You teaching me to ride the bike you made for me
Sacks of ice cream stolen by your best mate
How your moustache tickled
How you looked without that moustache for just one month of
my entire life
Your stories, my god, so many funny stories
Feeling small when I looked up and feeling tall when you
looked proud
Introducing you to your 1st, 2nd, 4th
and 6th grandchild
Being able to tell you anything (well, except for that one
thing, that one time, in band camp)
You letting me make my mistakes and boy, there were a lot of
them
(Although I wish you had stopped me from making a couple of
the worse ones)
The smell of your cigars (until I guilt tripped you into
giving up)
Tea and biscuits every morning in your bed, all five of us
Hunting for horseradish over Matchstick Island and you
cutting your foot
Singing ‘Let’s do it tonight because the moon is smiling
bright’ after a drunken meal in Barking
On more than one occasion
My driving scaring the bejesus out of you and me liking that
fact
Lemonade and a pack of crisps in the Captain Cook
Or the Barge Aground
You letting me win, making me lose and settling for a draw
Introducing you to Jack and Coke and then necking the whole
bottle
Hiding in your shed and watching the thunderstorms
Your hideous green garden jumper
Your somewhat eclectic taste in music and hoping I’ve stolen
the best and left the worst behind
All those long walks along longer beaches and tall cliff
tops
Having to be quiet all morning when you were on nights until
finally, at 11am, being able to go wake you up
Watching you finally learn to drive and then unveiling that
first car, a yellow Ford Cortina
Long trips down to Devon and sensing your delight driving
down those sweeping hills
(Something I’ve inherited, although I may go a bit faster)
A Cadburys flake every Friday night
Swimming in Belhus Park pool every Saturday and making you
throw us as high as you could over and over
Saturday night being yours and Mums night, even if you did
only have a bottle of R Whites and a packet of peanuts
And boy did we hear that line ad infinitum
Teaching me the Dutch Oven trick, brought tears to my eyes
in more ways than one
Sitting in the corner of the Tiger waiting for you to finish
work, whilst the regulars made a fuss of me
Watching you work at your bench in the loft, that place had
everything a young boy ever needed to get in trouble
Just watching you anything to be honest - paint, saw,
wallpaper and collecting tips along the way
Mum being ill and you attempting to boil an egg, Gordon
Ramsey you ain’t
Well maybe the swearing part
You teaching us about scrumping and then vaguely getting the
hump when we stole the neighbours cherries
Finally getting to work with you
proper when we had the pub, some of my best working mornings ever
Love, family and feeling safe
Happy Fathers Day Pops
