My dad was a great man.
They all say that in eulogies at funerals, I know, no matter how accurate the statement (or how deserving) but in this case, I can write it with a hundred percent certainty and with my hand on my heart.
My father was a great man.
There's that Facebook meme which does the rounds now and again. You know the one. You've all seen it - anyone can be a Father, but it takes a special person to be a Dad.
It applied to our Dad too.
Unlucky Cards
Dad passed away on July 25th this year.
Diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease two and a half years ago, the only possible negotiation with the Fates is in the timing: MND is a terminal diagnosis.
In the end, MND wasn't responsible for Dad's passing and that's something he would have been proud of. Neither was it anything to do with his recent diagnosis of Alzheimers. Dad was dealt some pretty unlucky cards late in life - not that he would ever complain - but it was something else entirely which got him in the end.
So, that's it, then
Dad passed away without pain, blissfully unaware of the transition through the veil. We watched him pass at the Queens Med at twenty five past two in the morning. He had a contended look on his face as if he was ready; as if he had made his peace and was ready for the next marathon somewhere in the stars.
As if he had said, well, that's it then.
Earlier, that hot summer's day, it had been business as usual. Whirring about on his mobility scooter, he had lovingly watered the vibrantly coloured plants in his garden in the still of the balmy evening, under the influence of the slowly setting sun, still warm in this most glorious of summers.
Then, when he was satisfied, he came in, sat in front of the telly to watch an episode of his favourite programme, "Last Of The Summer Wine", with a glass of his favourite whisky at his side, and his beloved wife, Mary, who was still busying around the house finishing some last errands before joining him.
In other words, as I wrote, business as usual at the top end of West Bridgford.
Soon after, Dad went to sleep, never to wake up.
He was born in 1942, just after the Blitz, in St Ann's, Nottingham. It's pointless recounting his life from the beginning because a) no biography should start like that and b) Dad tended to ignore most of his early days anyway.
There wasn't much good about it, he told me.
The total lack of money in the post-rationing era of the fifties made for a bleak existence, he said. The Nottingham squalor, the slums, the soot, the spewing chimneys spouting from filthy factories on innocent street corners, the shared baths at the fiery hearth (he was second-last for his dip, of eight), the shared beds used in shifts, inky sheets washed once a week, dried in all weathers on smoky lines behind row after row of terraced houses; living rooms too cramped to accommodate a cat cruelly swung.
He seldom talked about it. He just left it behind. I remember him saying that nostalgia is a liar; it really was Hell after the war.
An intelligent boy, with decent potential, Dad was never bitter about how his beloved mother was forced to turn down his offer of a place at the Becket, the Grammar School, because buying the requisite expensive blazer, shirt, tie and shorts would have left the rest of the family to starve.
And of course, in those days, unless you were posh, there were no grants: So, he went to the local secondary modern like everyone else.
Sparks
Later in life, as an apprentice electrician, he wasn't bitter about the bullying administered to him by older electricians in the name of "toughening up".
He just got on with it. Pulled up his overalls, salved the bruises with Swarfega and got his head down. Worked to get out of it. Worked his ticket.
And over many, many years, tooth and nail, one foothold after another, he made his way up.
No favours. No glittering silver spoon. No nods and no winks. Just sheer bloody minded, back-breaking hard work.
All hours; double shifts, double time on Sundays.
Witness
Dad worked his way slowly up. Ran a business. Made a few quid: Cast a wry smile, on occasion, in the direction of the bullies still in the pub with their fags and best bitter.
Through a frosted lens in which he could see the struggles of a country crippled by the War. And he saw history, He fixed cables through Wilson's white heat. He bent conduit all the way through the bleak midwinter of the three day week, with candles flickering on dinner tables filled with scraped-up tea leaves, piles of Smash and dripping puddles of spaghetti hoops.
He carried ladders under Sunny Jim's gaze, in some discontented winter as his maniacally eye-browed sidekick, Healey, went cap in hand to the Americans for a sub. He fixed brackets under Thatcher, hung flourescent lighting under Major. He saw them all and was still going when they were all gone.
It would be wrong to label him just as a grafter.
Yes, he admired hard work above all else (and hard workers, as his kids and grandkids will confirm). He could graft for hours and hours, yes, but he was a skilled worker.
With his passing, the world has lost yet another bloke from that era who can do just about anything with his hands.
As well as electrical stuff, he could join, weld, fabricate, lay slabs - he laid his own driveway single-handed at seventy - build kitchens and bathrooms, fix the roof, do things with soffits and fascias and fix broken stuff, almost anything.
Like many in my generation, I can barely change a plug without a manual, but I never saw Dad beaten by anything practical (though he disliked plastering).
As with everyone in our family and beyond, I knew he was the first port of call whenever I needed anything.
And he never said no.
No sooner had I picked up the phone, faced with some desperate conundrum to do with leaks and cracks, he was round my place, as if he had been teleported; cap on his head, pencil behind his ear, toolbox in the car.
Magpies
He was always busy.
He set up all sorts of businesses, including Amway. Brewed his own beer and moonshine (a legendary marrow rum talked about in hushed tones). Played football as a left back. Managed a football team to two league titles and a cup triumph in Nottingham's fiercely-contested Amateur leagues. He gardened. He read.
He was a fanatic Notts County man who introduced all his kids and grandkids to Meadow Lane. All of us are supporters because of him - some fanatic.
He never followed Forest, even in that strange era when Nottingham folk attended both clubs. He never hopped on the final bandwagon over the Trent in 1977, something our club has never recovered from.
He told us all that he saw the great Tommy Lawton hover ("he really did - he hovered!") and he told us that he was at the Lane against York in 1947.
He was proud of me when Ultra Violence, my novel/memoir about Notts, achieved a measure of success in 2012 - though I am glad, paradoxically, that he never read it.
Those unlucky cards meant his visits to Notts became infrequent, but he was there this year, at Easter, in the executive boxes against Coventry, with his entire family around him,
We won 2-0, but he saw neither of the goals as the family were having a drink and you can't drink in the boxes at Notts County. He regretted not seeing those goals, particularly as it was to be his last match.
Marathon Man
Marathon running was a great passion and he was a committed member of Holme Pierrepont running club. A hobby taken up when he worked at Heathrow Airport around Concorde and Jumbo Jets, he ran to save money while his contractor colleagues were out on the lash. He was 34.
By the time MND had claimed his left leg, he had run 118 marathons around the world in places like New York, Los Angeles, all the capitals of Europe and even Sydney.
Better than that, he ran the full length of the country with his friend William, running from John O'Groats to Lands End, in three stages.
He was sixty eight: and he didn't want me to tell the press because it wasn't that much of an achievement, according to him.
Crocodiles and Leopards
When he had finally made some cash for himself, he and Mary liked to travel and naturally, he combined this love of travel with his love of running.
Once, on safari, he found himself in a compound in the middle of Zimbabwaen jungle under strict instructions, like everyone else, to stay well behind the fencing.
Outside, said the guards, roamed man-eating lions, leopards, panthers and permanently hungry crocodiles.
All the safarigoers were happy to follow the instructions.
Except one.
You see, Dad had spotted a pathway through the jungle and he couldn't see any reason why a keen runner like him - and an Englishman - shouldn't be able to explore. After all, he had seen guards walk up there and they weren't being eaten!!
So, on went his singlet and headband. On went the New Balance.
Off he went up the pathway - only to be brought back shortly afterwards in the back of a jeep full of seriously angry guards.
The Skoda
Above all, he was a family man, never happier than when taking his three kids on a seventies holiday to Cornwall in an unreliable old Skoda.
I remember the endless summer of 1976, spending two weeks on Fistral Beach in Newquay, probably the best holiday we ever had.
Even when we were flat broke, which was often, he always made sure the family had a holiday like that one in Newquay.
A borrowed caravan in Mablethorpe. A cheap flight to Lloret. Twenty four hours on a coach to Frejus to spend ten days in a tent. An overnight drive down the M5 to Mevagissey and Polperro in a Skoda, which, I vividly remember, was once driven for several miles with a coathanger attached to the accelerator.
And when the overtime began to come in, when us kids got older, Benidorm and Malta.
Summer Holidays
In better times, after a million hours of hard work and the retirement gold watch, he would love nothing more than taking his five beloved grandkids to places like Alton Towers, Drayton Manor, the Leicester Space Centre; closer to home, Go-Karting and Nottingham Arena for the Ice Skating,
They went so often, they could have had season tickets. He adored kids, including those of his neighbours, and when he finally had the time, he took on the job of looking after the grandkids for every summer holiday possible.
He loved it. And all the grandkids loved him.
He was one of those grandads you read about who actually took an interest. Not a Werthers Original grandad on his armchair making things up about the good old days, which weren't actually good old days, but an active grandad never happier than on the ice skates himself or in a go-kart trying to overtake the boys up the inside rail.
I know the grandkids miss him and they always will. He was a massive part of their lives.
Stories
Writing this, I realise that there are so many stories. Like the time when, without childcare for the holidays, he smuggled his kids into Heathrow Airport where he was working on Concorde's overhead washers.
He threw us over the fence when no-one was looking and, at night, hid us in lockers until the security guards and their peering torches had passed.
The hitchhikers he lent money to knowing he was unlikely ever to see it again.
The hitchiker who he took home for dinner at the family table.
The time he fixed up the electrics in a cottage in France on a week's holiday there. For hours and hours, without complaint.
In the end, the stories are in our hearts along with the memories and in the end, Dad knew that all stories come to an end.
It's the one thing all stories have in common.
The Last Goodbye
Tony Barry, our Dad, leaves behind his beloved wife, Mary, my sister Marie, my brother Andrew, the grandchildren, Lee, Ellis, Charlie, Louis and Matthew.
He leaves behind brother Eddie and sister Mary. He leaves behind many friends at the running club, the football club, and in his personal life, including Dale, Lisa, William, Frank, Sheila, Wendy, Terry and Mavis.
I know, with certainty, that his essence is in all our hearts. I know, with equal certainty, that his spirit watches over us. He is sitting this morning, on his cloud in Heaven, a crystal glass of whisky in one hand, silver keys to a new celestial Skoda in the other, a pair of New Balance on his feet, a Notts scarf around his neck.
A permanent smile on his face.
I know this with certainty because this is what he deserved.
Goodbye, Dad. You were special. And a great man.
We'll miss you.
The family xx
PS My wife Emma is enthusiastic enough to listen to new music and she happily shares everything with me because of it. Before we got together, in a conversation about family over endless emails, she once sent me this, by Owl City.
It's called Not All Heroes Wear Capes and it breaks me up every time I hear it.
It says it all for me. This is for you, Dad.
They all say that in eulogies at funerals, I know, no matter how accurate the statement (or how deserving) but in this case, I can write it with a hundred percent certainty and with my hand on my heart.
My father was a great man.
There's that Facebook meme which does the rounds now and again. You know the one. You've all seen it - anyone can be a Father, but it takes a special person to be a Dad.
It applied to our Dad too.
Unlucky Cards
Diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease two and a half years ago, the only possible negotiation with the Fates is in the timing: MND is a terminal diagnosis.
In the end, MND wasn't responsible for Dad's passing and that's something he would have been proud of. Neither was it anything to do with his recent diagnosis of Alzheimers. Dad was dealt some pretty unlucky cards late in life - not that he would ever complain - but it was something else entirely which got him in the end.
So, that's it, then
As if he had said, well, that's it then.
Earlier, that hot summer's day, it had been business as usual. Whirring about on his mobility scooter, he had lovingly watered the vibrantly coloured plants in his garden in the still of the balmy evening, under the influence of the slowly setting sun, still warm in this most glorious of summers.
Then, when he was satisfied, he came in, sat in front of the telly to watch an episode of his favourite programme, "Last Of The Summer Wine", with a glass of his favourite whisky at his side, and his beloved wife, Mary, who was still busying around the house finishing some last errands before joining him.
In other words, as I wrote, business as usual at the top end of West Bridgford.
Soon after, Dad went to sleep, never to wake up.
Home and Hearth
There wasn't much good about it, he told me.
The total lack of money in the post-rationing era of the fifties made for a bleak existence, he said. The Nottingham squalor, the slums, the soot, the spewing chimneys spouting from filthy factories on innocent street corners, the shared baths at the fiery hearth (he was second-last for his dip, of eight), the shared beds used in shifts, inky sheets washed once a week, dried in all weathers on smoky lines behind row after row of terraced houses; living rooms too cramped to accommodate a cat cruelly swung.
He seldom talked about it. He just left it behind. I remember him saying that nostalgia is a liar; it really was Hell after the war.
And of course, in those days, unless you were posh, there were no grants: So, he went to the local secondary modern like everyone else.
Sparks
Later in life, as an apprentice electrician, he wasn't bitter about the bullying administered to him by older electricians in the name of "toughening up".
He just got on with it. Pulled up his overalls, salved the bruises with Swarfega and got his head down. Worked to get out of it. Worked his ticket.
And over many, many years, tooth and nail, one foothold after another, he made his way up.
No favours. No glittering silver spoon. No nods and no winks. Just sheer bloody minded, back-breaking hard work.
All hours; double shifts, double time on Sundays.
Witness
Through a frosted lens in which he could see the struggles of a country crippled by the War. And he saw history, He fixed cables through Wilson's white heat. He bent conduit all the way through the bleak midwinter of the three day week, with candles flickering on dinner tables filled with scraped-up tea leaves, piles of Smash and dripping puddles of spaghetti hoops.
He carried ladders under Sunny Jim's gaze, in some discontented winter as his maniacally eye-browed sidekick, Healey, went cap in hand to the Americans for a sub. He fixed brackets under Thatcher, hung flourescent lighting under Major. He saw them all and was still going when they were all gone.
Lost Skills
It would be wrong to label him just as a grafter.
Yes, he admired hard work above all else (and hard workers, as his kids and grandkids will confirm). He could graft for hours and hours, yes, but he was a skilled worker.
With his passing, the world has lost yet another bloke from that era who can do just about anything with his hands.
As well as electrical stuff, he could join, weld, fabricate, lay slabs - he laid his own driveway single-handed at seventy - build kitchens and bathrooms, fix the roof, do things with soffits and fascias and fix broken stuff, almost anything.
Like many in my generation, I can barely change a plug without a manual, but I never saw Dad beaten by anything practical (though he disliked plastering).
As with everyone in our family and beyond, I knew he was the first port of call whenever I needed anything.
And he never said no.
No sooner had I picked up the phone, faced with some desperate conundrum to do with leaks and cracks, he was round my place, as if he had been teleported; cap on his head, pencil behind his ear, toolbox in the car.
Magpies
He was always busy.
He set up all sorts of businesses, including Amway. Brewed his own beer and moonshine (a legendary marrow rum talked about in hushed tones). Played football as a left back. Managed a football team to two league titles and a cup triumph in Nottingham's fiercely-contested Amateur leagues. He gardened. He read.
He was a fanatic Notts County man who introduced all his kids and grandkids to Meadow Lane. All of us are supporters because of him - some fanatic.
He never followed Forest, even in that strange era when Nottingham folk attended both clubs. He never hopped on the final bandwagon over the Trent in 1977, something our club has never recovered from.
He told us all that he saw the great Tommy Lawton hover ("he really did - he hovered!") and he told us that he was at the Lane against York in 1947.
He was proud of me when Ultra Violence, my novel/memoir about Notts, achieved a measure of success in 2012 - though I am glad, paradoxically, that he never read it.
Those unlucky cards meant his visits to Notts became infrequent, but he was there this year, at Easter, in the executive boxes against Coventry, with his entire family around him,
We won 2-0, but he saw neither of the goals as the family were having a drink and you can't drink in the boxes at Notts County. He regretted not seeing those goals, particularly as it was to be his last match.
Marathon Man
Marathon running was a great passion and he was a committed member of Holme Pierrepont running club. A hobby taken up when he worked at Heathrow Airport around Concorde and Jumbo Jets, he ran to save money while his contractor colleagues were out on the lash. He was 34.
By the time MND had claimed his left leg, he had run 118 marathons around the world in places like New York, Los Angeles, all the capitals of Europe and even Sydney.
Better than that, he ran the full length of the country with his friend William, running from John O'Groats to Lands End, in three stages.
He was sixty eight: and he didn't want me to tell the press because it wasn't that much of an achievement, according to him.
Crocodiles and Leopards
Once, on safari, he found himself in a compound in the middle of Zimbabwaen jungle under strict instructions, like everyone else, to stay well behind the fencing.
Outside, said the guards, roamed man-eating lions, leopards, panthers and permanently hungry crocodiles.
All the safarigoers were happy to follow the instructions.
Except one.
You see, Dad had spotted a pathway through the jungle and he couldn't see any reason why a keen runner like him - and an Englishman - shouldn't be able to explore. After all, he had seen guards walk up there and they weren't being eaten!!
So, on went his singlet and headband. On went the New Balance.
Off he went up the pathway - only to be brought back shortly afterwards in the back of a jeep full of seriously angry guards.
The Skoda
Above all, he was a family man, never happier than when taking his three kids on a seventies holiday to Cornwall in an unreliable old Skoda.
I remember the endless summer of 1976, spending two weeks on Fistral Beach in Newquay, probably the best holiday we ever had.
Even when we were flat broke, which was often, he always made sure the family had a holiday like that one in Newquay.
A borrowed caravan in Mablethorpe. A cheap flight to Lloret. Twenty four hours on a coach to Frejus to spend ten days in a tent. An overnight drive down the M5 to Mevagissey and Polperro in a Skoda, which, I vividly remember, was once driven for several miles with a coathanger attached to the accelerator.
And when the overtime began to come in, when us kids got older, Benidorm and Malta.
Summer Holidays
They went so often, they could have had season tickets. He adored kids, including those of his neighbours, and when he finally had the time, he took on the job of looking after the grandkids for every summer holiday possible.
He loved it. And all the grandkids loved him.
He was one of those grandads you read about who actually took an interest. Not a Werthers Original grandad on his armchair making things up about the good old days, which weren't actually good old days, but an active grandad never happier than on the ice skates himself or in a go-kart trying to overtake the boys up the inside rail.
I know the grandkids miss him and they always will. He was a massive part of their lives.
Stories
He threw us over the fence when no-one was looking and, at night, hid us in lockers until the security guards and their peering torches had passed.
The hitchhikers he lent money to knowing he was unlikely ever to see it again.
The hitchiker who he took home for dinner at the family table.
The time he fixed up the electrics in a cottage in France on a week's holiday there. For hours and hours, without complaint.
In the end, the stories are in our hearts along with the memories and in the end, Dad knew that all stories come to an end.
It's the one thing all stories have in common.
The Last Goodbye
He leaves behind brother Eddie and sister Mary. He leaves behind many friends at the running club, the football club, and in his personal life, including Dale, Lisa, William, Frank, Sheila, Wendy, Terry and Mavis.
I know, with certainty, that his essence is in all our hearts. I know, with equal certainty, that his spirit watches over us. He is sitting this morning, on his cloud in Heaven, a crystal glass of whisky in one hand, silver keys to a new celestial Skoda in the other, a pair of New Balance on his feet, a Notts scarf around his neck.
A permanent smile on his face.
I know this with certainty because this is what he deserved.
Goodbye, Dad. You were special. And a great man.
We'll miss you.
The family xx
PS My wife Emma is enthusiastic enough to listen to new music and she happily shares everything with me because of it. Before we got together, in a conversation about family over endless emails, she once sent me this, by Owl City.
It's called Not All Heroes Wear Capes and it breaks me up every time I hear it.
It says it all for me. This is for you, Dad.
Every son deserves a father like the one you had; not every son (or daughter) gets one. How lovely that you can arrive at the end of a man's life and feel, with such love and honor, so powerfully and passionately. To me there is nothing more important the leaving a legacy such as your father's for his children and grand children... what a wonderfully successful man.
ReplyDeleteAnd what a wonderfully successful life beautifully memorialized in this piece, Mark.
Such beautiful words Mark and you were blessed to have such a loving and inspirational dad xx
ReplyDeleteBeautiful, and heartbreaking x
ReplyDelete