Dad was always just there, it didn’t matter if you were phoning so you could talk at him whilst you were on a boring 2hour motorway drive, or calling for him to pick you up from an obscure location at 2am telling him that you told your friends he would drop them home too. The only time we knew NOT to phone him was first thing in the morning, ever since we were kids it was painstakingly obvious that he HATED mornings. Trying to get two girls ready to leave the house who babbled incessantly, wouldn’t eat breakfast unless there were also pickled onions, who screamed and ran around the house at the sight of a hairbrush because the tangles were too painful, I doubt helped him become a fan. Instead in the morning he was a silent figure that we orbited around, there were occasional grunts, instructions for us to follow and “yes poppet I’m fine, it’s just early.” By the time he came home from work that evening though it was as if we had a different parent, he would tell us about his day and want to know every detail of ours, play in the garden with us setting up targets for our bow and arrows and walking the length and breadth of Kimpton with us on our bikes, until we were old enough to just go an knock for our friends. He told his very bad!! Dad jokes that he would laugh at whilst we rolled our eyes.
He was a font of information, some of it useless but all of it interesting – Did you know that the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland is called the Mad Hatter because Hatter’s would use Mercury during the production of Hats and that it would seep through their fingers and into their blood stream causing brain damage which turned them Mad…? We learnt that nugget on Boxing Day last year. He knew so much about Music, Composers, Writers, Drummers, Guitarists the list is endless. We would be watching tele, listening to the radio or out and about and hear a piece of music, Dad could tell you from the first cord what the song was, when it was written and by whom, if there was a cover or if the piece we were listening to was a cover, at which point we would chime in “Yes Dad, we know, you have this piece of Music”
A real hate of his was poor English Grammar, the incorrect use of Who or Whom, Their or There an unnecessary apostrophe or a missing apostrophe would make his blood boil, a trait that he has passed to me, so much so that last year after an incorrect use of the word “Myself” in a book I was reading made me write a complaint to the publishing house and throw the book in the recycling bin. Dad agreed that was the best thing to do. He said that you cannot, knowing full well that something is broken by the use of bad grammar, pass it on for the local charity shop to sell.
For all of our faults, for being held solely responsible for his hair loss, (something we vehemently deny) for all the early morning chatter that drove him mad, he fiercely loved us both, adored his Grandchildren, was always in our corner and would have done and did do anything he could to make our lives easier for us and put a smile on our faces.
We love you Dad and we will miss you every single day forever…
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