here be dragons

I always end up in the pub no one else drinks in, where a hot water tap in the toilet is regarded as a needless luxury, only poofs and people that use hand towels might appreciate, and I get landed with the guy everyone else is avoiding, including me.  He shoehorns his way into the seat beside you and grabs at your wrist to get your attention. There’s no looking away. He’s having his say, whether you like it or not.

‘I loved your da,’ he says, as part of his mantra.

‘I loved your mum.’

‘And I loved your brother and I pray for them every day. Every day!’  

Deep breathe. You know there’s no arguing with that kind of bullshit. It’s Donny Osmond’s song about Puppy Love disguised as the Ten Commandments. You loved your da, you loved your mum, you loved your mum, and, indirectly, because we’re both guys, I love you, so hurry up and get us a pint and shut up about it.

I should draw him a pie chart. Mum coloured red. Loved her 100%, but was delighted, euphoric, even when she died. Dementia turns red, pink and blue and all are true.

My elder brother’s colour in the pie chart would be green. Died young, mid-thirties. Alcoholic, often a pain in the arse. 50% pie chart green and 50% purple. I guess his biggest failing was he was always trying to please my da. Buying him wee things, showing him things like his new car, slipping him a few quid. That’s something I never did. I never tried to please my da. Usually I just tried to avoid him.

He got me my first job as a labourer on a building site. I was sixteen when I left school, he’d be in mid-fifties, the age I am now. We travelled on the same train for a year, same carriage, but sat on different seats. Sometimes we walked from Glasgow to Springburn, about three or four miles, me ahead of him, him ahead of me.  

As kids we had this saying, our own mantra, ‘you’re turning into your da’. There’s a whole stack of stories that go along with it piled up like records waiting to play on the turntable. Some of them are short and some of them longer playing family records.

Da was a sun worshipper. He used to coat himself in Vaseline and slowly cook, turning pink, red and then radioactive. That’s what killed him. Malignant skin melanoma. When he was sitting in the front garden he used to pick at the daises in the lawn, to save him cutting the grass. My sisters used to pay for him to go on holiday to Gibraltar.  He loved the grub, and he love the people because they were Roman Catholic and not ‘blue noses’ and most of all he loved the heat. He was a great swimmer and his bosom buddy, my Uncle John, told us the locals told him not to swim in the harbour because there was a shark in it. My da wasn’t one for taking other’s advice. I don’t think I was the only one in the family that voted for the shark and was disappointed it didn’t take a nip out of him.

My mum asked me to shave my da before he died. He’d grown a patchy grey beard lying in the back bedroom they’d shared when they moved from Dalmuir for thirty years.  I can still visit, not just in memory, my sister lives in my parent’s house. The hospice nurses were coming in and out at that time. They sang his praises, said ‘he was a great guy’. They’d ask him ‘how are you doing?’ and he’d answer ‘I’m fine. How are you-uu doing?’ Most people that didn’t know my da thought he was great. I guess I stumble into that latter but not the former category. As I get older my family say I get more like him. The truth is I didn’t know him.

When I was around thirteen, but knew I was adult, as grown-up as I’d ever be, I did confront him in our kitchen. He hadn’t been working for a while. He was around six-foot and fit for his age, walked miles every day.  He’d probably punched the gaffer or just walked out, because he was always right and the other guy had it coming. Sometimes I didn’t go to school, would just hang about with my pals and wait for four o’clock to go home. Da did that too. He kidded on he was going to work, taking his cheese sandwiches and came in at the usual hour. Any bills that came in he hid from mum, because he didn’t want to worry her.

That day it was a summer holiday and he’d all the windows open. Wind howled through the living room, fresh-air fortnight, was a fifty-two week phenomena. Da was gutting the house, because it was like a ‘shitehouse’. Mum did all the cleaning and cooking and just about everything else, but about fifteen minutes before she got in from her work as a Home Help, about 2.45 pm,  Da would spring into action. Pulling the cooker from the wall, as far as the grey cable could extend, so he could sweep behind it. Kitchen table and chairs piled in the living room. An old twin tub he’d picked up from some dump pulled out from the sink and the hose attached to the sink to fill it with cold water to heat. He started seeping and spinning some shapeless garment. I’d watched him for about ten minutes before I appeared at the door to the kitchen.

I pointed out to him that we had a washing machine in the corner that did all the things that the twin tub did, but did them better. No need for the twin tub, somehow is translated into a rite of passage.  Father and son eye each other in the third person. No overt violence. Lesson learned. Da is forever an arsehole of the worst kind.

When I shave my da with the orange Bic razor I used boiling hot water and sopped his skin with soap. He tilted his head as I shaved under his chin. I left no nicks or bloody cuts.

I didn’t like my da. But you must have loved him is the usual response. No, I didn’t. Pie chart, grey, here be dragons.   

‘I loved your da,’ he says, as part of his mantra.

‘I loved your mum.’

‘And I loved your brother and I pray for them every day. Every day!’