From the factory floor to a Rembrandt lover

MY DAD BOB by Diane Walters DAD grew up in Sunderland. He never forgot how his mam pawned her glasses every Monday to feed her brood — all 13 of them — and bought them back when his father, a painter and decorator, got paid on Friday. He often said: ‘We had nothing — but nobody had it better.’

He told us lovely tales of toasting crumpets on the open range and imagining castles in the fire.

One night after a dance he found a flask of hot chocolate by the fire in his attic room left by his mam. He started work in a factory at 15. He spent his days in overalls, but took them off the minute he got home, and dressed smart. He listened to classical music and loved Rembrandt. In a different age, he’d have gone to university.

Dad met Mam at a youth club and was smitten. They married in 1959. Just before he died he caught her looking in the mirror and complaining. ‘June, you were beautiful when we met, you were beautiful in middle age, and you are beautiful now,’ he told her. He spent hours playing with us, his three children, pretending we were tennis champions, teaching us to swim, taking us camping. As a grandad, he came into his own.

On his 80th birthday we all went out to celebrate — the next day he was diagnosed with cancer. When the waitress asked him what he’d got for his birthday, he told her: ‘These people here are the only gift I ever wanted.’

RobeRt (bob) young, born october 12, 1937, died January 7, 2018, aged 80.