The second person I dedicate my song today is Finn Hughes, who is a parishioner from our Catholic Church in Haworth. Finn was recently discharged from the hospital and is progressing well on antibiotics. Finn celebrates his 18thy birthday today. A very happy birthday, Finn, from Bill and Sheila Forde and all of your friends in Haworth xx
My song today is ‘When Your Young and In Love’. This song was composed by Van McCoy and first became a Top 40 hit single for the Marvelettes in 1967. A remake by the ‘Flying Pickets’ would reach the UK Top Ten in 1984.
The first recording of the song was by ‘Ruby and the Romantics’. That track was released in September 1964., ‘When You're Young and In Love’ reached the Top Five in Honolulu but otherwise failed to register strongly in any US market reaching Number 48 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ in November 1964. However, ‘When You're Young and In Love’ was a bigger hit in Canada, peaking at Number 25 on the RPM ‘Top Tracks’.
In 1967, the song was covered by the Marvelettes and reached Number 23 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ that June. Its R&B peak was Number 9. Although not one of the Marvelettes' very biggest US hits, ‘When You're Young and in Love’ became the only record by the group to achieve hit status in the UK with a Number 13 peak in July 1967.
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Written one year before I was first married, I truly believed myself to be young and in love during my courtship and engagement of my intended bride. During our engagement, she knew that I came from a large Catholic family and had always wanted a large family when I married. While she indicated that she wanted a big family also, once married she changed her mind as quickly as she appeared to change her nature. The young woman I was engaged to rapidly became a different person as my young wife. Immediately after our wedding, my wife told me that she wanted to wait five years for our first child and then added that she would have no more than two children maximum and that she would never agree to have them brought up in the Roman Catholic religion.
I’m sure that we have all heard the tale about the princess who kissed a frog and it turned into a beautiful prince, but few will be familiar with meeting a woman who seemed to possess the most wholesome of appearances, whom, after marrying, turns into a toad in the hole.
It has often been said that it’s not unusual just before any person gets married, for doubt to appear in one’s mind like a spectre foreboding future unhappiness. It is generally believed that it’s only natural for the bride and groom to have second thoughts about what they propose to do. Let me tell one and all sincerely, that I no longer believe such doubts to be ‘natural’ before any event that promises unrivalled happiness and contentment.
One hour before the wedding car arrived to take me to the Catholic Church in Heckmondwike in 1968 to be married, I sat on the low-level wall in front of our council house on Windybank Estate smoking a cigarette and thinking “Am I doing the right thing?” The upshot was that I went ahead with the marriage, but before too long, I knew that I’d made the wrong decision and had therefore done the wrong thing!
Please, please; if there is anyone out there who is due to ‘tie the knot’ and who expresses the slightest doubt about getting married before they walk down that church aisle and exchanges sacred vows, then don’t do it! If you do, you will most certainly find yourself walking a relationship plank in the immediate years ahead that is bound to see you end up in deep water.
It turned out for me that no matter how hard I tried to make my first marriage work; we were more incompatible than any two individuals getting married should ever have been. Don’t get me wrong, while I do believe in the sanctity of the marriage vows, were I to advise any young couple tying the knot today whether to marry or cohabit for a year or two before getting married, my advice would undoubtedly be to live together first as ‘man and wife’ before deciding to become ‘man and wife’ in the eyes of Church and State.
Only true and lasting love will lead to long-term happiness, as opposed to short-term gratification.
Love and peace Bill xxx