[grannyclaret]

Originally Posted by WillowTheWhisp

Totally agree that priorities are sometimes skewed. To me family is more important than anything and something which cannot be replaced. Time spent with children is most valuable because they grow up so quickly. I just cannot understand those people who have children and then hire nannies etc to look after them so that they can get on with their career and earn more money 'for them' when they rarely ever see them.

Your story reminded me of the Kris Kristofferson song 'Darby's Castle' Ian.


See the ruin on the hill,
Where the smoke is hanging still,
Like an echo of an age long forgotten.
There's a story of a home
Crushed beneath those blackened stones,
And the roof that fell before the beams were rotten.

Cecil Darby loved his wife
And he laboured all his life
To provide her with material possessions.
So he built for her a home
Of the finest wood and stone
But the building soon became his sole obsession.

It took three hundred days for the timbers to be raised
And the silhouette was seen for miles around.
The gables reached as high as an eagle in the sky
But it only took one night to bring it down
When Derby's Castle tumbled to the ground.

Though they shared a common bed
There was precious little said
In the moments that were set aside for sleeping
For his busy dreams were filled
With the rooms he'd yet to build,
And he never heard young Helen Darby weeping.

Then one night he heard a sound,
As he laid his pencil down,
And he traced it to her door and turned the handle.
And the pale light of the moon
Through the window of the room,
Split the shadows where two bodies lay entangled.

Oh, it took three-hundred days, for the timbers to be raised,
And the silhouette was seen for miles around.
The gables reached as high as the eagles in the sky,
But it only took one night to bring it down,
When Darby's castle tumbled to the ground.

I have that song too,but its sung/spoken by Ollie Austin...what a great tale