


“Like Mother’s Day, only cheaper!”
My Dad wrote that joke decades ago and never, ever missed the opportunity to retell it.
I will stick this line into the show if I remember that Father’s Day is imminent. I wouldn’t do it throughout the year because that just wouldn’t make sense. Although I am now thinking that perhaps I am throwing away a perfectly good laugh. After all, there is a Mother’s Day reference in the show so why not follow up with this beauty?
I have just remembered another joke Dad wrote for me. This one is about the moon landing and I often forget to bring it out for its annual outing because I can never recall the date. Google just informed me that they set off on July 16th and landed on the 20th. My son, Thomas, arrived on the 16th of July so the reminder is six feet tall and always asking for pocket money.
“Neil (Armstrong – you’d have been OK with just ‘Neil’ right?) wandered the moon, the first man ever to do such a thing, and suddenly remembered that he had forgotten the flag, went back to the rocket, climbed the steps, knocked on the door and Buzz asked, ‘Who is it?’.”
Love it. It’s a classic Charlie Adams joke.
It’s just hit me that the initials for my new blog adventure are the same as my Dad’s. You’d think I’d have spotted that sooner!
This blog has already taken one heck of a tangent but we’ve started it with a couple of laughs and my act is now a minute or two longer.
Father’s Day can be hard for some for a number of reasons. Not for me. When my Dad passed away eleven years ago there wasn’t anything I hadn’t told him, many times over. I didn’t need a special day to serve as a reminder to tell my Dad I loved him. I told him. A lot.
Now I am a dad myself and I suspect if you asked my kids what kind of dad I am you would get two different answers. Lucy is a Daddy’s Girl. From the start we have always spent time together finding fun things to do. Our most recent Daddy Daughter day was three days long, in Paris. It was an absolute joy. Lucy is a wonderful travel partner with a list of places she is keen to tick off, including but not limited to Japan, Dubai and NYC.
Thomas may have a different story. I have struggled to adapt to Thomas and his condition for a long time and sometimes I am too hard on myself and think I have let him down. I spent too long trying to emulate the relationship with my boy that I enjoyed with my Dad. I think now I realise this was an impossible dream. Our relationship was unique. Thomas is sixteen next month and things are as good as they have ever been. He mocks me, a lot, mostly for being old and short but I’ll take that. If you can make fun of someone, you generally feel comfortable around them. We play basketball, rugby, badminton and more recently football which gives me, us, another chance to bond. When it is just the two of us we talk, laugh and genuinely enjoy each other’s company. He is a West Ham fan now and when I asked why he had picked West Ham he told me:
“It was the closest Premier League team to me geographically that wasn’t Crystal Palace.”
I have been a Palace fan since 1986 and what son wants to support the same team as his father? Not my Dad, the Adamses were staunch Glasgow Rangers fans, all of them, so naturally Dad decided his loyalties lay elsewhere and opted for Falkirk FC. It’s unclear if Dad ever saw them live but he could rattle of the first XI from the 1957 Scottish Cup final which they won 2-1 after a replay. Thanks again Mr Google.
A few months after Dad passed away I went on to the Falkirk FC website. I was after a replica shirt and began my search. The size I needed was ‘unexpectedly out of stock’. I laughed out loud because the club’s motto was to ‘expect the unexpected’. I still follow Falkirk to this day.
When I started this piece it was Father’s Day. Lucy texted me to wish me a good one but I haven’t heard from Thomas yet. That one line should tell you all you need to know. But I will never give up. And Thomas knows I am here for him whenever he needs.
In its own way our relationship is unique.
I may not have got a text from my son but I got socks. Socks with pigs wearing headphones on them. I love ‘em.
A couple of years ago, on March 25th, the music world lost one of their own. Taylor Hawkins was the heartbeat of the Foo Fighters and died after a drugs overdose leaving behind family, friends and band mates. His son was 16 years old when he lost his dad and impressively, to me, he played a major role in the concert put on to pay tribute to his father. He played the drums in front of 80,000 people. The song? My Hero. I was in bits watching it. That clip can be seen here.
I wrote a blog about it which you can find here if you’d like to read it. I was in bits and mad. Shane had managed to pay the ultimate tribute to his dad within a year and here am I more than a decade after losing my own Dad and That Bloody Book still isn’t complete. I haven’t written much for it recently and the truth is there isn’t much more needed to be added, just the edit and an introduction. I wonder now as I pause why it’s not done and the only reason I can fathom is fear, the fear that once finished, proofed and out there it’ll be over, the greatest project of my life. Done!
I guess that I could always blog about it!
Perhaps this should be my target release day. What better day to put out a book in tribute to the relationship I shared with my Dad than to tell the world on Father’s Day.
Now that is a deadline!


Comments 7
Love it 😀
Author
Thanks for reading it.
Another brilliant mix of personal insights, absorbing information, emotion and , of course, humour!
Author
Again thanks so much for taking the time to read it.
Another excellent piece of writing from both heart and brain. If you know what I mean. It made more sense in my own brain before I wrote it.
Thanks Paul. Reminded me of the last line of my Dad’s eulogy which floored me at the time despite me writing it: “His biggest achievement in my eyes is that I strive every day to make my own children feel the same way about me as I always will about him. In that way he will live on in all of us.”
Nice one again my friend did anyone ever tell you,you have a way with words 😁
Author
Thank you Kev, from you that means a whole lot to me. Thank you for taking the time to read it.