I dedicate my song today to three people who celebrate their birthday. We wish a happy birthday to Marie Delanie who lives in Killenaule, Tipperary, Ireland where my mother once lived with her parents, Mary and Willie Fanning. We also send birthday wishes to Alice O’Dwyer who lives in Carrick-on-Suir, Tipperary, Ireland. Finally, we wish a happy birthday to Christopher McKinney who lives in Clearwater, Florida, USA. Marie, Alice, and Christopher enjoy your special day, and thank you for being my Facebook friend.
My song today is “I’ll Be Seeing You”. This popular song is as nostalgic as music gets. With music by Sammy Fain and lyrics by Irving Kahal, the song was published in 1938 just before the start of the ‘Second World War’. The song was inserted into the Broadway musical ‘Right This Way', which closed after fifteen performances. The title of the 1944 film “I’ll Be Seeing You” was taken from this song at the suggestion of the film's producer. The song is included in the film's soundtrack. The earliest recording of the song was by Dick Todd in 1940.
The song has been recorded and covered by so many famous artists from Bing Crosby: Billie Holliday: Vera Lynn, and Frank Sinatra, to name just a few of the past great artists to give the song its unique nostalgic message of parting loved ones.
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The first time I heard this song, it was being sung by either Bing Crosby or Vera Lynn. However, I do associate the song more with the late Dame Vera than any other singer.
I recall a mate of mine when I was growing up on Windybank Estate in the 1950s. He was more an acquaintance than a friend as he was four years older than I was, but he tended to hang around with young lads at the local café we all visited daily to listen to the jukebox. He would visit the café where we all hung out at Hightown which a lady called Annie ran., and announce his presence to all by revving up his motorbike which he would proudly park outside. This was at a time before motorbikes and Lambretta scooters came into their own with the youth of the day. His name was Brian, and he was one of the first people I ever knew who drove a motorbike with an engine size of over 250cc.
Brian never left a group of us without departing with the words, “I’ll be seeing you!” It was a phase that we clearly associated with him, and especially as Vera Lynn had made it so memorable in the mind of the nation after recording the song. One night while attending the Cleckheaton Fair Ground, Brian and a few others had a ride on the Big Wheel. We never established precisely what really happened, and whether anyone was messing about with the carriage contraption after it had started turning or whether it had not been secured properly. On its descent, the Big Wheel carriage where Brian was sitting in alone suddenly rocked and it threw Brian out from a great height. Brian landed on a young woman in the Fairground below. The female broke Brian’s fall and was instantly killed. Brian was a patient in hospital over the following six months and was discharged a cripple with iron leg braces to support each of his badly damaged legs (the type of metal brace supports that many polio victims of the time had to wear). After his fairground fall, Brian was unable to walk without great difficulty thereafter. This was the only fatal fairground accident that ever happened in my lifetime at Cleckheaton fairground, so it will be forever stuck in the memory of anyone who was alive and living in the area at the time.
As a result of his fairground accident, the fairground owners were held responsible and Brian was awarded a large amount of compensation for his lifelong injuries that prevented him from ever working again. Whether or not to compensate for his being left unable to walk properly, Brian started investing in bigger and faster motorbikes. He bought the best, the biggest, and the fastest motorbike at the time; the Triumph Bonneville T120. This was a motorcycle originally made by Triumph Engineering from 1959 to 1975. It was the first model of the Bonneville series, which was continued by Triumph Motorcycles Ltd. The T120 was discontinued in favour of the larger 750 cc T140 in the early 1970s. Brian boasted that his motorcycle was one of the few machines on the road that was capable of going 100 mph. This was a boast made by many bikers during the 1950s and early 1960s, and the roads they chose to travel at high speeds were paradoxically the most winding and bending roads on the way to Blackpool, Brighton or Scarborough seaside.
The upshot was that the day eventually came when Brian tried to do his ton again while driving to a seaside resort with three other bikers behind him. His witnessing biker-friends said that he did manage to achieve the 100-mph speed again; a feat that designated him a ‘Ton-up Boy’. It was as though when testifying at his inquest, his friends were more concerned with respecting his ‘reputation as a biker of speed’ with his peers more than the fact that his foolishness had been able to achieve that which the Big Wheel had failed to do many years earlier.
After Brian had departed this earth in his early 20s, many young men who had considered purchasing a motorbike changed their minds, and as a mark of respectful remembrance to Brian, many of us would leave the group of our mates at the cafe with the words, “I’ll be seeing you!”
During later years after I had become the author of over sixty published books, and I would often jot down story themes as they came to mind and put them in a back drawer. Some stories would later be converted into published novels and some would never see the light of day again. I recalled Brian’s tragic death as an author and temporarily toyed with the idea of writing one story that was part factual and part fictional. The book was planned to be in two parts; Part One and Part Two, and with two entirely different endings where the reader was allowed to exercise a preference for which part of the book they thought was a better read; the real or the imagined, the fact or the fiction.
My story plot would take the factual details of a person falling from a carriage of the Big Wheel as Brian had done, killing an innocent female below in the process. The book would then detail Brian buying a big motorbike with part of his compensation reward to compensate him for his crippled condition and going on to die while riding the public highway at 100 mph in search of peer admiration.
In the story which I never got around to writing, Part One of the two-part story would provide a factual account of Brian’s life before and after the horrific fairground fall that killed an innocent bystander, and Part Two of the book would be an entirely fictional account where a significant departure from factual details of the fairground incident would be made that would provide a much happier ending to the fairground survivor.
In my planned story, the person falling from the Big Wheel would be the woman who had died as a result of Brian landing on her below. Her fall would instead directly reverse the tragic circumstance of the fairground accident, instantly killing Brian and leaving the woman who fell on him crippled instead, along with being the beneficiary of a large compensation award.
The new story would tell of an entirely different way the woman whose life had been mercifully spared went on to devote her future life and works to the betterment of humanity, and how she used her compensation award to much greater effect by giving it all away to others who needed the money more than she did. The woman in the story was so happy to have been given a second chance to change her previously unhappy and purposeless life for the opportunity to live a more wholesome and satisfactory life, that she seized and embraced this Godsend opportunity with open arms.
If only all unhappy life endings could be reversed? Here is the moral of today's true story, folks. Believe in God, and believe me when I tell you, they can be.
Love and peace
Bill xxx
My song today is “I’ll Be Seeing You”. This popular song is as nostalgic as music gets. With music by Sammy Fain and lyrics by Irving Kahal, the song was published in 1938 just before the start of the ‘Second World War’. The song was inserted into the Broadway musical ‘Right This Way', which closed after fifteen performances. The title of the 1944 film “I’ll Be Seeing You” was taken from this song at the suggestion of the film's producer. The song is included in the film's soundtrack. The earliest recording of the song was by Dick Todd in 1940.
The song has been recorded and covered by so many famous artists from Bing Crosby: Billie Holliday: Vera Lynn, and Frank Sinatra, to name just a few of the past great artists to give the song its unique nostalgic message of parting loved ones.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The first time I heard this song, it was being sung by either Bing Crosby or Vera Lynn. However, I do associate the song more with the late Dame Vera than any other singer.
I recall a mate of mine when I was growing up on Windybank Estate in the 1950s. He was more an acquaintance than a friend as he was four years older than I was, but he tended to hang around with young lads at the local café we all visited daily to listen to the jukebox. He would visit the café where we all hung out at Hightown which a lady called Annie ran., and announce his presence to all by revving up his motorbike which he would proudly park outside. This was at a time before motorbikes and Lambretta scooters came into their own with the youth of the day. His name was Brian, and he was one of the first people I ever knew who drove a motorbike with an engine size of over 250cc.
Brian never left a group of us without departing with the words, “I’ll be seeing you!” It was a phase that we clearly associated with him, and especially as Vera Lynn had made it so memorable in the mind of the nation after recording the song. One night while attending the Cleckheaton Fair Ground, Brian and a few others had a ride on the Big Wheel. We never established precisely what really happened, and whether anyone was messing about with the carriage contraption after it had started turning or whether it had not been secured properly. On its descent, the Big Wheel carriage where Brian was sitting in alone suddenly rocked and it threw Brian out from a great height. Brian landed on a young woman in the Fairground below. The female broke Brian’s fall and was instantly killed. Brian was a patient in hospital over the following six months and was discharged a cripple with iron leg braces to support each of his badly damaged legs (the type of metal brace supports that many polio victims of the time had to wear). After his fairground fall, Brian was unable to walk without great difficulty thereafter. This was the only fatal fairground accident that ever happened in my lifetime at Cleckheaton fairground, so it will be forever stuck in the memory of anyone who was alive and living in the area at the time.
As a result of his fairground accident, the fairground owners were held responsible and Brian was awarded a large amount of compensation for his lifelong injuries that prevented him from ever working again. Whether or not to compensate for his being left unable to walk properly, Brian started investing in bigger and faster motorbikes. He bought the best, the biggest, and the fastest motorbike at the time; the Triumph Bonneville T120. This was a motorcycle originally made by Triumph Engineering from 1959 to 1975. It was the first model of the Bonneville series, which was continued by Triumph Motorcycles Ltd. The T120 was discontinued in favour of the larger 750 cc T140 in the early 1970s. Brian boasted that his motorcycle was one of the few machines on the road that was capable of going 100 mph. This was a boast made by many bikers during the 1950s and early 1960s, and the roads they chose to travel at high speeds were paradoxically the most winding and bending roads on the way to Blackpool, Brighton or Scarborough seaside.
The upshot was that the day eventually came when Brian tried to do his ton again while driving to a seaside resort with three other bikers behind him. His witnessing biker-friends said that he did manage to achieve the 100-mph speed again; a feat that designated him a ‘Ton-up Boy’. It was as though when testifying at his inquest, his friends were more concerned with respecting his ‘reputation as a biker of speed’ with his peers more than the fact that his foolishness had been able to achieve that which the Big Wheel had failed to do many years earlier.
After Brian had departed this earth in his early 20s, many young men who had considered purchasing a motorbike changed their minds, and as a mark of respectful remembrance to Brian, many of us would leave the group of our mates at the cafe with the words, “I’ll be seeing you!”
During later years after I had become the author of over sixty published books, and I would often jot down story themes as they came to mind and put them in a back drawer. Some stories would later be converted into published novels and some would never see the light of day again. I recalled Brian’s tragic death as an author and temporarily toyed with the idea of writing one story that was part factual and part fictional. The book was planned to be in two parts; Part One and Part Two, and with two entirely different endings where the reader was allowed to exercise a preference for which part of the book they thought was a better read; the real or the imagined, the fact or the fiction.
My story plot would take the factual details of a person falling from a carriage of the Big Wheel as Brian had done, killing an innocent female below in the process. The book would then detail Brian buying a big motorbike with part of his compensation reward to compensate him for his crippled condition and going on to die while riding the public highway at 100 mph in search of peer admiration.
In the story which I never got around to writing, Part One of the two-part story would provide a factual account of Brian’s life before and after the horrific fairground fall that killed an innocent bystander, and Part Two of the book would be an entirely fictional account where a significant departure from factual details of the fairground incident would be made that would provide a much happier ending to the fairground survivor.
In my planned story, the person falling from the Big Wheel would be the woman who had died as a result of Brian landing on her below. Her fall would instead directly reverse the tragic circumstance of the fairground accident, instantly killing Brian and leaving the woman who fell on him crippled instead, along with being the beneficiary of a large compensation award.
The new story would tell of an entirely different way the woman whose life had been mercifully spared went on to devote her future life and works to the betterment of humanity, and how she used her compensation award to much greater effect by giving it all away to others who needed the money more than she did. The woman in the story was so happy to have been given a second chance to change her previously unhappy and purposeless life for the opportunity to live a more wholesome and satisfactory life, that she seized and embraced this Godsend opportunity with open arms.
If only all unhappy life endings could be reversed? Here is the moral of today's true story, folks. Believe in God, and believe me when I tell you, they can be.
Love and peace
Bill xxx
