‘Did I ever tell about Roses match of ’38?’ said my father to his tiny bored sons. Well, yes - many times. Couldn’t we just play with our Hornby Dubloes? ‘Maurice Leyland came to the crease. The white rose glowed on his cap. And do you know how many we still needed?’ '347 Father!’
We knew it by heart....
 Ian Whitwan |
Father was on One. The cricket story. It may have had the grace and insight of Cardus or Arlott once. If he’d said it once. We’d heard it a thousand times. Did he have amnesia?
He had three stories: three major bees in his bonnet.
One: Yorkshire folk and their cricket team. They were the Chosen Ones. Socialist heroes who emerged blinking and pure from coalmines to slaughter the corrupt pansies of the South. Northern Lads with Northern Grit.
Father would drag us to Lords for the day to see the Tykes trash the Pansies. The scorecard was the Iliad. When each player came to the wicket we were informed of his preternatural gifts, their awesome skills - and from which coalmine they had hailed. We did our 'Listening - while - in - a - coma' faces. Desperate to get ‘yeah’ and ‘no’ in the right place. This went on for six hours. Well, 45 years...
Two: The music of Kathleen Ferrier. A Northern Lass. She probably had a lot of Grit. She certainly had a voice that reduced father to tears. He would wind up the phonograph and unleash ‘Blow The Wind Southerly’ at us. The Divine Kathleen seemed to our cloth ears to be swallowing marbles while frying an egg. She couldn’t hold a candle to The Shangri-Las. We imagined her doing ‘Leader of the Pack’ and got paralytic with mirth. We kept this to ourselves and did 'Coma face'. We wanted our pocket money.
Three: Golf. The Golf Speech was the Killer. ‘I wasn’t sure if I should take a seven at the fourth or a spoon or a wedge at the fifth. I took a nibble for Birdie or a Budgie and was in for an Eagle by the sixth.’
We were in a coma by the third...and Mother in the shed. She took to knitting fields of wool or attacking a mangle. Or she fled to the attic. Or another village. More than my brother and I could do. We had to do all eighteen holes. It was a Russian Novel.
We did ‘Rictus face’, and got the ‘yeahs’ and ‘nos’ all over the place. No matter, we could have said ‘custard’ and he would have ploughed on. I would never become this person. This amnesiac bore.
Wrong. I have done. I do it to my pupils..
‘Did I ever tell you about the time I went to Jerry Lee Lewis’ birthplace?’ I ask a baffled sixth form. Well, yes. Many times. ‘Can’t we do the syllabus Sir?’
Instead of the bees in my bonnet - QPR’S defensive frailties, gangster movies or Sam Phillips and the Hillbilly Tradition -
‘Don’t ask him ten minutes before lunch!’ said her mate the other day, ‘HE MIGHT GO OFF ON ONE! We’ll never eat!’
And to my family. They glaze over. They do ‘Listening faces’. I plough on. Then they’re gone. Wife takes to Dyson. Cat crawls through flap. Children plot exits. Big Daughter winks at Little Sister. Then goes upstairs and rings her on mobile pretending to be Billy the Phantom Boyfriend. Little daughter scarpers. I hear them giggle. They would rather sort out socks or shampoo the cat than endure another looming sermon on the Betrayal of the Working Classes.
I too have Bees in the bonnet. MUSIC. SPORT. GRIT. I seem to have become my father. An Unleasher of Bees.. I know it. I hear them coming. I can’t stop it. Going off on One. Maybe it’s terminal....
Hey you - are you still listening to this?
