The Weekend Post

The Weekend Post

3^rd April 1985.

Dear dad.

That’s you just gone. Wish I’d had the chance to say goodbye properly. I know yesterday you hinted that you’d be gone before I got there...but I wished you’d stayed awhile longer. I so wanted to have one more conversation with you, to reminisce over good times.

Like weekends; Saturday morning spent watching Swap Shop on TV, while you shaved in the kitchen wearing your white vest. Watching as you cleaned and put your teeth in. I thought all men had false teeth as I only ever knew you with yours.  Both of us lying on the living room floor picking horses from the paper, you’d give me a spare betting slip so I could pick my own. I always like the pretty colours the jockeys wore but you said that wasn’t the way to pick a good bet.

The betting shop was on route to your works social club, where you spent many Saturday afternoon. Once we reached there I had to stand outside, as under 18’s weren’t allowed in. I’d peek through the letterbox unable to see anything, my ears straining to hear a TV’s rendition of the 12.30 at Newmarket. Once the bets were placed we walked to the club, my two steps to your one stride.

The club was smoky. It smelled of beer. I stood by the TV room door waiting for my bottle of coke and crisps. Once you let me stand beside you at the fruit machine until I pressed the spin button just before you held the two bars, the third bar dropped and you lost a fiver. The TV room with Grandstand is where I was sent.

If I was lucky you’d let me to go upstairs to the snooker room. The large green table dominated the dusty space.  You taught me how to play and dismissed the rule about a foot always touching the floor. However you did insist I had to keep one on my beer crate step.

On the way home, I thought it was great how you’d open the sliding door to your workmate Don’s campervan and ring the old school bell he had in there, while tootling around town with YMCA playing on tape.

You brought cockles from the fish market for me to eat from the bag. Crab sarnies at home and eating the meat from the claw with a cocktail stick. All washed down with eggymilk. We were the only ones in the family that like it. I’d hear the buzzing of the hand mixer from in the kitchen knowing that our special drink was on its way. It was the very same hand mixer that you used to show how not having respect for machines could end up in accidents. I had been scared of the machinery in the metalwork room at school. We’d been shown photographs of pupils who had had chunks of hair caught up in drills and lathes and had to have it cut off. Scarred heads stuck in my mind and I was scared to go back. Using strips of newspaper you showed me how it got tangled up in the turning blades. I always wore my hair fastened back after that. You were proud of my CSE in metalwork.  

It makes me laugh that you would make me eggymilk and I always mashed your tea. The theme tune from the program M.A.S.H echoing from the telly and you shaking your mug, called to arms your daughter, your personal tea masher, to provide you with that much loved mug o tea.  Only I knew just how you liked it and had been doing the honour since I could reach the kettle.

With you in your favourite chair and me curled up on the settee we’d watch the football results, ticking off boxes on the pools coupon. Wearing your green knitted cardie that mum made you. Your smoking cardie! You always wore it when you were in the house. That fusty smoky smell would be a comfort to me when bullies stole my 10 pence and my teacher sent you a letter. You cradled me in your arms and told me everything would be ok.

At bedtime I’d lie silently in bed, pretending to be asleep. Knowing that at 11 o’clock after mum went to bed you’d come get me, carry me downstairs and we’d curl up on your chair watching the detective Ellery Queen. I’m sure my love of detective programs came from this and Basil Rathbones version of Sherlock Holmes.

And then on Sunday morning be awakened by the big band sound vibrating the blankets off my sleepy head. You loved Glen Miller and as a result of having it penetrate through the ceiling, my bed and my sleep...so do I. Then you treated me to the sponge awakening. The cruel trick of lifting the blanket and placing a wet sponge on me, covering me again and then waiting! Minutes later laughing as I leapt out of bed soaked.

Downstairs, you were in your favourite chair, the Sunday Mirror in one hand, cigarette in the other listening to Terry Wogan on radio Two. Mum hoovering in the front room and the smell of Sunday dinner wafting from the kitchen. 

At 1o’clock we’d sit in front of the telly to watch Space 1999 and Road Runner. Dinner was served plate-on-tray style with gravy poured from a plastic jug. You were a meat and veg man, a traditional Sunday roast. We’d share the skin off mums’ rice pudding and always go back for more. The choice of two films greeted us after dinner, John Wayne one BBC1, James Bond on ITV.  Sunday telly was always boring till Dr Who or Star trek came on at teatime. But I loved sitting watching old movies with you.

If the weather was nice we’d be in the garden. Not a particular talented gardener, grass and hedge cutting your speciality. Except of course your tomatoes, grown in the greenhouse you made from old window frames and plastic. With a mirrored wardrobe door as entry, you even left the mirror in it. Making things from odd items is where I think your talent lay. My favourite would be the shower you made. An L shaped bit of wood screwed to the wall, a hosepipe attached to it, with sucky things for the taps on one end and a watering-can rose on the other. It was great and worked well, even if we did have to put the water heater on for ages before hand.  I think that’s where my creativity came from.

I still have the photo of you hanging upside down out of the large cherry tree at the top of the garden. You’d climbed up to trim some branches but as usual you monkeyed around. Kath next door got the snapshot. It reminds of how un-serious you could take the world. On those rare occasions the world allowed you to.

Back indoors, the TV off button was pressed just before Songs of Praise came on. Cheese or beans on toast was the staple Sunday night tea, except in the summer when salad was the food of choice. We sit trays on knees eating while you complained about the ‘noise’ that was the top 40, counting down to number one before bath-time. Afterwards all washed and dry, I’d sit in your chair and watch That’s Life with you.  A gentle kiss sent me to bed with warmth of a fathers love.

And so back to today...

Two weeks before my seventeenth birthday, you’ve gone. Ten weeks ago we were both laughing about how I’d broken my arm while sledging and you’d put your back out at work, sneezing whilst carrying a wardrobe upstairs. That resulted in three separate stays in hospital for you and the knowledge that Cancer was eating at your bones. I watched as you slowly were reduced from the strong man who cradled me in your arms to a man who cried in pain whenever he was touched.

You saw me leave school with good grades and get my first job. But you’ll never see the adult you had a hand in raising, and you won’t be there to walk me down the aisle or cradle any future grandchildren you may have. I will never get the chance to buy you a drink and you’ll never see my eighteenth or twenty-first birthdays.

You always were a great believer in fate, the what-ever will be, will be, philosophy.  I have that too. There is a reason you’ve been taken from us so young in life. The answer will greet me when we meet again and walk painlessly side by side my two steps to your one stride.

I’m going to miss you

Puddin x

©Mills Laine