So

[routemaster159]

 When I started this blog I thought I would wait to post something interesting or give the world the benefit of my dazzling intellect on some matter of the day. I realise that no-one is actually paying any attention out there but frankly that's their loss. If I'm being ignored I'd rather it's something with a bit of weight; this means that I'm too

Comments

[moz_attics]

There's no helpful advice. There are, sadly, no antidotes.

My dad's been gone ten years and change. I spent the first year saying "hi" to look-alikes in shops.

I can still make myself cry by visualising him teaching me how to fish, or to play golf - both of which he had no skill in, but which I assumed he knew better than me, and in which he did his best.

I've busked "D-Day Dodgers" at a couple of folk clubs in Cumbria and made old men cry - presumably because I myself am crying as I sing the last verse, which mum wouldn't let me play at dad's funeral :

Dear old Lady Astor
What a nerve you've Got
Standing in the Commons
Talking Tommy Rot
This Nation's Darling
And its Pride
We Think your Mouth's
Too Bleeding Wide
We are the D-Day dodgers
Who'll stay in Italy

Dad was threatened with Monte Cassino (and busted back from Sergeant to Corporal for marching his men round the back of a big tent during a "selection" process, thus saving their lives). He'd been in the thick since 1938, and therefore had a sense for pointless pot-hunting shite-hawk wankers (as he described Montgomery and Patton).

Point is, it does get better. "A" is relatively lucky - the last words I said in the presence of my dad were "well, you're mental, then." {Door slammed like teenager}

Fortunately, we made up on the phone, and then he fell out of a holly bush whilst pruning it, having a heart attack.

[routemaster159]

When I was fourteen and, as a war-gamer, thought that war was a heroic thing, I asked my father, who had been a fighter-pilot in the dying stages of WWII in Europe, if he had ever shot anyone down. He blanched and just said "Yes". I knew him well enough just to shut up. Regardless of the frustrations that he casuses at the moment, I'm always grateful for that.