Today’s song is ‘I Have a Dream’ which I dedicate posthumously to both my mums, my birth mother and Etta Denton (the woman who became my adopted mother after the death of my birth mother). God bless you 'Mums'. If there is a heaven, then I know for certain that you will both have your place in it.
This a song by Swedish pop group ‘ABBA’ It was featured on the group's sixth studio album ‘Voulez-Vous’ and released as a single in December 1979. The single became a big hit, topping the charts in many countries and peaking at Number 2 in the UK over the Christmas week of 1979. Twenty years later, Irish pop group ‘Westlife’ released a version of the song which reached Number 1 in the UK over the Christmas week of 1999.
The song was written by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus and Anni-Frid Lyngstad sang the lead vocals. The recording is notable for being the only ‘ABBA’ song to include vocalists other than the four band members; the final chorus features a children's choir from the ‘International School of Stockholm’. In the UK,
Irish boy band, ‘Westlife’ released a cover of ‘I Have a Dream in December 1999, twenty years after ABBA's original release. The song became the group's fourth UK Number 1 single.
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I have always been a dreamer ever since my early childhood years as the firstborn in a family of seven children from Irish parents. If there is one fact in life, it is the old Irish saying that every dream begins with a dreamer. My mother was the queen of dreamers, so it was only natural that I would also dream and make the seedlings she planted in my mind the fruit of my future reality. Mum walked in the enchanted footsteps of Irish wisdom and her greatest asset was her capability of turning the question ’Why?’ into the exclamation ‘Why not!’ Once her mind engaged in the possibility of something happening, she just carried on with her life believing it would happen. No restraint was ever applied to any possibility of becoming a probability. Where power of positive energy was employed, nothing was held back.
My mother’s philosophy was that it is by our dreams we grow great and it is through our self-belief in our capacity to do and achieve we get anywhere at all worth arriving at. She believed that all big men and women are dreamers. She held the view that too few of us follow through with our dreams whilst most do not. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nurse, nourish and protect them until they come to fruition.
I must confess that because my mother always believed and told me daily that I was ‘a special child’, I too came to believe such to be true and acted in a special way from time to time during my development. It would have been so easy for me to believe that I was simply living my mother’s dream by being a ‘me’ that accorded with her view of me, but I quickly had it reinforced in me that anyone who was prepared to be ‘normal’ would never acquire the confidence to do amazing things!
The more I think back since my mother died many years ago, the more I am content to conclude that my mother dreamed with eyes both wide open and shut. Indeed, she never stopped dreaming between the moment of her birth and her death. Thus, it is a fact that we do not dream in equal measure. Some people I believe are endowed with the capacity to first dream the impossible, then seemingly improbable, before finally being able to dream the inevitable.
Some ten years after my mother died, fate brought me and Etta Denton together. Etta was a woman in her mid-80s when I first met her. She had never married and never had any children. She had missed out on her teenage years when her mother became an invalid. Etta devoted her whole life to looking after her bedridden mother and keeping house for the family. When her mother died, she looked after her father and then, when he died, she kept house for her older brother,
Etta was in her mid-sixties before she could exercise the freedoms enjoyed by most adults. Her secret soldier sweetheart, Bill had died in the 'Second World War' and not being married, she could not mourn him publicly. The upshot is that from first doing her garden for Etta, I became the son that she and her soldier sweetheart never had and she effectively became my adopted mother. We were mother and son for ten wonderful years before Etta died aged 94 years.
Etta was a keen Baptist and regular churchgoer whose every bone was Christian and whose every thought was always the most charitable. She often told me that she knew she would be going to heaven when her time came to leave this life as she had dreamed of being in heaven many times since her 80s.
Etta and my birth mum were two great influences in my life; one in my earlier years and the other in my later years. I dedicate today's song to both mums of mine with love and fond memories.
Why not follow your dream for once instead of chasing it in circles and getting nowhere?
Love and peace. Bill xxx
This a song by Swedish pop group ‘ABBA’ It was featured on the group's sixth studio album ‘Voulez-Vous’ and released as a single in December 1979. The single became a big hit, topping the charts in many countries and peaking at Number 2 in the UK over the Christmas week of 1979. Twenty years later, Irish pop group ‘Westlife’ released a version of the song which reached Number 1 in the UK over the Christmas week of 1999.
The song was written by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus and Anni-Frid Lyngstad sang the lead vocals. The recording is notable for being the only ‘ABBA’ song to include vocalists other than the four band members; the final chorus features a children's choir from the ‘International School of Stockholm’. In the UK,
Irish boy band, ‘Westlife’ released a cover of ‘I Have a Dream in December 1999, twenty years after ABBA's original release. The song became the group's fourth UK Number 1 single.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I have always been a dreamer ever since my early childhood years as the firstborn in a family of seven children from Irish parents. If there is one fact in life, it is the old Irish saying that every dream begins with a dreamer. My mother was the queen of dreamers, so it was only natural that I would also dream and make the seedlings she planted in my mind the fruit of my future reality. Mum walked in the enchanted footsteps of Irish wisdom and her greatest asset was her capability of turning the question ’Why?’ into the exclamation ‘Why not!’ Once her mind engaged in the possibility of something happening, she just carried on with her life believing it would happen. No restraint was ever applied to any possibility of becoming a probability. Where power of positive energy was employed, nothing was held back.
My mother’s philosophy was that it is by our dreams we grow great and it is through our self-belief in our capacity to do and achieve we get anywhere at all worth arriving at. She believed that all big men and women are dreamers. She held the view that too few of us follow through with our dreams whilst most do not. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nurse, nourish and protect them until they come to fruition.
I must confess that because my mother always believed and told me daily that I was ‘a special child’, I too came to believe such to be true and acted in a special way from time to time during my development. It would have been so easy for me to believe that I was simply living my mother’s dream by being a ‘me’ that accorded with her view of me, but I quickly had it reinforced in me that anyone who was prepared to be ‘normal’ would never acquire the confidence to do amazing things!
The more I think back since my mother died many years ago, the more I am content to conclude that my mother dreamed with eyes both wide open and shut. Indeed, she never stopped dreaming between the moment of her birth and her death. Thus, it is a fact that we do not dream in equal measure. Some people I believe are endowed with the capacity to first dream the impossible, then seemingly improbable, before finally being able to dream the inevitable.
Some ten years after my mother died, fate brought me and Etta Denton together. Etta was a woman in her mid-80s when I first met her. She had never married and never had any children. She had missed out on her teenage years when her mother became an invalid. Etta devoted her whole life to looking after her bedridden mother and keeping house for the family. When her mother died, she looked after her father and then, when he died, she kept house for her older brother,
Etta was in her mid-sixties before she could exercise the freedoms enjoyed by most adults. Her secret soldier sweetheart, Bill had died in the 'Second World War' and not being married, she could not mourn him publicly. The upshot is that from first doing her garden for Etta, I became the son that she and her soldier sweetheart never had and she effectively became my adopted mother. We were mother and son for ten wonderful years before Etta died aged 94 years.
Etta was a keen Baptist and regular churchgoer whose every bone was Christian and whose every thought was always the most charitable. She often told me that she knew she would be going to heaven when her time came to leave this life as she had dreamed of being in heaven many times since her 80s.
Etta and my birth mum were two great influences in my life; one in my earlier years and the other in my later years. I dedicate today's song to both mums of mine with love and fond memories.
Why not follow your dream for once instead of chasing it in circles and getting nowhere?
Love and peace. Bill xxx
