WHEN THE OLD MAN DIED (Part Two: it's a mystery to me!)

I liked me dad. He was me dad. Can’t say I really knew the man, but he was still me dad! Must be tough if you can’t even like the guy who fizzled you out of his loins and popped you food and shelter for the next eighteen years. One of the only two people I’d taken for granted all my life. I’d like to include my older brother, who has obviously been around since I was born, but truth be told I’d never apply to him for a grant. We were obviously never as close as I once liked to think we were. Till that afternoon he left me alone at the bus-stop, went off with his mates and I never saw him again except when he came back for meals, which we always ate separately, reading comic-books or watching television. The whole family ate separately, reading comic-books or watching tele’. Me dad worked ‘shifts” at the glass-factory, sometimes double-time, so we we were never sure when he was going to be around or not.

Before I’d turned teenager the family did try Sunday dinners together, sitting round the kitchen-table awkwardly discussing the News of the World, but by post=puberty we’d let that go. Plus me dad had started his Sunday lunchtime ritual down at The Smawthorne Working Mens’ Club having a few pints with me uncles and some of his mates, so nobody wanted to postpone our dinner till he got back from the pub. By two-thirty everybody vanished, left me dad to eat his Yorkshire Pudding in peace watching “Match of the Day”. Cause he could get a bit testy when he was toasted. We’d stay out of his way till he’d had his after-dinner nap, and by then it was time for Sunday Night at the London Palladium and nobody wanted to start an argument while Bruce Forsyth was trying to “beat his clock” on national television! ****

I’m not sure my brother even liked me dad. At our infrequent sibling gatherings, he’d always finish up scuttling him as a mean-spirited miserable bugger with a vicious streak, a petty tyrant who would one day get his comeuppance! I think I must have missed something when we were kids. Apparently my brother took most of me dad’s heat, actually felt “the belt”, I just felt its’ threat, cause he could be a scary bastard.. But I always figured that’s what dads are like. I mean, you work all hours od the day and night in a factory come home to three kids..? This is just what dads are like. And mams are not like that. Mams are always a bit of a pushover, cause they don’t do anything all day, just cook meals and vacuum, sip lemon-water and read women’s magazines…It was the dad who threatened with the belt and told you to “get your hair cut, you look like a girl!!!” Mams just suggested things : “you’d look so much nicer with your top-button fastened…Tuck your shirt in?” If things seemed to be getting seriously out of control she’d threaten to tell me dad, “I’m going to tell your dad!” Cause he could be a tough scary bugger! Maybe he learned that in a war. Or being raised by a tough scary bastard in a council slum. He never talked about his childhood. You take what you’re given and you make the best of it. Full stop.

Post-war victorious England in the early 1950’s was a mercilessly rationed place if you hadn’t financially profited by it. Not a mile away from where I was raised in a relatively cozy little council-house rental, families were scavenging and existence in Dickensian make-shift hovels, drinking out of jam-jars, down by the river in the scrubby wastelands girding the Fryston colliery. A breeding ground for tough scary bastard bullies who prowled the nether regions of Airedale, to be avoided at all costs. The highest achievement for a Castleford working-man was finding a job which didn’t take you down the coal-pits, if you couldn’t do that you’d likely find yourself nibbling along with the rats. Me dad took a job in the Lumbs’ glass-factory and stuck to it. Eventually trickled himself up from packing crates through sorting bottles to “quality-control” and into management, passed off “the clock” and into “salary”, doffed his jeans and bicycle-clips and donned suit and tie as a management “trouble-shooter”, on call 24 / 7. So we still never knew when he was going to be around or not. He seemed to thrive on responsibility and took serious responsibility for it, firm but fair. He seemed to be a well-respected man, and he respected himself for this. I can respect that. Before “facebook” you knew how many friends you had by how many people knew your first name and said hello to you whenever you promenaded downtown.

Meanwhile the apparently unruffled wealthy were trickling down their investments into Woolworth’s, cheap synthetic everythings and television for all! Austerity was the order of the day, the tax-payers needed to pay back the country’s war-debt, the price of victory! “Higher Purchase” HP credit-loans opened up all manner of cheap synthetic possibilities and “life insurance” was a must, in case there was another war, blitzkrieg hunger and homelessness always just around the corner. More than for Jesus, you needed to thank God for church jumble-sales and charity handouts. The world was changing. Everything had changed except the rich still got rich and the poor still got got poorer. But in the meantime, in between time, “ain’t we got fun!” Saturday nights at the local palais and Sunday Night at the London palladium! And always the dream of rags to riches. Or at least lower-class to middle-class, field-slave to house-slave. Given that any aristocratic possibilities had been pre-empted at birth…

It was at his funeral I first learned, from the vicar, that me dad had volunteered to join the Navy when he was seventeen years’ old, lied about his age, cause he really wanted to fight for his country against the Nazis. Truth or legend? It sounds good if you want to boost somebody’s post-humous morale. But I’m not convinced he was taking pride in his heritage as trying to get out from under the shadow of his own dad, my bald-headed ex-pig-slaughtering grandfather, most definitely a scary mean-spirited bugger with a vicious streak, docked his kids down in a wage-slave slum and telled ‘em to “just bloody get on with it! Tha’s like a big babby!!” Sorry, grand-dad, I am two years’ old, you know?” Either way it was me dad’s big chance to “see the world”, from the deck of an aircraft-carrier : the HMS Indomitable! Or was it “Inscrutable”? “Indescribable”? Something like that.

I remember poring wondrously through his souvenir war photos. Him in his ailor-suit with his best ship-mate “Shorty”, who seemed to be a bit taller than he was. The harbor at Singapore, very exotic, lots of junks! Crossing the Equator for the first time, all these able-bodied seamen dressed up as painted ladies being dunked into a big tin-tub of water, it’s a man’s life in the navy! (At least when you’re crossing the Equator?) But my favorite was this wreckage of a “kamikaze” pilot crashed his plane into the top-deck, sent himself up in flames to ensure that his rising sun never set and his kith-and-kinfolk could have a bigger plate of Sushi! Kamikaze! The very word sent shivers down me developing spine! The Suicide Mission! The ultimate warrior-creed. I’d seen these Japanese blokes in the comic-books, with their big owl goggles and their banzai teeth. Kamikaze! Talk about having your brain washed, these “Japs” seemed to have had their whole beings deep-steam-cleaned! I mean, the English “Tommy” would go “over the top” when ordered to on pain of death, but you always assumed they hoped beyond hope they’d survive the battle. These nefarious Nipponese let go all hope on this earth and dared to enter that crash-landing like it was the gateway to paradise, through a furnace of fire and smoke, molten metal and hopefully a lot of mutilated mangled enemy bodies! We must destroy the enemy at all costs!

But who made the enemy the enemy? Obviously the enemy did, cause in a war everybody is somebody’s enemy. There are two sides of equal value in every equation. And the “good guys” can never win, cause after a war everybody’s done something bad, if only condoned it, encouraged it or conscientiously objected to it, in which case the whole country is your enemy as well as the other enemy! Sometimes we just have to fight for what’s ours! Even if what’s ours very often used to be theirs. And what belongs to everybody just won’t stand up in a court of law! Otherwise we’d all be part of the same equation. X can’t equal Y unless Y becomes X, but Y would Y want to become X, if not to eliminate the equal sign altogether? And what about all them A’s through W’s? Collateral damage? Not to mention that poor Z dangling at the end like some participle can’t even define its’ own subject! I’ve always felt a remarkable affinity for the Z, at the end of the alphabet and still not sure why X should mark the spot anymore than a good P! It’s a mystery to me…

And to Albert Einstein…. Cause apparently on his death-bed those were his last words : “it’s a mystery to me!” Didn’t proffer up any revelatory equation, just a shrug of enlightened incomprehensibility : “it’s a mystery to me!” genius obviously has its’ limitations. besides, the last time I gave you a good equation it landed with a big bang on top of Hiroshima!!

Sometimes I think we’re all on a suicide mission, seeking something more glorious to die for than mere physical disintegration. Them kamikazes, at least they passed into eternity with a muscle still rippling! I’ve always thought it could be argued that jesus committed suicide. All He had to do was deny He was the Son of God…”Just kidding, Mr. Pilate, sir, Pontius, just havin’ a bit of a lugh! I was being metaphorical… Cause in truth we’re all the sons of God! Except the daughters, of course…And the sons of Allah… Different God altogether, must be, otherwise what’s the fuss all about?? God by any other name would still rule over everything, otherwise doesn’t deserve the name, may as well just call Him King Reggie, ruler of all the lands north of the Mississippi, or south of the Mississippi..? Depends which direction he invades from??? Jesus, life gets complicated once you start elaborating on the basics! And speaking of Jesus with a gun or grenade in your hand doesn’t seem much of a recipe for peace on earth!

Anyway, back from a war, what’s a poor chap to do but try to settle down in peace! Get a job, get married and raise a family.. Jesus, I made a baby! I must be a man and should put childish things behind me, sell me accordion and behave accordionlessly! Work my way to the tope, become a leader of men : Barry Fairclough, Jackie Carr, Ernie Sidebottom, they’d follow me to the ends of a pop-bottle! I wonder at what point did me dad decide he wasn’t destined for greatness? Not on any terms the mediated world might recognize. I wonder at what point I decided I wasn’t meant for greatness? maybe yesterday afternoon, when this fella flipped me the finger for cutting him off at the intersection? Like I was just anybody, some random idiot who really ought to be more aware of his fellow human-beings, keep in touch with the rankling file of a humanity which persistently insists on treating me just like one of their own!

But he did good, me dad, he did OK, kind of kept his shit together to the end. I remember only one time when the familiar nucleus really seemed to be flying off its’ hinges. I was too young to remember any details, but there was a lot of yelling and screaming which finished up with me dad locking me mam outside in the backyard in the dark. When he finally allowed her back in, she was in tears. And I’d never seen me mam cry before. Can break a little kid’s heart. I guess things were sorted out somehow. But it must have left its’ scars. In hindsight I reflect maybe this was the moment I realized I wasn’t meant to follow in me dad’s footsteps, not if this is where they led, I wasn’t meant to join the Navy, fight for my country in a war, get married, work in a factory, raise a family. I needed to follow different cultural imperatives.

So maybe I’m in denial. Strange thing about denial, you could be in denial you’re in denial or in denial you’re not in denial. there’s no denying there are some things you might prefer to forget : the fear, the dread, the darkness, the violence. But if they were real then, they must still be real now, and consigning them to the past or me mam and dad’s fault is a bit like blaming your left foot for not being on the right leg! Or expecting a time-machine to solve all your problems…

Besides, unless it’s also a space-machine, you never know where you might finish up, not always back where you started? So you really have to do your homework : make sure you don’t start of at the bottom of the ocean or in the middle of a very big bang, otherwise you could be traveling around forever too scared to ever set foot outside. So you’ll definitely need a full tank of gas or ether or vegetable-oil, whatever fuel time seems to run on…Can’t be natural energy, which doesn’t seem geared for never growing old and dying, so you really have to think synthetic… To know when you’ve really arrived somewhere else and it’s not just here and now, I mean, you can’t be in two places at the same time, you’d need a machine involving elements of split personality.. ”Where’s Charlie?” “He’s in the Middle Ages! He should be back by Thursday.” “It’s already Thursday.” “Hey, time flies when you’re traveling through it! besides, I though I was Charlie???”

Doesn’t it just blow the corpuscles off your blood-cells when somebody tells you we’re going to get it right this time! With the benefit of hindsight, we now have perfect foresight. We’ve got a time-machine to tell us where we went wrong last time! And everybody is so excited by it, absolutely everybody, the whole world! Except for the ones who’ve never heard of it, don’t listen to the News, which planet are they living on!?? You could wake up one morning and everybody’s disappeared and you’ll be wondering why you weren’t invited?? Well, you didn’t listen to the News, NPR would have told you..

We’re all in a little Viennese bistro circa 1937, schmoozing on some authentic Bohemian Rhapsody! Der wiener schnitzel ist vunderful! Die Schnapps out of this welt!! Trust me, this is an experience you vill not vish to mish!! Eine beite that Apflestrudel you’ll dinken you are in heaven!!!! When really you are in Nazi Germany.. But sometimes we just have to step outside of history and appreciate the here-and-now simply for what it is, an opportunity for fine-dining! So NPR has arranged a very special evening for its’ members. For a small donation of a few thousand dollars you can experience some of the finest cuisine in the Third Reich! For a few million more you can actually dine with Der Fuhrer himself, Adolph Hitler. Who I’m told, apart from his politics, is one of the most scinitillating after-dinner speakers in the western civilized world! Just don’t mention the Jews and he’ll keep you in stitches all night! So call us now and make your reservation, cause I’m told tickets are selling like hot blitzkriegen!!

If anyone is ever wondering what happened to all those frontier snake-oil salesmen…? belive me, they’re still out there hawking their placebos and convincing you it’s a magic show!

But what does this have to do with me dad dying? Hey, it’s a mystery to me!

NB. I performed a version of this at a theatre festival in Northern England, mistakenly assuming my family and relatives might choose to share it with me. None of them attended. I suspected they suspected I might prove embarrassing. I suspect they may have tuned in had it been beamed out on the BBC or live at the London Palladium, so at least I’d have professional accreditation even as an embarrassing idiot.. A bit like Bruce Forsyth, now Sir Bruce Forsyth, an oily-slick jutting-chinned skeletally mannequined comedian and game-show host who achieved national celebrity with his catch-phrase “I’m in charge!!” Apparently old ladies loved him.. Including the Queen?

A young critic at my performance, apart from commenting that I had long hair “for someone my age”, also berated the presentation for going too much off point. But I’ve always opted for the unabridged Herman Melville approach of digressive connectedness. If you know exactly where you’re going to end up, you can take as much time as you want to get there. Death demands a very temporal and fully contextual consideration.