Afterimage: My Fathers Birthday

Today is my father's birthday. He would have been seventy. Try as I might I can't see him at this age just as I can't seem to picture myself at seventy. Then again, I'm not sure anyone can really picture themselves as their Autumn slips into Winter.

Twelve years ago, at his eulogy, I looked out across the crowd and was surprised (yet shouldn't have been) by the faces. Family and friends from England, colleagues from Taiwan, China, Honduras, and South Africa. The stateside contingent from the deep south, New York, California. All there to pay homage.




I loathe speaking to groups larger than say six so I stuck with what I knew, what I had in common with my father. Travel.




Strange because his side of the family did not have the inherent wanderlust that pervades the rest. His people were footballers, mostly Everton, but some at Aston Villa, Liverpool, Newcastle. They we're pugilists, taking lads off the Liverpool streets and training them for the ring. As a child I'd walk around the gyms, the smell of sweat, leather, and blood in the air. Alien to someone used to rambling the hedgerows of the Kentish countryside. I stood centre field at Anfield, a scrawny eight year old imagining the roar of the Kop (my grandfather had taken me the previous week). These things seemed very Northern to me at the time, far removed from the home counties. They still do.






Before the wall came down my father was gone a tremendous amount. Prague, Budapest, Warsaw. I remember him being gone for a month, "detained" in Hungary, coming back gaunt and sallow, a Lech Walesa mustache and longish hair. He took me out and we bought a snakes and ladders set in the village. He was quiet, withdrawn and closely at my side.







In later years it was Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Guatemala City, San Pedro Sula. always traveling alone, always being gone for extended periods. He was the king of no reservations, believing that you honestly just showed up somewhere and they would fit you in. In fact, he was a hard fellow to say no to. I saw it as I became older, the athletic frame, grey, wavy, longish hair, the accent. Very Shakespearian in his presence.
















Before he passed away we where in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Thailand. In the lobby of the Oriental in Bangkok I see a well tailored man in his fifties staring intently at my father. I whisper that someone is checking him out. "don't be silly" he snapped as the gentleman walks towards us. Then they are hugging, clasping hands. The man reminiscing in an Australian accent how they worked together. He was apparently with the foreign service and now owned a bank. The gent walks off and my father shrugs and says ""Sydney, years ago. I'm famished. Let's eat."









He was full of surprises. I have a picture of him in Los Angeles standing on the sidelines with the England squad, deep in conversation. It must be the early eighties. Never heard him mention it. Still have no idea of the story behind it.






Unimpressed with the truly impressive but fascinated by the mundane he could be maddening in his reluctance to share information. I used to look at his passport that was more ink than paper and ask him about the exotic sounding names. Without fail I was met with a "don't remember" or a "bit boring" or "some sort of convention". When asked about a Mexico City stamp I hear "that's where I broke my ankle playing football in an alley, they had pointy alligator cowboy boots". No clarification, no story setup or closing.


I have his old leather suitcase, a suit with a lovely suppressed waist, a stainless watch that has a slight burr in the movement. With my arm under pillow I can hear it resonate. A metallic heart beat that I fall asleep to.









I think of my father every time I clear immigration and get that first sip of air on unfamiliar soil. I'm not sure if I travel for the same motivations as he but it courses through all that I am. Be it a heavily incensed air, a tremendous meal, a good conversation, or the rains of a monsoon, places like people resonate endlessly and colour all that we are. I miss him like hell and as I receive another stamp in the blue and gold (sadly now E.U. burgundy) I'll continue to look for traces of the old man.




E.M.M.




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to wax or not to wax oneself

It began with a knock on the door to the library.  The housekeeper stepped in and said she had done something terrible.

Did she throw one of my Drakes in the wash to remove a spot again?

One of the bikes knocked over in a frenzied attempt to clean the garage?

Was a child left at school while I was off somewhere?

much worse.....

"you know that old jacket with holes in it? .....well, I washed it, it looked terrible.  Now it looks worse, its peeling"

The green one?

"yes"

silence on my end.

Like many, I have felt a strange attachment to my Barbour.  In this case, a Border model that is pushing 16 years.  But my closeness to the waxy goodness goes further still.

When I was a child my Grandfather would show up wearing his dented, faded, and patched Barbour.  It smelled like the vestiges of pipe tobacco, a walk through bracken, a visit to the pub, and faintly of paraffin and mints.  He would tell us to pick a pocket (as you know the front bellows pockets can hold all sorts- the game pocket on a Beaufort, probably a small child).  On some days the pockets would hold a white waxy bag of mint imperials or tubes of Smarties.  Others days would bring dracula teeth, stink bombs, itching powder, or hand buzzers.  Once the left pocket moved oddly and a guinea pig called Buttons appeared.

,

In a nod to Pavlov the smell of a Barbour came to represent all that was good in a boys world.   It would also be the catalyst for a lifetime of motion sickness caused by the aforementioned smells and a Lancia that always seemed to careen down the roads of Kent.  My Grandfather was a terribly fast driver and I believe that his diesel exhaust vented to the right rear seat.  To this day, a car load of Barbours, the heat on high, and  a diesel on a windy road do not a good mix make.

When my Barbour was shiny and young we found ourselves iced in one New Years in Five Bridges.  The only salvation was a slithering down the skating rink of a lane to the local.  After much laughter at the newness of my coat we drank ourselves silly and gorged ourselves by the fire.  The walk home found the new coat of wax stiffening and cracking with the cold.  It smelled of smoke from the poorly vented fireplace, Dunhills, and a spilled Famous Grouse.  The patina had begun.

Every year I promise myself that I will send it off in summers mad heat waiting and waiting for the men that know how to mend such things to do so.  I always delay and come the first good cold rain I find myself with a can of Barbour's thornproof dressing bubbling away on the range.

I am terrible at doing this and the results are always haphazard and uneven.  Unlike the pleasure in building up a good shine on a pair of brogues, I tend to fall flat about half way through.  Just too much damn surface area.  However, these are some fine directions if you can prevail.

Do I trade down for a newer model?  Barbour snobs would scoff but I do like some of the newer offerings.  Still, I feel that it would be the betrayal of an old and tired friend.  Besides, there is always next summer to send it off......

Revival

What could be better than a sunny English day and a chance to relive some of the halcyon years of after the war?  Throw in some brilliant bits of machinery and some women and its a day.  Just inspiration everywhere from bonnet straps on Jags and Morgans to the pipes of a Maserati under power.  Would kill for some of the tweeds that the older set held on to.  The Goodwood Revival.

 

 

 

 

 

old friends

helmet & tie required

                                                  

silver dream racer