I dedicate my song today to six Facebook friends of mine who celebrate their birthday today. First, we wish a happy birthday to my Great Niece, Emily Jones who lives in Liversedge, West Yorkshire. Other birthday celebrants include my friend and illustrator of many of my children’s books, Dave Bradbury who lives in Shepley, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire: my friend, Eva Gasper, who lives in West Sussex: Denise McCauley, and Claire Carroll who live in Carrick-on-Suir, Tipperary, Ireland: Willie Corcoran who lives in Waterford, Ireland. We hope that you all have a wonderful birthday.
My song today is ‘Bring it on Home to Me’. This song was recorded by American soul singer Sam Cooke, and t was released on May 8, 1962. The song peaked at Number 2 on the ‘Billboard Hot R&B Sides’ chart, and it also charted at Number 13 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’. The song has become a pop standard and has been covered by numerous artists of different genres. It is one of ‘The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll’.
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It is said that we don’t miss the water until the well runs dry, which is another way of saying that we never know what we have until we lose it. How true that is! Whether the loss is one of love, life or liberty, there is no more sorry state than experiencing a lifetime of permanent regret, especially if we were partly responsible in the first instance.
The past year of this pernicious pandemic Covid-19 virus will surely have brought home to the country and the world at large how fragile mankind can be during times of great uncertainty, fear, and doubt. There are few among us who would have ever imagined the type of year we have all just experienced, along with the loss it has brought so many of us. Change can be wanted, it can be welcomed, or resisted. Change is always challenging and sometimes threatening, but none of us like change which is enforced upon us. National lockdowns and restriction of our basic freedoms to mix and move, to kiss and cuddle with family, and shake hands with friends, to marry our loved ones, to visit our hospitalised or to bury our dead, or even to take a walk represent a loss so great to each of us that is alien to a free and democratic country.
However, should our lives change drastically because of any wrong decision we have made, then the responsibility we shoulder in the future can become too heavy to bear. So many people who have denied the pernicious nature of Covid-19 have unfortunately been struck down by it or have had family members die from it. So many rational people have also had their mental health ruined because they have allowed well-intentioned government ministers to frighten them to death with the consequences if they continue to do what comes naturally for them to do. Surely, no government in the world (under any circumstances, pandemic or otherwise) has the moral right or justification to prevent a family member be at the death bed of a dying parent to hold their hands during their last moments on this earth?
I once worked with a man when I served as a Probation Officer in Huddersfield during the early 1970s. My client had been engaged to a young woman for five years and on the day of their planned wedding, as the taxi carrying the bride and her father to the church arrived outside the church steps, the bride broke down, started crying and told her father she did not want to go through with the wedding. Her father naturally told the taxi to take them both back home; leaving the church filled with wedding attenders, an anxious groom and best man, relatives wondering the worst, and a vicar twiddling his thumbs.
This was in the days prior to mobile phones. After dropping his daughter back home at the parental address, the father of the bride-that-was-to-be took the waiting wedding car back to the church to announce to all and sundry that the wedding was off. The very first response of the bride’s mother was to think about the lavish wedding reception awaiting sixty guests, the huge wedding cake that had taken months to make, and the booked entertainment for the evening. What was to be done about all that, just because of a few bridal wedding butterflies? She would have to tell everyone that everything was off. That thought was quickly followed by the knowledge that their retirement savings were now considerably depleted by being the bride’s parents.
Even by the 1970s, the custom was that the bride’s parents still stood the total cost for any wedding. The groom’s parents got off Scot free for having given birth to a son instead of a daughter. The groom had given his name to his bride, so, apart from the honeymoon tab to pick up (unless his parents paid the bill), his contribution was merely symbolic.
Meanwhile, inside the church, the rejected groom was in a state of bewilderment, not knowing what had hit him or where to put himself. He later admitted to being more worried about the shame of having been left at the altar and what people might think of him before trying to figure out why his fiancée had got cold feet at the church entrance.
The upshot was that while the bride-to-be liked her fiancé immensely, she did not love him. She later admitted that ‘she liked the idea of getting married as she was in her mid-20s and was ready for settling down’, but when push came to shove, she could not reconcile herself to the thought of being married to anyone for a lifetime, especially her boyfriend (divorce was still heavily frowned upon in the early 1970s). She told her father as he rode back home in the wedding car with her that “It would have been so easy to have gone ahead and married her fiancé, but it would have been wrong”. Her reason for eventually deciding against the wedding was, “He was too nice a man, too safe, too predictable an individual!” She said that life with him would have been too routine, and in time would simply have become boring, with little prospect of excitement or surprise.
I hear you asking yourself what brought such a good respectable man into statutory contact with a Probation Officer? Or are you perhaps wondering did he go berserk in a mad moment of feeling shamed and betrayed, and physically assault his bride-to-be? Or perhaps, did he tell her father what he really thought about his possessiveness where his precious daughter was concerned? I am afraid it was nothing so natural.
He truly was a decent law-abiding man who normally did not drink, but after being jilted at the altar he and the best man went in every pub between Huddersfield and Holmfirth and the pair wasn’t seen again until they were released from the police cells the following day. The couple had got blind drunk. The groom had fallen over a table filled with the drinks of six seated people in a pub lounge and finished up in a brawl he never asked for. The best man tried to protect his mate but was also embroiled in the melee. The police were called and arrived to arrest the jilted groom and the best man. One of the women sitting around the table was accidentally hurt when the collapsed table fell on her. Her minor injuries led to the groom being charged with an offence of Assault while being Drunk and Disorderly. His best man faced a lesser charge but being drunk, the couple were held overnight in the police cells.
Normally the matter would have been dealt with by a fine or a caution, but given the unusually-cancelled wedding circumstances before the pub incident, and the clean offence sheet of the two defendants, the court asked the Probation Service to prepare a Social Enquiry Report upon both men. The court was as concerned with the jilted groom as they were about the offence which he was charged with, hence the requested report.
In preparing the report, the Probation Officer concerned has access to interview whoever they believe can be of assistance in understanding the defendant’s full circumstances leading to and surrounding the offence. I had a brief interview with the father of the bride-to-be in my office after he had phoned me when he had heard that his daughter’s ex-fiancé had been arrested. It was he who filled me in with what his daughter had told him after she decided not to go through with the wedding. He and his daughter felt sorry for the jilted groom and sought to say a word to the reporting Probation Officer on his behalf.
I prepared my Social Enquiry Report and recommended a Conditional Discharge and a Compensation Order be awarded against the jilted groom for the damage caused in the pub. The Court agreed and sentenced as recommended by me.
When I was singing today’s song, I remembered that the one thing the defendant could not ‘bring back home’ with him that day was his beautiful bride, and instead of sleeping with his bride in the booked hotel wedding suite, he spent what would have been his wedding night in the Huddersfield Police Station in adjacent cells to his best man!
Love and peace
Bill xxx
My song today is ‘Bring it on Home to Me’. This song was recorded by American soul singer Sam Cooke, and t was released on May 8, 1962. The song peaked at Number 2 on the ‘Billboard Hot R&B Sides’ chart, and it also charted at Number 13 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’. The song has become a pop standard and has been covered by numerous artists of different genres. It is one of ‘The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll’.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
It is said that we don’t miss the water until the well runs dry, which is another way of saying that we never know what we have until we lose it. How true that is! Whether the loss is one of love, life or liberty, there is no more sorry state than experiencing a lifetime of permanent regret, especially if we were partly responsible in the first instance.
The past year of this pernicious pandemic Covid-19 virus will surely have brought home to the country and the world at large how fragile mankind can be during times of great uncertainty, fear, and doubt. There are few among us who would have ever imagined the type of year we have all just experienced, along with the loss it has brought so many of us. Change can be wanted, it can be welcomed, or resisted. Change is always challenging and sometimes threatening, but none of us like change which is enforced upon us. National lockdowns and restriction of our basic freedoms to mix and move, to kiss and cuddle with family, and shake hands with friends, to marry our loved ones, to visit our hospitalised or to bury our dead, or even to take a walk represent a loss so great to each of us that is alien to a free and democratic country.
However, should our lives change drastically because of any wrong decision we have made, then the responsibility we shoulder in the future can become too heavy to bear. So many people who have denied the pernicious nature of Covid-19 have unfortunately been struck down by it or have had family members die from it. So many rational people have also had their mental health ruined because they have allowed well-intentioned government ministers to frighten them to death with the consequences if they continue to do what comes naturally for them to do. Surely, no government in the world (under any circumstances, pandemic or otherwise) has the moral right or justification to prevent a family member be at the death bed of a dying parent to hold their hands during their last moments on this earth?
I once worked with a man when I served as a Probation Officer in Huddersfield during the early 1970s. My client had been engaged to a young woman for five years and on the day of their planned wedding, as the taxi carrying the bride and her father to the church arrived outside the church steps, the bride broke down, started crying and told her father she did not want to go through with the wedding. Her father naturally told the taxi to take them both back home; leaving the church filled with wedding attenders, an anxious groom and best man, relatives wondering the worst, and a vicar twiddling his thumbs.
This was in the days prior to mobile phones. After dropping his daughter back home at the parental address, the father of the bride-that-was-to-be took the waiting wedding car back to the church to announce to all and sundry that the wedding was off. The very first response of the bride’s mother was to think about the lavish wedding reception awaiting sixty guests, the huge wedding cake that had taken months to make, and the booked entertainment for the evening. What was to be done about all that, just because of a few bridal wedding butterflies? She would have to tell everyone that everything was off. That thought was quickly followed by the knowledge that their retirement savings were now considerably depleted by being the bride’s parents.
Even by the 1970s, the custom was that the bride’s parents still stood the total cost for any wedding. The groom’s parents got off Scot free for having given birth to a son instead of a daughter. The groom had given his name to his bride, so, apart from the honeymoon tab to pick up (unless his parents paid the bill), his contribution was merely symbolic.
Meanwhile, inside the church, the rejected groom was in a state of bewilderment, not knowing what had hit him or where to put himself. He later admitted to being more worried about the shame of having been left at the altar and what people might think of him before trying to figure out why his fiancée had got cold feet at the church entrance.
The upshot was that while the bride-to-be liked her fiancé immensely, she did not love him. She later admitted that ‘she liked the idea of getting married as she was in her mid-20s and was ready for settling down’, but when push came to shove, she could not reconcile herself to the thought of being married to anyone for a lifetime, especially her boyfriend (divorce was still heavily frowned upon in the early 1970s). She told her father as he rode back home in the wedding car with her that “It would have been so easy to have gone ahead and married her fiancé, but it would have been wrong”. Her reason for eventually deciding against the wedding was, “He was too nice a man, too safe, too predictable an individual!” She said that life with him would have been too routine, and in time would simply have become boring, with little prospect of excitement or surprise.
I hear you asking yourself what brought such a good respectable man into statutory contact with a Probation Officer? Or are you perhaps wondering did he go berserk in a mad moment of feeling shamed and betrayed, and physically assault his bride-to-be? Or perhaps, did he tell her father what he really thought about his possessiveness where his precious daughter was concerned? I am afraid it was nothing so natural.
He truly was a decent law-abiding man who normally did not drink, but after being jilted at the altar he and the best man went in every pub between Huddersfield and Holmfirth and the pair wasn’t seen again until they were released from the police cells the following day. The couple had got blind drunk. The groom had fallen over a table filled with the drinks of six seated people in a pub lounge and finished up in a brawl he never asked for. The best man tried to protect his mate but was also embroiled in the melee. The police were called and arrived to arrest the jilted groom and the best man. One of the women sitting around the table was accidentally hurt when the collapsed table fell on her. Her minor injuries led to the groom being charged with an offence of Assault while being Drunk and Disorderly. His best man faced a lesser charge but being drunk, the couple were held overnight in the police cells.
Normally the matter would have been dealt with by a fine or a caution, but given the unusually-cancelled wedding circumstances before the pub incident, and the clean offence sheet of the two defendants, the court asked the Probation Service to prepare a Social Enquiry Report upon both men. The court was as concerned with the jilted groom as they were about the offence which he was charged with, hence the requested report.
In preparing the report, the Probation Officer concerned has access to interview whoever they believe can be of assistance in understanding the defendant’s full circumstances leading to and surrounding the offence. I had a brief interview with the father of the bride-to-be in my office after he had phoned me when he had heard that his daughter’s ex-fiancé had been arrested. It was he who filled me in with what his daughter had told him after she decided not to go through with the wedding. He and his daughter felt sorry for the jilted groom and sought to say a word to the reporting Probation Officer on his behalf.
I prepared my Social Enquiry Report and recommended a Conditional Discharge and a Compensation Order be awarded against the jilted groom for the damage caused in the pub. The Court agreed and sentenced as recommended by me.
When I was singing today’s song, I remembered that the one thing the defendant could not ‘bring back home’ with him that day was his beautiful bride, and instead of sleeping with his bride in the booked hotel wedding suite, he spent what would have been his wedding night in the Huddersfield Police Station in adjacent cells to his best man!
Love and peace
Bill xxx
