Watching the footie will never be the same again!

Superb artwork from Allan Cavanagh of https://www.caricatures-ireland.com

My Dad died.

I have seen many people lose parents, siblings, friends and even children, and the most tragic losses are the ones in which there lingers something unfinished. As the minutes ooze from the time of death, that lingering becomes malingering, and pain follows close behind.

Dad made it easy for me, because he had been so unwell for so long, I had time to tell him everything I wanted to say.

And oy, he put up a fight! Year after year, Dad grumped and exploded his way through procedures, operations, scrapings and inflations.

Towards the end he lost his joie de vivre, but never his sense of humour, although my mother, his rock, his redeemer, and a great force of nature, mentioned how she sometimes missed the sound of laughter.

Watching somebody you love head slowly lethewards erases from your mind the image of the person they once were. When I think now of my father, all my mind offers is a weak old man in much discomfort, fed up with life, yet absolutely unwilling to die.

Naturally, I do not have to scrape much dust from my memories to see Dad as a younger man, and as I do, my heart races a little faster and a smile comes to my tear-sodden eyes.

So I am very happy to have told him what I thought of him, before he went.

A few months ago, he was sitting in his armchair next to my mum on the sofa. I had to be tactful, because despite the Jewish spirit, my parents' home and behaviour is quintessentially Olde Englishe, like the marmalade.

Hence to avoid melodrama, I had to tread carefully when trying to explain to my father that he had always been my inspiration.

To that Octogenarian these words came as a surprise; one which I had anticipated, and thought might fire his spirit and confidence a tad.

I told him, in front of Mum, that he had been my inspiration throughout my life, in two different ways.

At a most vital level, I appreciated how hard he had worked, how many decades he had climbed into his car at 7.40 am, and driven off through the dirthy sludge of London's constipated commute, all the way to Soho, where he worked all his life for Pearl and Dean.

At weekends he ran a small chain of three record shops, until one of his managers did the dirty, and sent the business down the pan.

From my privileged and relatively cushy life, I am in awe of how hard Dad worked, so that we might enjoy the upbringing we had.

His was the last generation that would ever enjoy the 'job for life' culture, but even so, I embarrass myself when I think of how few hours I have to spend earning money each week.

 

Somehow, back in the early 1960's he earned enough money to take all five of us on holidays to Europe every other year, with trips to Devon and Somerset in the intervening summers.

"Thanks Dad!" I told him. "I didn't appreciate it when I was a kid, but I do appreciate it now."

My mum spluttered out that she thought that was very nice, and my Dad did something with his mouth that showed he was grateful.
But then I looked over, into his eyes, and I sent them a twinkle.

"There's another way you inspired me, Dad. Your mountains."

Remember all your books from the 1930's and 1950's about the conquests of Kachenjunga, K2 and Everest? They all had the same kind of tan cloth covers, and were packed with photos and maps and tales of these great mountaineers, walking around the Annapurna Circuit and reaching for the skies.

Well, it took a while for me to realise it, but all my travelling; the way I've lived my life; it's down to you.

Didn't cop on when I was a teenager, because all that hitching just felt so good, and looked to me a million miles from the life you lived, and the one you wanted for me.

But when I went off for my first roundy-worldy jaunt in 1984, you whispered 

'Say hello to the mountains for me!'

and it all made sense.

Yes, in that instant I understood why I was who I was. I knew that your spirit of adventure was kindled in me; that the boy who read those books gave birth to another who could go and see them; that the greatest thing about a sprit of adventure is that it helps you live your life less dominated by fear.

So thanks Dad! You worked your arse off so that I might have a good childhood, and you also lifted my eyes, my horizons and my understanding of ambition, so that when I felt happy in my life, I might know that I was a success."

What I didn't say to him then, but do now, was that unfortunately, I don't think you ever enjoyed the same self-confidence that you helped build in me.

You were a possessor of great charm and unquestioning generosity.

You taught me how to appreciate fine wines, how to carry myself in any situation, and always assured me that while fine things were alright, you could never beat the pleasure and honesty of a pie and a pint.

Wherever I have been in the world, we always had time for the Chelsea.

Remember that time when you were almost unconscious in hospital, and the Special One came on the TV in your hospital room?

"Mou mou mou rinho!" you spluttered, as you entered consciousness.

But my favourite of all time, was a year ago last Spring, when we were all standing round your bed in Intensive Care. We'd nearly lost you in the ambulance, and had been discussing how to cancel your big 80th birthday party.

Unaware of where you were, or how close you had come to death, your first words as you opened your eyes:

"Who's ordering the wine for the party?"

You couldn't understand why we all fell about laughing. Your spirit was so strong it will live forever amongst us.

I love you Dad. I love you very much.
God knows, I'll miss you.

 

©Charlie Adley

16.05.2008.

 

"You cheat! You only walked 26,000 miles!"

In one of my earliest memories I am looking out of the back window of the car, as my mum drives me to school. Off in the distance trees line the horizon, and inside me something stirrs.
I want to go off and live in them.
Even at that tiny age I had the urge to reject the comforts of security in exchange for living an adventurous life.
In many ways I have, but still I am captivated, inspired and enthralled by true adventurers.
Since then, I have also grown to love language, and dwell happy in the world of words. Would that it were possible to combine the two: to walk intrepid into unknown territory whilst also having just the right thing to say at the correct time.
Too much to hope for?
Unfortunately, apparently so.
Who wasn't somewhat enchanted by the legendary greeting uttered by Henry Stanley when he finally found Doctor Livingstone in the African jungle?
"Doctor Livingstone I presume?" said he, as understated and perfectly English as one might imagine possible.
Sadly, one might have imagined it all together.
According to Vanessa Thorpe of The Observer, our Stanley was a bit of a terror for the 'porky pies', as my London brethren would say.
Tim Jeal, having written a comprehensive biography of Livingstone, has just released a new biography, called 'Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer', in which he claims that Stanley was Britain's greatest land explorer.
Stanley did exceptional work as a cartographer in the Congo, while several of his expeditionary trips lie in historical limbo, shadowed by the classic encounter and memorable introduction that brought him fame.
Tim Jeal explains:
"Stanley told lies, that is the problem. And a liar can never subsequently tell the truth."
After being the first white man to clap his eyes upon the Victoria Falls, Livingstone went off to try and find the source of the River Nile, and disappeared for five years.
In 1871, the editor of the New York Herald sent Stanley to Africa to try and find Livingstone.
After the two finally met in Ujiji, in what is now western Tanzania, Livingstone recorded in his diary that he had met "a pale-looking white man in a faded blue cap."
The only other observation noted by Livingstone about the event was the way his servant Susi had cried "An Englishman coming! I see him!"
Riddled with insecurities about his background, Stanley rejected his Welsh roots and faked American parentage. Forever in awe of what he perceived as gentlemanly conduct, Stanley loved the story of how, when two English officers were crossing the wild and windswept Palestinian desert in opposite directions, they had simply touched their caps in respect as they passed each other.
Jeal believes that it was this anecdote in particular that inspired Stanley to embellish his greeting.
Stanley made a living out of his famous salutation, spending years touring the lecture circuit, and a transcript of such a lecture was recently sold at Sotheby's, offering the 'official revised' version of events. Stanley's script read:
"Doubtful of the temper he would receive me, I simply bowed and said 'Doctor Livingstone, I presume?'. He held out his hand in token of kindly welcome and in a few minutes we became warm friends.'
Biographer Jeal thinks not, instead believing these are the somewhat sad actions of a man seeking acceptance into what he perceived to be a cut and class above.
My hat goes off to both of them: Livingstone, lost for five years in the African jungle, back when nobody knew what that meant; Stanley heading off into the tropical abyss, and actually finding his man.
Menschen true, through and through, fibs or no fibs.

****

Anyway, this morphing of what was actually said into something more profound, poetic and historical is quite a common phenomenon.
Napoleon never complained "Not tonight, Josephine!" and Marie Antoinette never chirruped "Let them eat cake!"
Sherlock Holmes never quipped "Elementary, my dear Watson!"
Harold Macmillan never declared "You've never had it so good!" and Spock never told Captain Kirk "It's life Jim, but not as we know it!"
According to Elizabeth Knowles, an editor for the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, many of these 'folk' quotations have become a lot more interesting than what was actually said.
"Again and again we see misquotations flourish because they catch the tone of a personality more than the original remark." explains Knowles.

****

Still today, at the heights of intrepid bravery and extremes of physical endeavour, discord still rules the roost in the world of adventure.
Journalist Steven Morris caught up with Englishman Jason Lewis, who has spent 13 years making his way around the globe under his own power. Travelling by neither engine nor sail, Lewis has chalked up over 30,000 miles of walking, cycling, and pedalo-ing across oceans.
Yet his brain is filled with neither the fear of failure, nor what manner of piratical peril lurks around each corner, nor the pain of decade-old blisters swarming on his feet.
What Lewis is pissed off about is how a Canadian guy called Colin Angus has claimed to have done the same thing in just two years.
Angus did travel 26,000 miles, far enough to circle the globe, but Lewis and others complain that by his own admission, Angus never crossed the equator, and cannot therefore claim to have performed a circumnavigation. According to the Guinness Book of Records, a circumnavigation of the globe requires the crossing of two antipodal points.
Like like er, if you walk in a circle around the top of a globe, you haven't gone as far as somebody who went right around the middle.
Angus doesn't really care. He has scored book and film deals, and has won an award from National Geographic.
"Colin (Angus) is full of hot air, but that doesn't make him a balloon." says Tim Harvey, who set off with Angus, but dropped out when his partner differed over circumnavigation claims.
Jason Lewis says it all.
"If you have spent 13 years of your life trying to do something the right way, and then someone comes along and says they've done it, but not done it the right way, then it is extremely irritating. Angus has cheapened the concept. He has not acted in a gentlemanly way."
That dirty cheatin' Angus only walked 26,000 miles!
Now, how far is Black Rock?

cadley1@eircom.net
http://doubledoublevision.blogspot.com