I dedicate today’s song to four Facebook friends who celebrate their birthday today, and one person who celebrates her wedding anniversary. I wish a happy birthday to my niece, Alex, who lives in London: Pauline Wall, and Nikki O’Neill who comes from Carrick-on-Suir, Tipperary, Ireland: Linda O’Shea who lives in Piltown, Kilkenny, Ireland. We also wish a happy wedding anniversary to Michelle Stubbs who comes from Carrick-on-Suir, Tipperary but who now lives in Waterford, Ireland.
My song today is ‘Fairytale’. This song was introduced on the May 1974 album release ‘That’s a Plenty’ by the Pointer Sisters. It was written by group members, Anita Pointer and Bonnie Pointer. ‘Fairytale’ became the second of the three Top 40 hits scored by the Pointer Sisters in their original embodiment as a quartet, and Anita Pointer would sing lead on all three of these hits.
Anita Pointer has stated that she wrote this ‘breakup’ song from personal experience. In her pre-stardom days, Anita had become romantically involved with a man who had neglected to mention being married. She said, "He lied to me, and when I found out that's when that song took shape”.
‘Fairytale’ was an extreme stylistic departure for the Pointer Sisters. The song achieved moderate C&W hit status, peaking at Number 39 on the ‘Billboard C&W’ chart on October 5, 1974, but this was sufficient success to effect a crossover to Pop radio with the song debuting on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chart. It eventually ascended to a Number 13 peak that December. Internationally ‘Fairytale’ reached Number 21 in Australia and Number 42 in Canada. It also hit Number 41 on the Canadian C&W chart.
'Fairytale’ went on to win the Pointer Sisters the ‘Best Country Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group’ for the year 1974, marking the first awarding of a Grammy to an all-female vocal group, and Bonnie and Anita Pointer also received a nomination for the Grammy Award for 'Best Country Song’ as the writers of ‘Fairytale’. Elvis Presley also recorded a cover version of the song in March 1975.
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We are all lied to occasionally, even by those closest to us on occasions. It is true that some deceptions will amount to no more than harmless white lies, told to preserve our feelings. On other occasions, we will be told whoppers to throw us off the scent of the truth completely. Some people will lie to varnish their employment capabilities on their C.V. when applying for another job, and other people may lie to disguise past truths which might embarrass them if they were ever to see the light of day. Given the social increase in ‘dating on line’ that has overtaken society during the past decade, I am sure that much of the details on a member’s profile is inaccurate, especially profile photograph likenesses that were taken five or ten years earlier before you lost all your teeth or hair and gained a few stones in weight.
I am sure that my dearly departed mother told me grossly exaggerated stories when I was growing up during the late 1940s and 1950s. There were no televisions in working-class homes then, and the prime entertainment which one did not make themselves came from the wireless (radio), which the family mighty huddle around on an evening to hear another adventure of ‘Dick Barton, Special Agent’ or blood-curdling stories from ‘The Black Museum’. The former wireless programme was about the adventures of a ‘World War 2’ veteran, turned crimefighter, Dick Barton, and his sidekicks, Snowey and Jock. The latter was a radio crime-drama programme produced in London. I can still recall being huddled around an old radio and waiting for the broadcaster to announce the commencement of this week’s gruesome story with the words, ‘This is Orson Wells from London’ as the chimes of Big Ben struck in the background. Too often I went to bed scared witless, and had nightmares afterward about the telling of some sinister murder, with particular detail given to the gruesome murder weapon/method used on the victim.
After my discharge from Batley Hospital during my twelfth year of life, unable to stand or walk after a serious traffic accident and multiple operations, I missed between one and two years’ schooling, I would often stay up late and talk to mum at the end of the day when the rest of the household was asleep in bed, as mum ironed clothes for use the following day, or darned some holed socks for the following day.. My father would always be in bed before 10:00 pm as he would start his 6:00 am shift as a miner underground the following day. Dad and the milkman got up on a morning around the same time as the rest of the country slept soundly in their beds, so early nights were a necessity. Both would have been working two hours before the ordinary worker stumbled out of bed at the start of their day.
These late hours spent with mum on a night was my most treasured time of all I spent with her. As the hour advanced towards midnight, mum’s tongue would loosen, and she would start to reveal all manner of things that few mothers and sons would ever talk about. Having been born the oldest of seven children, I always had this closeness of bond with my mother, and there was literally no topic of conversation that either of us would consider being ‘out of bounds' as far as the discussion went. I also felt our relationship to be more special than my six siblings shared with mum, whether that was true or merely a figment of my imagination. During such occasions, my mum would tell me tales about the ‘old country’ in Ireland where I’d been born but had left when I was aged 4 years. I loved to hear such tales, and whether true or false, elaborated, embroidered, or simply fabricated by mum, I would be spellbound listening to them. I dearly wanted the stories which mum told me to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so it naturally pleased me to initially regard the facts she related as being Gospel!
Mum was a natural storyteller, and I now wonder if she ever knew what she was going to say before her mouth had formed her spoken words. I loved my mum to bits, but I knew her as being a bit of a romancer wherever the finer details of a situation were concerned. Whether true or false, in either part or whole, I loved listening to her description of Portlaw Village where I was born in the front room of my grandparent’s house at 14, William Street. I could not get enough of it.
Mum told me many outrageous tales that fascinated my young ears and placed my imagination into overdrive, as she spoke about some of the Irish characters who were part of the village community. There was one tale so common, that it is heard in every Irish household all over the world, every day of the week. The ‘teller’ of the tale is an Irish mother, who was the firstborn in a family of many siblings. The most important thing all non-Irish should understand is ‘the special place’ within the family setting which is traditionally occupied by the oldest daughter. Being the firstborn to their parents endows her with the additional role of a ‘little mammy’ until the day she gets married and leaves the parental abode. In short, this additional family role corresponds with the extra work she will be expected to do by all of her family and the additional daily responsibilities she will have to discharge to those of her younger siblings. I refer to having to rise before 6:00 am on a winter’s morning, before walking a six-mile return journey to fetch a bucket of milk from some dairy farmer in the next county. And it does not end when she arrives back home with the pale of milk. ‘Little Mamma’ has to make up the fire and warming the kitchen for the rest of the household to get up to. Only when she has set the table with a loaf of bread and a dish of butter and heated the first kettle of water on the range, can she consider her morning chores done. Only then can the oldest daughter get dressed into her school clothes and rush to school before the class register is called, or get a whacking from the teacher/nun!
The stories about Portlaw that my mum told me, kept my Irishness alive in me, even though I had lived in a foreign country called England since the age of 4 years. Some stories mum told, were never forgotten by me. There was the tale about the alleged indiscretions of some Irish priests who took her confession. Mum told me that it would have been far more interesting had she’d heard their sins being confessed instead of listening to hers. My mum told me about a handsome Irish priest who would leave his walking stick outside the front door of any parishioner’s house he visited in the village. Anyone seeing the priest’s walking stick standing by the door outside knew not to interrupt the priestly caller by entering the house while he was inside. Naturally, the villagers gossiped about what the priest might be getting up to inside, especially after it had been widely observed by many a good God-fearing Catholic that he only visited the attractive female parishioners, and when their husbands were at work. Not once was he known to enter the home of any unattractive woman, or any woman aged 40 or over!
Then, there was naturally the story of the novice nuns, who after adopting their latest habit could not find it within themselves to dispense with any other worldly habits which brought them immense pleasure of the flesh. I heard about some unusual penances given to the novice nuns whenever the parish priest heard their private confessions. Of course, there were also the stories about cruel nuns who taught in the schools and who derived great pleasure caning their pupils on their bare bottoms.
In Portlaw, the main employer of the village was the Tannery. Almost everyone in Portlaw who worked there worked at the Tannery at the top of the square. Every Friday was payday at the Tannery and if the men’s wives did not relieve their husbands of their wage packets as soon as they came through the Tannery gates into the square, many knew that some of their much-needed cash would be passed over the counter of the nearest pub before the worker came home to his wife and family. Any man who could get away with it made a beeline for the pub as soon as he left work. The only way to intercede in this pub tradition on a wage day was to be outside the Tannery gate as one’s husband walked through the gates and remove the inevitable temptation from him.
Mum told me about one man who worked in the town tannery, who for £5 wager, walked out of the gates of his works on a wage day at 5:00pm when the hooter went off, into a crowded square of women waiting to collar their husbands and get their household money off him before he drank it all! “Why should he win a £5 bet for doing that?” I asked my mother incredulously; not realising she was merely setting me up. “Oh, he didn’t win £5 for walking out the Tannery gates, Billy,” mum said smilingly, adding, “ He won his wager because the only stitch of clothes he was wearing was one short shirt that did not come down beyond his waist.” Instead of telling me the story’s punchline straight away, my chain-smoking mum would light up another fag and take half a dozen puffs of it before continuing. She was undoubtedly a mistress of suspense. To win his bet and save his shame, the man wearing only the short shirt and showing all of his manhood walked out the Tannery gates with his shirt pulled over his face so that no one but his wife would know his identity!
One of mum’s stories that was a firm favourite of mine concerned a retired Headmaster who was never seen without a cane in his hand. He carried his cane with pride and boasted that there was not a man in Portlaw who he had not thrashed at least once. When the cruel Headmaster retired, still needing to be the ‘top dog’ in Portlaw, and liking gardening, he started growing onions which he entered at the ‘Waterford Show’ year after year. He won with the largest onion, the first time he ever entered the ‘Waterford Show’, and every year after for a decade, he beat every contestant across Ireland with his huge prize onions. Each time he went to the pub, he would boast of being the best man in Portlaw and the best onion grower in the whole of Ireland.
Naturally, my mother was the only person ever to discover the secret of his giant-sized onions after she followed him up to his allotments one day. Apparently, he had an old donkey which he would beat daily until it urinated on his onion bed, and apparently, the donkey piss produced the largest onions Ireland had ever seen! According to my mum, it was a secret that was now known to only her and myself, as the onion grower took his secret to the grave with him. When I enquired about the nature of his demise, mum said that his death was totally unexpected. On the day he died, he had been beating his old donkey as usual until the ass urinated over the onion plot. Then, after his donkey had finished, his owner walked behind the beast. The donkey was less of an ass than its owner, and after seeing an opportunity to end the daily beatings there and then, the donkey took it! The cruel owner was about to cane the ass on its ass again, but being right-handed he needed to walk to the donkey’s left flank to wield his cane at full force. As he walked around the rear of the donkey, the donkey lashed out with his hind hoofs, making contact with the retired Headmaster’s skull which was instantly cracked open. The unfortunate incident was later discovered after the retired headmaster failed to return home from the allotments. He was found dead on the ground and there was a strong smell of donkey piss all over his body. The old ass was having a loud laugh nearby as it brayed away contentedly!
Whether or not my mother told the truth, a part of the truth, or none of it, I will never know for certain. These were just a few of the tales she would tell me on a night-time as she completed her daily chores as wife and mother of seven children. In later years, after my mother died, I became an established author and had over sixty books published. By the time I had met my wife, Sheila, in 2010, I had put down my pen, but she persuaded me to take it back up and to write some more stories. I decided that I would take the germ of my mother’s tales about my Irish homeland, and with a bit of poetic embroidery and artistic licence, I wrote Irish romantic stories, based around the village of Portlaw, County Waterford.
Since 2010, I have written and had published another fourteen novels of a romantic nature. The stories are called ‘Tales from Portlaw’ and can be purchased in either e-book format or hard copy from amazon or any other main publisher. All profits from their sales will be given to charitable causes in perpetuity. Should you be unable to afford the modest price of these books and wish to read them all for free, they are available on my website www.fordefables.co.uk under the ‘Tales from Portlaw’ section.
I first started writing books in 1990, and I have never taken one penny profit from this labour of love. All book-sale profits have always been given to charitable causes, and by 2003, over two hundred thousand pounds ((£200,000) had been given to charity. Any profits from future book sales will witness free books being given to children. We do not physically promote book sales anymore, as the books are there today for future access when the time arrives that I no longer am. There is also a section on my website which tells you all of the book themes of every book I have ever written, and the appropriate reading ages that the book was written for. I have written for children: young person: adults: strictly adults.
Love and peace Bill xxx