When revenge was so sweet

THE card which R Russell Smith received for Father’s Day, and which proved to be “emotionally ambivalent” (Letters, March 20) called to mind my own experience of that same day, but in the middle of the 1950s.

My father’s idea of male sophistication, especially in the toiletries department, was a mixture of carbolic soap and pine disinfectant; with a dab of Brylcreem in his thick wavy hair on the Sabbath. (Was that to appease his Maker?) The pine disinfectant was used in a bucket of hot water, in the outhouse, to wash his feet and prevent the rest of us from fainting when he came into the house after a day’s hard work. This was not my teenage idea of a lovely-smelling daddy. So I bought him, for Father’s Day, a bottle of that heady aftershave that was around at the time. I gift-wrapped it, wrote on a very nice card and presented it at breakfast. I don’t know whose reaction was the more surprising, as on opening the wrapping he muttered something inaudible, except for one word “muck”, put the bottle down and went out.

I realise that most daddies in those days did not apply aftershave to their scraped and cut faces, at least not without swearing, but I never forgave him for not being delighted with my gift. It took all my hard-earned pocket-money (hedgecutting) to buy it. In later years I repented and would present him with a chocolate orange, which was a good idea as he didn’t much care for them, but the rest of us did.

As Mr Smith says, it’s the thought that counts. Maybe I should cease nursing that grudge, after 60 years? Thelma Edwards,

Old Comrades Hall,

Hume, Kelso.