A dad with dash – and a green moustache

IAM often asked for more information about Mr F, so, with Father’s Day coming up, I’m handing over this week to Fisher Junior (FJ) to fill you in... When I was young I thought my dad’s moustache was green. I have no idea why, but when I drew pictures of our family he always had a green moustache.

He was a brilliant storyteller and always used to read to me at bedtime, despite the fact that my mum was a teacher and would have been the natural choice. He would put on a variety of stupid voices and also assign strange noises to each punctuation mark... helping me to learn where the full stops and commas were meant to sit in a sentence.

When I was older, the storytelling was replaced by A level revision. My dad spent hours coaching me through my notes, again punctuating the work with a variety of silly plops and whoops. I cannot look at sociology research even now without hearing his performance.

My dad, like many dads, had an ambivalent relationship with our many pets. Not given to public displays of affection, he nevertheless could be seen or heard tending to their emotional needs when he thought nobody was within earshot.

He also had a party piece where he would crouch down in our long thin living room and Sam, our Shetland sheep dog, would run up and leap over him. Sam would typically manage about two successful jumps before losing momentum, crashing into his human hurdle, and giving up embarrassed.

My dad was the one who would walk the dogs in all weathers. He braved depressing waiting rooms at the vets and was the one who dealt stoically with the inevitable end, once rushing home from work to scrape a cold stiff cat into a C&A bag to bury in the garden.

An anxious child, I was always convinced that if he was ten minutes late home there had been a train crash at Paddington.

When he fell off a swing in Cornwall and broke his finger it was scary to see him sitting in A&E.

When he sliced his foot on the lawn mower and I heard a particular swear word for the first time I thought his foot would fall off. But he is still here. And with both feet.

So… Happy Father’s Day Dad!