博客存档 - FordeFables

Song For Today: 31st December 2020

31/12/2020

By popular demand, Sheila will accompany me in both my morning and evening New Year's Eve songs today to round off our old year 2020.

Sheila and I wish you all a happy New Year. Let us make 2021 much more than a token twelve months of unfulfilled intentions, however noble. Let our resolution matter much more than simply going in one year and out the other! The New Year stands before us like a chapter in a book waiting to be written; a pathway to new stars waiting to be explored, and an army of new friends who have not yet passed our way.

Sheila and I wish that your New Year brings you an abundance of amazing opportunities, beautiful moments, joyful and memorable experiences. May you display positive actions and attitude to inspire others to do the things they need to do for their own happiness. May you be brave enough to take on and overcome the rewarding challenges you face, and be kind enough to yourself, if at first, you don't succeed. We hope that you are blessed with robust health, but if you cannot be, we pray that you are able to positively cope with your burden and retain enough positive thought, goodwill, and a genuine appreciation of the good things in life to lighten your load. May you feel confident enough to love with all your heart and that the love you express through the purity of your thoughts, your warmth of feeling, and the goodness of your actions come back to you tenfold. May you always breathe the wind of calm and find peace in the most turbulent of times and moments of occasional madness. Finally, may your most wonderous of dreams today become your New year's reality tomorrow.

We cannot allow this past year to pass without thanking each and every one of you for the beautiful and loving thoughts you have expressed to me and Sheila during my time of illness this past year. We appreciate the unqualified love you have bestowed upon two strangers you have never met in person but have graced by taking us to your heart and retaining us in your affections. Your prayers said, candles lit, and masses offered on my behalf have meant more to me than words can express. You make me feel much loved, and evoke in me the essence of humility; a trait that is a stranger to my person and with whom I have never been well enough acquainted.

Love and peace
Bill and Sheila xxx

Song For Today: 31st December

31/12/2020

A Happy New Year from Bill and Sheila. Life is always filled with new opportunities and the New Year of 2021 will provide us all with another chance to get it right. If you are anything like me, you may need more than a second or even a third chance to get things right before they eventually come good. The secret is never to stop trying making our imperfect selves a bit better with each attempt.

I offer special greetings this afternoon to Mary Fitzgerald and Franny Walsh, both of whom celebrate their birthday today. Mary and Franny each live in Carrick-on-Suir in Tipperary, Ireland. Enjoy your special day, ladies, and a Happy Birthday and a Happy New Year.

Love and peace Bill and Sheila xxx

Song For Today: 30th December 2020

30/12/2020

I dedicate my song today to Ruth Cole who lives in Brighouse, West Yorkshire but who comes from Cleckheaton, the dancing capital of my romantic teenage years. It is Ruth's birthday today. Enjoy your special day, Ruth, and thank you for being my Facebook friend.

Today’s Christmas song is ‘Jingle Bell Rock’. This an American popular Christmas song that was first released by Bobby Helms in1957.

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Whoever we are or wherever we come from, the vast majority of us won’t mind doing a ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ at the height of the festive season, whether it be at the work’s office party, in some dance hall or disco or even in one’s lounge after a few festive drinks. Nobody cares if you dance well, so long as you dance!

I have always loved both song and dance. Dancing allows you to express a wide variety of emotions. The way you dance can express happiness, excitement, and passion. What is so wonderful about dancing is that it helps you to relieve stress and to fully centre yourself in the present moment. Had I been a teenager today in the current pandemic virus lockdown and restrictions and not been able to visit the local dance hall, I would have been heartbroken.

One of the very first poems I learned at school as a child was ‘The Owl and the Pussy Cat’ by Edward Lear and the line from the poem which most stuck in my memory was “Hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, they danced by the light of the moon.” I have always considered dance to be the hidden language of the soul. It reveals our emotions like pleasure, excitement, and sheer exuberance. All the best dancers are those who show passion in their step and movement.

My feet were unable to do what they were supposed to do after a traffic accident as an 11-year-old left me unable to walk for almost three years. Whilst walking had always been their prime purpose, since the age of nine years, dancing had always been their hobby. I never knew if it was the challenge of the correct footwork that made me interested in learning to dance at a young age or the mere fact that I had discovered the pleasure of placing my arms around the waist of a bonny girl as we glided around the floor? Either way, as soon as I recovered the ability to walk again, there was no keeping me away from the dance hall floor.

In my romantic teenage years, I very much started to appreciate the movement of dance as being "a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.” as George Bernard Shaw once described it. I would go dancing three times weekly in the era of Rock and Roll but I must admit that my dancing was usually the prelude to getting an attractive young woman to walk home at the end of the night. Ever since the 1920s onwards, the dance hall became the happy hunting ground for most meetings between future wives and husbands, and during the 1950s and 60s, both sexes came to appreciate that one of the few places where one was most likely to find love and marriage was ‘across the dance floor’.

Dance and song have always been, and will always remain an important part of my life. Indeed, one of the things I miss doing today is dancing over the past eight years. My severe arthritis and the onset of several cancers have affected the agility and the extent of my movement. Whatever my absence of leg movement is now though, I will never stop tapping my feet to the sound and rhythm of a good beat.

And for all you out there who excuse yourself from the pleasure of dancing by saying, “I can’t dance" or " I could never dance" or "I’ve two left feet!” I would simply say one thing: “If there is nothing in your life to dance about, then for God’s sake, find a reason to take up singing”.

Love and peace
Bill xxx

Song For Today: 29th December 2020

29/12/2020

This afternoon I want to dedicate a seasonal song to two groups of people whom I am thinking about today.

One is a Facebook friend called Regina Mullins who is greatly missing the presence of her brother, Charles Byrne, and family this Christmas. As a rule, Charles (who was born in Carlow Town but who now lives in Bradford, West Yorkshire) and his wife and their two daughters, Hannah and Katherine Byrne, usually make a point of visiting Carrick-on-Suir. The Coronavirus has knocked their seasonal visit on the head this year. Regina Mullins makes a special request for a seasonal song dedication for her brother and his family, and hopes that they can soon be together again next year. Have a happy Christmas to the Byrne family from Regina xxx

The second (persons) who I am especially thinking about today is a lovely couple, my good friends, Ann Rhodes from Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire, and her husband, Tom. Twenty years ago today, Ann had a massive heart attack which was critical and almost killed her. During the past twenty years, Ann has fortunately not had a reoccurrence and has been able to devote her attention to looking after her husband, Tom, with his ill health. Let us celebrate the presence of both Ann and her husband, Tom, who are still with us today and will hopefully continue to be for many more Christmases to come.

To these two groups of people this afternoon, I dedicate this seasonal song, ' Oh Christmas Tree', wishing all continued good health and seasonal greetings as we approach the New Year of 2021.

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 29th December 2020

29/12/2020

I dedicate my Christmas song today to Catherine Tobin Fitzgerald who lives in Carrick-on-Suir, Tipperary, Ireland, and Cheryl Steele-Powell who lives in Warden, Washington, U.S.A. Both Catherine and Cheryl celebrate their birthdays today. Enjoy your special day, Catherine and Cheryl, and thank you for being my Facebook friend.

My Christmas song today is ‘Mistletoe and Wine’. This a Christmas song made famous by Cliff Richard in 1988. The song was written by Jeremy Paul, Leslie Stewart, and Kath Strachan for a musical called ‘Scraps’, which was an adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson’s ‘The Little Match Girl’ set in Victorian London.

Cliff liked the song but changed the original lyrics to reflect a more religious theme (which the writers accepted). This song was Cliff Richard's ninety-ninth single and it became his twelfth UK Number 1 single. It became the highest-selling single of 1988. One of the record-breaking statistics often cited about Cliff Richard is his achievement of Number 1 hit singles in five consecutive decades.

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I was brought up in an era when one was either a Teddy Boy or a Mod and either rode a motorbike or a Lambretta scooter. Even the hairstyles defined which social teenage group one belonged to. One had long, greasy hair with sideburns and a crease down the back of the head (Duck's Arse) instead of on top of it; whereas the Mods wore their hair neat and short and parted on the top left-hand side of their heads like their fathers always wore it. The clothes worn by the two groups could not have been more opposite either. The Teddy Boys wore jackets of Edwardian length that stretched past the knees, and trouser bottoms which tapered into narrow drainpipes. The Mods wore smart clothes that their fathers would have been as equally proud to be seen in. The Teddy Boys hailed the American pelvic mover, Elvis Presley, as their 'King of Song' (who many parents considered as being the son of the Devil), whereas the Mods gave their loyal support to the British singer, Cliff Richards. Cliff had that clean-cut boy-next-door image, and his quavering-lip singing pleased grandparents, parents, and teenage children in equal measure.

These two groups of teenagers were as different as chalk and cheese, and once every year, thousands of motorbikes and Lambretta scooter riders would converge in Brighton and meet up on the beach for a good, old Bank Holiday bust-up!

I was a Teddy Boy in my youth with all the trimmings apart from the motorbike. I never did manage to get to a ‘Brighton Beach Bank Holiday Bust-Up’ but I often made up for this by involving myself in regular Saturday night gang fights at Cleckheaton Town Hall.

I was naturally an Elvis fan, and as such, I grew into manhood with a ‘marmite’ dislike for the British ‘pretender’, Cliff Richards who tried to steal the King’s crown when Elvis was drafted into the U.S.A. Army (1958-1960), During Elvis’ two-year period of army service, Cliff tried his best to usurp ‘The King, but the Teddy Boys were having none of it! We kept on buying Elvis’s records and every time a group of us passed a café with a dozen Lambretta scooters parked outside in neat rows, and a dozen Mods drinking coffee inside, we’d topple the lead scooter to the ground and create a domino effect of collapsed scooters and broken mirrors. It was common for the scooters of Mods to have dozens of mirrors at each side of their steering wheel. It was just like the perfect set-up for 'an accident waiting to happen' whenever we saw the opportunity.

I would be in my mid-twenties before I was made to sit down for three minutes and listened to a current Cliff Richard’s record. That was when I was courting my first wife-to-be and had been convinced by her that she was a 'good woman’ and that her idol, Cliff, was a 'good singer’. I was most certainly proved wrong on the first count and the judges are still out about the merits of her second assertion.

Since I got older, and eventually changed my string tie for a satin one, before going open-necked in my old age, I have managed to find half a dozen songs sung by Cliff that I like among his hundred-plus of hit records over the past sixty years. Today’s Christmas song, ‘Mistletoe and Wine’ is one such example. Hoping that your Christmas is turning out pleasurable.

Love and peace Bill and Sheila xxx

Song For Today: 28th December 2020

28/12/2020

I dedicate my seasonal song today to Michael Lonergan who lives in Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary, Ireland, and Imelda Butler who also comes from Carrick-on-Suir but who now lives in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. Both Michael and Imelda celebrate their birthday today. We wish them the happiest of days.

Today’s Christmas song is ‘Winter Wonderland’. This is a song written in 1934 by Felix Bernard and lyricist, Richard B. Smith. Due to its seasonal theme, it is often regarded as a Christmas song in the northern hemisphere. Since its original recording by Richard Himber, it has been covered by over 200 different artists, including Doris Day: Air Supply: Andy Williams: Bing Crosby: Dean Martin: Dolly Parton: Kenny Rogers: Johnny Mathis: Frank Sinatra: Ella Fitzgerald: Tony Bennett, Michael Buble: Radiohead and many more.

The song's lyrics are about a couple enjoying a picturesque winter landscape. They build a snowman, whom they agree to pretend is Parson Brown. They imagine the snowman asking if the couple is married, to which they tell him that they are not. They tell the snowman that he can marry them.

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If I was asked to design a Christmas card that showed the seasonal aspect as opposed to the religious aspect of Christmas, there would most certainly be snow in the scene, and whether or not the card contained images of a happy young courting couple or a family group, what the card would be purporting to convey is, seasonal ‘love, happiness, and togetherness’.

It will be difficult for so many people during this Christmas season to feel all three of these blessings with the current Coronavirus restrictions. Some may be ill, some may feel very unhappy, some may feel alone. Some may be very ill or are dying with a terminal condition; some may feel so poor and impoverished of sustenance, accommodation, warmth, security, and purpose, that they may even wish they were dead. All those people who lost loving partners and spouses in recent years are more likely to feel that absence of ‘togetherness’ we all need in order to feel content and complete. Our prayers remain with all of you this Christmas.

There have been times in my life when I have seriously asked myself if it is right and fitting for me to feel so happy with myself, my partner, my religion, and my life as I do when many others in the world do not feel like me? I have frequently posed the question in my mind, what right do I have to be happy and purposeful, and embrace my life daily as though there is no tomorrow. My own simple answer is that for me, there will always be a tomorrow; if not in this life, then in the next. That is a great consolation to me as I close my eyes to sleep at the end of each day. It also feels so good to open them at the start of each new day before me that presents a fresh challenge of a new say's experience.

Sheila and I wish you all a Merry Christmas and it is our hope that if you are unable to experience feelings of love, happiness, and togetherness’ at the moment that these feelings will become genuine emotions for you in the New Year.

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 28th December 2020

28/12/2020

This popular Christmas song which pays no respect to the PC Brigade is dedicated to my sister Susan who has had a tough year. Our Susan is the youngest of seven siblings and is as proud of her Irish heritage as the rest of us. I would never normally attempt this song, Susan, but you deserve someone doing something special for you, little sis. Happy Christmas, Susan to you, Evie, and the grandchildren.

Love from your brother Billy xxx

Song For Today: 27th December 2020

27/12/2020

My song this afternoon is “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”. This Christmas song was written by the lyricist Kim Gannon and composer Walter Kent. It was recorded in 1943 by Bing Crosby who scored a top ten hit with the song. Originally written to honour soldiers overseas who longed to be home at Christmas time.

“I'll Be Home for Christmas” has since gone on to become a Christmas standard. The song is sung from the point of view of a soldier stationed overseas during ‘World War 11’. The soldier is writing a letter to his family. In the message, he tells the family he will be coming home and to make the necessary preparations. He requests snow, mistletoe, and presents on the tree. The song ends on a melancholy note, with the soldier saying, "I'll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams."

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There will be many people who would love to be home for Christmas, was it possible and circumstances did not prevent them. Some serving soldiers will be laid in some military hospital with images of mutilated limbs. We still have serving soldiers abroad who are rarely mentioned in the national press. There will be some people in society who would love to have a home; any type of home ‘to come home to’ instead of being accommodated in substandard overcrowded rented accommodation with young children. Some people will leave their house this Christmas and will not come back because of incurring deadly strokes, massive heart attacks, or fatal road accidents.

Several years ago, I took my wife and daughter out for their Christmas dinner. We had to abandon the meal halfway through it, and the day after, I was rushed into hospital. I’d already been diagnosed with a terminal blood cancer a few years earlier and had experienced nine months of chemotherapy. My cancer had transformed into a Lymphoma and I spent the following six weeks in the hospital in critical condition. Unknown to either myself or my wife, a hospital medic had put a ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ instruction on me (which we only discovered a year later when I was in hospital undertaking another procedure and the nurse performing the procedure made a passing remark about it in my hospital file). Although I did not think that I was dying of Lymphoma at the time, another nine-month course of chemotherapy was commenced and had to be discontinued partway through because my body wasn’t strong enough to endure it. I will not forget lying awake throughout most of the night, being unable to sleep with the body pain and discomfort while the rest of the country was still enjoying the Christmas festivities.

Several years along the line, and now having three different body cancers to cope with (two of them incurable) and still in tier-three restrictions during a pandemic virus, I know that ‘I’ll be home this Christmas’. I have rented the holiday home next door to our house for my son, William, and my only daughter, Rebecca, to stay the week. We had a Christmas Day meal together, and it was lovely catching up with my daughter who I have not seen since last Christmas, and my son, William, who has been living in Australia for many years and who I have not seen for three years.

Having recently learned that the hospital will not medically intervene in my cancers until they worsen as they reach their later stages, this song reminds me of my three important homes that these days occupy my mind, and which I use as landing posts throughout my remaining time on this side of the green sod. Just as Charles Dicken’s character, Oliver Twist, dared to ask for ‘more’, I also perceive greediness in me develop as my appetite to have a bit more life grows daily, especially as it has been so happy an experience for me since I met my lovely wife, Sheila, ten years ago.

Each night as I lay in bed, I look forward to tomorrow in our Haworth home. Each December, I look forward to one more spring up at our allotments, pleasured by our own floral heaven and an abundance of new home-grown spuds from May to November. Each Spring, I look forward to one more visit to my homeland of Ireland, if possible, in the summer months. Our house, our allotment. and the Irish village where I was born to represent the vital aspects of what ‘Home’ has come to mean to me in the autumn of my life. Of course, my children are a large part of my life, and our home is always theirs.

After the summer months, I automatically look forward to next Christmas. Being in the autumn of one’s life is very much like being at the start of infancy in some regard; one retraces one’s footsteps of growth with each fleeting memory, and I learn to take one step at a time, as the future is explored with experience anew. And just as the child progresses from crawl to totter, to walk without the parent noticing the passage of time, so it is from one Christmas to the next with me these days: they seem to go quicker and quicker. Most will know what I speak of as ‘old age’ but to me, the living of another month is every bit a ‘new age’ for a person who has been on borrowed time for many years now.

Sheila and I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 27th December 2020

27/12/2020

I dedicate my Christmas song today to all those people who will not be with their loved ones this year. Rest assured that somehow, sometime, somewhere, there will be a place and a time when you will be together again.

My song this morning is ‘Lonely This Christmas’. This song is a popular Christmas song by the English glam rock band, ‘Mud’ that topped the UK Singles Chart in 1974. And reached the Christmas Number 1 spot.

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I also dedicate my song today to any family member, friend, neighbour, or Facebook contact who is approaching this season of Christmas with some trepidation, having been bereaved of a loved one or lifelong partner recently or in the past. While most of us look forward to Christmas, there are so many people who will be glad when the festivities are over. For many people, Christmas has become a sad time of the year instead of being an occasion to rejoice. Sometimes the feeling of loss of a loved one can last many years, replacing the constant love and laughter you once shared with them with feelings of loneliness and social isolation.

There will be some people this Christmas, who through occupational commitments, cannot be with their partner at this special time of the year. I think of serving soldiers overseas in troubled parts of the world, risking their life and personal safety in maintaining peace. I also think of all those dedicated people who serve and staff the caring professions like hospitals, old folk’s homes, and hospices; not forgetting those thousands of volunteers who will be handing out blankets and serving in soup kitchens for the homeless and rough sleepers this Christmas week.

Then, there are those men and women serving prison sentences, or those political prisoners who are illegally confined in other parts of the world because they protested peaceably against some state injustice. There are those young children in Children’s Homes and orphanages, growing up without the support of a family structure and never having the comfort of a parent tucking them in their beds on Christmas Eve and telling them that they are loved. There are those people who are on their death beds in hospices who cannot be at home this Christmas and who will never see another Christmas with their loved ones. What weight their thoughts must be this Christmas as they think upon the loved ones they will leave behind to grieve their absence?

Then, there is the elderly neighbour who lives alone and doesn’t have one visitor between one month and the next; and the rough sleeper who has either lost contact with their family or is too proud or ashamed to re-initiate contact for fear of rejection again. Finally, there is the single man or single woman who has never yet known the deep affection of a partner yet would dearly love to have someone to love and care for other than their cat or dog, if only they could meet the right person. They experience a kind of loneliness at Christmas time that none of all the other mentioned categories will ever experience. Their loneliness is born in the hurt of a deep loss of ‘never having known love’; it springs from ‘within the well of emptiness’ that only the state of regretful singleness can produce, forever dwelling within a person who never desired to live alone, and was never meant to live alone and not know the intimate love of another.

If there was only one thing I could persuade you of this Christmas it would be this. I want you to know that each of you is loved by more people than you can ever know; even by strangers, you will never meet or people you will pass on the street, live next door to, and may never speak to or socialise with. None of us lives in a vacuum, adrift from the concerns of everyone else in society or isolated from the thoughts and positive influence of so many good people around us. It is in mankind’s nature to be ‘good to one another’, and to think well of others or not think about them at all; especially at Christmas time. Sheila and I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Love and peace Bill and Sheila xxx

Song For Today: 26th December 2020

26/12/2020

I dedicate my Christmas song today to three birthday celebrants. We wish a happy birthday to Lynn Greenwood who lives in Wilsden, West Yorkshire, and Helen Chambers who lives in Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Finally, we send birthday greetings to Adam Horrocks who lives in Oxenhope, West Yorkshire. Enjoy your special day, Lynn, Helen, and Adam.

Today’s Christmas song is ‘And So This is Christmas’. Also known as ’Happy Christmas (War is Over),’ this Christmas song was released in 1971 as a single by ‘John & Yoko, and over the years it has become one of the nation's favourite Christmas songs, especially with its central message: ‘War is over! If You Want It"

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Given the recent government directions that have severely restricted the seasonal meetings with family and friends this Christmas period, many of you will feel well and truly disheartened this year.

My dearly departed mother used to tell me, “Anyone can be happy, Billy, when everything in the garden is rosy!” She was bang on. All fair-weather gardeners may get to look at the flowers and eat the vegetables, but the fact that they grow at all has absolutely nothing to do with their horticultural contribution, and everything to do with mother nature. Hence, the world will carry on turning on its axis, even if we choose to stand still and have no part in it.

The unwelcome situation that the British nation finds itself in this Christmas week is something that nobody can smile about, but please, don’t give up smiling altogether. It is a senseless exercise (and some might argue a reckless one) to abandon hope and relinquish one’s capacity to remain rational and functionally calm in the storm, for to do otherwise, is merely to invite further calamity. Like the good gardener who does not abandon their allotment during inclement weather, like the shepherd who searches for the stray flock, and the farmer who fights to bring in a healthy harvest, we remain the captains of our own ship and the masters of our own fate, however perilous the seas we sail!

So, let me state here and now, nobody is cancelling my Christmas. Christ will still come into my life, whatever the weather or the government restrictions, and will hopefully bless our home with His permanent presence. We may all be in a place that we would rather not be this Christmas week, but the prerequisite condition of life is very much a lottery for all of us; ‘You’ve got to be in it to win it!’

So do not relinquish your right to be happy this Christmas. In the final analysis, bringing in the crop implies that one is still prepared to dig. So, stiffen your resolve, stand up straight, pick up that spade and start digging yourselves out of that hole of desperation where no life can survive and no hope can thrive.

We wish you a Happy Christmas and a better New Year in 2021 than you experienced in 2020.

Love and peace Bill and Sheila xxx

Song For Today: 26th December 2020

26/12/2020

Given the news last night that effectively increases the restrictions of meeting and movement over this Christmas period, many of you will feel well and truly disheartened today as you try to get your head around the last-minute change of plans again, and what it means for you personally.

My dearly departed mother used to tell me, “Anyone can be happy, Billy, when everything in the garden is rosy!” She was bang on. All fair-weather gardeners may get to look at the flowers and eat the vegetables, but the fact that they grow at all has absolutely nothing to do with their horticultural contribution, and everything to do with nature.

The unwelcome situation that the British nation finds itself in today is something that nobody can smile about, but please, don’t give up smiling altogether. It is a senseless exercise (and some might argue a reckless one) to abandon hope and relinquish one’s capacity to remain rational and calm in the storm, for to do so is merely to invite further calamity. Like the good gardener who will not abandon their allotment during inclement weather, like the shepherd who refuses to search for stray flock or the farmer who fights to bring in the crop, we remain the captains of our own ship and the masters of our own fate; however perilous the seas we sail!

So, let me state here and now, nobody is cancelling my Christmas. Christ will still come into my life, whatever the weather. We may be in a place that we would rather not be this Christmas Day, but life is very much a lottery for all of us; ‘You’ve got to be in it to win it!’ So do not relinquish your right to be happy this Christmas in whatever way you can be. In the final analysis, even the most pessimistic among you have to admit that however unsatisfactory a situation every person finds themselves in today, it is still better than not being alive. So, stiffen your resolve, stand up straight, pick up that spade and start digging yourselves out of that hole of desperation where no life can thrive.

The song for my morning post today is ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’. This festive song was recorded by Welsh singer-songwriter Shakin’ Stevens in November 1985 and was the Christmas Number 1 song for that year. Ever since it has been included in many top-selling Christmas collections and received frequent airplay every Christmas. We wish you all a Merry Christmas.

Love and peace Bill and Sheila xxx

Song For Today: 25th December 2020

25/12/2020

I jointly dedicate my Christmas songs today to two people who celebrate their birthday on this most sacred day of the year that celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ also. Our two birthday celebrants are Chris Cuddihy and Rose Pradeep. Chris was born in the same Irish village as me and lives in County Waterford, Ireland. Rose was born in Bangalore, India. Enjoy this special and most holy of days, Chris and Rose.

Today I sing ‘Christmas Day 1915’. This song tells about a temporary truce that took place on Christmas Day during ‘The First World War’ when German and British soldiers on the war front stopped firing their guns at each other for a few hours. They left their trenches and mingled with the enemy in ‘No Man’s Land’. For the next few hours, it could be said that they lived together peacefully in ‘Every Man’s Land’ as they closed-down their cannons and opened their hearts to the true spirit of Christmas, exchanging pleasantries and singing carols with each other. Then, war beckoned once more, and they returned to their respective trenches and started killing each other again.

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Sheila and I wish all our Facebook friends a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. This Christmas will be one of the strangest that all of us will ever have experienced. Brought out of a National lockdown with fewer restrictions being applied over several days during the Christmas week, we are being allowed the opportunity of seeing our family and loved ones again during this seasonal period while being warned not to get too close to them in confined spaces indoors. Because of the imposed restrictions of freedom we have taken for granted before the current pandemic virus swept the world, even giving an aged parent a kiss, a hug or a loving embrace carries with it the gravest of health warnings. We are told that even an action of endearment between loved ones which requires closeness and touch (especially those in the most vulnerable medical category) could result in the heaviest cost of all, with our aged parents and grandparents not living to see another Christmas?

In many ways, the national situation that families all over Britain are faced with this Christmas Day is not too dissimilar to that which the German and British soldiers faced on the Front Line of their war in 1915. For a few hours this Christmas Day, an attempt is being made between our Government and its people, who are much divided in their opinion on the best way to fight and defeat Covid-19. The Government has decided to call a brief truce to our war with the virus. For Christmas Day only, we shall be allowed to enter ‘No Man’s Land”, and mingle on the Front Line (inside our homes) with our loved ones (who may or may not carry the enemy covid-19 virus unknowingly). We are being led to fear that the closer we get to our hidden enemy, the more loving and tactile we become in their presence, the more we will be playing Russian Roulette with our own lives. It is as though our war against the enemy virus has been suspended, to allow us some semblance of a peaceful Christmas Day before we return to our trenches and continue killing each other once more by being too close to each other in our lockdown trenches. Now, there’s an image to play around with during the New Year!

May your seasonal break be one of good cheer and celebration for all the good things in your life that we too often take for granted. I refer to important things such as, one’s beliefs, family, friends, good neighbours and not forgetting health, hope, and happiness. Please give a thought to all those people who lost their partners, are grieving the loss of a family member, or experiencing loss of good health, loss of employment, loss of business, and loss of accommodation due to bankruptcy and increased debt. Christmas time is always one of the worse times to cope without those basic things of life.

So many people in this country, and across this world are permanently engaged in their own ‘War Of Want’, and this must result in the true spirit of Christmas invariably seeming more distant from their lives with the passing of each day. Whatever the season of the year, they remain engaged in a seemingly endless war they cannot see any hope of ever winning. For them, there is no respite to be found during their Christmas Day. Christmas Day for people engaged in the ‘War of Want’ witness their hearts filled with hostility instead of seasonal festivity. Where peace is found by many of the more fortunate citizens of the world on this holiest of days, those ‘in want’ feel more pain and isolation as the guns of hunger fire in their direction again, the cannons of depression blast out more despair once more, the grenades of destitution explode their future prospects of hope, the bombs of pending bankruptcy break their spirits, and the missiles of death cascade around their fragile ears and shatter any broken peace they ever felt.

The next chance we get to give one such person a better day, a happier hour, a safer minute, and a more hopeful and purposeful moment, then let us feel duty-bound as fellow humans to do so. The most we could ever want out of a good life is to diminish the want in the life of another person who is having a bad day? That is the Christmas message my mother, my church and my individual belief have always been. That is the true Christian message of December 25th and the true Christmas message of every day of the year.

One of my earliest childhood memories was my mother warning me that I will never be comfortable in any of my travels through life ‘if I was too big for my own boots’. The garment I have always found the most uncomfortable to wear is the ‘coat of modesty’, as it has no natural fit upon my body, and there is no pocket in it where I can store my pride. All the pockets in ‘the coat of modesty’ are filled with what really matters about a person and what really constitutes the building blocks of good character; honesty, love, compassion, forgiveness, charity, belief, and being a good neighbour. I always found it easier to give away my material possessions, even the ones I treasured. However, the most difficult thing I found to give up, the thing I have always most resisted giving up, and the very last thing I will probably give up, is my pride.

This Christmas, please let yourself be the good person you were always meant to be, and intrinsically are. Do not forget to be nice to yourself as well as being nice to others. Be not too hard on yourself or others when we or they do not come up to scratch, and remember, it is impossible to be able to truly forgive others for any past wrongs they have done you until you are prepared to forgive yourself for your past misgivings to others.

The greatest of all presents you will receive this Christmas is the one you most willingly give away; the gift of love. This is the most priceless of all possessions, and the more you express it towards others, the more loving reward you will receive in return. It is the best personal investment you will ever make as the dividend that comes back to you never stops, and always exceeds the amount of love you initially invest in your thoughts, feelings, and actions. Happy Christmas everyone.

Love and peace Bill and Sheila xxx

Song For Today: 25th December 2020

25/12/2020

As I was enjoying Midnight Mass again last night at church with my wife Sheila videoing it for those parishioners who were unable to attend, and also accompanied by my daughter, Rebecca, and my son, William, who I have not a-seen for three years, I naturally focused on the crib of the Nativity scene which stood before the altar. Looking at the figure of Joseph there, I was reminded once more about the role of a stepfather that he played to Jesus. It was a role that each of us had experienced, although I feel sure that Joseph had made far fewer mistakes than I had.

Within the past week, an American Facebook contact called William McDonald was impressed by one of my daily posts upon my experiences in the role of ‘stepfather’ that he asked me to video some of my views upon the topic which he could distribute to his students at a future date. I enclose that vocal message tonight, which will hopefully assist anyone who happens to find themselves in the stepfather role at a future date because of circumstance or choice (falling in love and living with a woman who is the mother of a child to another man).

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 24th December 2020

24/12/2020

I dedicate this morning’s song to four birthday celebrants. We wish happy birthday to Nicole Norris who lives in Carrick-on-Suir, Tipperary, Ireland. We wish a happy birthday to Bridget Gaizely who also lives in Carrick-on-Suir, Tipperary. Birthday greetings are extended to David Fitzpatrick who is the third birthday celebrant today who also lives in Carrick-on-Suir, Tipperary, and finally, a very happy birthday is wished to Teresa Bates who lives in Corby, Liverpool, England.

This morning Sheila and I will individually sing for the children. Sheila will sing the Christmas carol, ‘Away in a Manger’ along with the background of a children’s choir, and I will sing a Christmas song which Walt Disney immortalised in every child’s memory who watched his movies as he brought his own unique form of film magic to the cinema screen, telling children that if they wish upon a star, their dreams will come true. Both renditions are to celebrate the magic of Christmas that the young child experiences. Both Christmas carol and song involve the presence of a special star.

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When you next walk out with a young child on Christmas Eve or tuck them into bed, whether as a parent, grandparent, or another family member, show them the stars in the sky and ask them to pick out the brightest star they see. Then, tell them to close their eyes and imagine a poor child somewhere else in the world who will not get a Christmas present this Christmas morning. Then, ask them to think of a lovely present they would give such a child if they could wave a magic wand.

When they have thought of their present, ask them to look at the star again and wish upon it. Tell them that everyone has a magic wand, should they wish to use it. Their wand is made up of all the love and goodness in their hearts. Their wand is blessed by the purity of their thoughts, the loving gentleness of their feelings, and the generosity of their actions. Tell the child that we all have a magic wand to wave. Tell them that our wands sleep in our hearts, and we should wake our wands up and wave it whenever we think it has overslept and needs to get up and do some more good work. Let the child know that if everyone did this, then every day would be Christmas Day.

If we want our children and grandchildren to grow up as good, caring, honest, and loving adults, we could do far worse than giving them the most meaningful of all Christmas messages that will serve them well when they leave their innocent childhood behind. Tell them that on Christmas Eve, approximately two thousand years ago, a heavenly star showed the world where Jesus had been born. Tell the child that this story and that star has guided the lives of more people since the birth of Jesus than any other story that has ever been told.

Sheila and I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Love and Peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 24th December 2020

24/12/2020

My song on Christmas Eve is ‘Silent Night’. Today’s Christmas carol is ‘Silent Night’. ‘Silent Night’ (German: "Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht") is a popular Christmas carol that was composed in 1818 by Franz Xaver Gruber to lyrics by Joseph Mohr in the small town of Oberndorf Salzburg, Austria. It was declared ‘an intangible cultural heritage’ by UNESCO in 2011.

The song has been recorded by many singers across many music genres. The version sung by Bing Crosby in 1935 is the ‘fourth best-selling single of all-time’. The song was first performed on Christmas Eve of 1818 at St Nicholas parish church in Oberndorf, a village in the Austrian Empire on the Salzach River in present-day Austria. In 1816, at Mariapfarr, a young priest called, Father Joseph Mohr, who had come to Oberndorf the year before wrote the lyrics of the song "Stille Nacht. Before Christmas Eve, Mohr brought the words to Gruber and asked him to compose a melody and guitar accompaniment for the Christmas Eve mass, after river flooding had damaged the church organ. The church was eventually destroyed by repeated flooding and replaced with the ‘Silent-Night-Chapel’.

It is unknown what inspired Mohr to write the lyrics, or what prompted him to create a new carol. Over the years, because the original manuscript had been lost, Mohr's name was forgotten and although Gruber was known to be the composer, many people assumed the melody was composed by a famous composer, and it was variously attributed to Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven. However, a manuscript was discovered in 1995 in Mohr's handwriting and dated by researchers as c. 1820. It states that Mohr wrote the words in 1816 when he was assigned to a pilgrim church in Mariapfarr, Austria, and shows that the music was composed by Gruber in 1818. This is the earliest manuscript that exists and is the only one in Mohr's handwriting. The first edition was published by Friese (de) in 1833 in a collection of ‘Four Genuine Tyrolean Songs’.

For me, the heart and focal point of all Christmas is while the priest serves Holy Communion at Midnight Mass, and as the parishioners queue at the altar to receive the holy bread and wine, the church organist plays ‘Silent Night’ as the church choir and all parishioners sing this most traditional song. We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Love and peace Bill and Sheila xxx

Song For Today: 23rd December 2020

23/12/2020

I dedicate my song today to two American residents who celebrate their birthday. Enjoy your special day, Jean O’Donovan- Keller, who lives in Portland, Oregon, U.S.A., and Sue Loftus who lives in Southfield, Michigan, U.S.A.

My seasonal song this morning is ‘My Favourite Time of Year’. This Christmas song was performed by ‘The Florin Street Band’ which was written and sung by British composer Leigh Hggerwood in 2010. His aim was to create a song with strong melodies that would match the classics and bring back the Christmas magic that he felt had been missing from the UK charts for decades.

Had I one wish to bring back something, it would be to restore the child in every adult, at least for some seasons throughout the year. Adults do tend to be too damn serious for our own good far too often, you know. There is so much happiness we can learn from the activity of young children having fun, especially when playing merrily in the snow and allowing their imagination to run riot. I also dedicate my seasonal song this morning to the child in every adult longing to get out.

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There are few activities that please small children as much as rolling up the snow into a larger ball to help dad and mum make a snowman. Children at play in the seasonal snow possess the imagination to take all their dreams and roll them up into the biggest snowball ever made. Then, with the help of a few old clothes and items which are found around the household, they wave their magic wand and produce Mr. Snowman.

With lots of imagination and little effort, granddad’s old hat is placed on the snowman’s head, dad’s scarf is placed around the snowman’s neck, a carrot is used for its nose, two pieces of coal for its eyes, and two half-moon-shaped pieces of watermelon for its mouth. To make the mouth realistic, granddad has loaned us his false teeth to use. An empty sewing bobbing is stuck at each side of the snowman’s head act as its ears, and what better use is there for mum’s old tin of buttons than to button up the snowman’s long white coat? To finish off Mr. Snowman, a cricket bat placed upside down with a glove fastened to the handle with an elastic band, makes an excellent arm and hand. Unless one wishes their snowman to be handicapped, two cricket bats will be required, and they will need to be hard-pressed flatly into the snowman’s body to remain stable. They will soon look perfect after the snow has continued to cover and merge them in with the other body parts.

Making a snowman with one’s children and grandchildren not only keeps the child happy and enthralled with the imaginative construction, but it also helps to express the child in oneself that secretly longs for every opportunity to be released into the happy adult. To ensure that we retain the child in us, adults must be prepared to both nurture and preserve the child in our children, as well as being unashamed to express the child in ourselves from time to time.

One will never make a splash in this life unless one is prepared to occasionally jump in puddles for the sheer pleasure of it! I will never forget a six-year-old child who I came across one day in Mirfield after it had been raining. Her mother was talking with another woman about ten yards away, and the waiting child had decided to occupy herself in the meantime with whatever was around. The small girl had those yellow Paddington Bear wellies on and was running in and out of a large puddle and jumping where the water was deepest. Seeing her little girl jumping in the puddle, led to her mother apologetically curtailing her conversation with her friend, and she started walking back to her child muttering loudly, “Silly girl! What are you doing? I can’t even leave you alone for a minute! Why... why are you jumping in that mucky puddle, you silly girl?” The young girl looked at her mother in amazement that anyone could ask her such a stupid question before boldly replying, “For fun!”

That six-year-old taught me in seconds, something that would remain with me the rest of my life. The very next time I saw a puddle, I remembered what the small girl had taught me and jumped in it for no other reason than to make a splash. As it turned out, that puddle contained magical properties I had never envisaged. It instantly released in me that child who had been imprisoned inside a straitjacket of adult seriousness for far too many years.

During the years that followed, I was to learn that all innocent pleasures any individual experiences go to make up the tapestry of total contentment. The pleasurable things we do today that help to make us happy now, can benefit enormously from the pleasurable things that made us happy yesterday. Our memory banks assist us in generating as much pleasure as we can from a ‘today experience’, by the mere recollection of a ‘former happy experience’ of a similar/identical event. This mental combination of pleasurable experiences from two time zones merge harmoniously in emotional equilibrium and effectively magnifies the intensity of one’s current ‘happy’ feeling.

So, the very next time nature presents you with a nice puddle in front of you, go on! Jump in it for the sheer fun of it and let the child in you out. But if you do and your partner or parents are at the side of you, don't expect anything other than a customary 'adult' response. If, however, there is a small girl or boy at your side, they will consider your action wholly harmless and fun, and automatically jump in the puddle after you and create their own splash!

We wish a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all our family, neighbours, Facebook friends, and every child on God’s planet.

Love and peace Bill and Sheila xxx

Song For Today: 22nd December 2020

22/12/2020

I dedicate my song today to Carolina Wu who lives in Singapore. Caroline was my wife Sheila’s classmate at ‘The Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus School’ in Singapore. This is a part of the world where the population will never have experienced ‘snow’.

My seasonal song this morning is ‘Let it Snow’. This song was written by lyricist, Sammy Cahn and composer, Jule Styne, in July 1945.

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I love to see it snow at Christmas time. My love of Christmas snow, like most adults, was born during my childhood and has stayed with me ever since. Should I lay on my death bed one Christmas Eve, no better sight could wave off my passage into tomorrow than being surrounded by my loved ones and family, and seeing the snow falling outside my window and blanketing the cobbled streets of Haworth.

Snow at Christmas time is a special experience for many people and in some countries, large snowfalls are the seasonal norm. I remember living in Canada for two years between early 1964 and 1966. For the first few winter months, I lived in Montreal, Quebec and when it snows there, it snows in spades, and frequently covers the roofs of cars. I will never forget a sleigh ride I had through the Laurentian Mountains in North Quebec during January 1964. I felt as though I was taking part in the David Lean screen production, ‘Doctor Zhivago’, based on the 1957 Boris Pasternak novel set in Russia between 1917-22.

Neither will I ever forget the time that I worked on the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) when I lived in Montreal. I was a server of drink and food on the long-distance runs that would often take several days to travel to the coast of the country. During such journeys, I would marvel at the wide-open prairie that one would see, with twenty or thirty miles separating one isolated dwelling from another.

I will never forget one winter’s train journey out to Winnipeg. Winnipeg is on the eastern edge of the Canadian Prairies in Western Canada and is commonly known as being the ‘Gateway to the West’. Long before one even got to the Province of Manitoba (of which Winnipeg is its Capital), widely different weather conditions would be experienced between every hundred miles the train travelled.

I will never forget looking out of the train I was working on one winter’s day and seeing what looked like the rooftops of a community of houses in the distance. As the train passed closer, I could not believe my eyes. I was able to clearly observe the roofs and chimney stacks of the houses, but not any part beneath roof level. I later learned that each winter, the occupants could be snowed in for months at a time in snowdrifts that had been known to reach their up-stairs bedrooms. My mind instantly went back to the film ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’ where Adam and his six brothers who’d captured their seven brides-to-be deliberately caused an avalanche in Echo Pass as they drove through, knowing that they’d all be snowed in with their sweethearts until the following spring. That thought immediately made me consider the alternative prospects of being snowed in over winter with a person you couldn't tolerate one moment longer!

Snow means different things to different people. To young children, it represents the fun of snowballing, sledging down hills and building snowmen with mum and dad. To mums and dads everywhere that the snow falls (however materially rich or poor they are), snow represents seasonal opportunity to let the child in them loose again. It becomes one of the most natural of parental ways of playing with one’s children without it costing no more than drying off a few damp clothes and a pair of woollen mitts afterwards.

To the young man and woman courting each other, walking home through the snow holding hands with the one you love and want to marry, warms one’s heart better than any seasonal bag of roasted chestnuts or a glass of hot punch ever could.

To the old person, it is not the snow they fear but often the ice that lies beneath it and the danger of falling and breaking a leg or a hip. Such bone fractures cannot be so lightly brushed off for the elderly and can lead to months in hospital, often being unable to walk again unaided. If the fallen pensioner has a fragile bone structure, a fall can often precipitate a worsening situation, and it is not uncommon that some of them lose the will to carry on. Most elderly people experiencing a bad fall are never the same again. All suffer a loss of confidence, some avoid going outside again, and in worse-case scenarios, their lives are shortened by the trauma. It is quite common for some elderly pensioners to die soon after experiencing a traumatic fall.

It is most unlikely to snow this Christmas, but on the off chance it did, then enjoy it if you are safely able to. Given the Covid-19 lockdown across the country this year, and with Christmas day being the only window we may have to see our loved ones, I am sure that looking out onto a scene of snow outside will be more enjoyable than watching the rain falling heavily on the empty streets. Snow is a natural cleanser and purifier of the land it covers. Wouldn’t it be the best Christmas message of all if the falling of snow was able to purify all human thought and actions, enrich all the land upon which it touches, and rid the world of all illnesses and disease; not forgetting the many types of cancer which adversely affects the lives of so many individuals?

We hope that you and your loved ones have as pleasant a Christmas as is possible in such uncertain times besides experiencing a happier New Year than the one the world has just left behind. Seasonal greetings from us both.

Love and peace Bill and Sheila xxx

Song For Today: 22nd December 2020

22/12/2020

I attend Leeds Hospital on the 23rd December to find out the result of my recent body scans and to determine what course (if any) is the best one to take regarding my current cancer state. I am therefore including a song this afternoon, in case I am too busy tomorrow to post a daily song.

My song this afternoon is ‘Santa Baby’.This is a 1953 Christmas song that was written by Joan Javits and Phillip Springer. The song was initially sung and popularised by Eartha Kitt. It was recorded in July 1953.

The song essentially is a long list of expensive Christmas presents by some seductive woman looking for a Father Christmas ‘sugar daddy’ to lavish her with seasonal riches and presumably worldly wealth. A kind of ‘Gold Digger’ I imagine.

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I remember the first time I heard this song being sung in the seductive voice of Eartha Kitt over the family radio. It was one of the songs doing the rounds during my last few months of normality as an 11-year-old child. Within months of the song having been released, I had incurred multiple life-threatening injuries after a wagon had knocked me down, run over me and stopped on top of me; wrapping my body like a barley twist around the main propeller drive shaft. I was a patient for nine months in Batley Hospital and was unable to walk for over two years following my hospital discharge.

During my first three weeks in the hospital, I was in and out of consciousness, and the hospital doctors told my parents that I was dying and that my chances of pulling through were remote, given the extent of my injuries. The major injuries included a damaged spine (leaving me without feeling beneath my waist), a crushed chest (breaking all but two of my two dozen ribs) a punctured lung, and all four limbs broken in at least two places each. My left leg had been broken badly on the knee and over the following two years, it would be broken and reset during dozens of leg operations.

Prior to my accident, my dad had bought me a rusty old bike from the Market Place in Cleckheaton for me to learn to ride, for the price of ten shillings. It was a relic from the ‘Second World War’ era and probably lost its brakes and mudguards during the bombing of the Blitz. Still, despite its age, I loved that bike to bits, and I did learn to ride it before my legs became mangled when the wagon ran over me.

When I was at my worse, and knocking at death’s door, my father held my hand and promised that if I lived, he would buy me a brand-new bicycle. He really thought it was a promise he would never have to keep but would be glad to. When I pulled through, he was then informed by the medics that my damaged spine would prevent me from ever walking again.

I need to explain here that though my father was the poorest of men with a wife and seven children to support, he was a proud man who would sooner die before breaking a promise. The fact that I would never be able to ride any new bicycle he bought me was neither here nor there as far he was concerned. He had pledged such a purchase on my behalf, and his word was his bond. Indeed, one of the things he would often tell me was “The only thing a poor man has to give, Billy, is their word, and once given there can never be any cause to break it.” He would also tell me, “The only thing we need to stay honourable is our ‘good name’. You are a ‘Forde’, Billy. Never shame the family name!” With such a philosophy to uphold, there was never any question that my father would find the means to buy me a new bicycle once pledged to do so.

I was the oldest of seven children and my father was a miner whose weekly wage was always less than the average household spends on bare necessities. Consequently, we were always in debt. There was never a week during my first 16 years of life when the food that the family ate this week wasn’t paid for by my father's wages the following week. The household accounts never once balanced, and the dog would have more chance of catching its tail than mum ever had of paying the bills on time.

My father kept his promise and bought me a brand-new Raleigh bicycle with the latest Sturmey Archer three-speed attachment. The bicycle was naturally purchased on the ‘never-never’ and it took my father three years to pay it off. During this period of bicycle repayment, dad forfeited five shillings weekly from his ten shillings weekly spending money. Fortunately, dad never smoked nor drank alcohol, and his only earthly pleasure was a bag of toffees and a bar of dark chocolate which he bought every wage night.

For many months after my hospital discharge, the brand-new bicycle stood in the hallway, and although I could not ride it, it did not stop me polishing it twice daily. It took me two years before I could ride the bicycle properly again, and fully regain the mobility of my legs. I would be almost 14 years old before I was able to properly ride the bicycle dad had struggled to buy me.

Between the age of 14-16 years of age, I would help the family out as much as I could. As the oldest of seven children, not only was it expected of me to contribute more than my younger siblings, but I wanted to give something back to my brothers and sisters for them having had their needs placed second to mine during my previous years of recuperation after my accident. I was a clever young man, and my greatest talent as being the possessor of an excellent singing voice (pop not classical). I had won every talent contest I had ever entered since the age of 9 years, and the breaking of my voice seemed to make it much better.

Before my accident, my ambition was to play football for Ireland as my father had done in his early twenties, but my road accident put paid to that. After my accident, I was more prepared to settle for a singing career that would provide me with fame and fortune like Tommy Steele, who was six years older than me, but not quite as good a singer in my modest opinion.

My answer was to maximise the money I could earn without working down the pit eight hours a day like my mining father. I decided to use the one asset that could earn me enough money during the month of December to provide enough presents to fill the Christmas stockings of my six brothers and sisters so that they could enjoy Christmas mornings like other young boys and girls. From the 1st December until 11:00 pm on December 24th, I would carol sing every night alone between the hours of 7:00 pm and 10:00 pm.

I chose to sing alone because it suited me better. I wanted to earn as much money as I could and singing alone meant I need not share any takings with others. Also, I was a good singer who did not want my harmonious notes wrecked by the musical mutterings of someone who was in it for the laugh. I knew all the Christmas carols and would always sing all the verses before I knocked on the door. I wanted them to hear my voice, like my voice, know that I was a good singer who knew all the words and could sing the correct notes. In short, I wanted to give them their money's worth., which was usually one shilling's reward instead of the customary 'thruppence' most carol singers could expect.

Even at that age, though I did not realise it at the time, I was making good use of psychology lessons which I would not be formally taught until I trained to be a Probation Officer at the age of thirty. I always made sure that I was clean looking but dressed in older clothing befitting a young boy from a poorer household.
I had deliberately decided to sing in the wealthiest area between the estate where I lived and Cleckheaton, known as the Pack Horse and Moorside. This area comprised mostly of large private properties that were occupied by solicitors, doctors, accountants, bank managers, factory owners, and all manner of professional monied people. Indeed, they were the very areas where no boy from my estate would normally choose to carol sing, either due to an inverted form of class prejudice or fear of rejection ‘by one’s betters’.

My Christmas carol strategy worked perfectly, and during the three weeks leading up to Christmas Eve, I would earn as much money in three hours a night, weekly, as my father brought home from his torturous work down the pit in eight-hour shifts. For three years, I was proud to be able to provide my mother with enough money to cover the Christmas cost of presents for my younger siblings (a fact I have never let them forget ever since) at family gatherings.

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There will be many a child this year who will receive far too many presents under the family Christmas tree, but there will be just as many children with empty stomachs in other parts of the world who will receive nothing. For these deprived children and their families, while Christmas would not appear to be a time to celebrate, ironically it is the most relevant time of the year for the poorest in the land. The birth of Jesus is a cause for celebration for people across the world with the emptiest of stomachs, the most painful of life experiences and worse of earthly prosperity, for it is such people who are most likely to be granted eternal life in the next world while the richest among us will find it harder to get into Heaven. Indeed, MATTHEW 19:24: says, “Again I tell you it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

Many families living on the poverty line in Great Britain, will view this seasonal time, as being the time of year that highlights gross inequalities, injustices, and wide disparities that exist between our richest and poorest citizens in the land.

In modern society, too few children have a true appreciation for the most special presents of all. The most special present of all one can have this Christmas is the presence of a loving God, loving parents, a loving family, good neighbours, and reliable friends. To have one’s own roof to safely sleep beneath, and enough income to heat one’s home and provide adequate clothing and suitable footwear is a material bonus. To have sufficient income to provide food, shelter, and heat is the basic requirement for one’s good health, hope, and happiness, and yet, far better to have none of these basic requirements than never to know the true spiritual message of Christmas, as life without the knowledge of the true significance and purpose of Christmas is the worst of all deprivation.

I will never forget the words of my dear mother after I complained to her once about the family being poor. I was moaning that we never had enough money to provide sufficient food, and even added that most of our clothes either came from jumble sales or were hand-me-downs. In a final uncharitable aside, I also indicated that coming from a poor family, I could never expect to inherit anything substantial when my parents died like some of my better-off friends might. My mother smiled and said, “When me and your dad dies, Billy, we will leave you the greatest inheritance of all; your six brothers and sisters. Make sure that you look after each other.” How right she was!

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Should any of you know a child aged between 4-8 years who likes stories, my most popular story for this age range is about a precocious young girl called ‘Annie’. The story is called, ‘Annie’s Christmas Surprise’. This is one of the stories to be found in my book ‘The Complete Action Annie Omnibus’.

The first publication of this book of twelve seasonal stories spread throughout the year became a reality when the late Catherine Cookson listened to the very first Annie story of mine. It was at a time in Catherine Cookson’s life when her eyesight was failing, and she would dictate all her writing into a tape recorder. She learned from some unknown source about the twelve stories I had written for very young children that Brigit Forsyth (best known for her television roles as Thelma Ferris in the BBC comedy ‘Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads’) had recorded for radio transmission to schools. Catherine Cookson asked me to send her the recordings to listen to as she was extremely interested in anyone promoting the interests of girls in male-dominated society. The upshot was that she was taken so much with my ‘Action Annie’ stories that as a combined Christmas and wedding anniversary present between herself and her husband Tom, the couple fully funded the very first limited publication of the ‘Complete Action Annie Omnibus’, and all money from book sales was given to child charities.

The story which enthralled Catherine most within the twelve-story omnibus was inspired by a question that puzzled the curious Annie. It is the very question that millions of children have often puzzled about as well as Annie. “Why does Father Christmas give his biggest and best presents to the children with rich parents, and his smallest and cheapest presents to the children with poor parents?” When Annie asks her mother this question, her mum replies, “He doesn’t, Annie!” The answer provided by Annie’s mother represents the theme of “Annie’s Christmas Surprise”

The then ‘Chief Inspector of Schools for Ofsted’ (the late Chris Woodward), read ‘Annie’s Christmas Surprise’ to a school assembly of children in Littletown, West Yorkshire. Later, in a press interview he gave to ‘The Guardian’ newspaper, Chris Woodhead kindly described my book as being of ‘high-quality literature’. He also told the school assembly he read the story to that “Had I the power, I would make the ’Action Annie’ stories obligatory reading/listening to for all girls aged 4-9 years of age.”

‘The Complete Action Annie Omnibus’ is one of my most popular books with the young children who have not yet learned to read and are read to, as well as young readers under the age of 9 years of age. ‘The Complete Action Annie Omnibus’ book can be purchased in either hardback or e-book format. Any of the twelve stories can also be purchased individually in e-book format from Amazon/Kindle for just over £1.

IT IS ALSO POSSIBLE TO ACCESS ‘Annie’s Christmas Surprise’ FREE OF CHARGE in e-book format by accessing:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/115301

I have done this as an introduction to the character of ‘Annie’ and the other eleven seasonal stories about her. These books were written to educate as well as entertain, and all profit from their sales go to charitable causes in perpetuity (over £200,000 given to charity between 1990 and 2003). Anyone wishing to buy all twelve ‘Action Annie’ stories in hard copy can purchase ‘Action Annie: The Complete Omnibus’ from Amazon for the price of £9.99.

Have a nice Christmas everybody. Love and peace Bill and Sheila xxx

Song For Today: 21st December 2020

21/12/2020

I dedicate my song this afternoon to my great-niece, Shannon Foster, who is 22 years old today. Shannon is the daughter of her parents, Janie Foster (my favourite niece, but don’t tell the other nieces) and Chris Foster who lives in Fareham, Hampshire. As I enter the autumn of my life, Shannon, you start the most exciting summer of your life that you will ever know. The age between 20 and 30 is a wonderful age for any individual to experience. It is a decade of delightful happenings where your beauty of face is at its peak, your feelings are at their most intense, and your development of personality is still trying to catch up with all the other changes going on in your life. This is also the time in your life when your mother or/and father can become your best friend and be there for you in ways previously unimagined if you let them. Enjoy your life ahead, Shannon, and remain the loving person you were born to be. Lots of love Great-Uncle Billy and Sheila xxx

My song today is ‘Driving Home for Christmas’. This Christmas song was written and composed by English singer-songwriter Chris Rea. It was originally released in 1988. Despite its original modest chart placement, the song has made a reappearance in the top 40 every year since 2007 when was featured among the Top 10 Christmas singles.

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This song has been a Christmas favourite of mine ever since I first heard it around 1990. In fact, hearing it forms one of several important seasonal indicators that tell me annually that Christmas Day is fast approaching. As Christmas Day draws closer, one sees an increase in the footfall at shopping centres as hundreds of people pass you armed with shopping bags, stuffed to the brim with presents for their friends and loved ones; some of which will never be used and others that will be returned and exchanged before the New Year Day sales start. The roads seem to get fuller with slow-moving traffic, and despite it being a season of goodwill, more horns get honked by impatient motorists who curse the queue of ‘bad drivers’ they seem to be in.

Due to the current lockdown and rapid Covid-19 increase this December, things will be much different this Christmas. The shopping centres will not be open in the immediate days to Christmas, yet there will be some car travellers driving on Christmas Eve driving to meet up with a member of their family, and eager to share Christmas Day with them.

I do not know about you, but when you pull up alongside another car at the traffic lights, do you automatically look across at the other motorist and start a mad minute’s personal assessment based only on what your eyes see and your mind conjectures? Do you think he/she looks ‘fit’ and begin a thirty second’s flirtatious exchange of looks that says nothing significant, but could in other circumstances, hold out the promise of everything? Does your mind then move from the speculation of a frustrated romantic motorist to that of sociopathic Police Officer who could so easily have turned killer twenty years earlier had they not become a law enforcement officer instead?

It must be the writer’s imagination constantly at play inside me, but my mind can turn over so many permutations of fanciful thoughts in the time it takes for the traffic lights to change from red to green. I usually begin to speculate what the other motorist is currently engaged in this Christmas season, especially at that time of day, and what thoughts are floating around inside their head? I wonder where they are travelling to and why, or where they have just come from, and what did they do there? I ask myself several imaginary questions which only the curious mind of a police detective or an inquisitive author would possibly think of. Is the other driver thinking about some romantic planned rendezvous with their spouse, or are squeezing in seeing some secret lover they’ve been having a clandestine affair with for the past two years, and who is pressing them to leave their spouse and family? Or do they have a serious medical problem which has just come to light during a casual visit to the local health clinic to have their GP check out a small facial mole which has been annoying them for months now? Or have they just been for a hospital test and have just learned that they have malignant cancer, and will not see another Christmas out? Or have just now been medically pronounced as being ‘cancer clear’ and are happily on their way home to tell their family the glorious news? Perhaps they are a mass murderer who has killed ten victims over the past twenty years and has managed to remain undetected, and is currently motoring to a quiet country spot where they can dump the body of their latest victim who lies dead in the boot of their car? All these permutations of thought can cross my mind in the passing of a mere minute.

By the time the traffic lights change, I have usually concluded which scenario it is. Whatever I decide them to be, it is never ‘an ordinary person out on an innocent shopping trip’. Such a conclusion would represent a total waste of my brainpower. It would not have been worth putting my brain into drive only to crash it in a rational conclusion. I would rather have stuck with my very first flirtatious glance than to have gone down a path that led to an innocent front door and a household of normal occupants inside.

My conclusion will be invariably determined by the nature of the look the other driver gives me when they glance back across at me or don’t? If, for instance, they seem determined to ignore my very presence by looking straight ahead in a stare of outright defiance, it might suggest the presence of ‘guilt’. In that case, I would seriously consider that they have definitely done something wrong or intend doing so at the first opportunity? I might even return to my first thought; namely that they have done no wrong but would dearly like to if they thought they might get away with it and believed it would not ruin their marriage. Yes! That sounds quite plausible, given my rugged and handsome face. Perhaps the look of ‘guilty pleasure’ in her face that she is attempting to conceal has been brought about because she secretly fancies the look of me and has been entertaining sexual thoughts which embarrasses her?

If the face of the other driver carries a look of impatience, then I am most likely to plump for the option that they cannot wait to see their secret lover. If their look harbours a suspicion of anger or revenge, I will most likely conclude that they have probably just been dumped or handed their divorce papers by their cheating partner and father of their four children. If their face appears to be in a state of temporary squashed-nose revulsion, I’ll guess that they have probably overeaten at the Christmas dinner outing with work colleagues and have just filled their car with the flatulent appreciation of too many Brussel sprouts. However, if the face of the other driver looks deadly serious, is bland and looks straight ahead with a glare of fixed determination, I know that they are most probably a mass murderer in malicious thought of their wicked deed.

But, if they are like me; simply smiling and singing along loudly with Chris Rea on their car radio, I will know that they are obviously, ‘Driving Home for Christmas’. If you are driving over this Christmas, please drive sober and stay safe.

Sheila and I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 21st December 2020

21/12/2020

I dedicate my song today to four people who celebrate their birthday. I will dedicate to three birthday celebrants this morning, and my great-niece, Shannon Foster, with my second song later this afternoon.

The three birthday celebrants this morning are Angela Ogorman who lives in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, Gary Hemmingway who lives in Leeds, West Yorkshire, and Tina Williams who comes from Carrick-on-Suir, Tipperary but who now lives in Basingstoke, Hampshire, England. Enjoy your special day, Angela, Gary, and Tina. Thank you for being my Facebook friend.

My Christmas song today is “It Wasn’t His Child”. This song was written and originally recorded by Skip Ewing. Trisha Yearwood also covered the song.

The song deals with the situation of Mary’s husband, Joseph, who reared the baby Jesus as his own child. With almost half of all marriages today ending in divorce followed by marriage to another, there are many family units who have the man of the house being a stepfather to a child that belongs to their partner and which is not of their blood. Being a stepfather is not an easy role, as anyone who has found themselves in this situation can testify. It is a role that is fraught with all manner of hidden minefields to the novice who finds themselves in love with their new partner, and a new situation for which there is no training. Their new partner is often the mother of a young child with divided loyalties between mum and dad, a child who is both confused as to why his parents no longer live together, and why his mother chooses to live with this stranger instead of dad? The child will still be emotionally unsettled as most parental separations often occur in the heat of the moment and not after cool, calm, and collective thought and proper planning.

In this extremely delicate and highly sensitive situation, the stepfather needs to tread carefully as he crosses a domestic minefield of unexploded emotions that can blow up at a moment’s notice without the slightest warning. Indeed, treading on eggshells would be considered infinitely easier for a stepfather who is new to his unexpected role than his needing to negotiate the muddled maze of a confused child’s thoughts, and a labyrinth of unanswered questions and unresolved feelings which the stepchild is going through during the early stages of parental separation. No new father figure in a young child’s life is ever adequately prepared for this, and should his new partner’s child/children be teenagers, then nothing less than outright defiance by the stepchild is to be expected, along with the persistent rejection of their mother’s choice of new partner!

Often young children believe that they are responsible in some way for the parental breakup, and carry around guilt they ought never to shoulder, whereas teenage children whose parents decide to separate and set up house with a new partner are more prepared to blame the person their mother or father was unfaithful with as being their home wrecker and marriage breaker. Even when the parent, in whose custody the children to the marriage remain living with, was not associating with their new partner before their marital separation, the stepchild still sees the stepfather figure as being an unwanted obstruction to mum and dad ‘getting back together’ while they remain on the scene.

One of the biggest issues with being a stepdad is deciding the boundaries of one’s new role. Just because you have married the mother of another man’s child, does not give you the right to assume that which is not your proper place to adopt. Major issues will include: Do I expect my stepchild to call me ‘Dad’? Do I want him/her to call me ‘Dad’? Is it wrong for me to consider him/her as being my child now that their mother and I are together/married? How should I relate to him/her, especially since their mum and I have parented a baby of our own? Is it natural/ healthy to think of the children in our new family unit as being half-brothers and sisters? Am I allowed to discipline and chastise my stepchild like I would my blood children?

Such are some of the major issues which all stepfathers encounter at some stage, and they are considerations that require a great deal of patience and understanding by all parties involved in the equation. When married parents separate and re-establish new relationships and reconstruct their combined family units, there are usually three family units of different blood in the mixture, and occasionally four.

While it not my place to indicate what is right or wrong in the stepfather situation, having been in this role, I can only tell you how I responded. Months after my separation from my first wife, I met and subsequently fell in love with another woman who had been separated from her husband for the previous two years. She had one child to her previous marriage, a five-year-old son who lived with her, and I had two sons to my first marriage who lived with their mother. Coming together in the way we did, we naturally experienced most of the difficulties that fractured family units usually incur as they seek smooth resettlement and try to bring about an acceptable ‘new family unit’. The one thing that I was eternally grateful for was that neither myself nor my new partner knew each other at the point of either of our separations from our former spouses. I think that had our ‘finding each other’ been the cause of us ‘leaving our previous spouse’ it would have been too much guilt for my shoulders to bear, and I do not know if I could have ever found it in me to forgive myself whenever I looked at my stepson knowing that I was partly responsible for the reason his mother and father separated.

Having difficulty gaining access to the two children of my previous marriage, my stepfather's days of a new relationship naturally made me sympathetic (as well as being as generous as I could be) in ensuring that my stepson had access in abundance to his own blood father. This was the easiest of things to do as my stepson’s father was a good man in every regard. I never physically disciplined my stepson, and I made it clear from the outset that he should not call me ‘dad’ unless he felt that was natural, and only if he wanted to. With there being no expectation that he should call me dad, he never did or has done.
When his mother and I had two children in our union, there were some obvious difficulties we had to deal with. I wanted to create one healthy family unit beneath one roof, and was determined that this aim would not be thwarted by any of the children born to the three unions, by using unhelpful and counterproductive terms like ‘half-brother’ and ‘half-sister’ or ‘step-brother’ and ‘step-sister’. I had no intention of allowing the vocal weaponry of our children to diminish the ‘wholesomeness’ of our new family unit by the divisive use of fractions (like half-brother and half-sister) or seeking to extend emotional distancing between all the children by referring to each other as being one step away from being either a full-blooded brother or sister.

I have often wondered about the problems that Joseph experienced with his wife’s son, Jesus. Little reference is given to that relationship in the bible, other than saying that Jesus was a respectful son.

Sheila and I wish you all a Happy Christmas.
Love and peace. Bill and Sheila xxx

Song For Today: 20th December 2020

20/12/2020

Over the Christmas week, I will post a seasonal song/hymn, both morning and mid-afternoon. I dedicate my song this morning to Joan O'Regan who lives in Carrick-on-Suir, Tipperary, Ireland. Joan celebrates her birthday today. Enjoy your special day Joan, and thank you for being my Facebook friend.

Given the news last night that effectively increases the restrictions of meeting and movement over this Christmas period, many of you will feel well and truly disheartened this morning as you try to get your head around the last-minute change of plans again, and what it means for you personally.

My dearly departed mother used to tell me, “Anyone can be happy, Billy, when everything in the garden is rosy!” She was bang on. All fair-weather gardeners may get to look at the flowers and eat the vegetables, but the fact that they grow at all has absolutely nothing to do with their horticultural contribution, and everything to do with nature.

The unwelcome situation that the British nation finds itself in this morning is something that nobody can smile about, but please, don’t give up smiling altogether. It is a senseless exercise (and some might argue a reckless one) to abandon hope and relinquish one’s capacity to remain rational and calm in the storm, for to do so is merely to invite further calamity. Like the good gardener who will not abandon their allotment during inclement weather, like the shepherd who refuses to search for stray flock or the farmer who fights to bring in the crop, we remain the captains of our own ship and the masters of our own fate; however perilous the seas we sail!

So, let me state here and now, nobody is cancelling my Christmas. Christ will still come into my life, whatever the weather. We may be in a place that we would rather not be this Christmas Day, but life is very much a lottery for all of us; ‘You’ve got to be in it to win it!’ So do not relinquish your right to be happy this Christmas in whatever way you can be. In the final analysis, even the most pessimistic among you have to admit that however unsatisfactory a situation every person finds themselves in this morning, it is still better than not being alive. So, stiffen your resolve, stand up straight, pick up that spade and start digging yourselves out of that hole of desperation where no life can thrive.

The song for my morning post today is ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’. This festive song was recorded by Welsh singer-songwriter Shakin’ Stevens in November 1985 and was the Christmas Number 1 song for that year. Ever since it has been included in many top-selling Christmas collections and received frequent airplay every Christmas.

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‘Merry Christmas’ is a seasonal expression that is spoken by everyone to each other every Christmas. As a rule, the sentiment expresses a genuine wish that the person being greeted enjoys themselves this Christmas. Often, however, the greeter of this seasonal welcome will not be fully aware of the precise circumstances of the person being greeted; sometimes making the wishing of ‘Merry Christmas’ itself, words that are too difficult to hear or take on board positively for some recipients of them.

The person being greeted may have just received their redundancy notice from their employer and hasn’t yet told their wife and children of the sad news. Or they may have received a ‘Final Warning’ threatening ‘cut off’ for fuel arrears, or have been served with divorce papers, or been told that they have a terminal illness and might not see another Christmas. They may have incurred massive debts and face house eviction in the New Year, or be harbouring some secret that will change their life like a single woman who finds herself pregnant by a past boyfriend who is no longer on the scene, or perhaps a married person who has fallen in love with someone else and has decided to tell their spouse and end their marriage in the New Year.

Knock on any door down any street in any town this Christmas, and within that household, you will most likely find some unwelcome personal circumstances of one of its members. All families have its own perennial problems and unsatisfactory situations they need to cope with and manage ‘behind closed doors’. This year, with the pandemic virus ripping large, the customary problems to be found in many households will be intensified and worsened by unnecessary illness and death in some instances either before Christmas Day or in the New Year because of Christmas Day mixing, and enjoying our Christmas will be much harder to achieve.

I have always loved Christmas and celebrated this season of December; not only because of its religious significance in my life, but because Christmas happiness is a large part of my family upbringing and heritage. Although I was the oldest child of seven children born to Irish parents who migrated to West Yorkshire in 1945, my dear mother would never let Christmas pass us by without making a song and dance about it. Mum attended ‘Midnight Mass’ every year with any of her children who could walk the three miles journey from Windybank Estate to Cleckheaton Catholic Church and back. Every year, my mother would look around the church congregation to see if she could spot her oldest brother, Willie, at Midnight Mass.

Uncle Willie lived alone in the house of his deceased parents in Portlaw, County Waterford in Ireland. This was my maternal grandparent’s home, in whose front room, I was born on November 10th, 1942. Uncle Willie would exchange letters weekly with my mother, and every December he would write to my mother saying that if she looked for him at the Midnight Mass in Cleckheaton, she might spot him at the back of the church.

Uncle Willie had been 'an alcoholic' as long as I had known him, as well as being a man who couldn’t utter one sentence without three ‘fakes’ in them (the Irish pronunciation for its English swear-word equivalent of fu..). While my mother dearly hoped that her brother Willie would show up, a large part of her wished he’d wait outside the church if he did, instead of entering it eating fish and chips and ‘effin’ and ‘blinding’ during the crowded service, besides proudly making himself known to all and sundry as being my mum’s brother.

I will always recall one year when Uncle Willie was at Midnight Mass in Cleckheaton, having caught the ferry across to England at the last moment to surprise us all. Mum naturally asked him to stay with us for Christmas (adding that I would be willing to sleep in the same bed with my two sisters during his visit). I was 11 years old at the time and although I loved my sisters, I didn’t want to share a double bed with them and their rude awakenings.

Uncle Willie did not come across to England from Ireland every year he promised to, but on the two occasions during my childhood when he did, he would remain with us for months on end, and only return to his house in Ireland after he had well and truly outstayed his welcome by tarnishing the Forde family name of which my father prided himself.

During his two-month stay with us, Uncle Willie would remain drunk for the most part. My father never drank a drop of alcohol, and yet, because Willie was my mother’s brother, he put up with him ‘because he was family’. After that first year when Willie had crossed the Irish Sea to spend Christmas and see his oldest sister and her family, although we continued to look for his presence at Midnight Mass in Cleckheaton every year that followed, mum was both sad yet somewhat relieved when she didn’t find him there.

I am pleased to say that for almost five years prior to his death in Portlaw, Ireland, Uncle Willie broke his lifelong addiction to alcohol and stopped drinking altogether. He also stopped a lifetime’s tobacco addiction and started going for daily walks. Paradoxically, it was only when he was on the verge of dying that he started to look after his health a bit better. He died in sobriety and was buried a teetotal man in the grounds of the church where I’d been baptised as an infant. All my mother’s seven children and their partners attended his Irish funeral. The Irish need little excuse to make a big occasion out of every family event, especially if can be turned into a celebration of life. We all had a good few drinks to celebrate Uncle Willie’s life on earth.

Uncle Willie had made himself a bit of a recluse during his final few years on earth with the other Portlaw villagers, and because he housed so many cats as his companions, many of the villagers considered him to be a bit of an odd ball. Few villagers would ever knock on his door, and most would always cross the street when they saw him walking towards them, believing him to be unpredictable in his general response.

As my deceased mother’s seven children and their partners travelled into Portlaw by car on the day of Uncle Willie’s funeral, we approached the bridge on the last stage of the journey and looked up the steep hill towards ‘St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church’ to see if anyone from the village was walking up to attend Uncle Willie’s funeral. There wasn’t a soul in sight, and our hearts sank with the sad thought that not one of his Portlaw neighbours had seen fit to attend his burial service. As we turned the corner in our cars to go up the hill towards the church (just like a crowd scene out of the film ‘The Quiet Man’), over 100 villagers emerged from the bottom of the village and crossed the Portlaw bridge in respectful silence to walk up the steep hill to the church where they said their final farewells to Uncle Willie. Though the sight of such a large crowd to attend the burial service of Uncle Willie heartened the Forde family and brought immediate tears to our eyes, none of us was ignorant enough of Irish ways not to realise that all the Irish hate to waste the opportunity of a good get together in the pub after a funeral, especially when the visiting Forde family from England was standing the rounds!

Whatever one has to say about the Irish, never let it be said that they don’t look after their own; whether they be oddballs, drunks, or the most eccentric of individuals on God’s planet like dear Uncle Willie was!

My mother brought the Christmas spirit into our family home from my childhood years and kept it there until she died at the early age of 64 years. Every Christmas Eve, she would join all her grown-up children and their partners at some pub gathering and make merry until she was literally unable to drink another free rum and black currant juice or tell another one of her ‘tall tales’ about Ireland, and the interesting characters she grew up with. We all loved listening to the telling and retelling of my mother’s tales about her years of growing up into the most attractive woman ever to walk the streets of Portlaw; not forgetting all of the men she could have chosen to marry (especially those handsome fellows who finished up rich and owning their own farms or factories) instead of the one she did (my soccer-playing father). While dad neither danced nor drank, mum would dance and drink his portion gladly in his absence from family gatherings.

While my mother could tell the tallest of stories, she was never small on honesty whenever she expressed her true emotions with us. Never a day passed when she didn’t tell all her children that she loved us. When mum looked us in the eye and said she loved us, we knew she did, and whenever mum said ‘Merry Christmas’ to anyone, they also knew that she truly meant it. I don’t know what she would have thought about Christmas 2020, but I do know that she would have met and greeted it with as much hope and positivism as she possessed, and no sooner than it had passed, she would have been positively looking forward to next Christmas!

Sheila and I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Love and peace. Bill and Sheila xxx

Second Song For Today

20/12/2020

My second seasonal song today is ‘I Only Want You This Christmas’. This song was sung by country music artist, Alan Jackson. Being the first artist signed to ‘Arista Nashville Records’, he was with them from 1989 to 2011. He has released 15 studio albums, two Christmas albums, 10 compilations, and a tribute album for the label, as well as 66 singles. Out of his singles, all but six have reached Top 40 or higher on the ‘Billboard Country Singles Chart’, including 26 Number 1 hits.

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I dedicate this afternoon’s seasonal song to everyone who is fortunate enough to be spending this Christmas with their soulmate and sweetheart.

I have often wondered about the origin of the term ‘soulmate’. The best concept I have ever been able not come up with is a pair of wedded angels disguised as human lovers having a heavenly holiday. Whatever a soulmate is, there is no doubt what a soulmate does within a relationship. One thing that is certain about the effect a soulmate can have on their partner is the confirmation of their worth. No one can know their own beauty or perceive a sense of their own true worth until it has been reflected through the mirror of another loving, caring human being. It is only when one recognises the loving traits of their partner in themselves that enables each to perceive the two of them as being one.

The term ‘soulmates’ is an often overused and undeserving description of a loving relationship between two sweethearts. Having a physical and emotional bond between a loving couple, however strong, is never enough to accurately describe the pair as being ‘soulmates’. The start of the word (soul) indicates that much more than the earthly physical dimension is required to make the couple eternal mates. The ultimate death of one ends their earthly partnership forthwith, even though the deceased person lives on in the memory of their bereaved partner. It is only when a spiritual dimension exists alongside both the physical and emotional dimensions that the criteria for being soulmates exist. It is only when an afterlife beyond their earth life is believed in by both lovers that they can ever become ‘soulmates’.

“What’s the difference between the love of your life, and your soulmate?” I hear some couples who cannot conceive in an afterlife ask, no doubt believing that I am merely playing with words. My answer is “The former is a choice, and the latter is not. It is the difference between ‘choosing’ and ‘happening’!”

People are too eager to experience ‘lasting love’ that they do not even possess the patience to wait for the right person to come along. They invariably settle for commitment to another in the hope that they can become a satisfactory lifelong partner, whom they may loosely refer to in the passing as ‘being their soulmate’. Their loving relationship is most unlikely to be perfect in all regards, and it is probable that either partner will desire changes to take place in the behaviour of the other before full satisfaction is felt by them. In this respect, each/one of the pair is perceived by the other at the commencement of their loving relationship as being a ‘project in the making’ where a positive change in behaviour is sought. Anyone who has ever experienced a genuine soulmate would not ever want to change any part of them as there would be no need!

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas. Love and peace Bill and Sheila xxx

Song For Today: 19th December 2020

19/12/2020

I dedicate my song today to Kay Wall who lives in Piltown. Piltown is historically known as ‘Ballypoyle’( Irish: Baile an Phoill) is a small village in County Kilkenny, Ireland. It is Kay’s birthday today. We hope you have a memorable day. Thank you for being my Facebook friend.

My song today is “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of The Year’. This is a popular Christmas song written in 1963 by Edward Pola and George Wyle.

‘It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year’ is a celebration and description of activities associated with the Christmas season. The song focuses primarily on get-togethers between friends and families. Among the activities included in the song is the telling of ‘scary ghost stories,’ hosting parties, receiving spontaneous visits from friends, universal social gaiety, spending time with loved ones, sledding for children, roasting marshmallows, sharing stories about previous Christmases, and singing Christmas carols in winter weather.

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It is a fact, that for most of us, Christmas is ‘the most wonderful time of the year’. What can possibly provide more cheer than to see and hear a crowd of carol singers in the square, and traders selling roasted chestnuts on the Christmas market street nearby? Whom among us can fail to surrender to the innocent charm of a child snuggling up beneath their sheets on a Christmas Eve, half wanting to go to sleep and wake up to presents under the Christmas tree in the morning, and the other half of their curious little mind trying to stay awake and hear Santa and his reindeers arrive? Christmas Eve will witness worshippers at Midnight Mass celebrating the birth of Jesus, revellers at Christmas Eve parties, and exhausted mums and dads having a quiet Christmas drink after getting everything prepared for Christmas morning when the children wake up. All of this is what Christmas is about and much more.

Christmas time is that magical time of the year when hardened hearts are softened, old enmities are often put to one side, and a new-born star beckons hope and the ‘rule of love’ in the New Year sky. It is that time of year that reminds all who inhabit God’s earth that this world turns on an axis of His love. Our Lord God made the heavens and the stars, and then He made the Earth. Then, He made all the land, sea, skies, and underworld and filled it with beasts of the field, creatures of the underworld, birds of the air, and fish in the sea. He filled his world with all manner of plants, seed crops, foliage, flowers, and wildlife. When God had made all these things, He then made his most wondrous thing of all; you!

You are the living embodiment of God’s love on this Earth! You are His most loving and divine creation of all, and it is through the love of each of you, as expressed to one another, that all life is sustained, and hope and happiness promoted. Yes, God made this world and set it spinning on an axis of love, but it is only through the love of mankind for the rest of mankind, that the earth keeps spinning within an orbit of love, a galaxy of charity and grace, and an atmosphere of forbearance and forgiveness. The day that mankind stops loving its neighbour, all hope and happiness will stop, and the earth will rotate no more.

For all of us, this Christmas will be the strangest Christmas that any of us will have ever experienced due to the restrictions and periods of lockdowns we have had to endure in various phases since the Covid-19 Pandemic virus gripped the world in early 2019. Christmas for most will welcome a brief respite from government restrictions on our movement and mingling and meeting with family members for a few days. There will be none of the seasonal festivities engaged in that we have grown accustomed to, and even hugging, embracing, and kissing our most dearest is actively discouraged, and carries a deadly health warning by the government medical officers and scientists.

Finally, we should not allow our absence of thought for others this Christmas to ignore their plight, for to do so is essentially to lose the Christmas message. Please say an extra prayer this year, that the New Year will be better for us all. Do not forget those people of bereaved circumstances this Christmas, especially those who have died with this pernicious virus or because of its impact on the ability of our Health Service to operate normally and treat the mentally ill, and carry out all elective routine medical routines and non-Covid-19 operations on people with life-threatening cancer and other medical conditions. We pray that the hurt and emotional hole in the heart of all bereaved families soothe and heal with the passage of time. Let us not forget all those persons of impoverished circumstances, the homeless, the helpless, and those without hope of a better tomorrow. We pray for those who experience family estrangement and have remained out of contact for so long that they fear reinitiating contact with their family lest they experience further rejection. We ask that people who experience unemployment, loneliness, severe illness, addiction, or mounting debt and depression, get assistance in the early New Year and are not left feeling abandoned. Our thoughts are also with those people who lack hope and harbour feelings of hate, resentment, or helplessness. We hope for peace to break out in places of civil unrest within our world, whether within the knife gangs on our streets, or the death, destruction, and loss of liberty in war-torn countries beyond our national borders. Please spare a thought for all these people this Christmas because these are people for whom this festive season may hold nothing to cheer about as they enter a New Year that promises them nothing better than the past year they have just experienced.

Finally, another marvellous piece of Christmas news on the horizon besides the coming of Christ this Christmas Day is the rollout of a vaccine in the New Year to help combat and control this terrible and destructive virus. Whatever the personal reservations any of you may have about the safety or efficacy of this approved vaccine, let us at least give thanks that it will preserve the lives of many aged and highly vulnerable people, and allow their relatives to visit Care Homes once more to see their loved ones, as well as facilitating a more normal resumption of commerce, employment, and day-to-day social activities in our local communities. Surely, such a reward is to be warmly welcomed, even from among the most sceptical of you? The negative impact that Covid-19 has had on the country’s health, hope, happiness, and fear factors cannot be denied by anyone who has eyes to see and a brain to think! Neither can it be denied that the rollout of the vaccine (in the hope of controlling the spread of this virus) will act as a massive 'reassurance factor' for all those people in the population who take it! Only if taking the vaccine was to prove harmful in the future for significant numbers of vaccinated people, only then could any reasonable argument ‘for not having taken it’ be retrospectively justified.
We wish you seasonal greetings.

Love and peace Bill and Sheila xxx

Song For Today: 18th December 2020

18/12/2020

I dedicate today’s song to my great-niece, Lucy Eggett, who lives in her Heckmondwike family home with her father Robert Eggett, mother, Susan Eggett, and 19-year-old sister Jessica and her 12-year-old brother, Christian. Lucy celebrates her 17th birthday today. Enjoy your special day, Lucy. Lots of love Great-Uncle Billy and Sheila xx

I also dedicate today’s seasonal song to birthday to Margo Kavanagh who lives in Carrick-on-Suir, Tipperary, Ireland. Enjoy your special day, Margot, and thank you for being my Facebook friend.

Today’s song is ‘The Little Drummer Boy’. "The Little Drummer Boy" (originally known as ‘Carol of the Drum’) is a popular Christmas song written by the American classical music composer and teacher Katherine Kennicott Davis in 1941. The song was first recorded in 1951 by the ‘Trapp Family Singers’, and the song was further popularized by a 1958 recording by the Harry Simeone Chorale. The Simeone version was re-released successfully for several years and the song has been recorded many times since.

In the lyrics, the singer relates how, as a poor young boy, he was summoned by the Magi to the Nativity of Jesus. Without a gift for the Infant, the little drummer boy played his drum with approval from Jesus's mother, Mary, recalling, "I played my best for him" and "He smiled at me".

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In regard to the central message of this seasonal song, ‘Doing one’s best’ is the most that anyone can ever do. My dear late father was a man of few words and a person who held even fewer doubts about the importance of all work where mankind is concerned. My father was born in County Kilkenny, Ireland into a family of such poverty that the male children of the household were obliged to leave school not long after their twelfth birthdays and go to work on behalf of their family.

My father’s education was subsequently cut short and so all his effort went into the manual work for the whole of his working life. The few pieces of advice that my father ever gave me were directly related to one’s working ethos, one’s word, and one’s level of self-respect.

They were as follows:
“Never break your word, Billy, once you have given it. However hard it is to keep, keep it!”
“Hold on to what little self-respect you have, Billy, because that is all a poor man has when his pocket is empty!”
“Whatever work you do, Billy, and whatever job you have, even if it is sweeping the factory floor, do it to the best of your ability and you will sleep better every night knowing that you have done your best!”

Although my father never placed any store upon the accumulation of academic qualifications, he was a hard-working man all his life whose employers always thought highly of him. The only books my father ever read in his life were western paperbacks about cowboy heroes of the previous century. The area where my father excelled was in the arena of football or ‘soccer’ as it is known in the land of his birth, Eire (Southern Ireland). By the age of 20 years, my father played soccer for County Kilkenny, and before he married my mother when he was 26 years old, he was playing soccer for the Irish national squad! Being the modest man he was, I would be 9 years old before I ever learned about my father’s soccer credentials.

While it is possible for anyone to question some of my father’s views and beliefs, nobody can justifiably fault him for not ‘doing his best’ at whatever job he ever held! From the early years of my life, he was a miner at the coal face, followed by semi-skilled employment in engineer factories. Being the father of seven children (of whom I was the oldest), his normal working weeks would always involve working overtime when he could get it and working through his two-week summer holiday period so that my mother could take the children on a week’s holiday in a caravan at Scarborough. Had dad not been one of the most modest men I ever knew, he would have been the first to bang his drum as loud as any other working-class man, where industrious character traits and soccer skills of the highest order were concerned. I have frequently wondered why his oldest child never learned such humility of character, and learn to pocket his proud achievements instead of wearing them like a prominent badge of honour on ready display? God bless you, dad x

Love and peace Bill xxx

Song For Today: 17th December 2020

17/12/2020

I dedicate my song today to four people. Three people are celebrating their birthday today and my fourth dedication is for the 54th wedding anniversary of a wonderful couple from Cleckheaton in West Yorkshire.

We wish a happy birthday to Amanda Bradbury from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. Amanda's husband, David Bradbury was the illustrated of my two best-selling children's books in the 1990s called 'Sleezy the Fox' and 'Douglas the Dragon' that sold in their tens of thousands. We also wish a happy birthday to Bridget Power who was born in the same village as me (Portlaw) and who lives in Waterford, Ireland. Our final birthday celebrant today is Christine Mountney, who lives in Rustington, West Sussex. Enjoy your special day, Amanda, Bridget, and Christine. And thank you for being my Facebook friend.

We also celebrate the 54th wedding anniversary of a wonderful Cleckheaton couple, Tom and Ann Rhodes. Tom is an army veteran and Ann is his ex-army wife. The couple has three grown children and is the proud grandparents of five grandchildren. Like myself, both Tom and Ann have had their fair share of health issues, and it is fair to say that any Christmas in recent years could so easily have been our ‘last Christmas’. Twenty years ago, Ann incurred a massive heart attack which almost killed her, and 19 years ago, I also incurred two heart attacks in the same week, the second of which resulted in me being unconscious for four days. The families of both Ann and mine were each told to prepare for our imminent death. In 2013, both Tom and me we were diagnosed with a terminal illness. Tom was given a life expectancy of 18 months and I was given a maximum of 3 years. So, it could be legitimately said that all three of us have been living on borrowed time for many years now, and given our medical histories, we each approach every Christmas with gratitude of having reached another annual landmark in our lives. You know, although we have only met once face-to-face when a happily married couple is in the presence of another married couple who are just as happy in their relationship, there is no disguising the joy of a successful marriage. Enjoy your special day Tom and Ann, and may you have many more.

My seasonal song today is ‘Last Christmas’. This is a song by English pop duo ‘Wham!’ The song was released in December 1984. It was written and produced by George Michael and has been covered by many artists since its original release. The song reached Number 1 in Denmark, Slovenia, and Sweden and Number 2 in eight countries: Belgium, Netherlands, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Norway, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Wham! donated all their royalties to the Ethiopian famine. In a UK-wide poll in December 2012, it was voted eighth on the ITV television special ‘The Nation’s Favourite Christmas Song’. It was the most-played Christmas song of the 21st century in the UK until it was overtaken by ‘Fairytale of New York’ in 2015.

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One of the things about having three different body cancers (blood, bottom, and skin), with the strong possibility of having another life-saving cancer operation in the new year (making the 8th cancer operation and 40 sessions of radiotherapy I will have had in the past 27 months) is that one cannot take tomorrow for granted. Instead. I have had to learn to live in the moment. I receive moral support from hundreds of people, and I seriously doubt that few individuals have ever felt so privileged as I do, and have grown to feel over the past seven years, or has had as many prayers and masses said on their behalf, and church candles lit by people across the world they will never meet.

I have always loved the season of Christmas for its social and religious pleasures and observances. I love seeing other people in a happy frame of mind as they go about their busy lives preparing for Christmas Day and Boxing Day and having their family get-togethers. There is something special in the skies each Christmas as the world is reminded of the real reason for a seasonal celebration. I love to think that somewhere in the world, someone who was an enemy of someone else yesterday is prepared to soften their hearts and be more friendly towards them today, just because of the promise of a new-born star.

As each Christmas has come around ever since early 2013 when I was diagnosed with terminal blood cancer, I have always approached it, never fearing that it would be my last Christmas, whilst never really knowing if it might be. That is why each Christmas will grow more meaningful and special to me with the passing of every year. Indeed, every day in heaven is Christmas Day!

We all want something extra at Christmas time. Some of us desire a more reliable car, others a new job in the New Year. Some young married couples starting a family want to move to a larger house, while countless homeless families would be happy to live in any kind of house which they could call their own. Most children wish for their favourite present this year, while some starving children in impoverished parts of the world won’t even know it is Christmas, and the best thing they could be given on Christmas morning would be a bowl of cereal and a piece of dry bread!

Then, there will be those bereaved individuals like my wife Sheila, whose only sibling, Winston, died this year, sadly before his time, along with many others who have lost loved ones and lifelong soul mates during the past year, or simply observe their empty chair each Christmas time. And not forgetting that army of lonely people; individuals who live alone with no real support systems, people who experienced past happy relationships with a mate (and for whatever reason) sadly ended. Let us spare a thought for those lonely individuals who are fed up with living alone, coming home at the end of a working day to an empty house, eating meals-for-one, having no other company than oneself and the television or radio to ‘talk back to’, and ending one’s day by sleeping alone and obtaining whatever comfort can be derived from cuddling or crying into one’s pillow. Imagine how much happier such lonely people’s lives could be if Santa left them a man or woman under the tree with whom to share the rest of their life. I very much suspect that some people who are fed up to the teeth of their own company would even appreciate the trial period of ‘a mate’, even if they had to return their extra present after the Christmas festivities had ended!

What do I want for Christmas? To live to see another Christmas arrive would suit me just fine thank you very much! However, on a more somber note, if I could choose the best time to die, I would ask to die during the last week of December, after I have enjoyed my ‘last Christmas’ with those whom I love most. I have often heard bereaved spouses say that Christmas is the worst time of the year to lose a loved one. For me, I believe that any time, any day, any minute, any moment in any person’s life is neither better nor worse than any other time to grieve the loss of someone you love. For every negative reason that anyone can come up with for believing that to die on such and such a day would be a bad day to die, I’d simply challenge them to select a better day, if possible!

I have never been afraid of dying since the age of 11 years and have believed every year thereafter to have represented ‘borrowed time’ that I have been living on. There has never been one day in my life when I have wanted to die. I cannot envisage ever wanting to give up the struggle to survive another day, whatever pain level I must endure. To me, pain is a positive feeling, because if there is anything concrete in our experiences that represent ‘being alive’, then surely it must be 'pain'?

I have always felt that there is still more work to do for me to do before I shuffle off my mortal coil and having important things still to do tomorrow each day I retire, gives one extra incentive for the sleeping brain and body to wake up the following morning. None of us will ever know the purpose of our life until we discover ‘what is worth dying for?’

Meanwhile, I have no fear of dying, and whatever inconvenience and pain I need to endure, as long as I can remain happy with being alive, I will keep going to bed content each night with the expectation of waking up again tomorrow morning. The simple fact of life is that no one on earth has ever been promised a tomorrow or ever will be.

I have long known that being happy is so personal a thing that it has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else. I know that it is ‘me’ who determines my happiness; I and nobody else! I am also of the view that if we trust our feelings about what is right or wrong, we will always recognise the truth by the way things instinctively feel. I have come to learn that there is value in all friendship, and to keep closer to me those individuals who bring pleasure and poetry into my life as opposed to pain, pity, and concern. I know that if we make our lives an event of celebration instead of an accident waiting to happen, we will more likely feel blessed for today than apologetic for yesterday. I have always found that pragmatism was infinitely better than procrastination when on the move. When seeking to get things done, doing what is possible is more achievable when we forget the six reasons why something cannot be done and remember the one reason why it can/will.

I once read that life is made up of lots of ‘waiting’ and very little ‘arrival’ at destinations. I believe that sentiment to be true, but I also believe that what we become ‘in the process of our waiting’ is far more important to our development of character than ‘what we are waiting for’. We have all heard that the journey of life is always more interesting than at the ultimate point of arrival. I am 78 years old now but know that my life’s ultimate destination grows closer each passing month/year of travel. As a Christian, I naturally believe that dying is never about the ending, and as an author of 64 published books, I believe it is always about the story that proceeds our passing from this life to the next. The legacy we all leave when we die is to be found in the way we lived, and never in the manner of our death.

We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Love and peace.
Bill and Sheila xxx