On this Valentine Day of February 14th, 2019, instead of a card, I will give my Valentine a vocal rendition, to hopefully ‘Jib Jab’ her into the realisation of just how much I love her. ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ is my chosen song I sing to Sheila today. I have never sung this song before, although I have heard it in the background from time to time. It is a beautiful song and I’m simply amazed that I missed it. I welcome this morning’s opportunity to redress this omission and consider it a perfect song to sing for the occasion of Valentine's Day.
This is a 1957 folk song that was written by the British political singer and songwriter, Ewan MacColl for Peggy Seeger, who later became his wife. At the time, the couple were lovers, although MacColl was still married to Joan Littlewood. Seeger sang the song when the duo performed in folk clubs around Britain.
During the 1960s, it was recorded by various folk singers and became a major international hit for Roberta Flack in 1972, winning Grammy Awards for ‘Record of the Year’ and ‘Song of the Year’. Flack's slow and sensual version was used by Clint Eastwood in his 1971 directorial film debut, ‘Play Misty for Me’ to score a love scene featuring Eastwood and actress Donna Mills.
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Many people doubt the romantic phenomenon of there being ‘love at first sight’, but I tell all ‘Doubting Thomas’s’ that they are wrong! Whereas it can take a lifetime to understand the treasure one has been blessed with, it only takes a second to fall in love. It is, unfortunately, a sad fact that until our love has left our life (has separated from us through either choice or death) or (has been unwillingly separated from us through illness such as dementia or abduction); only then, when we miss what we have had, only then do we realise what we have truly lost!
I will never forget the ‘first time ever I saw Sheila’s face’. It wasn’t the attractiveness of the facial features that drew me towards her and made me stick to her like a magnet. I have always been a man who preferred to see long black hair on a woman, and when I first looked at Sheila, I thought her hair to have been cropped too severely. It seemed too harsh for the tender facial bone structure it framed. The severe cut of her hairline did little to make her immediately appealing to my male eyes.
I have always loved physical attractiveness on the surface, but only when it is surpassed by the beauty that lies beneath the skin; the beauty that grows more beautiful with the passing of time and never wrinkles with age. It was plain to see that Sheila possessed that inner beauty, along with a depth of sensitivity and compassion that I found most alluring. As we spoke, her truth of expression in her words, the purity of thought coming effortlessly from her mind, and the innocence she exuded, drew me ever closer and kept me wanting to be ever nearer. Shelia came across as being non-pretentious and enabled me to see her human flaws and fallibility of character, which merely made her more humanly desiring, along with hints of ‘the little girl’ inside her. All these things I was able to see in her from being with her and talking to her for a few hours the first time we met.
By the time I’d left her on that first occasion, I had been smitten by her and knew instinctively that I'd just met a beautiful woman who'd ensnared me in a mesh of my own values and beliefs that she had cast (knowing or unknowingly). I knew that I had met my soulmate, someone who would make me half of ‘a perfect two’.
After I’d returned to my own home that first time after leaving Sheila, although I wasn’t wholly aware of it at the time, I had willingly allowed myself to fall into a ‘love trap’ that I was happy to be in and didn’t want to be extricated from. We had started to fall in love from the start of that first date and have been in love with each other ever since. Being in love with each other has enabled me and Sheila to be much more in love with life and our fellow beings. I LOVE YOU, MY VALENTINE.
Love and peace Bill XXX
This is a 1957 folk song that was written by the British political singer and songwriter, Ewan MacColl for Peggy Seeger, who later became his wife. At the time, the couple were lovers, although MacColl was still married to Joan Littlewood. Seeger sang the song when the duo performed in folk clubs around Britain.
During the 1960s, it was recorded by various folk singers and became a major international hit for Roberta Flack in 1972, winning Grammy Awards for ‘Record of the Year’ and ‘Song of the Year’. Flack's slow and sensual version was used by Clint Eastwood in his 1971 directorial film debut, ‘Play Misty for Me’ to score a love scene featuring Eastwood and actress Donna Mills.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Many people doubt the romantic phenomenon of there being ‘love at first sight’, but I tell all ‘Doubting Thomas’s’ that they are wrong! Whereas it can take a lifetime to understand the treasure one has been blessed with, it only takes a second to fall in love. It is, unfortunately, a sad fact that until our love has left our life (has separated from us through either choice or death) or (has been unwillingly separated from us through illness such as dementia or abduction); only then, when we miss what we have had, only then do we realise what we have truly lost!
I will never forget the ‘first time ever I saw Sheila’s face’. It wasn’t the attractiveness of the facial features that drew me towards her and made me stick to her like a magnet. I have always been a man who preferred to see long black hair on a woman, and when I first looked at Sheila, I thought her hair to have been cropped too severely. It seemed too harsh for the tender facial bone structure it framed. The severe cut of her hairline did little to make her immediately appealing to my male eyes.
I have always loved physical attractiveness on the surface, but only when it is surpassed by the beauty that lies beneath the skin; the beauty that grows more beautiful with the passing of time and never wrinkles with age. It was plain to see that Sheila possessed that inner beauty, along with a depth of sensitivity and compassion that I found most alluring. As we spoke, her truth of expression in her words, the purity of thought coming effortlessly from her mind, and the innocence she exuded, drew me ever closer and kept me wanting to be ever nearer. Shelia came across as being non-pretentious and enabled me to see her human flaws and fallibility of character, which merely made her more humanly desiring, along with hints of ‘the little girl’ inside her. All these things I was able to see in her from being with her and talking to her for a few hours the first time we met.
By the time I’d left her on that first occasion, I had been smitten by her and knew instinctively that I'd just met a beautiful woman who'd ensnared me in a mesh of my own values and beliefs that she had cast (knowing or unknowingly). I knew that I had met my soulmate, someone who would make me half of ‘a perfect two’.
After I’d returned to my own home that first time after leaving Sheila, although I wasn’t wholly aware of it at the time, I had willingly allowed myself to fall into a ‘love trap’ that I was happy to be in and didn’t want to be extricated from. We had started to fall in love from the start of that first date and have been in love with each other ever since. Being in love with each other has enabled me and Sheila to be much more in love with life and our fellow beings. I LOVE YOU, MY VALENTINE.
Love and peace Bill XXX
