My Grandad

My Grandad was born 100 years ago today. And I wanted to mark the occasion.  But not with a “Happy Heavenly Birthday” (that’s just not me) or “if he’d lived, he’d be a hundred today” (because he didn’t, so he won’t be). He died on a beautifully warm June day in 2003, aged 77, and I miss him. Everyone does. Because he was kind and funny and a gentleman and totally devoted to my Grandma and to his family and  he had strong values without being judgemental and he was helpful and selfless and caring and made you feel listened to when you were a kid. And he loved a fart.

One of many things he managed to bestow on me was a forehead you could use as a snooker table if you tilted it back, but which actually slopes at 45 degrees to the horizon, like a solar panel. And each Christmas, he’d take a hat from a cracker and pull it down over that forehead, and it’d tear a bit, because Christmas cracker hats weren’t designed for our family’s heads. And he would wear it all day. Even when he had to work up a sweat putting one of the Grandchildren’s toys together, or washing up after dinner, and the paper hat stuck to his forehead and slowly perished during the evening.

Now that I think of it, the Christmas hat probably started its journey towards sweat saturation during Christmas dinner. Because he loved a roast. Every time he had a roast, though especially my mum’s, his plate adeptly supported an absolute mountain of meat and potatoes and veg and gravy. I seem to remember a fondness for sprouts. I may be wrong, but it would explain a lot. Grandad used to do a great fart. Really healthy smelling too. Sometimes, I do a similar one and it smells exactly like his and it evokes a wonderful memory, real nostalgic and sentimental. That sounds like something a person would say just to get a laugh, but it’s absolutely true, I do these occasional Grandad farts and it’s lovely.

He wouldn’t make a big deal out of farting, he wasn’t ever crude, but he acknowledged a fart with a sense of humour.  There was something about Ronnie Barker that made me think of Grandad. How he’d raise his eyebrows and give you a look to say that was funny or that was a bit odd, or that was louder than expected.

Grandad loved Ireland, where my Grandma was from. In his Sussex accent, he’d pronounce it Are-land and the family over there absolutely loved him. A gentleman, they’d call him and still do. He gave me my first sip of Guinness, in E O’Gara’s in Kilcar, and it was great.  That pub still does the best Guinness I ever have.  One of my favourite songs, and this was Grandad’s absolute favourite, is “The Town I Loved so Well” sung by Paddy Reilly. If you don’t know it, it’s a very moving story about a man returning to his hometown of Derry after the Troubles have begun. Gets me every time, partly because Grandad loved it. And that’s despite having visited Derry for the first time only a few years ago and thinking it’s a bit of a shithole, even now the Troubles are over. 

So in some ways he influenced my taste in music. But not completely. When I bought my first “midi” hi-fi system, with record and tape decks, Grandad asked me to record all his Max Bygraves records to cassette. Bloody hell, that was a long listen. I know he fought briefly at the end of the war, in Burma, but I didn’t think he had been a POW.  Only the Japanese could have come up with such an imaginatively brutal bit of torture as having to listen to hours of Max Bygraves.

Grandad himself was from Eastbourne, not at all like Derry and thus a fun place to visit when we were kids. This meant that Grandad’s team was Brighton, who had very few seasons in the First Division in his lifetime. Nor did Fulham, which was the nearest club to where he and my Grandma raised their family in St John’s Wood. Fulham-Hull was my first ever match, thanks to Grandad who took me. He’d enjoy seeing both Brighton and Fulham doing so well in recent years.

That’s an example of how Grandad would give you his time. Time is always more valuable than money, but he would also secretly slip you a 10p or 50p coin in your hand every time he said goodbye after a visit.  When my Dad pointed this out, how it was done on the quiet, in contrast to people who gave me money and made sure everyone could see, I learned one of many life lessons from both he and Grandad.

I could go on. Or I could recount many other stories shared amongst the family. But no amount of tales can ever do enough justice to the life of someone like my Grandad. Hopefully, these snapshots give you a small idea of that kind and funny gentleman born a hundred years ago today, whose legacy I am fortunate to see in my own children. And the occasional Grandad fart.