My father...

      I am a firm believer that all the previous events of one’s life make you the person that you are at this very moment. All the good things and all of the bad that one experiences lead to the sum of .... well the sum of what is you. I have been thinking about my past and the events that it is made up of quite a bit recently (when I am not too knackered to think at all that is!), especially of my father who passed nearly four years ago. I find myself wondering what affect he has had on the person I now am and indeed am yet to be. I do know one thing and that is I miss him and find myself thinking of him every bloody day. I find myself talking to G about him more these days, sharing stories about him with her seems to help and I feel better for the telling. G suggested that I should share them here, upon this blog on occasion, so I will do so for awhile, if only so that he is still part of my life. G says that she can see my father within me, either by an expression that passes over my face, the way I talk on occasion or sometimes my attitude to a situation. I use to think bloody hell I do not want to become my dad, but these days I do not see that as a bad thing at all.

     My father was born in the nineteen thirties and hailed from Helsby in Cheshire. He was a big man standing six feet and four inches tall and held himself in a manner that made him seem even larger. He seldom smiled yet when he did it was with his eyes which then would sparkle and seemed to be full of mischief. He served an apprenticeship in engineering then joined the merchant navy as his national service, I think if it wasn’t for my mother he would have spent his working life here. He rarely spoke of this time of his life and later I grew to understand that it was quite an issue between my parents. Having said sometimes, with his cheeks a tad reddened with a pint or two he would tell the odd tale of that time to me as long as my mother was out of earshot! After the navy he plied his trade in various factories finally working at the cement factory in Padeswood until he retired aged fifty nine (Christ, that’s only three years older than what I am now!). He trained greyhounds back in the day and we traveled over the north of England pitting our dogs against the best others had to offer. Family holidays consisted of trips to Anglesey where we would stop in a caravan spending the days walking the cliffs, fishing or visiting places that always seemed to have an engineering interest to them. The evenings would be spent in local pubs, or squinting under the gas lighting of the caravan reading, playing games or eating hot filling stews after the day’s adventures. I guess my father taught me the pleasure of a simple life, working hard and giving my view of the world a very black and white way of looking at it. 

     At times I have thought of my father as racist, a bigot, narrow minded and draconian but as I have aged myself I now realise that he truly was none of these but he was just a product of his time. I know now that although he was sometimes single, even bloody minded, he was also fair and honest. He spoke his mind, sometimes not with appropriate timing it must be said, and didn’t really give a damn if he upset people in so doing. He was also quite possibly the most intelligent man that I have ever known and it saddened me in his later years to see him lose some of his confidence and self belief. 

     So yes, I think it may be a good thing to write about him. A good thing for me in the writing and a good thing for you in the reading. So I’ll get my thinking cap on and relate to you some tales of my father in some future posts....

John.