I dedicate my song today to Jerry McCarthy who lives in Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary, Ireland, and Philip Murray who lives in Orcutt, California. Jerry and Philip celebrate their birthdays today. Have a good day chaps and thank you both for being my Facebook friends.
My song today is ‘Let’s Stay Together’. This song was by American singer Al Green from his 1972 album of the same name. It was released as a single in 1971 and reached Number 1 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chart. It remained on the chart for 16 weeks, and also topped ‘Billboard’s R&B’ chart for nine weeks. Billboard ranked it as the Number 11 song of 1972.
It was ranked the 60th ‘Greatest Song of All Time’ by Rolling Stone magazine on their list of the ‘500 Greatest Songs of All Time’ and has been covered by numerous other performers, most notably, Tina Turner.
It was selected by the ‘Library of Congress’ as a 2010 addition to the ‘National Recording Registry’, which selects recordings annually that are ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant’. The song went on to claim the Number 1 position on the ‘Billboard Year-End’ chart as an R&B song for 1972.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
When this song was first released, I had just completed my Probation Officer training one year earlier and was serving my probationary first year at the ‘Huddersfield Probation Office’. Having postponed my earlier education as a teenager in order to get into work to earn some money at the age of 15 years (when I should have been studying for my GCE O-level qualifications), I progressed rapidly in the textile job market and was a mill foreman at the age of 24 years and a Mill Manager by the early age of 25 years.
A few years later, I was to give up my well-paid Mill Manager’s job to study for my university qualifications from Further Education courses during three years of evening classes three times weekly, whilst holding down an ordinary mill hand’s job during the day. My previous job as a Mill Manager had been on permanent night shifts, and as I needed to free up my evenings for study and night school attendance three times weekly, I downsized my job to make that possible to a manual textile job earning one-third of my Mill Manager’s former salary.
Once I had qualified as a Probation Officer, my thirst for knowledge was never quenched, as I overcompensated for earlier years of education that I’d missed out on. Over my 27 years’ service as a Probation Officer, there was never a single year when I did not attend at least two advanced courses in one working method or another. At the time (1971), I was a working-class man coming into a middle-class profession carrying a huge ‘educational chip on my shoulder’. I had this inner compulsion to make up for all of the years I considered I had lost in my educational studies, and I wanted to be as learned and as professional as any other Probation Officer whom I worked alongside.
I was extremely fortunate to have entered the Probation Service in its prime of life. We were highly resourced, and unlike today, we were not subject to the overburdened pressures of having too many people to work with, having insufficient office time to work with them, or being directed as to which methods of work were most appropriate to use in their circumstances. There was a freedom in the 1970s that Probation Officers today would neither believe ever existed and would most certainly die for, were they given the opportunity.
Then, every Probation Officer had their own office, instead of one office or partitioned open space shared by three or four officers today. Then, we had our own personal secretary as opposed to a few clerical typists shared by a dozen officers or more like today. Finally, we were given ample time and sufficient freedom to do our job using the working methods we best saw fit and appropriate to best serve the client to stop offending and improve their lifestyle.
In short, I had the best job in the world which only showed signs of irreversibly changing for the worse during the last five years before I retired early on grounds of ill health. My final five years as a Probation Officer witnessed a decline year-upon-year in overall resources allocated to Probation Officers, combined with a massive increase in cases to be responsible for. I refrain from using the term ‘supervise’ as opposed to the preferred choice ‘responsible for’ as today, the bulk of a Probation Officer’s task is to act as a Parole Officer who ticks off brief office attendance with their Parole licensees. Since I retired from the service, Probation Officers (like the rest of the workers in society) have been expected to do more and more on fewer and fewer resources, coupled with additional pressures of work which I never experienced. Indeed, the Probation Service was wrongly privatised for several years; a catastrophic decision that has only recently been reversed.
For my first ten years as a Probation Officer, the matrimonial courts ( in which Probation Officers doubled as ‘Matrimonial Court Officers’) would not grant a divorce, (even to consenting marriage partners) unless the divorcing couple first attended half a dozen hourly mediation sessions with a ‘Matrimonial Court Officer’. The purpose of these meetings was for the court to offer one last opportunity for divorcing couples to explore all possible avenues of mediation and reconciliation to be explored under the guidance of a worker trained in such matters. Having completed the prestigious Tavistock Programme as a Matrimonial Counsellor over a two-year period of weekly attendances each month, I found myself in this specialist role to my additional Probation Officer functions.
No person who decides to divorce arrives at their decision in doubtful mind, and most of the couples undergoing these compulsory mediation interviews at the behest of the divorce court were merely ‘going through the motions’ to satisfy the Judge that divorce was appropriate to grant. Having thought long and hard about divorce, few couples came to seek divorce lightly and only very rarely were the couples ever reconciled because of their mandatory mediation sessions, however expertise the matrimonial worker was.
However, on the few occasions when the marriage held possibilities of being salvaged, and when man and wife had separated too soon without seeking help and ended up giving it another go, there was a level of judicial rejoicing that was wholly disproportionate in respect of the overall amount of Government resources being allocated to the mediation process. For the matrimonial mediator, reconciling a married couple to give their marriage another chance to work out was the rarest of successful work experiences; like losing a shilling and finding a twenty-pound note!
One such couple who entered a course of mediation under my supervision before they pressed ahead with their intended divorce, remained ever so grateful that they had given their marriage another chance. They annually expressed their gratitude to me, and each year, on their wedding anniversary, they would either phone me to thank me or drop me a card, or a brief letter of gratitude off at the Probation Office. It was pleasing to know that their decision to ‘Let’s Stay Together’ was the correct one for them.
Love and peace Bill xxx
My song today is ‘Let’s Stay Together’. This song was by American singer Al Green from his 1972 album of the same name. It was released as a single in 1971 and reached Number 1 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chart. It remained on the chart for 16 weeks, and also topped ‘Billboard’s R&B’ chart for nine weeks. Billboard ranked it as the Number 11 song of 1972.
It was ranked the 60th ‘Greatest Song of All Time’ by Rolling Stone magazine on their list of the ‘500 Greatest Songs of All Time’ and has been covered by numerous other performers, most notably, Tina Turner.
It was selected by the ‘Library of Congress’ as a 2010 addition to the ‘National Recording Registry’, which selects recordings annually that are ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant’. The song went on to claim the Number 1 position on the ‘Billboard Year-End’ chart as an R&B song for 1972.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
When this song was first released, I had just completed my Probation Officer training one year earlier and was serving my probationary first year at the ‘Huddersfield Probation Office’. Having postponed my earlier education as a teenager in order to get into work to earn some money at the age of 15 years (when I should have been studying for my GCE O-level qualifications), I progressed rapidly in the textile job market and was a mill foreman at the age of 24 years and a Mill Manager by the early age of 25 years.
A few years later, I was to give up my well-paid Mill Manager’s job to study for my university qualifications from Further Education courses during three years of evening classes three times weekly, whilst holding down an ordinary mill hand’s job during the day. My previous job as a Mill Manager had been on permanent night shifts, and as I needed to free up my evenings for study and night school attendance three times weekly, I downsized my job to make that possible to a manual textile job earning one-third of my Mill Manager’s former salary.
Once I had qualified as a Probation Officer, my thirst for knowledge was never quenched, as I overcompensated for earlier years of education that I’d missed out on. Over my 27 years’ service as a Probation Officer, there was never a single year when I did not attend at least two advanced courses in one working method or another. At the time (1971), I was a working-class man coming into a middle-class profession carrying a huge ‘educational chip on my shoulder’. I had this inner compulsion to make up for all of the years I considered I had lost in my educational studies, and I wanted to be as learned and as professional as any other Probation Officer whom I worked alongside.
I was extremely fortunate to have entered the Probation Service in its prime of life. We were highly resourced, and unlike today, we were not subject to the overburdened pressures of having too many people to work with, having insufficient office time to work with them, or being directed as to which methods of work were most appropriate to use in their circumstances. There was a freedom in the 1970s that Probation Officers today would neither believe ever existed and would most certainly die for, were they given the opportunity.
Then, every Probation Officer had their own office, instead of one office or partitioned open space shared by three or four officers today. Then, we had our own personal secretary as opposed to a few clerical typists shared by a dozen officers or more like today. Finally, we were given ample time and sufficient freedom to do our job using the working methods we best saw fit and appropriate to best serve the client to stop offending and improve their lifestyle.
In short, I had the best job in the world which only showed signs of irreversibly changing for the worse during the last five years before I retired early on grounds of ill health. My final five years as a Probation Officer witnessed a decline year-upon-year in overall resources allocated to Probation Officers, combined with a massive increase in cases to be responsible for. I refrain from using the term ‘supervise’ as opposed to the preferred choice ‘responsible for’ as today, the bulk of a Probation Officer’s task is to act as a Parole Officer who ticks off brief office attendance with their Parole licensees. Since I retired from the service, Probation Officers (like the rest of the workers in society) have been expected to do more and more on fewer and fewer resources, coupled with additional pressures of work which I never experienced. Indeed, the Probation Service was wrongly privatised for several years; a catastrophic decision that has only recently been reversed.
For my first ten years as a Probation Officer, the matrimonial courts ( in which Probation Officers doubled as ‘Matrimonial Court Officers’) would not grant a divorce, (even to consenting marriage partners) unless the divorcing couple first attended half a dozen hourly mediation sessions with a ‘Matrimonial Court Officer’. The purpose of these meetings was for the court to offer one last opportunity for divorcing couples to explore all possible avenues of mediation and reconciliation to be explored under the guidance of a worker trained in such matters. Having completed the prestigious Tavistock Programme as a Matrimonial Counsellor over a two-year period of weekly attendances each month, I found myself in this specialist role to my additional Probation Officer functions.
No person who decides to divorce arrives at their decision in doubtful mind, and most of the couples undergoing these compulsory mediation interviews at the behest of the divorce court were merely ‘going through the motions’ to satisfy the Judge that divorce was appropriate to grant. Having thought long and hard about divorce, few couples came to seek divorce lightly and only very rarely were the couples ever reconciled because of their mandatory mediation sessions, however expertise the matrimonial worker was.
However, on the few occasions when the marriage held possibilities of being salvaged, and when man and wife had separated too soon without seeking help and ended up giving it another go, there was a level of judicial rejoicing that was wholly disproportionate in respect of the overall amount of Government resources being allocated to the mediation process. For the matrimonial mediator, reconciling a married couple to give their marriage another chance to work out was the rarest of successful work experiences; like losing a shilling and finding a twenty-pound note!
One such couple who entered a course of mediation under my supervision before they pressed ahead with their intended divorce, remained ever so grateful that they had given their marriage another chance. They annually expressed their gratitude to me, and each year, on their wedding anniversary, they would either phone me to thank me or drop me a card, or a brief letter of gratitude off at the Probation Office. It was pleasing to know that their decision to ‘Let’s Stay Together’ was the correct one for them.
Love and peace Bill xxx
