: 17th October 2019

17/10/2019

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I dedicate my song today to three Facebook friends who are each celebrating their birthday today. Happy birthdays to Catherine Foley from Carrick-on-Suir in County Tipperary, Ireland; Nora Galvin from my hometown of Portlaw, County Waterford, Ireland, and my wife’s Singaporean school pal, Marie Ann Mathot from The Hague in the Netherlands.

Today’s song is ‘What’s New Pussycat?’ This song was the theme song for the eponymous movie, sung by British singer Tom Jones, and written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Nominated for the ‘Academy Award for Best Original Song’ in 1966, it lost to ‘The Shadow of Your Smile’. It peaked at Number 11 in the UK and it reached Number 3 in the US. The song has been performed by numerous others.

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My relationship with cats has been one that witnessed a conversion around the late 1990s. Prior to my conversion, I won’t say that I hated cats but can honestly claim to not liking them and their slinky presence as they surreptitiously crept among us. I had always been a dog or a horse person and can even admit to shooing the pesky creatures away from my garden should they trespass. In fact, I’d even as far as declaring that cats (being secretive in nature) were the common pets of devil worshippers, white witches, kinky men and suspicious spinsters!

Around 1998, I agreed to write some books to help the 32 schools in Falmouth, Jamaica (the old slave capital port) raise vital funds for vital school resources. I wanted to engage in a trans-Atlantic pen-pal project involving 32 schools in Falmouth that would be paired with 32 Yorkshire schools. The prime purpose was to help black and white pupils understand each other’s culture better in the hope of reducing racist attitudes, beliefs and behaviour. To assist in this work (that lasted around three years), involved two monthly visits to Jamaica along with working in conjunction with the Jamaican Minister for Education and Youth Culture, the Mayor of Falmouth (known as the Custos), and a total of 64 headteachers, over 400 school teachers and approximately 10,000 pupils in Trelawney and West Yorkshire. This was an extensive trans-Atlantic project, involving lots of committed work and numerous collaborations with people in both England and Jamaica.

I wanted to write around five books to help raise tens of thousands of pounds for school materials in the 32 Falmouth schools, and one of these book projects would be a Trilogy; the central theme of which would be discrimination of all manner, but in particular racial discrimination between different cultures and skin colours. The book would be set in Ireland, Northern England and Jamaica and would involve ‘the Troubles’ in Ireland, violent flare ups, riots and corruption in Jamaica and the riots in the north of England during the 1990s that were mostly between black and white cultures.

While deciding how best to construct this Trilogy of books that would take four years of research and writing, and especially the book characters, I eventually decided to make every character in the trilogy a breed of cat which displayed human characteristics (with the one exception of a human man and wife). The reason I selected cats was because of their numerous breeds, and also because cats are travellers in every sense of the word. These three books were titled, ‘Truth’, ‘Justice’ and ‘Freedom’, and the series was titled, ‘The Kilkenny Cat Trilogy’. The story is told through the eyes, experiences and travels of a gipsy band of cats through Ireland, Jamaica and England, encountering racism and discrimination in every country and culture they encounter.

As my knowledge about cats and their many breeds was scant, I used the services of one of England’s cat experts for three years along with my reading of dozens of cat books about the numerous breeds I elected to write about. The upshot was remarkable in the personal conversion that took place inside of me. Whereas I once hated the presence of cats, I gradually came to love and appreciate them! I was eventually obliged to conclude that my initial dislike and mistrust of felines lay in my ignorance of them, but once I started to learn about them and their ways, I gradually grew to appreciate them and moved through the phases of liking them to loving them.

When I thought about it, I had undergone the very same process of increasing my understanding and reducing my discrimination, just as I had planned for 10,000 school pupils in Falmouth and Yorkshire. I then appreciated that the process is precisely the same for humans. We tend to fear and discriminate against the people and customs we do not understand and our way out of this ‘ignorant entrapment’ towards ‘unqualified acceptance’ is through increased familiarisation and better understanding. Whenever thereafter I saw a cat enter my presence, instead of shooing it away, I welcomed its presence.

‘The Kilkenny Cat Trilogy’ available in both e-book format and hard copy and is available from Amazon. All book sale profits go to charitable causes in perpetuity, along with the £200,000 already given to charity since 1990. The trilogy is not suitable for readers under the age of thirteen as they contain some graphic violent scenes in places.

I dedicate my song to three Facebook friends who are each celebrating their birthday today. Happy birthdays to Catherine Foley from Carrick-on-Suir in County Tipperary, Ireland; Nora Galvin from my hometown of Portlaw, County Waterford, Ireland, and my wife’s Singaporean school pal, Marie Ann Mathot from The Hague in the Netherlands. I don’t know whether Catherine or Nora are cat lovers, but I do know that my wife’s school friend, Marie-Ann is. Have a lovely birthday all of you and thank you for being my Facebook friends. Bill x

Love and peace Bill x
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Song for Today: 16th October 2019

16/10/2019

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My song today is dedicated to my Facebook friend, Monty Scargill who lives in Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire.

My song today is ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?’ which Rod Stewart sang in his 1978 album ‘Blondes Have More Fun’. The song was written by Stewart, Carmine Appice and Duane Hitchings, though it incorporates the melody from the song ’Taj Mahal’ by Jorge Ben Jor. It spent one week at the top of the British charts in December 1978 and four weeks at the top of the ‘US Billboard Hot 100’ chart in February 1979. Billboard ranked it Number 4 on its ‘Top Singles of 1979 Year-end chart’. It also topped the charts in Australia for two weeks. Royalties from the song were donated to the ‘United Nations Children's Fund’ (UNICEF) and Stewart performed the song at the ‘Music for UNICEF Concert’ at the ‘United Nations General Assembly’ in January 1979. Rolling Stone ranked the song at Number 308 in its list of the ‘500 Greatest Songs of All Time’.

It has been noted that Stewart created parts of the song through musical plagiarism. A copyright infringement lawsuit by Brazilian musician Jorge Ben Jor claimed the chorus of the song had been derived from his song "Taj Mahal". The case was ‘settled amicably’ according to Jorge Ben Jor, in Ben Jor's favour. Stewart admitted in his 2012 autobiography to ‘unconscious plagiarism’ of the Ben Jor song, which he had heard while attending the Rio Carnival in 1978.

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When this song was first released, I was aged 35 and was probably at the height of my good looks and honed body. If I recall correctly, I then had a 40-inch chest, measured 30 inches around my waist and displayed a muscular six-pack in the solar plexus region of my stomach that most bodybuilders would die for. My good looks were still intact and despite having been married for 9 years, I still had to fend off unwarranted advances from good-looking women at parties and dances whenever my wife’s eyes were elsewhere.

When this 77-year-old man (next month) now looks in the full wardrobe mirror as I dress and undress these days, there is much of which I once held so proud that I can no longer see, and far too much of which I do not like being able to see. My manhood, which once stood proud from beneath a muscular six-pack stomach, is now concealed in shrunken shame between ‘Good Year’ folds of flesh that hide it from the eyes of the world (including myself). Instead of displaying a muscular six-pack stomach, my tummy area now resembles three empty shelves with nothing to show in between.

Until two years ago, despite being the oldest of seven siblings, I could boast of having all my own teeth and a full head of hair, in a family who’d long ago lost most of theirs. Then, two lots of chemotherapy (six months at a time) softened my teeth and shattered six of them, requiring their removal at the hospital over three sittings. After these shattered teeth had been taken out, thereby necessitating a denture, the price of this new dental work was to cave in my mouth again in sheer astonishment. Having acquired my denture, which I rarely wear (six times maximum during the past six months) they now sit in pride of place in my bathroom like a Damien Hirst piece of art, positioned above the toilet bowl, in a glass of Formaldehyde (a substance that preserves the teeth of sharks and cows, similar to Steradent denture tablets).

That indignity was compounded recently when after two skin cancer operations on my skull, the plastic surgeon needed to put a skin graft over a large area that had been opened up to remove all deadly cancer deep down. That operation was subsequently followed two months later by twenty sessions of radiotherapy to mop up any remaining cancer that the operation might have missed removing. The surgeon; a Scottish woman in her mid-thirties smiled sweetly in her nonplussed medical manner as she told me that my hair would not grow back over the skin graft area again. At the time, knowing that I was 76-years-old and with a limited time span remaining, the good looking surgeon no doubt quickly glanced at the rest of my unsightly body mass and misshapen torso and silently thought, “ I don’t know why he should worry about the loss of a wee bit of hair no larger than the area of a wee orange. He’s lucky he’s still got his eyesight to see a bald patch any size smaller than a football!”

As I get older daily, I find that I don’t stand too close to the long mirror in the bedroom anymore when I have no clothes on. I find the wrinkled folds of my ageing body too cruel to compare with the man I once was when Rod Stewart first sang this song. Fortunately, my loss of teeth (three from each side of my mouth) are not my middle teeth and I am still able to sing and smile without being conscious of the unseen toothless gaps. As for my hair, I told myself initially that I would not give into vanity by falsifying the real image at the top right-hand side of my bald scalp, but even that promise has fallen foul to the unfettered vanity of an old man trying to look younger than his years.

I have recently noticed when I comb my hair on a morning, an unconscious tendency to brush a few long strands of hair over the bald patch at the side of my forehead. Any astute followers of my daily songs on my Facebook page will not be fooled by my recent inclusion of many Country and Western songs of choice to sing; all of which enables me more naturally to wear my cowboy hat of conceited concealment.

I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friend, Monty Scargill of Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire.

Cleckheaton was one of the most significant areas in my life before my first marriage, even though it was situated two miles away from where I lived on Windybank Estate. My father bought my first bicycle (costing ten shillings) from the old Market Place. It was a rusty second-hand contraption with no brakes or mudguards, but I loved it! My father worked at a Cleckheaton foundry at the time and I worked at ‘Bulmer and Lumbs’, a Cleckheaton mill. The Doctor’s surgery which the family attended was in Cleckheaton, and unless we had a house call, we would have to walk two miles each way to attend the doctor’s surgery when we did not have the bus fare to ride. Every Sunday, the Forde Family would walk one and a half miles each way, from Windybank Estate, down Hightown Road to attend the Catholic Church service in Cleckheaton. I drank my first underage pint of beer in a Cleckheaton pub (The Commercial). All my favourite drinking spots were in Cleckheaton pubs, and all cinema attendances were either at the Savoy or the Palace picture houses, opposite the Cleckheaton branch of the Yorkshire Bank. I have had an account at the Cleckheaton branch of the Yorkshire Bank for fifty-one years. Never once between the ages of 6-21 years of age, did I miss attending the annual Fair down Peg Lane, Cleckheaton. I was even there on that night a chap fell off the Big Wheel and landed on a girl below, instantly killing her!

During my wild teenage years of romance and hanky panky, Cleckheaton was the happy hunting ground of this ‘sexy’ teenager. I would visit the Town Hall every Saturday Night to dance and romance the rest of the night away after going on a Cleckheaton pub crawl with my mates, and whoever I escorted safely home from the dance, would not leave my sight until she had walked back inside her parent’s house. The last bus ride home was always preceded by having a final goodnight kiss and teenage fumble behind the Cleckheaton Bus Shelter. There would usually be about six courting couples alongside each other in various forms of partial undress, whose actions were wholly concealed by the darkness. Then, as a bus entered the depot, there were around five seconds when its headlights would catch sight of all the ‘goings-on’ between the couples holding up the bus-shelter wall. Knowing how best to catch an eyeful, the envious bus drivers would deliberately slow down as they crawled entry back into the bus station, not forgetting to leave their headlights on full beam as they did so.

Then, in my mid-twenties, I committed my first cardinal sin when I wholly ignored some of my mother's wisest advice she ever gave me! I actually went and married a girl who was brought up in Heckmondwike but who later lived in Cleckheaton. If only I’d have followed my dear mother’s advice, I would have spared myself so much heartache in the years that followed. When I was a growing teenager, my mother would often tell me as I left the house to have a good night out dancing, “Take heed, Billy Forde. Don’t dishonour the family name. Never trust a word those girls from Heckmondwike tell you and steer clear of any girl who comes from Cleckheaton if you don’t want to be trapped in an unhappy marriage!”

My song today is dedicated to my Facebook friend, Monty Scargill who lives in Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire. Have a nice day, Monty, and thank you for being my Facebook friend. Bill.

Love and peace Bill x
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Song for Today: 15th October 2019

15/10/2019

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My song today is dedicated to my Facebook friend, Carol L Vanzant from En Centro, California, U.S.A. who celebrates her birthday today.

Today’s song is ‘I Can’t Stand It’. This song was the first single from Eric Clapton’s 1981 album ‘Another Ticket’. ‘All Music’ critic Matthew Greenwald recalls the song as "one of Eric Clapton's biggest hits from the early '80s". He also went on to praise the driving tempo of the song and the superb guitar playing.

Besides reaching Number 10 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chart, the song was also the first Number 1 on ‘Billboard’s Top Tracks’ chart for rock songs, which debuted in March 1981. It stayed at the summit for two weeks. The song reached Number 15 in Canada. By 1981, ‘Broadcast Music, Incorp.’ measured more than one million broadcasts of the song, earning Clapton a special recognition certificate.

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Working as a Probation Officer with Behaviour Modification methods between 1970 and the mid-1990s, I came across the work of an American behaviourist called Albert Ellis whose work was to greatly enhance the work I was doing with clients that displayed entrenched problematic behaviour. Ellis was creating a whole lot of positive waves within the psychological and psychiatric schools of thought within the many diverse fields of American therapists and other group workers.

Albert Ellis founded much of his work around his theoretical viewpoint that instead of having problems come into one’s life, people invariably invite problematic behaviour into their own bodies, which then go on to infiltrate and brainwash their minds before negatively influencing all thinking and controlling ultimate response patterns. This is reportedly achieved by inviting into one’s mind ‘irrational beliefs’; a few of which are harmless but most of which are very harmful to our general disposition, our health, hope and happiness levels.

According to the work and lifetime research of Albert Ellis, any emotional disturbance one ever experiences (usually occurring after some traumatic incident such as divorce or death of a loved one etc) is unnecessarily produced and prolonged by one’s ‘Irrational Beliefs’. Through our irrational belief system, our brain punishes our bodies by saying to it, “What has happened to you, mate, is enough to kill anyone off: so feel terrible, become emotionally disturbed or massively depressed, die!”

Such Irrational beliefs can more easily be identified in our self-talk, the words we tell ourselves. Irrational self-talk always exaggerates the situation; making it much worse than it ought to be and making us feel infinitely worse than we ought to feel. Irrational self-talk always includes exaggerated words like MUST: SHOULD, SHOULDN’T and CAN’T! Such exaggerated words, intensify and exaggerate our feelings that our bodies have been instructed to produce.

When one examines one’s self-talk closely, one usually finds that one talks a great deal of harmful and self-defeating nonsense to oneself. The real harm of this negative and irrational self-talk and the holding of false beliefs is that the body is mentally instructed by the mind to either do something harmful to oneself or not do something healthy and helpful. Because the mind controls all actions and determines all manner of emotions we feel and their depth, Ellis preached that ‘irrational beliefs’ led to irrational and harmful action and produced irrational and extremely harmful emotions which disturbed and unbalanced the mind and body of the individual.

A quick rational examination of our self-talk will reveal that whenever we believe that certain things ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ be said to us or happen to us, then, when they do happen, it bodes that something bad will happen in feeling consequence. It would be desirable or even nice was such things not to happen to us, but there is no universal law that says they must never happen to us! Where is it written that we should never be sad or unhappy because someone did something we didn’t like or that something happened to us we didn’t want to happen? It would be lovely if we never experienced, inconvenient, nasty or sad things happening to us, but that does not equate with saying and believing ‘they should, must not ever happen to us!’

Ellis also espoused that the precise nature of self-talk we engage in almost every minute of our day determines the precise degree of motivation we instil inside ourselves and the amount of energy we harness. Ellis also states, that all self-talk (positive or negative self-talk) will store up either positive or negative thoughts in our heads and corresponding feelings in our bodies of a positive or negative order. The result is that the energy we harness in our body, deriving from our precise self-talk, will be positive or negative energy we use to either heal or harm ourselves.

The precise nature of our self-talk also determines our motivational levels and likelihood of failure or success in what we do. If, for example, we choose to say ‘I might give up smoking’ as opposed to, ‘I will give up smoking’ or ‘I shall give up smoking’, only the latter will demand the required will power and body energy needed to stop smoking! The self-talk saying ‘I might give up smoking’ will not provide what is needed in motivational and energy terms to stop smoking; and even though the statement ‘I will give up smoking’ is more likely than the former to succeed, it is far less likely than the ‘I shall give up smoking’ statement to make you stop.

Where Albert Ellis really made a positive difference in my own understanding of problematic behaviour that led to emotional disturbance though was in his ‘I can’t stand it’ self-talk.

Imagine a person in a job who doesn’t like their employment and who repeatedly starts telling themselves “I can’t stand this job!” The more times a person impounds this irrational belief on their brain, the more likely they are to give up the job. Such a person telling themselves that ‘they cannot stand’ this type of person or that type of behaviour or this type of situation; the more times they encounter that type of person, behaviour or situation, the angrier they will become and the stronger will become their irrational belief.

The real significance about holding the belief ‘I can’t stand it’ is that the person holding this belief is talking drivel; a complete falsehood and a palpable untruth. The truth is ‘we can stand anything’ until the last breath of life leaves our lungs! Then, it’s arguable that we aren’t the one standing it, but our corpse? We may not want it, desire it, wish it or like it, but the one thing we cannot truthfully say while we are standing it is, ‘I cannot stand it! That is palpably untrue. That is drivel!

Ellis also pointed out that when we tell our bodies ‘I can’t stand it!” we are indirectly instructing our bodies ‘not to stand it’. It is times such as these that we are more likely to become emotionally disturbed or even mentally unbalanced as the brain and body try to reconcile the irreconcilable between the rational and irrational event (the difference between what is actually happening outside one’s body as compared to what we are telling ourselves is happening to us).

The long-term danger of having the irrational belief of ‘I can’t stand it’, is that we carry our beliefs from one situation to the next. You may think that you are significantly changing your situation when you change your job, girlfriend, house, marriage partner etc, but you aren’t, because the ‘I can’t stand it’ belief follows you like a shadow into your next situation.

There have been half a dozen times since my childhood when I have laid close to death, either in a hospital bed or on an operation table. I have experienced life-threatening medical conditions such as punctured lung, caved in chest (breaking all but two of my ribs), damaged spine, two heart attacks, plus half a dozen different cancers to contend with over the past seven years (one of them terminal), from within all this uncertainty that has constantly surrounded me, has been one clear certainty. Had I once told myself ‘I can’t stand it!” when my pain levels were at their worst and my continued life chances so critical to call, I wouldn’t have been able to stand it; I’d be dead now.

I tell you these facts not to impress you but to hopefully influence you never again to say those most debilitating and destructive of words, “I CAN’T STAND IT!”

I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friend, Carol L Vanzant from En Centro, California, U.S.A. whose birthday it is today. Have a lovely day, Carol and thank you for being my Facebook friend. Bill x

Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song for Today: 14th October 2019

14/10/2019

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I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friend, Mary Anderson of Santa Fe Springs, California.

Today’s song is ‘How Deep Is Your Love’. This song is a pop ballad written and recorded by the Bee Gees in 1977 and released as a single in September of that year. It was ultimately used as part of the soundtrack to the film, ‘Saturday Night Fever’. It was a Number 3 hit in the United Kingdom and Australia. In the United States, it topped the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ on 25 December 1977 (becoming the first of six consecutive US Number-1 hits). The single spent six weeks atop the ‘US Adult Contemporary Chart’. It is listed at Number 22 on the 55th-anniversary edition of ‘Billboard’s All-Time Top 100’. Alongside Staying Alive’ and Night Fever’, it is one of the group's three tracks on the list.

‘How Deep Is Your Love’ ranked Number 375 on Rolling Stone’s list of ‘500 Greatest Songs of All Time’. During the Bee Gees' 2001 Billboard magazine interview, Barry reportedly said that ‘How Deep Is Your Love’ was his favourite Bee Gees’ song.

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I suppose that none of us really knows how deep one’s love is until it is truly tested. It matters not if it is the love of self, parents, children, family, partner or God, it is only when the chips are down that we only ever learn.

My wife, Sheila, unlike me, never needed or desired to parent children. Instead, she seemed to spend most of her adult life being the mistress to a long line of rescue dogs; and the rough collie breed (lassie dogs) were her preference. When her last dog, ‘Lady’ was alive a few years ago, I would frequently joke with my wife that she loved her dog more than me. Sheila would tactfully reply, “I love Lady ‘Differently’ to you, Bill, not ‘more’ than you.” It was at this diplomatic stage of her answer that I would pose her a situation that would definitively reveal her true answer.

As my working career involved the study of the human response (voluntary and involuntary response) for almost thirty years, I knew that only those responses the body makes naturally/ automatically/ unthinkingly/ involuntarily to be our ‘most natural’ responses; not those reactions we make after we have had time to voluntarily/consciously consider them beforehand. So, I would set Sheila my human-trap puzzle.

I would give Sheila the following situation. Imagine that you are half-way across one of those lengthy bridges that is often seen in tropical countries; the type made from platted vines by the natives, and which swing precariously in a pendulum motion as you walk across it gripping both sides, 1000 metres above a rocky ravine below. Suddenly; as you are in the centre of the bridge, the platted vines which have held it firm for two hundred years begin to snap at both sides of the bridge and you become aware they are tens of seconds remaining before they collapse completely and you are fatally thrown into the ravine below. If you run at breakneck speed, you can make it to one side of the bridge. You don’t even have the luxury of one second to make up your mind which side to run to. Your dilemma is that at each side of the bridge are the two loves of your life; your lifelong spouse and your faithful dog. Your husband is frantically beckoning you to run to his side of the bridge and your dog is barking loudly for you to run to its side of the bridge. Only in that briefest of unconscious moments as you automatically dash to one side of the bridge unthinkingly, will be determined if Sheila loved me or Lady the most!

Most of us, thank God, is likely ever to be asked to die for our love, but if we are wise, we will all choose to live for our love.

I know that without the love of my mother to rely on as I grew up, this child would have grown into much less of a man. I know that without the love of my friends as a wild teenager, that there would have been many a night I slept in a ditch instead of making it back home with a couple of broken ribs following a fight. I know that without the love of Mr Northrop; a greengrocer whose shop I stole from at the age of 15 years, and his invested trust in hiring me to work in his shop on a Saturday morning, I would have probably remained a lifelong thief instead of becoming a Probation Officer. I know that without my love of reading, I may not have been introduced to the importance of 'Second Chances'; the central theme of Victor Hugo's novel 'Les Miserables'. Without the love of music, song and dance, there would have been no romance in my life worthy of remembrance.

I know that without the love of my God, I would have already died half a dozen times on the operation table, and without the ongoing love of my beautiful wife, Sheila, I could not be as content as I am today. Though cancer is my ongoing medical affliction, the love of my beautiful wife is my only cure. I also know that without the love of myself, I could not have loved at all; I could not have ever loved my neighbour or achieved what I have done in my lifetime.

‘Love’ is the deepest well of the body and soul. The well of ‘Love’ blesses all who drink heartedly from it. The more we draw on it in our daily lives, the less our thirst for vengeance or supremacy is allowed to reign in our lives, the more forgiving, understanding and wholesome we become, the purer is our thoughts, the gentler our actions, and the greater is the spiritual nourishment that feeds our heart and soul.

I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friend, Mary Anderson, who lives in Santa Fe, California. We have never met, Mary, but I see in yourself and the regular comments on your Facebook page that, like myself, you are a political animal who takes a great interest in the politicians who govern our country. Your love of your family and country shines through for all to see within the daily entries of your Facebook page. Thank you for being my Facebook friend, Mary. Have a wonderful day. Bill x

Love and peace Bill xxx


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Song for Today: 13th October 2019

13/10/2019

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I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friend, Tracy Bowers from Northampton, Northamptonshire.

Today’s song is, ‘How Do You Do What You Do to Me’. This song was the debut single by the Liverpudlian band, ‘Gerry and the Pacemakers’. The song reached Number 1 in the ‘UK Singles Chart’ on 11 April 1963, where it stayed for three weeks. The song was written by Mitch Murray, who offered it to Adam Faith and Brian Poole but was turned down by both. George Martin of EMI decided to pick it up for the new group he was producing called the Beatles, as the A-side of their first record. The Beatles recorded the song but were opposed to releasing it, feeling that it did not fit their sound, but worked out changes from Murray's demo-disc version. Gerry and the Pacemakers' version, also produced by Martin, became a Number-1 hit in the UK’.

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Titled ‘How Do You Do It?’ this song was released during my 20th year of life as I was making plans to emigrate to Canada. Indeed, the question in the song title always reminds me of the ways that people can generally feel astounded by specific acts achieved by an individual along with certain situations encountered, faced and managed.

Since early 2013 when I was told that I had a terminal blood cancer, I have had numerous operations. I have twice received six months chemotherapy treatment and twenty sessions of radiotherapy for a further four cancers my body developed. On several occasions, I have been close to death, but thankfully, I have managed to pull through each time. And yet, I can honestly describe these past seven years of my life since I married my wife, Sheila as having been the happiest seven years since my birth (77 years ago next month).

Throughout my life, people have asked me, ‘How do you do it?’ whenever I manage to pull off something significant. Were my mother alive, I haven’t the slightest doubt of her answer to this question. She would look at me, smile lovingly and say, “Because our Billy is ‘special’. He always was and always will be!”

I am the firstborn of seven children born to my dear mother in Portlaw, County Waterford (in the home of my grandparents). My mother told me early on in my childhood that when she was six weeks into her pregnancy with me, she opened the door at 14, William Street, Portlaw one afternoon to a peg-selling gipsy. The Romany reportedly looked at my mother and said, “Cross my palm with sixpence or any silver coin and I’ll tell you about the ‘special child’ you will give birth to before Christmas!” Not showing any sign of her pregnant state, and not yet having mentioned the ‘good news’ to my father or her parents, as well as being wary about turning away any Romany empty-handed, my mother instantly opened her purse and placed sixpence in the hand of the Romany. The Romany told my mother that she would give birth to a special son and that this boy would be the firstborn of seven children born to her. Then, without further ado, the Romany left my mother’s doorstep saying, “Bless you and all the people of this house.”

From as early as I can remember, my mother told me every single day of my life, “Billy Forde, never forget that you are special!” She told me about the prophecy of the travelling Romany, and because she was my loving mother, I believed her words as no less than being Gospel. Having had ‘specialness’ conferred upon me by a peg-selling gypsy while I was fresh in my mother’s womb for the price of sixpence, and having my ‘specialness’ confirmed to me daily by my mother thereafter, I naturally came to believe that I was indeed ‘special’.

Everything unusual I did thereafter, every time I did something to beat the odds and I managed to survive the things one isn’t supposed to get over, in my mother’s eyes, it was because I was ‘special.’

Following a horrific traffic accident at the age of almost 12 years and a several life-threatening injuries, the doctors told my parents I wouldn’t live. When I managed to pull through, mum knew that it was because her eldest child was ‘special’. A damaged spine resulted from having my body twisted around the drive shaft of the wagon that ran over me and my parents were informed that I’d never walk again. When I did walk some three years later, my mother said it was because I was ‘a special child’.

While in hospital nine months, a teacher called Mr McNamara, who knew me to be a clever pupil (always first or second in any class subject) got me Mensa tested. When the results came back with a reading of 142, my mother instantly said, “It’s because our Billy’s special!”. The same was true when I became the youngest Trade Union Shop Steward in Great Britain at the age of 18 years and then became the youngest Youth Leader in England at the age of 18 years.

Over my adult years, several heart attacks and half a dozen different cancers in my body have been experienced by me and still, I have managed to resist shuffling off my mortal coil.

In short; the more often I was told by my mother that I was ‘special’, the more ‘special’ I felt; I was not in the least surprised when I continued to do ‘special things’ (which I believe were ordinary things done in a special way).

I spent the first 25 years of my life believing strongly in my own ‘specialness’ before my life underwent a significant positive change. I gradually came to appreciate that ‘I was special’ BUT SO WAS EVERY OTHER LIVING PERSON AND CREATURE ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH! Still, I will never say that the sixpenny piece my mother gave the Romany wasn’t worth its value a million fold.

Ever since that realisation that everyone is ‘special’, I have devoted the past fifty years doing everything I do in attempting to make people more aware of their own ‘specialness’. I have done that through my work as a Probation Officer, Marriage Guidance Counsellor, Anger Management Worker, Group Worker, Relaxation Trainer, Good Neighbour and Christian. I have sought to do it through my many published children’s books, my charitable work, all my relationships and my daily Facebook posts.

The purpose of this personal explanation isn’t to ‘big myself up’ but simply to point out that it isn’t ‘Me’ as such who has been able to achieve the outcomes I have experienced. It was ‘my belief’ in my mother’s words, my belief in my self-worth, my belief in God, my belief that good hold power and sway over all manner of evil in the long run and my belief in the capacity of others to change their life and behaviour for the better. The power lay 'in my belief'.

I have never yet achieved one thing alone since I first drew breath 77 years ago. At every twist and turn in my life there has been someone there to support, nourish, teach, guide, demonstrate, intervene, encourage me, stop me, share and help in one way or another.

Two of the most important pieces of advice ever given to me came from my parents. My father once told me, “Billy, no job is beneath any man to perform.” My mother once told me, “Billy, never be too proud to allow others to help you!” In their own way they were both essentially telling me that ‘humility’ is the greatest of character traits. Unfortunately, too much pride and too little humility has always been, and will no doubt prove to be my own downfall and this still remains a ‘work in progress’ for me.

I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friend, Tracy Bowers from Northampton. Tracy has had her own struggle with fighting cancer over the years and always demonstrates the innate courage that can be called upon at our most difficult of coping times. Thank you for being my Facebook friend, Tracy. Bill x

Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song For Today: 12th October 2019

12/10/2019

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I jointly dedicate my song today to Jovanka Banjac, Bill Whitfield,

Today’s song is ,’Love of My Life’. This song is by the British rock band ‘Queen’ from their 1975 album ‘A Night at The Opera’. The ballad was written by the late Freddie Mercury. After Queen performed the song in South America in 1981, the version from their live album ‘Live Killers’ reached Number 1 in the singles chart in Argentina and Brazil, and stayed in the charts in Argentina for an entire year.

Freddie Mercury wrote it on the piano and guitar first, and Brian May rearranged the song for an acoustic 12-string guitar for live performances, also lowering the key by a minor third. May contributed occasional guitar phrases to the original recording and played the swooping harp glissandos by pasting together multiple takes of single chords. The song is an example of Mercury's familiarity with rubato phrasing, showcasing his classical piano influences, notably by Chopin and Beethoven.

During the voyage of the space shuttle Columbia (STS-107) Israeli astronaut, Ilan Ramon, asked to play the song. The song was played in the shuttle and Ramon said: "A special good morning to my wife, Rona, the love of my life."] Ramon died in the ‘Columbia disaster’ shortly thereafter, during its return to the atmosphere in 2003.

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There are so many aesthetic and tangible things that have been the love of my life that it would take a full day to name them all. First and foremost is my love of music, song and dance, along with art and all manner of creative imagery, whether it be painted, sculpted, or carved in bronze, stone or any other metal or material. This would be closely followed by my love of books and in particular history books and biographies. I love my daily newspaper and am a highly political animal. As for television programmes, my favourite would be David Attenborough’s 'Blue Planet' and any Nature programme.

I used to love walking in the meadows and across the moorlands during earlier years when I was more mobile and greatly miss such outings today. I love our allotment and the peace and tranquillity it affords me and Sheila as we spend time among the flowers, trees, plants, birds, all creatures, vegetables and fresh air. I love our own home-grown potatoes and Sheila’s soda bread and arraignment of heavenly jams and other cooked treats on daily offer to my palate.

About pleasures of the flesh and the heart, I love my wife, Sheila most of all but will never disguise (to even her good self), my love of the female form and most appealing of bodies. In body physical traits, my preferential love is for black hair, brown eyes, and shapely legs. In the area of personal attributes, I love strong-minded women who are honest and open in expression; and I am happier even still if they are prepared to jump in puddles alongside me and are prepared on occasions to recognise that some things are better left ‘unsaid’. My ideal woman, Sheila, she has provided the degree of mental, physical, emotional and spiritual bond that I require to be both independent and happily interdependent.

The activities I love and have loved in my life when I could perform them were playing football, dancing, singing, horse riding, relaxation exercises and talking on any mutually agreeable subject with present company. All these things/people/creatures and pastimes have been my life’s loves, with my wife Sheila being the absolute ‘Love of my Life’.

I jointly dedicate my song today to four Facebook friends. The first two people this song is dedicated to are classical music lovers and pianists, Jovanka Banjac from Vienna, Austria and Bill Whitfield from Summerville, South Carolina, U.S.A. Jovanka’s skill as a classical pianist is clearly observable in her masterful twenty-minute recital of Mozart’s Sonata on her Facebook page of October 11th, 2019, and much of Bill's wonderful piano playing can be heard on 'Spotify'. Both Jovanka and Bill share with me my love of classical piano music and they will no doubt appreciate the Chopin and Beethoven connection of Freddie Mercury's song construction.

I also jointly dedicate my song today to Facebook friends, Fay Bailey who lives in Ocala, Florida and Enda O’Driscoll of Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary. It is the birthday of Fay and Enda today. Fay shares with me our love of animals and I love Enda’s wit and dry humour as illustrated in many of her Facebook page entries. Have a super birthday.

I thank all four of you for being my Facebook friends. Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song for today: 11th October 2019

11/10/2019

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I jointly dedicate my song today to my Facebook friends, Cindy Sonday from East Lansing, Michigan whose birthday it is today, along with Briget Tobin who lives in County Tipperary, and whose birthday it also is today.

Today’s song is ‘How Can You Mend A Broken Heart’. This was a song released by the Bee Gees in 1971. It was written mainly by Barry and Robin Gibb and was the lead and first single on the group's 1971 album ‘Trafalgar’. It was their first US Number 1 single and it also reached Number 1 in ‘Cash Board Magazine’ for two weeks. The song appears in the 2013 film ‘American Hussle’ and on its soundtrack.

Barry and Robin Gibb wrote the song on August 1970, when the Gibb brothers had reconvened following a period of break-up and alienation. "Robin came to my place," says Barry, "and that afternoon we wrote 'How Can You Mend a Broken Heart' and that obviously was a link to us coming back together. We called Maurice, finished the song, went to the studio.”

Following the release of ‘How Can You Mend a Broken Heart’, the song was nominated for a ‘Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group’.

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When this song was first released, I was just coming out of my training as a Probation Officer in Newcastle and my first job location was working in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. As a young man, I wasn’t averse to getting into a bit of street fighting on the estate where we were brought up In Liversedge. Having a fight whenever ‘called out’ by someone else was expected of one if they wanted to preserve their gang respect from their mates. It was common for young men to fight over all manner of things during the 1950s, but wherever the honour of your young woman was concerned, whenever another young man insulted her, an instant duel to the death was demanded. This kind of fight invariably ended with one or both combatants being taken to the hospital badly hurt.

The rules of combat were always adhered to if one didn’t want to be shamed and have their family name sullied through the charge of ‘cowardice’. While being ‘a good fighter’ did one’s street cred no harm, winning a fight outright proved less important than how well a young man fought. If one gave as good as one got, or in some cases, gave as good as one could, the honour would be restored. Kicking was outlawed in my day and weapons were unthinkable. Only fists and hands were permissible and if the opponent raised their hand in the air from a prostrate position to indicate he’d had enough if the fighter who was winning struck another blow, he’d be shamed and booted out of the gang. It was not unusual to have an arm or a leg broken in a gang fight. I have broken a few ribs, arms and legs in my time and have had half a dozen of my own limbs broken in reply.

All through my teenage years to adulthood and emigrating to Canada, I may have broken many an arm or a leg in a fight, but I never once broke a heart, either by intention, deliberate action or ‘without fair warning’. I was a romancer who was always falling in love with a beautiful young woman at the drop of a hat or some lower garment, but I never allowed any young woman I dated to be left with any impression that ‘I was the settling-down type of person’.

I preferred to be in the company of a good- looking woman, especially a female who was a good Bopper on the dance floor. Consequently, after a few dates, if I was getting to like the young woman a bit too much for my own liking or sensed that she was starting to get emotionally attached to me, I would be instantly off and in search of a new date. I treasured my independence and freedom to do what I wanted too much to give it up to any woman. I prized the opportunity to go where I pleased, with whom and when I liked too greatly to willingly part with it for the exclusivity of one relationship; however enjoyable.

Paradoxically, instead of putting girls off wanting my company and their desire to date me, my exclusivity seemed to simply attract the fairer sex more. I had made myself one of the ‘untouchables’, a form of ‘forbidden fruit’ that hung low on a passion tree from which most young Eves wanted to eat. If any heart got broken, therefore, it would have been done unintentionally and with sufficient advanced warning if my freedom was targetted.

As a Probation Officer and a Marriage Guidance Counsellor for several years, I witnessed too many broken relationships which left one side totally devastated and emotionally disturbed. I witnessed many relationships where physical, sexual and mental abuse was distributed uncaringly by one partner towards another. As the founder of ‘Anger Management’ (a method of working to decrease anger in individuals), I also worked with violent criminals who displayed involuntary aggressive responses and behaviour patterns.

I will never forget one woman from Holmfirth in Huddersfield who had experienced a chain of violent and aggressive relationships with her many partners between the ages of 16-40 years. The violence had been inflicted towards herself initially by a violent parent. When the violence became too bad, around the age of 16 years, she ran away from home. She did not escape the violence however and running away from home was simply jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Every man she got attached too had a violent streak in him and they would frequently physically assault and beat up on her.

I will never forget trying hard to understand that it was the emotional and psychological hurt she couldn’t endure during a relationship and not the physical abuse. During one office session, she was telling me that half a dozen partners of hers had all displayed similar patterns of aggressive behaviour towards her She said, “I always seem to love and attract the wrong type of man, Mr Forde” I can still recall her telling me, “It always starts and finishes up the same. I find myself being attracted to the bad boys; then, after I fall in love and we move in together, I find they are always violent and controlling. I have been stabbed by one, knocked unconscious by another on four occasions, had my teeth knocked out by fists to the face, kicked in the stomach when I was pregnant, and jumped on sexually(against my wishes to the contrary) whenever he came back home randy and drunk. They all broke my heart, Mr Forde!”

Then she added, “It wasn’t the aggro I couldn’t stand. I’d have probably let him break my arm and bust my face any day of the week, if only they had stayed loving and faithful instead of going with everyone they fancied, and not broken my heart! “

Then she added some words I will never forget, “Broken arms and legs can be mended, Mr Forde, but broken hearts can’t. They will always remain damaged.” I suspect that she was probably correct in her view.

I jointly dedicate my song today to two Facebook friends Cindy Sonday from East Lansing, Michigan whose birthday it is today, along with Briget Tobin who lives in County Tipperary, and whose birthday it also is today. Thank you for being my Facebook friends, Cindy and Briget. Hoping that you both have a super birthday. Bill x

Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song for Today: 10th October 2019

10/10/2019

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I dedicate my song today to Ann Laffan of Portlaw, County Waterford, Ireland.

Today’s song is ‘Everything I own’. This song was written by David Gates. It was originally recorded by Gates's rock band ‘Bread’ for their 1972 album ‘Baby I Want You’. The original reached Number 5 on the American ‘Billboard Hot 100’. Billboard ranked it as the Number 52 song for 1972. ‘Everything I Own’ also reached Number 5 in Canada.

Jamaican artist Ken Boothes reggae version of the song was Number 1 in the ‘UK Singles’ chart in 1974. A version by Boy George reached No. 1 in the charts in the UK, Canada, Ireland and Norway in 1987.

Although initial listeners may have interpreted it as a song about a broken relationship, Gates revealed that it was written in memory of his father who died in 1963 before he achieved his success with ‘Bread’.

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This song was first released when I was aged 30, and I was starting my career as a Probation Officer serving in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. It was almost a decade later when David Gates and the group ‘Bread’ registered on my musical radar. I fell in love with this beautiful song the first time I heard it. I had just separated from my wife and was at that period in life when personal loneliness and specific songs seem to gel in a comforting and emotionally supportive way.

When I think about it, ‘relationships’; their beginnings and endings, are grist to the mill of songwriters seeking ideal songs for the romantic listener. The world-famous Adele has made £millions out of writing and singing songs about the start and end of her relationships, the heartaches and the breakups, the ecstasy and the happiness in between.

My own life witnessed the years between the 1950s to the 1980s being almost solely devoted to ‘love songs’. When I was living in Canada in the early 1960s, my love of country and western songs took flame. Almost every country-and-western song is a story about love. I always admired Americans. Often, when they get their decree nisi papers through, instead of showing a measure of sorrow and disappointment as a British person might do, instead, the Americans dress up to the nines and go out to celebrate. One can also wager that by the end of the night they are singing the song ‘D.I.V.O.R.C.E as they rumba their way back home in an inebriated state of merriment.

Essentially the central message of today’s song speaks to something most of us would willingly subscribe to. Regarding people in our lives that we truly love, like our parents, children, siblings, partners and lovers, there is simply nothing we wouldn’t do for them. We would willingly give them our all!

I dedicate my song today to Ann Laffan from the village where I was born; Portlaw, County Waterford in Ireland. While I do not know Ann, her Facebook page entry of September 11th, 2019 reveals her to be a most hospitable person, and definitely, a person who would give ‘everything they own’ to someone they truly love. Ann wrote, “My house is a safe zone. Kettle can be on in minutes, I will always do my best to be available ... you are always welcome! Nobody is alone, there’s always someone willing to listen, go for a walk with you, take you shopping, watch a movie with you, relate to what your feeling 💚 "

Sheila and I will be having three weeks touring Ireland next Spring, Ann, so get that kettle on as we shall certainly be popping in for a cuppa. Thank you for being my Facebook friend. Bill x

Love and peace Bill x
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Song for Today: 9th October 2019

9/10/2019

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I dedicate my song today to Elaine Drake of Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire.

Today’s song is ‘The Greatest Love of All’. This song was written by Michael Masser, who composed the music, and Linda Creed, who wrote the lyrics. It was originally recorded in 1977 by George Benson, who made the song a substantial hit, peaking at Number 2 on the ‘US Hot R&B/Hip Hop Songs’ chart that year, the first R&B chart top-ten hit for ‘Arista Records’. The song was written and recorded to be the main theme of the 1977 film ‘The Greatest’, a biopic of the boxer Muhammad Ali. Eight years after Benson's original recording, the song became even more well known for a version by Whitney Houston, whose 1985 cover (with the slightly amended title ‘Greatest Love of All’) eventually topped the charts, peaking at Number 1 in the United States, Australia, Canada and on the ‘US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs’ in early 1986.

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

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I have always considered the words of this song to dovetail into so many of my own inner beliefs, along with a few of society’s failures. The lyrics espouse the belief that ‘children are our future’ and that it is the duty of adults to see in them the beauty of themselves and to instil in them a sense of pride. The song tells us, ‘Everyone is looking for a hero’ and indicates that being one’s own person is a way of becoming one’s own hero. Without a doubt, however, the most powerful lines in the song and its central message can be found in the lines, ‘I found the greatest love of all inside of me’ along with, ‘For you to love yourself is the greatest love of all’.

I suppose that one of life’s hardest lessons to learn and take on board is being aware that ‘Until one can love oneself (faults and all) one is unable to truly love another!’ My own experiences reveal this statement to hold so much truth,

Prior to getting knocked down with a wagon when I was 11 years and incurring life-threatening injuries that kept me in the hospital as an in-patient for nine months and then prevented me walking for almost three years, my dream was to play football for Ireland; the country of my birth. Indeed, everything indicated that this 11-year-old who was skilled enough to play in the senior football team at St. Patrick’s school with pupils four years older, would one day achieve a sporting break-through and witness his dream come true. “After all, “I thought, “why shouldn’t I one day play soccer for Ireland? My father did when he was 21 years old, so why shouldn’t I?”

That was a time in my life when my confidence and belief in myself to do anything I set my mind to was at its height. After the medics told me that because of my spine (which I’d badly damaged when my body had got twisted around the main drive shaft of the wagon), I’d never walk again, I was emotionally gutted. Within the matter of a day, the bottom had fallen out of my world. The emotions that I predominantly felt at that precise moment were ‘fear’ and ‘anger.’ I was fearful that I would never walk again and angry that my glittering football career was over before it had ever really got started! Then, over the immediate months that followed, ‘I stopped loving myself’, and before long, I’d also stopped loving others (or rather had stopped showing and expressing my love for others).

The years between my childhood accident and emigrating to Canada at the age of 21 years witnessed most of my leisure hours being taken up with numerous sporting activities and exercises that were designed to restore a sense of balance and improve my mobility. During this period, I had learned to master my fears, manage my anger and begin to love myself again. Once I started to invest love in myself again, I also unknowingly started to automatically express love in others also, along with expressing love in whatever I did.

During my thirties as a Probation Officer with the West Yorkshire Probation Service, I found new and constructively creative ways of working with aggressive clients who were unable to manage their anger states and prevent themselves acting aggressively and violently in certain situations. For over twenty years I researched the behaviour and response patterns of my clients and discovered some very important factors.

By the age of thirty-five, my work with violent clients led to me being able to set up the very first systematised ‘Anger Management’ working methods in the world. Within two years, I’d founded ‘Anger Management’ and my systemised methods of working with aggressive people started to mushroom across the English-speaking world.

The magic formula that I had stumbled on in the dark as opposed to coming across in clear daylight was the three most important emotions that lie behind a person’s most entrenched problems; fear, anger and the absence of enough self-love! My research into my own working practices and results also led me to recognise 'the order' that these three major problems ought to be addressed. I had discovered that while behavioural change could be temporarily achieved if I worked with these three components in the wrong order, positive behavioural change of a long-term nature could not be maintained. It was like going on a specific dietary regime, losing a significant amount of weight but not being able to keep off the weight loss as you gradually revert to your old eating habits.

Ironically, I was to later discover that my life’s work in changing behaviour patterns and founding the process of 'Anger Management' had its roots in my own childhood accident and the three prominent emotions I had when I was told by the medics that I’d never walk again.

My later work with hundreds of groups taught me that the first of these three emotions to be worked with was learning clients to love themselves again before they were able to express love towards others. This work involved lots of talking helping people discover the good things about themselves they had buried away. There were also many self-enhancement exercises revealing their personal strengths they hide from public view, to help them feel better about themselves and establish a good enough level of self-love.

When the person has started to love themselves again, they are able to love others and are less likely to feel such alone in their lives. They also find renewed strength to face, confront and tackle their other two problem areas. Their second problem emotion to work on is their high level of fear; particularly their irrational fears. This is best done by relaxation training exercises, a working method called, ‘Systematic Desensitisation’(designed to reduce unhealthy fear levels), followed by lots of behavioural rehearsal exercises. After the fear component of their problem behaviour has been successfully addressed; only then is it appropriate to work on their anger management problems. While working on their anger issues, it will be their self-love and their love of others that will enable them to change for the better and maintain their change of behaviour long term.

As the song says, ’I found the greatest love of all inside me.’

I dedicate my song today to Elaine Drake from Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire. I know from the regular entries of Elaine’s Facebook page that she loves children and that she knows her greatest strength lies in her love of self and her love of others. Thank you for being my Facebook friend, Elaine. Bill x

Love and peace Bill xxx

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Song For Today: 8th October 2019

8/10/2019

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I dedicate my song today to my Aunt, Kathleen Fanning who lives in Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire, and whose birthday it is.

My song today is ‘Delilah’.This was is a song recorded by Welsh singer Tom Jones in December, 1967. It was originally recorded by P.J. Proby in late November, 1967. Proby hated the song and refused to include it on his album ‘Believe It or Not’, which was being compiled and recorded at the time. The lyrics were written by Barry Mason, and the music by Les Reed who also contributed the title and theme of the song. It earned Reed and Mason the 1968 ‘Ivor Novello Award’ for ‘Best Song Musically and Lyrically’.

The song reached the Number 1 spot in the charts of several countries, including Germany and Switzerland. It reached Number 2 in the British charts in March 1968 and was the sixth-best selling single of that year. The US ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chart records its highest position as Number 15.

The singer narrates the song from the point of view of someone who perceives himself as a betrayed lover and who spies a woman in silhouette on a window blind as she makes love to another man. Although he realises that she is no good for him, he calls her 'his'. At the break of day, armed with a knife and waiting until her paramour leaves, he knocks on the door, which she opens only to laugh in his face. He stabs her to death, then waits for the police to come to break down the door and take him away.

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I have known of so many ‘crimes of passion’ in my career as a Probation Officer serving in the West Yorkshire Probation Service between 1971-96. Feeling excessive jealousy, needing control and having a deep sense of betrayal is usually the terrible-triplet of human traits propelling such acts of violence against a former loved one.

I have known a number of women who were stabbed by their former lovers, one was shot in the arm and leg; one woman had a pan of boiling water thrown over her head, and one woman I worked with even had their house burnt down after having refused to open the door to an aggressive ex-lover who was determined to do her harm.

Perhaps the spookiest I ever personally knew of was the daughter of a neighbour. The young woman in question had never spoken to, dated or even knew of her attacker. The man who physically attacked her was a ‘stalker’. The young woman was a nurse at a local hospital. She was single in status and did not know the man who tried to severely hurt her. The stalker seemingly spotted the nurse in the hospital corridor one morning as he walked out from the A&E department and took a fancy to her. Through a weird sense of logic and a mental process I cannot truly understand, the man got it into his head that he and the young woman secretly loved each other madly and were waiting to declare their love to her parents before getting married and living happily ever after.

For many months, her stalker became detective and discovered the woman’s name, address, house phone number, friends, interests and a whole range of personal details about her. He started following her to work daily and would wait for her when she came out of work, whether her shifts were early or late. In the beginning, she sensed the man’s background presence but took no action. A week later, she walked into the hospital ward to start her shift and had a big bunch of red roses waiting for her at the reception desk with a note saying, ’To my sweetheart and only love of my life.’ xxx. The card was unsigned. The flowers from the anonymous man continued daily and after a week, the woman’s parents reported the matter to the local police in a hope to halt the harassment.

The young woman continued to receive her daily floral gifts (which were now left on the doorstep of her parent’s house where she lived). They would be placed on the step during the hours of darkness and were sometimes delivered to the young woman in person by ‘Interflora’. Her home would be regularly phoned by the stalker when she was in. When her parents answered, he hung up.Then, the young woman’s items of the more personal nature started to disappear from her washing line.

It was around two months after it had all first started when her stalker drummed up enough courage to approach the young woman direct and to reveal his face to her. He reportedly approached the young woman, smiling and expecting to be lovingly greeted by her with open arms. He carried a bunch of red roses that he placed in her hand, saying, “Won’t be long now, sweetheart! We’ll be married soon, sweetheart. I love you!” She instantly dropped the flowers to the ground, shouted at her stalker and called him a pervert (he was a man in his mid-40s). He ran off as she continued to scream after him.

The stalking went on for over six months, but the police were unable to prevent it, as no stalking law had yet been legislated for by Parliament in the early 90s. The eventual upshot was that the entire family up-sticks and moved to a new house in another part of the country. The young woman had been so badly psychologically traumatised by her stalking experiences, and probably still lives in fear of him ever discovering her present circumstances. No forwarding address was left by her parents for the neighbours and the young woman even changed the nature of her employment. I last spoke with her father 17 years ago.

I mention this latter case in greater detail than the women who were physically attacked, maimed and scarred because I know that while physical, emotional and psychological trauma severely affects one’s life and health in the most terrible of ways, it is the psychological traumatic effects that often last a lifetime; even beyond that of severe physical and sexual abuse.

I dedicate my song today to my Aunt Kathleen Fanning from Cleckheaton who has suffered ill-health for several years now. Happy birthday, Aunt Kathleen. I hope you have a pleasant day. Love Bill and Sheila x

Love and peace Bill xxx
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Song For Today: 7th October 2019

7/10/2019

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I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friend, Lizzy Walsh, the daughter of my best friend, Tony Walsh from Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary, along with my Facebook friend Pauline Upton, whose birthday it is today.

My song today is ‘Surrender’. This song was recorded by Elvis Presley in 1961 and reached number 1. It is an adaptation by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman of the music of a 1902 Neapolitan ballad by Giambattista and Ernesto de Curtis entitled ‘Torna a Surriento’ (‘Come Back to Sorrento). It hit Number one in the US and UK in 1961 and eventually became one of the best-selling singles of all time. This was one of 25 songs Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman wrote for Presley. It has been recorded by many other artists, including Michael Buble.
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I was 19 years old when this song was first recorded and released. I had ‘surrendered’ much of my then life to the responsibilities of being the youngest textile shop steward in Great Britain, along with performing the role as the youngest Youth Club leader in England and Wales, along with devoting most of any remaining spare time to sports, rock and rolling and dating as many of the fairer sex as I could get my hands on.

During my late teenage years, I was nicknamed ‘The Wanderer’ by all my mates because of my unwillingness to ever show signs that I might one day settle down into a loving relationship with one woman. There simply appeared no way that I was prepared to surrender my freedom and bachelor status to any fair maiden, and the only aisle I was ready for walking down was the aisle of a passenger ship that would take me across the Atlantic for a couple of years, where I might continue to sow my oats in the fields of Canada and parts of America in wild abandonment.

Like all ‘bad boys’ who would one day become a ‘good guy’ when I settled down into marriage and family commitment, I just needed to squeeze every bit of badness out of me before I could know my better self and become acquainted with the more reliable and wholesome chap I would one day become.

After my return from Canada, I surrendered myself to what I believed would be a life of steadiness and partner stability, and greater conformity with much that I’d rebelled against during my earlier life.

But if I thought I’d cracked it as an enlightened and mature citizen during my early twenties, I couldn’t have been farther from the truth. Over the next thirty years, until I was obliged to seek early retirement from my work as a Probation Officer on the grounds of ill-health, I remained a constant thorn in the side of my employers with my outright refusal to ever settle for second best when better was attainable with extra effort, more resources, better transparency and greater accountability.

I jointly dedicate my song today to my Facebook Friend, Lizzy Walsh from Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary, Ireland. Lizzy is the daughter of my best friend, Tony Walsh who lives in Carrick-on-Suir with his wife Lily. Lizzy has always been close to her parents and has always exhibited concern for the underdog and society's problems within the world around her. Have a great day, Lizzy. I sing you an Elvis Presley song today, as I know he was a favourite singer of your dad. Have a good day and thank you for being my Facebook friend. Billy x

I also jointly dedicate my song today to Pauline Upton, whose birthday it is. Pauline places roses in her dear mother's memorial garden, just as I have always done. Have a lovely birthday, Pauline and thank you for being my Facebook friend. Bill x

Love and peace Bill xxx
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