Jonah The Turkey Russler

Jonah the Turkey Russler

It would have been my Dad's birthday today but as the only way to where
he lives these days involves a long one-way street, I can't actually
get there to give him his annual bottle of Glenfidich so I've chosen to
remember him instead.

He was in the pub when I was born. This kind of set a precedent for my
upbringing, initially with me sitting outside in the car with a can of
red and a packet of blue, later the two of us propping up the bar in
pubs the length and breadth of the country. On 20 July 1973, however,
it appears to have been quite a legendary session. The following
morning he had to ring my uncle for a reminder as to the gender of the
first born whose head they had been soaking the night before.

He was a great educator. Not just in his professional life (Management
Consultant) but in everything that he did. As soon as I was old enough
to keep my own eyes open long enough to have a passport photograph
taken (ten days) he whisked my mother and I off to live in a cuckoo
clock house in the French Alps. Bearing in mind that my mother had
never set foot outside Glasgow until then, this was quite a whisking.
He wanted to show us the world. After a year and bored with a life of
fondue, slush and getting from A to B with a pair of sticks attached to
his feet, he moved us again. This time to the desert in Algeria.

It was a difficult time for the country. There was a war rumbling
around and everything bar sand and trouble was in short supply. We
lived in a compound in the north with other Europeans working for the
Oil companies. Perhaps it's just because this is the time when my first
memories were formed but I remember it also as a very happy
place.

The first Christmas we were out there one of our neighbours had
arranged for a Turkey to be shipped over from the UK. They received it
about a week before Christmas and it was left to wander around the
compound until its services were required on the 25th - and yes, the
fact that the fowl still had a pulse did come as a bit of a shock to
all concerned. A short time after Santa Claus's visit that Christmas
Eve, my father, who was shall we say, a great believer in Christmas
spirit, snuck in to the yard, kidnapped the turkey and left a ransom
note under the neighbour's door. Not only did they pay the ransom
(about ?7.50), they invited us to share the poor bird with them and
then agreed to be my godparents.

He loved parties. We stayed in Algeria for three years but returned
when things on the political front began to boil. Also, by this stage
my mum was pregnant with my brother and was reaching the end of her rag
(and her second trimester). We moved back to the UK and bought a house
in west London. To celebrate they held a massive party. My dad was in
charge of the invitations, instructing that guests bring a bottle and a
cheque for a million pounds. My uncle, sharing the Coates sense of
humour, took him at his word and dutifully arrived with the required
amount. Bearing in mind that my Uncle, by then aged about 35, had never
worked in his life, it was a bit stupid of my dad to pay the cheque in
at the bank. The brothers were hauled in front of a short man in a bad
suit at Lloyds and given a thorough rollocking.

In 1980, fed up with working for other men in bad suits who exploited
other men who would never be able to afford a suit, good or bad, in
their lives, he set up his own management consultancy, mainly concerned
with teaching third world governments and national organisations how to
- well - manage. He travelled all over the world and had adventures. He
was in Saudi Arabia the day that they had their first ever fall of
snow. He was shot in the bum in Nigeria (honestly). He was in the
cockpit of a Boeing 737 flying over Beirut when the plane dodged a land
to air missile by a hairs-breadth. He was in Kuwait when the Iraqis
invaded at the start of Gulf War I. And yet after all that, the only
time I ever saw him get close to flapping was when we were hijacked by
a group of angry French fishermen while on a Dover to Calais hovercraft
en route to our family holiday (but that's another story).

I say family holiday but in fact, after a nasty experience involving a
mobile home, a swamp and a chemical toilet in Italy in 1984 (also
another story), my mother declared that she was resigning from summer
holiday duty and that we would have to go it alone from now on. So from
then on, every year on 31 July, my father would pack my brother and I
(and often a couple of extras) into the car and drive us across the
channel to a campsite of our choice.

He loved France, even after the Alpine / Algerian experiences, although
he took great pride in speaking French with a Belgian accent to
irritate the natives. Mainly it was the food and drink: the wines, the
coffee, the fish and the stews. It was on these holidays that he taught
me to eat. I had always been quite a picky eater until then, possibly
and in my defense, because of the unspeakable things I'd had to consume
in my formative years in North Africa. In France, he would take me to a
restaurant a day (we gave up cooking on the campsite site after a nasty
incident with a Spaghetti Bolognese, a bucket and a slug but that too,
is another story) and educate me in the delights of moules marinieres,
Chateau Neuf du Pape and Coq au Vin. On holiday, price was no object
when it came to food and I remember him staring at me fondly as, aged
14 ?, I tucked in to a dish of lobster washed down with a half-bottle
of Petit Chablis.

Africa was his favourite place on earth and he encouraged my brother
and I, and later my sister, who appeared in 1986 aged 17 (that, I'm
afraid, is yet another story) to explore the continent too. Once when
Bella (aforementioned sister) was having a hard time in life having
left university after only one term, my dad slapped his credit card on
the kitchen table and told her that she could have a flight to anywhere
in Africa as long as she did something useful while she was out there
and came back with a smile on her face because of it. She went to
Tanzania and spent six months working with elephants and small children
by the banks of lake Kariba and dutifully came back with a grin the
size of an elephant's tusk.

Of all the countries in Africa he loved Ghana. He worked closely with
the government and the forestry commission and had a hand in the
reconstruction of this beautiful place. He was a regular guest of (but
not necessarily the greatest fan of) President Rawlings. After one trip
out there he brought a Ghanaian man called Ben back with him. By this
time we had left London and were living in a sleepy and less than
enlightened village in the Cotswolds and I'm sure dad partly invited
Ben over to see the look on the locals' faces when a six foot three
black man wearing full tribal dress and a pair of spanking new Nike
trainers walked in to the pub. Dad insisted that Ben try English beer
and made the barman pour out a selection of each of the local ales into
a sherry glass for the guy to try.

In the mid-eighties Dad developed diabetes. Not the greatest disease
for someone as fond of food and drink as he. I think he probably made a
conscious decision that he would not allow it to change his life, even
if there were risks involved. Ten years later, as often happens with
diabetics, he began to loose his eye sight. Although it meant that he
had to give up driving (which was fine because he hated it) and reading
(which was not because he loved it) he was resolute that life would
continue as normal. He continued to travel the world and to work as
hard as he always had. It was about this time that I left university
and got my first job running a large English language school in London.
As he was Initially skeptical, I took Dad to my brand new school with
its brass doorknobs and fancy computer equipment to show him that it
really was a worthy career and after that he was dead proud of me -
because he realised that my new place of work was next door to his
favourite pub in the whole world.

That Autumn Mum, Dad and I went to Portugal for a weekend break. I
should at this stage point out that my mother is deaf (started loosing
her hearing at the same time as my dad started loosing his sight). It
was a great weekend, if a little stressful, with me having to hold both
parents hands as we crossed the road, saying, quietly to dad, "No,
there's a car coming" then shouting "NOT YET MUM, THERE'S A CAR
COMING". Yet we ate and drank and had a merry old time.

In 1997 my Dad's health was definitely on the wane. A series of
accidents (I haven't mentioned this before but he was extremely
accident prone), including a broken funny bone, the result of a late
night Curling session with a group of guards from Barlinie Jail in
Aberdeenshire, which he didn't find very amusing, and a septic foot
from a mosquito bite contracted in Ghana, left him deflated. However,
he picked himself up and went on a scheduled trip back to Ghana. He
arrived at his hotel, The Shangrila (which always made us giggle),
called Ben to arrange a dinner for later that evening. He poured
himself a large scotch and lay down on the bed. He was dead when Ben
came to call for him. It was the day after his 52nd birthday.

His was the only funeral I've ever been to where there was as much
laughter as there were tears. Even the vicar, who didn't even know him,
chortled his way through the readings. The place was packed. There were
people from all over the world there. They closed his local pub and
arranged for a minibus to take the regulars up to the crematorium (none
of that lot have drivers licenses for various reasons). You can
probably imagine by now the state of the Wake. He would have loved it.
We got through 135 bottles of wine. My sister snogged my cousin, my
best mate (aged 30) went off with my brother's best mate (aged 19) and
I'm sure it was dad who arranged for a double glazing salesman to call
in the middle of the proceedings - poor guy was mortified, which made
us laugh quite cruelly.

I miss him. But I'm glad that I had him, even if it was only for 25
years. He was a big man with a big life, and he fitted more into his 52
years than most people could fit into 100. It's a shame you never met
him.