The things I argue about with my father
The dad divide The six arguments every daughter will eventually have with her father
Lately, my father has taken to prefacing everything he says with a trigger warning: “I know you won’t like what I am about to say, but…” This is a fairly new development. It started as an occasional tick, around the time of the Brexit vote, and then, post Trump’s election, it became standard safe practice. “None of you will agree with me on this one but…” has become his opening conversational gambit. And every time, I snap back: “Oh, don’t say that! You’re entitled to your opinion! Come on, out with it!” After which, he grips the arms of his chair, takes a deep breath and… ding ding, we’re off.
You’re probably thinking, “What kind of a daughter are you? Cut your 90-year-old father some slack, for pity’s sake!” But my dad loves a fiery debate. He has always liked to thrash around the issues of the day, and now he finds himself living in a world, and more importantly in a country, where nothing he assumed was normal and sacred is any longer normal or sacred. (His second most used expression is “I mean, can you beat it?”)
A good percentage of the time I am entirely on his side: the plague of beards; no longer using BC and AD; people feeding the ducks chorizo pizza, while leaning against the Please Do Not Feed The Ducks sign. Frequently, we are in cahoots, I’m happy to say, but not always. So, these are the things we argue about now.
1) Me ringing off before he has time to pick up his phone. I hope I don’t need to tell you that I am not “ringing off ” because I am “frightfully impatient” (his version of events), rather his voicemail kicks in after the number of rings sufficient for the average phone user to press Accept. My dad is not the average phone user. He has got the hang of what he calls his Sam Sung in most respects, but answering it is not his strong suit. Or ending a call. Or switching to loudspeaker. Also, taking photographs. He has a lot of photographs of himself from the nose up, as well as grass in motion, and a heck of a lot of videos of us at waist level, sitting around, doing nothing.
2) The press. As in the media, for making such a fuss about Theresa May’s coughing fit, for example, and for being snide about Melania Trump (though we can do our worst with Sir Philip Green).
3) This “obsession” with lentils. To be fair, he will eat lentils, if forced, but he will not have couscous and, obviously, bulgar wheat/quinoa – forget it. My argument is that, by eating lentils, you are not necessarily indirectly supporting Momentum or CND or similar.
4) The modern compulsion to replace things before they have disintegrated. Yes, but what about pillows, after 20 years? Or a 30-year-old mattress? Might it be fun to have a cooker that takes less than an hour to reach 180? How about an armchair with a fully sprung seat that doesn’t knacker your back every time you sit in it? No, thank you very much, fine as we are. Recently, in order to try to stop me from buying a new suitcase, my dad lent me one of his from the pre-wheels era: hard brown leather, three inches deep (not joking) and about 20lb in weight when empty. You’d have to be a) Vin Diesel and b) smuggling budgies for this suitcase to be of any use in the 21st century.
5) How Trump is (in his opinion) playing a cleverer game than we give him credit for. Hmmm. Laaaaa. Let’s Hope So!
6) The correct way to cook toast. He likes his toast very burned and, if necessary, actually charcoal around the edges. My objection is simply that burnt toast is carcinogenic. His argument is: “What isn’t these days?! Everything, apart from couscous. Ha ha.”
Well, he does have a point.
‘Might it be fun to have a cooker that takes less than an hour to reach 180?’