July 27th 2005

If my Dad hadn't had a dodgy ticker which dropped him in his tracks for good way back in 1986, he'd have been ninety years old today, probably still drinking too much whisky and wandering about singing "Minnie The Moocher". I'm absolutely sure that I was the only five-year-old in the village of Saintfield, County Down, Northern Ireland who'd heard of Cab Calloway, and much good it did me.

My Dad was an intelligent, kind and strikingly ugly man, who looked a lot like Quentin Blake's drawings of Roald Dahl's Big Friendly Giant, although he wasn't thirty feet tall, which was fortunate as it would have made his career as a teacher pretty much impossible. Before going into teaching he had served in the Middle East and Africa in the Pioneer Corps, which left him with admiration for the African tribes of Basutoland, a profound dislike of Egyptians and the ability to swear in Arabic, which came in handy when stray dogs got into the garden and crapped in the flowerbeds.

I'd only just grown out of thinking my Dad was a buffoon when he went and died, and I have a lot of regret that I know so little about his life as a child and as a young man. He was a teenager during the Depression of the thirties and the family moved from the North of England to London to try to find work. On the outbreak of war he joined the Army, reaching the rank of Captain and meeting Sergeant Sarah McMillan of the ATS, who ended up as my mother, was eighty-five years old last month, and is also, I know, thinking about him today.

Happy Birthday, Dad. We miss you.