Monologue of a Factory Worker.

You never think some people will die. Even after you’re all grown up and know that Santa isn’t real and life isn’t your own little fairyland, you still don’t expect some folk to snuff it. Pop stars, film stars, your family. That sort of thing. That’d be why it was such a shock when my dad fell down dead in Morrisons last Saturday.
I wasn’t with him or nothing, but my mam rang me up, all crying and whimpery and said that his face had gone all twisted and he fell over onto the Easter egg display and wouldn’t get up again. Of course I was all cut up. I’d had my dad my entire life. Who would do dad things with me now? That was when I started thinking all deep and shit. Y’know, about life and carpe-ing the diem and that.

You see my dad never really did much with his life. He had married mam and they had me, but that was it really. He worked the same job at the factory for forty-five years, being passed over for promotions for those degree boys, and only ever seemed happy when he was reading them fantasy books. All about dragons and Kings and that nonsense they were. He loved his books, said he used to want to be a writer. This was before he worked in the factory a’course. He never had time for any of that nonsense once he got a job. He hadn’t wanted to get it, but my mam was knocked up, see, so they had to get married, and you can’t support a family on the odd bit of journalist work. He still read those nonsense books though. Tried to get me to read them with him, but I just liked lookin’ at the pictures.

“I’ll wait until the film comes out” I’d always say.
“But films aren’t as good as the original text!” he’d always say.
“I’m not wasting a month reading something I can see in a few hours” I’d always say.

He never listened. He’s bought me a book for Christmas every year since I was ten. I’ve never touched them. I open them, act all surprised, fake a smile and put them on the shelf. I actually had to make shelves to hold all of the books my dad’s given me over the years. It’s getting a bit ridiculous. I suppose I won’t get another one this year.

But the thing about my dad which really gets me is that he gave it all up for me and mam. He didn’t even have time to write on the side because he was always so tired. It got me thinking about how I’ve never really done much in my own life neither.
See, the thing about them books is that they were somethin’ for him to hold on to, like, and I don’t have nothing like that. I know where my life’s heading and I’m realistic: retirement at sixty-five and babysitting me grandkids. Course I’m overweight, middle aged and depressed like he’s always been, but I don’t see no connection really.
At least, I didn’t until me dad got ill. He got better course, otherwise I wouldn’t a been plannin’ on leavin’ the country, like, but at the time it got me thinkin’ all deep like, about the point of it all, y’know?

Now I’m seeing that I need something to look forward to. Gardening and watching telly all day is nice for the hols, but for my entire twilight years? Nah, I need to find something to do.

That’s what led me to travel. I was reading my Sunday paper like always and just for once instead of throwing it out I opened the travel section. I had a week’s holiday coming up and I thought “d’know, why not?” There was this article about New Zealand in there, and that film being filmed there. Y’know, the one with the little people who got them hairy feet. What’re they called? Hobbits. I only looked because my dad had been banging on about it a few weeks ago. Anyway, I was looking at the pictures and in amongst all these ridiculous fantasy sets, there were pictures of the country. All blue lakes and purple mountains. And I thought to myself, ‘well, it doesn’t look too bad. Maybe dad has a point.’ So I read the article. And then I got my son to look up prices of holidays to New Zealand online – he’s one of these whiz kid computer people. He found some pretty cheap ones, but the holidays looked naff.

So I picked up a few more shifts at the factory. I stopped going down the pub on Friday nights. I started putting some money away, not much mind you, but any spare change ended up in a big pot in the lounge and eventually in a bank account. I’d decided to take my other half for three weeks over our anniversary. The kids are all out of the house by now, off doing degrees and earning a living of their own, so we don’t need to take them with us.

It took me a year and a bit, but I eventually scraped two non-refundable tickets and three weeks in a little cottage next to a lake where we planned to go swimming, fishing, canoeing and sunbathing on the southern island of New Zealand.

I put the tickets on the work surface one morning before getting off to work for the missus to see when she got up to do the dishes. She was delighted.

We packed, got our eldest to look after the cat, gave a spare set of keys to Mrs Norris next door and were set to go for Monday the 14th of March, stopping off at Bangkok for one night, coming back three weeks later on a non-stop flight in business class with BA.

And then, on Sunday the 13th of March mum rings me crying that dad had died. The funeral was in two weeks’ time.

I sat down on top of my suitcase and cried.