Sunday will
come and go and I will miss father's day as am off to London. So here is my
tribute to my dad, don't worry he is still alive and kicking at 80 years old.
My daddy
used to carry me over seaweed at beach holidays as I was utterly petrified of
the seething bubbly alien mass covered in blue bottles. It was basically moving
and buzzing embedded in the sand and the thought of standing on dirty flies
scared me to death, so he would lift me up all the way down to the water.
Then as I
saw the roaring ocean, I would need the toilet and he would carry me all the
way back up the beach to do a pee, as I cried behind a big stone, convinced a
blue bottle would come near my bare bum.
He had three
other older kids to tend to, but he had to devote this entire time to me,
probably worried sick his other kids were drowning.
That's my
dad.
In the early
60s before anyone else had one, my daddy made me a skateboard. Yes, an actual
skateboard with roller skate wheels attached to the bottom. I managed to stand
on it, roll down a hill crashed into a parked lorry and smashed my two front
teeth into my upper lip.
We had no
car in inner city Glasgow, so he ran all the way to the doctors with me in his
arms, spewing blood and teeth. He worked in a steel factory, five days a week,
so this must have been his day off.
My dad could
repair television's and radio's and even built a whole stereo system way before
it's time and he taught me how to solder circuit boards.
One summer's
day as he lay in bed off the night shift, 30 kids in our street played
rounder's and a stray dog attacked me, biting into my flesh, my dad identified
my scream from all the other kids. He leapt from his bed and ran with my
bleeding hand to the doctors, I am sure you recognise a recurring theme here.
One winter
night I was crossing the road to the church going to the Brownie's for my road
safety badge, and yes....you guessed it, I got knocked down with a car.....my
dad arrived on the scene and promptly attacked the speeding driver and sat in
an ambulance with both me and the man he beat up for hitting his daughter with
a car. He kept slapping the driver, all the way to the hospital. That's my dad.
My dad left
my mum when I was 12 years old and every weekend he met me off the bus to give
me money and share a supper. He reminded me how much he loved me and missed me.
The day my
mother was found dead in the River Clyde my dad sat in my house and held me for
hours as I sat in shock.
My dad
walked the length of a hospital corridor the night I gave birth and cried out
loud as the labour went onto for 48 hours or more. When he saw his granddaughter
with her tufts of dark hair, he tenderly lifted her up and whispered "why
did you take so long for me to hold you?".
When my
daughter was ten she went missing after going to the shops and we had to call
the police. You can imagine the terror and shock this caused.
For four
hours she was in a new friend's garden in the West End of Glasgow oblivious to
the trouble she had caused, and playing on a bike. My dad ran up and down the
Byres Rd with a photo of Ashley, stopping everyone and asking them to look at
the picture. The police didn't find Ashley, my dad did. She walked out of a
garden and into his arms, wondering why her granddad was running about with a
photo of her. He bought her a bike.
My dad sat
in a court in 1996 and watched me give evidence against a man who sexually
abused me as a kid, he wept buckets throughout the whole ordeal. He stood outside the court room and waited for
me as I walked out of the witness box and he apologised for not protecting me
from this man who was his brother in law.
He told me he was so proud of me for standing
up there and telling the truth and being brave. I assured him he didn't need to
apologise to me, that he was a great dad and I was proud of him.
The court
officials all stood back as we both wept.
I hugged him
tight and he whispered to me "want to leave here, go to the beach? Don't
worry I will carry you over the seaweed"
Happy
Father's Day Daddy.
