A reflective fathers day this year. Later this week it is twenty five years since my father died. Twenty five years, a quarter of a century! I got the call and drove my battered Ford Escort flat out from London to Southport and he died in our arms. It was shortly after David Platt scored the winner for England against Belgium (he loved football), and with Pavarotti singing Nessum Dorma. He was only 71, but of a different generation to most of my friends’ fathers.
My father never met my children, or saw the internet, or computers or mobile phones. He would have loved Sky Sports News and have been utterly bewildered by most of what we think is normal today. I was pondering Periscope today and have no idea how that could have been explained to him. He fought in the war and would never talk about it, saying simply that he had seen things that no-one should see. He didn’t like ‘foreign’ food – “Tried it in the war, didn’t like it”, so my mother used to slip garlic in when he wasn’t looking.
He hit his tennis serve by holding the racquet like a frying pan, drawing it down on the ball to give it acute backspin. When he his a forehand his right leg went up in the air. He was truly awful at DIY. My father loved small children, but didn’t understand anyone over 5 years old; and teenagers, oh the battles!
William Thomas (Terry) Terrett was a cool man with a dry sense of humour. He worked hard for his family and kept little for himself. He offered little encouragement when we were growing up but was rarely critical.He retired at 63 and within a few years began to fade, badly. I have always thought, that like many of his generation, the war broke something in him that could never be unbroken. When military service ended, work began. When work ended there was little left.
My father was a maths genius. We used to race to add up vast lists of numbers from his Sales Conferences, him by hand and, me on a calculator. He was never wrong, and always faster. In another life he would have taken the University place denied him as a youth and then who knows?
There have been many times when I needed his guidance in the last twenty five years and have just had to work things out myself, today I feel it more than usual.
As Leonard Cohen sang “It’s Fathers Day and everybody’s wounded”
Copernican inversions and other engaging nonsense 