Where, grave, thy victory?
Well it’s nearly cricket season once more Dad, your favourite time of the year. That and the greyhound season and the “nags” and the “gee-gees” you used to lose your shirt on. Remember sending me to the betting shop with your greyhound bets? I sure do. 6 and 1, 1 and 6 reverse, 20p to win. I wasn’t even old enough yet for senior school let alone those dusty, spit and sawdust hell pits full of older gentlemen smoking like proverbial steam trains.
What larks!
All that’s changed now Dad. Sure betting shops still exist, in fact they’re as ubiquitous as Hollywood actors screeching at people during every advertisement break in the football to “Gamble Responsibly” but it’s mainly online now (I’ll explain that to you later) and on the internet (I’ll explain that later too). Mum never understood the internet even though I explained it to her, and I’m going to miss telephoning her today to tell her I’m thinking of her, and you, and that we’ve both had our cry for the day in honour of the man we dearly miss. Give her a hug from me and tell her I’m okay. She won’t believe you!
She never believed me.
Much more has changed Dad. The pubs you used to frequent are mostly gone now, replaced with flats and apartments. I lived in one myself for a few years, overlooking the River Severn and boy how I thought of you and the irony whilst I did. I so wanted to show that old pub and living space to Mum. I go back often, if only to marvel at an old bridge. I joke that I talk to it and that it’s a metaphor for Mum, the “Grand Old Lady”. Don’t tell her I call her a grand old lady! She’d be apoplectic with incandescence. She sure did mix up her words! Made perfect sense to her as she seethed with invigoration. It’s an old joke concerning your Granddaughter.
I just wish I could tell you that joke in person.
Well it’s nearly cricket season once more Dad, and you’ll never believe what’s happened to your favourite player recently. Let me go back a step or two. First, he broke my heart by winning the cricket World Cup for his home country of Pakistan, beating England in the Final, before retiring as an all time great and then deciding that he wanted to be Prime Minister! Politics is a fools errand as we all know, but he seemed to have cracked it with enormous popular support back home, but he was then ousted in an American coup amid a popular uprising demanding his reinstatement before as recent as only a few months ago he was shot and wounded. All a far cry from the tranquil setting of Hove or Arundel Castle and the home games playing for and captaining your beloved Sussex County Cricket Club.
Much has changed Dad and yet, as above, nothing really changes.
So many birthday wishes Dad and so many wishes that will forever go unfulfilled. I wish you could have experienced the joy Mum did with your grandchildren and great grandchildren. Your favourite daughter, that beautiful unspoken bond between adoring young lady and her proud father, had children, against the mightiest of odds, and boy would you be proud of the grandchildren that have now grown into incredible human beings. I wish I had photos of their children, your great grandchildren, bouncing on your knee, like the photograph I adore above. There’s no need to ask you to take a guess as to whom passed this precious memory gift to me. She was one of a kind your daughter.
One of a kind.
I wish there were more photographs of us together but they’ve been lost to the mists of time, that uncontrollable beast that’s slowly turning that memory a faded yellow now, and almost as yellow as your dreadful wallpaper choices of the 1970's! Remember your bar, your pride and joy with the fully working pub style optics and how you held court in your absolute element? I do. Much has changed now Dad, with men boasting of their own bars and “Man Caves”. You were ahead of the curve, light years ahead of the curve.
You always were.
Remember cooking the “Bacon Hock” on a Saturday morning? They’re now called “Gammon Joints” apparently, but they’ll always be bacon hocks to me. Remember the fresh cockles and mussels on a Saturday morning and the smell Mum used to moan about, every, single, Saturday, morning! Boy they were fun times. Saturday’s have never been the same, but how could they? Betting on the horses and greyhounds, helping out the multitude of friends who could always rely on “Blackie”. A swift half or four at The Viking or The Black Dog before returning to rescue the bacon browning to perfection in the oven or those delicious smelling cockles finally coming to the boil on the stove. We call it a “hob” now, but it’ll always be the stove to me. Then snooker in the spare room on the table I treasured with all my heart (the table which I watched you and Uncle John and others lug up the stairs on Christmas Eve). “Has Father Christmas been?” I can still hear you asking the following morning as I was already preparing for our first game together. The first of hundreds. Especially on those precious Saturday nights before a round of fresh cockles in vinegar, carved pieces of bacon hock and “Match of the Day”.
Those Saturday's sure were special Dad.
I wish I could’ve introduced you to the grandson Mum adored.
I wish for another of those winks you only reserved for me.
I wish you’d call me “Tosh” one more time, and I wish I knew why!
I wish. I wish. I wish.
There’s a meme (I’ll explain it to you later) on the internet (Yes, I’ll explain that later to you too) whereby people post a picture of a bench with the simple question of who you’d like to spend an hour on the bench with and why. Yes Dad, we tell the entire world now, mainly strangers too, our innermost desires and longings via the wizardry and invisible witchcraft we all call the internet, and there’s no prizes, prices or bets taken as to whom I’d love to share this bench with for an hour. A soppy old son and the two people who showered me with all the love I could ever ask for.
So it’s nearly cricket season once more Dad.
Happy Birthday.
Love Tosh.
A much longer article on my dear old Dad, written a year or so ago. I can’t read it now. But maybe you wish to. I’d be honoured if you did.
My Dad in a Field of Dreams
and why I can’t watch a silly baseball film about baseball that isn’t about baseballmedium.com
My Dad’s favourite song.
“Abide with me, fast falls the eventide
The darkness deepens Lord, with me abide
When other helpers fail and comforts flee
Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me
Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day
Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away
Change and decay in all around I see
O Thou who changest not, abide with me
I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness
Where is death’s sting?
Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if Thou abide with me
Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies
Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee
In life, in death, o Lord, abide with me
Abide with me, abide with me”
Thanks for reading. My library here contains a wealth of writing pieces across the spectrum from sports through to film criticism, existentialism through to mental health improvement, and here are three of my most recent publications for your perusal should you so desire:
You’ll Never Walk Alone
For Maureen.medium.com
Sorry seems to be the easiest word
The uncertainty of uncertainty.medium.com
In Court with The Beatles
Part IV. Insanity versus Absurdity, 2023.medium.com