Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Tales From Portlaw Volume Twelve: 'Fourteen Days'
    Tales From Portlaw Volume Twelve: 'Fourteen Days'
    Tales From Portlaw Volume Twelve: 'Fourteen Days'
    Ebook101 pages1 hour

    Tales From Portlaw Volume Twelve: 'Fourteen Days'

    By William Forde

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    I was born in Portlaw, County Waterford and came to West Yorkshire, England at the age of 4 years, where I have lived ever since. As I grew up, my mother used to tell me tales of Portlaw. Being a natural-born Irish person with a healthy imagination, she was also a natural-born storyteller. Consequently, I have no way of knowing how truthful the recall and re-telling these stories were and was pulled in opposing directions in how best to write them.

    I eventually decided to use the medium of fiction. In my section entitled, ‘Tales from Portlaw’, I recount the stories that my mother told me all the years I was growing up in West Yorkshire about ‘the old country’ across the Irish Sea. I have taken the ‘germ of truth’ in her stories and have made that detail the central thread of my story, adding to her truth, my fiction, through the extended use of my writer’s imagination. Any resemblance to anyone who ever lived or came from Portlaw in either name, likeness or character description is purely co-incidental; and to the best of my knowledge, this story is purely fictional.

    This love story is about a dying man and his personal assistant in his haulage firm. During the last fourteen days of his life, the dying man’s lover strikes up a new relationship in the hospital ward with a patient in an adjacent bed. After her lover’s death, she disappears and the new patient, who is infatuated with her, pursues his dream across the Irish Sea, only to discover that love is never smooth.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilliam Forde
    Release dateNov 10, 2017
    ISBN9781370595945
    Tales From Portlaw Volume Twelve: 'Fourteen Days'
    Author

    William Forde

    William Forde was born in Ireland and currently lives in Haworth, West Yorkshire with his wife Sheila. He is the father of five children and the author of over 60 published books and two musical plays. Approximately 20 of his books are suitable for the 7-11 year old readers while the remainder are suitable for young persons and adults. Since 2010, all of his new stories have been written for adults under his 'Tales from Portlaw' series of short stories. His website is www.fordefables.co.uk on which all his miscellaneous writings may be freely read. There are also a number of children's audio stories which can be freely heard.He is unique in the field of contemporary children's authors through the challenging emotional issues and story themes he addresses, preferring to focus upon those emotions that children and adults find most difficult to appropriately express.One of West Yorkshire's most popular children's authors, Between 1990 and 2002 his books were publicly read in over 2,000 Yorkshire school assemblies by over 800 famous names and celebrities from the realms of Royalty, Film, Stage, Screen, Politics, Church, Sport, etc. The late Princess Diana used to read his earlier books to her then young children, William and Harry and Nelson Mandela once telephoned him to praise an African story book he had written. Others who have supported his works have included three Princesses, three Prime Ministers, two Presidents and numerous Bishops of the realm. A former Chief Inspector of Schools for OFSTED described his writing to the press as 'High quality literature.' He has also written books which are suitable for adults along with a number of crossover books that are suitable for teenagers and adults.Forever at the forefront of change, at the age of 18 years, William became the youngest Youth Leader and Trade Union Shop Steward in Great Britain. In 1971, He founded Anger Management in Great Britain and freely gave his courses to the world. Within the next two years, Anger Management courses had mushroomed across the English-speaking world. During the mid-70's, he introduced Relaxation Training into H.M. Prisons and between 1970 and 1995, he worked in West Yorkshire as a Probation Officer specialising in Relaxation Training, Anger Management, Stress Management and Assertive Training Group Work.He retired early on the grounds of ill health in 1995 to further his writing career, which witnessed him working with the Minister of Youth and Culture in Jamaica to establish a trans-Atlantic pen-pal project between 32 primary schools in Falmouth, Jamaica and 32 primary schools in Yorkshire.William was awarded the MBE in the New Year's Honours List of 1995 for his services to West Yorkshire. He has never sought to materially profit from the publication of his books and writings and has allowed all profit from their sales (approx £200,000) to be given to charity. Since 2013, he was diagnosed with CLL; a terminal condition for which he is currently receiving treatment.In 2014, William had his very first 'strictly for adult' reader's novel puiblished called‘Rebecca’s Revenge'. This book was first written over twenty years ago and spans the period between the 1950s and the New Millennium. He initially refrained from having it published because of his ‘children’s author credentials and charity work’. He felt that it would have conflicted too adversely with the image which had taken a decade or more to establish with his audience and young person readership. Now, however as he approaches the final years of his life and cares less about his public image, besides no longer writing for children (only short stories for adults since 2010), he feels the time to be appropriate to publish this ‘strictly for adults only’ novel alongside the remainder of his work.In December 2016 he was diagnosed with skin cancer on his face and two weeks later he was diagnosed with High-grade Lymphoma (Richter’s Transformation from CLL). He was successfully treated during the first half of 2017 and is presently enjoying good health albeit with no effective immune system.

    Read more from William Forde

    Related to Tales From Portlaw Volume Twelve

    Related ebooks

    Romance For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      GOING TO THE edge

      Sep 3, 2020

      GOING TO THE edge
      7 min read

    • Article

      I Was a Prison Hospice Aide. Then Came Coronavirus.

      Apr 10, 2020

      “I know firsthand how the looming threat of COVID-19 is being absorbed by all of us behind the walls.”

      4 min read

    • Article

      Psychics

      Jan 12, 2022

      Psychics
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Abortions I Have Known

      Mar 17, 2019

      The Abortions I Have Known
      10 min read

    • Article

      Psychics

      Jan 12, 2022

      Psychics
      10 min read

    • Article

      Psychics

      Jan 12, 2022

      Psychics
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Dying Of The Light

      Dec 13, 2023

      The Dying Of The Light
      7 min read

    • Article

      Why I Transitioned At 68

      Feb 13, 2024

      If you’d told me 10 years ago that I’d be a member of the Women’s Institute, travelling the country giving awareness talks about life as a transgender woman, I wouldn’t have believed you. Back then I was still ‘masking’, hiding behind the gender soci

      4 min read

    • Article

      Why I transitioned AT 68

      Jul 27, 2023

      If you’d told me 10 years ago that I’d be a member of the Women’s Institute, travelling the country giving awareness talks about life as a transgender woman, I wouldn’t have believed you. Back then I was still ‘masking’, hiding behind the gender soci

      4 min read

    • Article

      Shells: Picking Apart Pain and Womanhood

      Jun 7, 2018

      The skin on the bottoms of my feet is so hard that I have felt a dull ache somewhere in my heel after running miles barefoot on the beach; not until I pull my foot up on my knee do I realize that a small, sharp shell has dug in and stuck inside the c

      11 min read

    • Article

      By Luke Ryan

      Aug 1, 2017

      On a shelf in a freezer somewhere back in Perth, Western Australia, sits a small canister of me. More specifically, me in the year 2007, at age twenty-two, full of youth, arrogance, and both literal and metaphorical spunk. This canister represents t

      2 min read

    • Article

      Hannah Green

      May 26, 2022

      Hannah Green
      6 min read

    • Article

      Risky Women’s Business

      Sep 8, 2019

      Risky Women’s Business
      10 min read

    • Article

      Nikki Gemmell On Family

      May 2, 2021

      We must love one another or die,” urged the poet W. H. Auden. Yet growing up, my riven family seemed quite beyond any of that. Snippets of unwelcome memory. Thuds in a room. Anguished sobs. The flash of a police siren in the suburban dark. Having to

      4 min read

    • Article

      Last Chance Saloon

      Jun 28, 2023

      Last Chance Saloon
      4 min read

    • Article

      Where The Wild Things Are.

      Sep 3, 2020

      Where The Wild Things Are.
      12 min read

    • Article

      I Watched My Sister DISAPPEAR

      May 2, 2023

      Back in February, the news that Bruce Willis had been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) hit me hard. Not because I’m a huge Die Hard fan, but because I know far too much about FTD, and my heart breaks for the 68-year-old Hollywood actor an

      4 min read

    • Article

      Bird’s Words

      Nov 29, 2021

      Bird’s Words
      3 min read

    • Article

      Leaps and Bounds

      Jan 13, 2020

      Leaps and Bounds
      5 min read

    • Article

      Dawn Neesom Mind Of My Own

      Sep 27, 2022

      The midlife crisis has finally been scientifically proven. Evidently, we experience our toughest times in our late 40s and early 50s when, in theory, we should be at our most comfortable, certainly financially. The research also suggests that at 45

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Baby Grudge

      Feb 2, 2020

      A Baby Grudge
      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Tales From Portlaw Volume Twelve

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Tales From Portlaw Volume Twelve - William Forde

      ‘Tales from Portlaw’

      Volume 12

      ‘Fourteen Days’

      by

      William Forde

      Copyright © 2017 William Forde

      Published by William Forde

      November 2017

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return it to Smashwords.com or your favourite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      ‘Tales from Portlaw’: ‘Fourteen Days’

      by William Forde

      Table of Contents

      Author’s Foreword

      Chapter One: ‘Admittance to Hospital

      Chapter Two: ‘Allocation to the High-dependency Ward’

      Chapter Three: ‘Day One’

      Chapter Four: ‘Day Two: Margaret’

      Chapter Five: ‘The Cottage’

      Chapter Six: ‘Alan and Margaret’

      Chapter Seven: ‘Day Four to Seven’

      Chapter Eight: ‘Day Eight’

      Chapter Nine: ‘Day Nine to Twelve’

      Chapter Ten: ‘Margaret’s Upbringing’

      Chapter Eleven: ‘Two days before the End’

      Chapter Twelve: ‘The Last Day of Alan’s Life’

      Chapter Thirteen: ‘Pilgrimage to Portlaw’

      Chapter Fourteen:’ The Sound of Footsteps’

      Author’s Background

      Other Books by this Author

      For the General Audience

      Romantic Drama Strictly for Adults

      Connect with William Forde

      Author’s Foreword

      I was born in Portlaw, County Waterford and came to West Yorkshire, England at the age of 4 years, where I have lived ever since. As I grew up, my mother used to tell me tales of Portlaw. Being a natural-born Irish person with a healthy imagination, she was also a natural-born storyteller. Consequently, I have no way of knowing how truthful the recall and re-telling these stories were and was pulled in opposing directions in how best to write them.

      I eventually decided to use the medium of fiction. In my section entitled, ‘Tales from Portlaw’, I recount the stories that my mother told me all the years I was growing up in West Yorkshire about ‘the old country’ across the Irish Sea. I have taken the ‘germ of truth’ in her stories and have made that detail the central thread of my story, adding to her truth, my fiction, through the extended use of my writer’s imagination. Any resemblance to anyone who ever lived or came from Portlaw in either name, likeness or character description is purely co-incidental; and to the best of my knowledge, this story is purely fictional.

      This love story is about a dying man and his personal assistant in his haulage firm. During the last fourteen days of his life, the dying man’s lover strikes up a new relationship in the hospital ward with a patient in an adjacent bed. After her lover’s death, she disappears and the new patient, who is infatuated with her, pursues his dream across the Irish Sea, only to discover that love is never smooth.

      William Forde: November 2017.

      Chapter One: ‘Admittance to Hospital’

      I have found love several times in my life, but never envisaged finding it in a hospital ward of terminally-ill patients.

      It was Boxing Day, 2010 when I became breathless and started running a high temperature. I’d been diagnosed with a terminal type of leukaemia (CLL) four years previously and had received six months of chemo therapy in early 2007, which seemed to have stabilised the condition. Over the past two years, because of the absence of virtually any immune system with which to fight off illness or infection, any cold passed on to me would run the risk of turning into flu and any bug caught might kill me.

      I’d always feared from the start of my illness that having no effective immune system would prove to be the eventual death of me. I always sensed that even before the cancer returned to haunt me again, I’d be playing Russian Roulette with my life in-between. Each time I placed my body within the breathing distance of another person who was carrying some unknown bug or germ, or harbouring the start of a cold; every time I shook hands or came into close proximity with another who had started to come down with some infection, I was essentially risking my life.

      My choice towards continued existence was therefore twofold. I could cut myself off from all people most of the time and remain housebound like some hermit or domestic prisoner, enforcing all house visitors to have a full medical examination before they called, besides insisting that they arrive at my door wearing a mask that covered both mouth and nasal passage! Alternatively, I could determine to live a relatively normal life for as long as possible, taking reasonable precautions not to invite added sickness back into my life through carelessness.

      ~~~~~

      I was financially independent enough to have a cleaner called Jane who came twice a week to tidy up my small cottage in Haworth, and Mrs Hall; a kindly woman of widowed status who attended to the rest of my daily needs. Mrs Hall was paid to do my shopping, washing and ironing, taking my clothes to the cleaners and cooking my evening meal. I would always make my own breakfast, as this allowed me to sleep in and to get up when I was ready to. I never saw the point of living alone if one couldn’t pamper oneself with the smaller luxuries of life!

      Mrs Hall would prepare me an evening meal during mid-week days, but on Saturday and Sundays I would either eat out or cook something simple for myself. Mrs Hall was a widow on a state pension only. This meant that the £50 I gave her weekly (cash in hand), was very useful and kept the wolf from her door. We were therefore mutually beneficial in each other’s lives.

      ~~~~~

      Given my terminal illness, I considered myself fortunate that I’d never fathered children. My wife had divorced me some eight years earlier, and to tell the truth, after that relationship ended I had no immediate need or desire to start another one. Besides, I was now approaching my 56th year of life and had become accustomed to enjoying my own company.

      There is a luxury in living alone that few married people ever know and will never experience. Eating what, where, when and how one wants to, listening to one’s favourite music on the radio instead of hearing the television constantly droning on in the background, and trying to ignore the nagging complaint of another because you haven’t yet done this or that as quickly or as satisfactorily as they wanted you to! All of this is the lost treasure of a married man. One can even fart freely without looking around to see if another is within hearing distance and ignore the smell of indiscretion without receiving one look of disapproval!

      When my ex-wife initially told me that she wanted a divorce, stating that our marital relationship had passed its ‘sell by date’, I was more shocked than heartbroken. I’d felt a distancing between us during the three years prior to her walking out on me, but being of Roman Catholic persuasion, I’d married for life and would have put up with the life-long union between us before ever contemplating abandoning it. Consequently, had she not made the decision to end our marriage and separate, we would still have been unhappily wed, even if spiritually bound in the eyes of the Church.

      Naturally, I saw the occasional woman from time to time after my

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1