The first person I remember today is my dear deceased mother-in-law, Elizabeth, who died in May 2017. It is Mother Elizabeth’s 92nd heavenly birthday today. Never forgotten and eternally loved, Mother Elizabeth, may the smile you always wore never leave your face. Your face was always friendly and radiated happiness, and your talk was always happy. All our memories of you are happy ones. Your presence on this earth is sadly missed by family and friends. Love Bill and Sheila.
The other three people who also celebrate their birthday today are Clare Davies who lives in Mirfield, West Yorkshire, and is a lifelong friend to my daughter Rebecca and the Forde family. Also, I wish happy birthday to Debbie Torpey and Shane Finn, both of whom celebrate their birthday today. Debbie and Shane live in Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary. Enjoy your special day.
My song today is ‘Happy Talk’. This song was from the 1949 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical ‘South Pacific’. The song is sung by the character ‘Bloody Mary’ to the American lieutenant, Joe Cable, about having a happy life, after he begins romancing her daughter Liat.
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I recall one home that I frequently visited in the 1980s in Holmfirth, Huddersfield when I worked as a Probation Officer. In the house lived a mother and her three children aged 5, 7, and 11 years old. She had never married the father of her children, and the couple separated one year after her youngest child had been born. The children’s father had started a relationship with another woman and moved up to Tyneside with his new partner and maintained no contact with the mother of his three children or any of his offspring.
The children’s mother had been made the subject of a I-year Probation Order by the local Magistrate’s Court after an altercation with one of her neighbours had resulted in the other woman being assaulted. The argument was over something of nothing. Apparently, her 11-year-old son had been playing football on the street and had gone into his neighbour’s front garden without permission to retrieve a football he and some other boys had been kicking about. Whilst in his neighbour’s garden, he inadvertently trampled on some of the flowers. The neighbour saw the boy and started giving him an earful about unlawful trespass.
During the boy's verbal scolding, the neighbour made some uncharitable reference to the boy having no father in his life to keep him in check. The boy’s mother heard her angry neighbour berating her son and started giving her a bit of her own verbal abuse back. A slanging match between the two angry women commenced and as insults were flung backwards and forward, the boy’s mother lost her temper after her angry neighbour shouted, ‘No wonder, your old man ran off with a younger woman! Who would put up with that mouth on you?”
My client had heard enough, and when she could not persuade her argumentative neighbour to ‘back off’, she lost it and threw a pan which she had been holding at her, hitting her in the face with the missile. Her neighbour called the local police, and my client was charged with assault and a breach of the peace and subsequently produced before the ‘Huddersfield Magistrate’s Court’. I prepared a report for the sentencing court and could see at the interviewing stage that the mother of three had a lot on her plate and deserved support and sympathy more than punishment for her offence. I recommended a short period of Probation Order supervision.
My client had a part-time job which she attended every morning after walking her children to school. She would then have to hurry back home in the early afternoon to get ready to pick her children up again at the end of their school day. Because of her limited time and motherly responsibilities, I decided that our obligatory contact would be made via my home visits in the early evening around 6:00 pm every fortnight.
During my visits, it soon became apparent that it was her 11-year-old son who gave her the most worry. As regarding her youngest child, her 5-year-old daughter, this little girl was one of the happiest children one could come across. I can still remember her mother contrasting and comparing the youngest and oldest of her three children when she first introduced the three of them to me. She indicated that her 11-year-old son was constantly angry for no apparent reason these days while all she ever heard from the mouth of her youngest daughter was ‘happy talk’.
This young girl merely reaffirmed a long-held view of mine that happiness depends more on the inward disposition of mind than on outward circumstances. I have always thought that most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be. So, when you wake up tomorrow morning, make the first thought that comes into your head a happy one and the first words you will speak when you go downstairs will be ‘happy talk’.
Love and peace Bill xxx