(no subject)
Dad has died, in hospital, in California. We had just decided, yesterday, to stop the interventions and take him home, but he didn't last that long. (He did last twenty years longer than we would have predicted twenty years ago, and he had quite clearly finished.)
This seems a good moment to dig out That List.
Ten things my Dad has done that your Dad hasn't (er, unless you're darkzack):
1. Written a book covering buggery in Karachi, unnatural sex in bushes, and a PhD thesis about obscure tropical diseases affecting the author's penis (the thesis's author, not the book's);
2. Been deported from Indonesia at gunpoint;
3. Named his daughter after his main research project;
4. Deliberately aimed a hosepipe through a pub toilet window and soaked a gentleman unknown to him while said gentleman was peeing;
5. Sank the only research vessel of the University of Jamaica;
6. Set a box of fireworks on fire in a long thin garden;
7. Required his children to sleep on cupboards in a flooded basement with nails poking through the ceiling, rather than move the manuscript of his Tibet book [now abandoned] off their beds;
8. Had his feet nibbled by rats while he slept, without waking up;
9. Kept 70 boxes of books in his garden having run out of room in the house;
10. When shipwrecked on a desert island, was able to offer the US coastguard who suspected him of drug-running a gin and tonic *with ice*;
11. Required his children to survey pineapple fields on holiday (pineapple plants tear your ankles to shreds);
12. Had a chronic medical condition ameliorated by acupuncture;
13. Required his wife to swim off the Norfolk marshes in February;
14. Having spent all day pruning a house-worth of climbing rose, accidentally cut it off at ground level as he went indoors;
15. Given an entire eight-week lecture course in the three days before the exam on it;
16. Flounced out of a parents' evening at a posh selective private girls' school declaiming "I'm fed up of all these bloody old women, where's the bar?";
17. Cut his foot while carving meat;
18. Required his family to survey gorse cliffs on holiday (gorse tears your arms to shreds);
19. Broke his nose in India by diving into a swimming pool which was marked 6'6" but was actually 3'6" throughout its length;
20. Clubbed a barracuda to death;
21. Stayed three weeks in a hotel before they found the cook drowned at the bottom of the well;
22. Took a taxi from Cambridge to North Yorkshire to avoid changing trains at Peterborough;
23. When he got to North Yorkshire discovered he'd forgotten the name of the village he was going to;
24. Got a skateboard as a leaving present;
25. Had to stay in a hotel room in Vancouver in the middle of winter for three days because he washed all his undies and couldn't get them to dry;
26. Required his family to survey raised fossilised coral reefs on holiday (M, aged 8: "Daddy, which fossilised reef are we going to today?");
27. Got a garland of used photocopier cards as a leaving present;
28. Punted down the Cam calling to assorted tourists that he was the Fijian government in exile;
29. Been taken off an international flight because comatose;
30. Pushed someone else's small child into the Cam, and didn't rescue it once it transpired that it couldn't swim;
31. "Saved money" by plumbing a washing machine in himself, on a Bank Holiday Sunday, but unplumbing the old one by hitting the stop-tap with a hammer until the pipe sheared;
32. Said BOLLOCKS in a television documentary;
33. Been reported dead by the bedder in the Master's Lodge in Sidney Sussex;
34. Required his family to survey the Cromer landslide on "a day at the seaside" (can't remember whether this was November or February);
35. Said "coprophagous" in a television documentary;
36. Had his professorship queried by the LesGay caucus;
37. Lost his wallet, by forgetting that he'd put it in his underpants which he was wearing on his head;
38. Bought a colleague a G&T with a large-denomination note, at Heathrow as the flight was being called, and absent-mindedly throwing the change in a swing-bin;
39. In a canoe on an expedition in British HondurasColombia, used his rifle to shoot the expedition's radio, resulting in cancellation of the expedition;
40. Tried to disguise New Zealand marmite as real marmite by decanting it into the real marmite jar in the middle of the night;
41. Had holes eaten in his dress shirt collar by a cockatoo;
42. Told me in a transatlantic phonecall that he'd been diagnosed with multiple cancers, without saying they were multiple *skin* cancers;
43. Barked like a mad dog through the wrong person's letterbox at 2am;
44. Had an 8"x3" portion of his scalp removed;
45. Had a plant named after him. Matthiola stoddartii ("hairy and prostrate").
This seems a good moment to dig out That List.
Ten things my Dad has done that your Dad hasn't (er, unless you're darkzack):
1. Written a book covering buggery in Karachi, unnatural sex in bushes, and a PhD thesis about obscure tropical diseases affecting the author's penis (the thesis's author, not the book's);
2. Been deported from Indonesia at gunpoint;
3. Named his daughter after his main research project;
4. Deliberately aimed a hosepipe through a pub toilet window and soaked a gentleman unknown to him while said gentleman was peeing;
5. Sank the only research vessel of the University of Jamaica;
6. Set a box of fireworks on fire in a long thin garden;
7. Required his children to sleep on cupboards in a flooded basement with nails poking through the ceiling, rather than move the manuscript of his Tibet book [now abandoned] off their beds;
8. Had his feet nibbled by rats while he slept, without waking up;
9. Kept 70 boxes of books in his garden having run out of room in the house;
10. When shipwrecked on a desert island, was able to offer the US coastguard who suspected him of drug-running a gin and tonic *with ice*;
11. Required his children to survey pineapple fields on holiday (pineapple plants tear your ankles to shreds);
12. Had a chronic medical condition ameliorated by acupuncture;
13. Required his wife to swim off the Norfolk marshes in February;
14. Having spent all day pruning a house-worth of climbing rose, accidentally cut it off at ground level as he went indoors;
15. Given an entire eight-week lecture course in the three days before the exam on it;
16. Flounced out of a parents' evening at a posh selective private girls' school declaiming "I'm fed up of all these bloody old women, where's the bar?";
17. Cut his foot while carving meat;
18. Required his family to survey gorse cliffs on holiday (gorse tears your arms to shreds);
19. Broke his nose in India by diving into a swimming pool which was marked 6'6" but was actually 3'6" throughout its length;
20. Clubbed a barracuda to death;
21. Stayed three weeks in a hotel before they found the cook drowned at the bottom of the well;
22. Took a taxi from Cambridge to North Yorkshire to avoid changing trains at Peterborough;
23. When he got to North Yorkshire discovered he'd forgotten the name of the village he was going to;
24. Got a skateboard as a leaving present;
25. Had to stay in a hotel room in Vancouver in the middle of winter for three days because he washed all his undies and couldn't get them to dry;
26. Required his family to survey raised fossilised coral reefs on holiday (M, aged 8: "Daddy, which fossilised reef are we going to today?");
27. Got a garland of used photocopier cards as a leaving present;
28. Punted down the Cam calling to assorted tourists that he was the Fijian government in exile;
29. Been taken off an international flight because comatose;
30. Pushed someone else's small child into the Cam, and didn't rescue it once it transpired that it couldn't swim;
31. "Saved money" by plumbing a washing machine in himself, on a Bank Holiday Sunday, but unplumbing the old one by hitting the stop-tap with a hammer until the pipe sheared;
32. Said BOLLOCKS in a television documentary;
33. Been reported dead by the bedder in the Master's Lodge in Sidney Sussex;
34. Required his family to survey the Cromer landslide on "a day at the seaside" (can't remember whether this was November or February);
35. Said "coprophagous" in a television documentary;
36. Had his professorship queried by the LesGay caucus;
37. Lost his wallet, by forgetting that he'd put it in his underpants which he was wearing on his head;
38. Bought a colleague a G&T with a large-denomination note, at Heathrow as the flight was being called, and absent-mindedly throwing the change in a swing-bin;
39. In a canoe on an expedition in British HondurasColombia, used his rifle to shoot the expedition's radio, resulting in cancellation of the expedition;
40. Tried to disguise New Zealand marmite as real marmite by decanting it into the real marmite jar in the middle of the night;
41. Had holes eaten in his dress shirt collar by a cockatoo;
42. Told me in a transatlantic phonecall that he'd been diagnosed with multiple cancers, without saying they were multiple *skin* cancers;
43. Barked like a mad dog through the wrong person's letterbox at 2am;
44. Had an 8"x3" portion of his scalp removed;
45. Had a plant named after him. Matthiola stoddartii ("hairy and prostrate").