Dad's just about to turn 86
and is still compos mentis. Not only that he seems to have a better social life than I do.

When I was a child he never had much to say. For years I knew next to nothing about his early life. But after Mum died three years ago he's opened up a lot. He showed me something last year I will not forget, a scrap of office paper with a pencilled note on the back congratulating him on my birth. I'm well on the wrong side of 55 so he's kept it all that time, somewhere.

He lives 1000 miles away, so I phone him regularly and we chat about this and that, sometimes for an hour at a time. I know I have been a disappointment to him in some ways but he's never said a word, so I try to make some of it up to him when we do get together.

The Christmas after Mum died we took a long car drive together over 3 days. I learned a lot about him then. He and Mum were married in 1948, though he'd first met her in 1940 as she stood on a railway platform handing out sandwiches and tea to soldiers. He was a railway man himself then and worked at the station.

This one - www.wheelsonsteel.com.au/showthread.php?tid=5048

He could barely support himself on his wages and there was no hope of marrying so they waited for years.

I could rant on about his faults but they don't amount to much. Never did, really. When I hear about the families of some people I know, I realise I've been damn lucky.
(Redemption blamed it on the Bossa Nova since, Fri 26 Nov 2010, 7:14, Reply)