Why was my Dad a good Dad?

Sometimes, in the early days, you can even find yourself telling yourself that it’s a welcome change, a trying out of something new, ‘Oh, remember that month that Dad died!’ That there was once a bizarre and invigorating interlude where Dad vanished entirely from the world for a while, allowing us all to realise exactly how much (tho of course we knew) we valued him. Well-played, old man! But after a while you want to say, OK Dad, enough now, we get it, joke’s over. You can come back now. But he isn’t coming back. They don’t come back, the dead stay very much dead. I will never say another word to him.

It’s natural to look for consolations. In my case, the chief being, as I have described here, that the relationship was good; there had been little animosity between my father and I for decades, and at least twenty years of respectful, loving parental dynamics as I made my way into adult life and he traversed old age. Of course, there were stickier times, harder moments, and I was rude and headstrong when a teenager and saw only his flaws, but he stuck with it and I grew up.

I read all the time about people who have difficult relationships with parents, irreconcilable ones even, but I still suspect they’re in the minority. It’s just that good relationships tend to be of less interest to people than fractious ones. Nonetheless, I think it’s worth thinking, as I mourn my dear old Dad, about just what he did right. After all, for such a good bond to exist between a man born into a council house in Ruabon, North Wales, in 1940 and an artsy indie kid who saw the light of the world in 1980s Nottingham, well, as the French say, ce n'était pas evident. There’s a big gap between those starting points in life and yet somehow we made it work.

If I had to say there was one lesson from the way my Dad was my Dad, which I imagine he barely thought about as a practice at all – I severely doubt he ever so much as skimmed a parenting guide – it would be to keep it simple. To a large extent his approach was, as the kids say these days, ‘don’t deep it.’ There were two hallmarks of my Dad as a Dad, consistency, and a lack of judgement. He was more than reliable; if I needed a lift – and much to his amusement I have not yet managed to scrape a driving licence together – he was always there, and not only that, seemed to turn such duties into things to actively look forward to. For him, thirty minutes in the car with his son going somewhere was an opportunity to catch up and have a laugh.

In the days when I lived in Berlin, he’d often drive me down to Luton airport, an experience which, amazingly, he would later tell me he ‘really enjoyed’. I got him into quite a lot of new (now old) music on those trips, tho there was still plenty of stuff of mine, from The Boo Radleys to Green Day, that he disliked. Even in later years, he’d always be happy to pick me up at Nottingham station, and it was only when he failed to come get me due to feeling the effects of a ‘new painkiller’ that I realised that something was seriously wrong with him.

Secondly, he accepted me as I was. A statement like ‘Your kids will turn out as they’re going to turn out and your job is to stop them getting eaten by bears in the meantime’ is developmentally sound, but apparently very difficult for many parents to accept. There are some people who view their kids as a creative project, as their ‘work’, which isn’t quite right; child-rearing is a creative process, but you don’t control the outcome. If you want creative control, write books.

My Dad wouldn’t have blinked twice at that idea of me being an independent entity of him; he just wanted me to be alright. Of course, he had his aspirations for me, as every parent does, but suffice to say I wasn’t in line with them. I was never going to meet his goal for me of attending Harvard Business School. What he did do was embrace what I was doing, and there was a lot of it. There was barely an artistic event, from my early sixth-form college shows to my final comedy hour, that he wasn’t present at, always well turned-out (my mother largely responsible for that), and seemingly genuinely enthused by whatever it was I was up to.

For sure, I would say a kid who is into stand-up comedy and writing funny plays may, short of me actually being a professional sportsperson, one of the easier ones to get behind. It helps even more if they’re decent at it, and I was; one of the proudest moments of my life remains, having gone with my Dad to a gig in Berlin that I was performing at – and where he made not the slightest fuss of being the oldest audience member by some forty years – and him remarking, almost to himself, ‘You’re very professional in the way you do it.’ That was a real moment of pride for me and, now I think about it, probably for him.

Lastly, we both knew when to leave it, that good relationships don’t have to include everything. We knew sometimes that shared mutual silence and chat about joint interests helped more than getting into heavy stuff. If we talked politics we’d end up arguing, so we didn’t; it was one of my greatest shocks, after years of dispute on individual issues, when he disclosed to me that he remained a dues-paying member of the Labour Party. We differed fundamentally on the matter of the EU – tho like anyone who lives and works in Brussels my position became closer to his Euroscepticism in recent years – but we also knew not to go there. Why would we waste the time available to us on political arguments?

For we did have things in common, a love of food, beer and football, and frankly the opposite sex, and that’s what I’d fill him in on or seek his views on. It certainly helped when I gave him some football tips that paid off, such as before the 2006 World Cup telling him to put money on Italy to win. Above all there was cricket, which we both loved in any form. ‘As far as I’m concerned,’ he’d say, ‘There are two sports. Cricket and all the others.’ You only need a few points of such unanimous agreement to sustain a great friendship with your Dad.

Sometimes it annoys people when advice is simple, but the point of simple advice is that it works for everybody, that it has proved largely universal. And I think my Dad’s formula would be hard to beat; show up for your kids, be completely reliable, and accept them as you find them. Perhaps in some way being a Dad is a minimalist craft, in contrast with the more holistic, more totalising art of the mother, but it’s no less important for that. Someone needs to be there to take the pressure off and chat about the T20 Blast.

Above all, my Dad dressed for the children he had, and I genuinely believe that all he wanted for me was to be living my life, doing things I’m interested in, showing a bit of drive, and happy. There’s a lack of ego in taking up that role in relation to your son – there was never the hint of competition between Dad and I, in part because our chosen fields were so different – and I’m not sure I could do it so selflessly. Let’s just say that if I were going to give my Dad an Oscar it would be for Best Supporting Actor. He absolutely aced his part and knew when to leave them wanting more.

The principles I’ve outlined, of reliability and tolerance, may not be the most glamorous or sufficiently highfalutin for some but they added up to an awful lot of love and good times over the 43 years we got to spend together. Without fuss, and on our own homespun terms, we loved each other very much.

This is the last post before my summer break. Thanks for all your support across the writing year, and see you all back in September. A special thanks is as ever due to my paying subscribers who keep this going. If you would like to say thank you with a one off gift, a tip jar is below.