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It’s late, and the music’s on low..
Oh man. You know how music has that power to totally transport you back in time, and drop you into a memory so vivid that it’s like you’re living through it again? I’m sitting here surfing and randomly clicking on songs in iTunes and BAM!! I’m right back there.
What I’m listening to is the soundtrack to Cal, which is a Mark Knopfler one. I remember that I heard the soundtrack long before I ever saw the film (which is based around a young lad called Cal, who gets drawn deeper and deeper into the IRA) and it was always just music. Then when I saw the film, I began to know the scenes associated with each track.
Cal and his father don’t get on all that well, but there’s one scene of real affection and tenderness between them and it’s the piece of music - called Father and Son - that I’ve just heard and which has triggered this outpouring.
This isn’t the only track that triggers this feeling; there are others such as Sailing by Rod Stewart, Solisbury Hill by Peter Gabriel, Another Man’s Cause by The Levellers and more which have this connection in me between fathers and sons.
I never knew my father - he died in a motorcycle accident when I was just a baby. Nobody really talked about him as I was growing up and I never asked; I’ve never really been that inquisitive. I know that he died around the beginning of November, because Guy Fawkes night always seemed tense - I just never knew why.
But even though I never knew him, I would sometimes wonder what my life might have been like had he been around. Sometimes when I was angry at my Mum, I would wish that he was there to take my side. When I got to that sort of age, I wished that I had someone to take me out for a pint, or teach me to drive, or how to shave, or any one of a hundred things that fathers are supposed to do with sons.
I said that no-one really spoke of him; that’s not quite right. Whenever I’d managed to really piss my Mum off (which happened more and more as I got older) she’d tell me that I was just like my father. I remember telling her once that what did she expect? Weren’t sons supposed to take after their fathers? (All I can say now is that if I do take after my Dad, he was a miserable sod with no tolerance who didn’t make friends easily, didn’t keep the ones he did make and was completely unsociable!)
My paternal grandparents didn’t speak about him all that much either, and I never really understood why. Perhaps the wound of his loss never really healed, perhaps they wanted to protect me. I don’t know. What I do know is that I regret not asking them about him. All I really know about him from them is that he was a sucker for my Nan’s lemon meringue pie (just like I was, when she was finally able to bring herself to make them again, which she couldn’t for years after he died) and that she didn’t trust him to wire the plug on her iron - even though he was responsible for the wiring on Fleet Air Arm helicopters!
It’s funny how your feelings change as you get older. When I was a kid, I wasn’t really jealous of the mates that I had who’s Dad’s were around - by and large, they were absent most of the time (out earning a living) and when they were around, they seemed to be unhappy about everything - bring that bike in, stop that noise, look after your sister, do as your mother tells you. At least with me, I knew exactly where I stood; there was no ambiguity. What Mum said, went.
But still, as I got older, there would be those moments - what Douglas Adams might call the long dark tea-time of the soul moments - where I’d wonder how it might have been different. Apparently, my Dad wanted to take us to Australia; I could get behind that. Whenever I think I’d like to leave the UK, it’s always Oz that I think of, for that reason. Would I have been a dramatically different person if I’d grown up in Australia? Would I have been a dramatically different person if I’d grown up with a father around?
I remember years ago going back to the town that I was born in for a holiday. We’d decided - my girlfriend at the time and I - that we were going to have a holiday but didn’t know where to go; neither of us had passports, so we decided it had to be a UK holiday and purely because I couldn’t think of anywhere else, I suggested Weymouth. I was born there, in St. Mary’s Hospital, while my Dad was stationed at Portland Naval Base. I hadn’t been back there since I was about five, so thought it would a good place to go.
What I wasn’t prepared for, though, was the sense of attachment I felt to my Dad as Tracy and I wandered around. We went to see the house where I used to live, and we went down to the Naval base on Portland Bill and I remember thinking for the first time, that here was my father. He had walked these streets, he had worked in this place, lived his life here. Suddenly, he was more than an abstract idea - a ghost to be called on when I was feeling hard done by - he was a real man. I could picture him riding his motorbike up the causeway back to the married quarters at the top of the hill.
Since then, he has faded in and out at various times in my life; months can go by and I won’t give him a thought. Other times, he’s so close I feel that all I need to do is turn around and he’ll be there - still in his cadet’s uniform, like he was on my Nan’s mantlepiece - smiling at me, arms open for a hug. Sometimes I think I hear his voice - so much like my own - telling me off, or advising me.
I think this entry has rambled somewhat and I’m not sure that I’ve really got across what I’m really trying to say and that there’s more I need to say; about how I felt the other day, riding on my bike behind a car that had a Haverfordwest dealer plate on it thinking “My Dad was riding his bike in Haverfordwest when he was killed”, how I have this nagging desire to go there and search through the local archives for reports of his death, and so much else.
I know, though, that my father’s face is very clear to me at the moment, even though my vision is strangely blurred (I must have something in my eye). Even if it doesn’t make sense, it feels good to have said it.
We are sailing, home again, cross the sea
We are sailing, stormy waters, to be near you to be free
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[...] that you didn’t necessarily want to relive (I won’t re-hash it here, check it out using this link if you like). Suffice to say that this song is very emotionally tied-up with my father, who I never [...]
[...] impossible to listen to it again. For me, this is one of those songs. I’ve mentioned this in posts before so I’m not going to re-hash it all here. Suffice to say that this is a very emotionally [...]