‘He’s not going to get better luv. He’s never going to get better.’
At this point she completely broke down.
This was the worst moment of my life. Nothing since has come even close to it. When I first heard those words come out of Mum’s mouth, I couldn’t compute what she meant, it had sounded for all the world as if she had said Dad was no longer going to get better and then of course I began to realise that’s exactly what she had said.
Dad was now in that other category of very sick people: he was no longer ill, he was dying.
Life over the next few months or so—up until Dad’s final passing—was much as it had been before, except now we were all much sadder and everything seemed to become much quieter. Dad’s disease and everything that came with it continued to happen but now with more frequency and for longer.
The sooner any human being is spared the indignity of such a living hell the better—I don’t care what anyone says.
In our minds, now that we knew there was no longer hope, it became more and more evident that our dad—once a big, burly, jolly, intelligent man—had long since left us. The frail old gentleman upstairs was little more than a stranger.
In many ways this made things easier, of course the old gentleman was still a welcome guest and to my mum a worthy patient, but our dad, as we knew him, had now very much gone. My sister, brother and I continued to visit the upstairs room to see the old gentleman every day, chatting about what we were up to at school, but we had already laid my real dad to rest. Secretly we had said our goodbyes, our pillows long since dry from the tears.
The old gentleman battled on but the slope was becoming ever steeper. I hope you never have to experience the silent killer, but as cancer grows everything else diminishes. It’s truly awful. We prayed he would be free soon.
The crazy thing is, even when someone is dying, the rest of life has to go on and so it was with us during those last few weeks. We carried on doing the things we were expected to do. You can’t have time off just because your dad’s dying—a bizarre state of affairs. Besides, to be honest, no one outside the immediate family knew Dad was so gravely ill. Mum had asked us to keep it between ourselves. I never told any of my friends and they were never interested enough to ask. Kids don’t care about illness unless it’s their own.
The night Dad died I was cycling home from school. Taking my bike to school instead of the bus was something I had begun to do more recently of late. I had around a quarter of a mile left to go when I came to the last roundabout just before you turned into our road. There was an ambulance coming the other way. Its lights were flashing but there was no siren. I knew it was him.
As the ambulance passed me on my right-hand side, I felt peace more than anything.
There were no tears, just relief. It was over.
*Danny Baker phoned me up on the Sunday morning: ‘Have you heard about Diana?’ ‘No,’ I replied, still half asleep. ‘She’s been killed along with Dodi.’ I immediately jumped out of bed and went downstairs to put the telly on. Fifteen minutes later I was outside the gates of Kensington Palace on my motorbike. When I arrived there was only a single bunch of flowers at the gate, later to become the famous sea of flowers, of course. I don’t know why I went there that morning, I’d never even met Diana. I just felt drawn to go.
Top 10 Favourite Jobs (Other than Showbiz)
10 Windscreen fitter
9 Hi-fi salesman
8 Seafood salesman
7 Golf shop assistant (for about a week)
6 Supermarket assistant (trolley boy)
5 Tarzanagram
4 Private detective
3 Market stallholder
2 Mobile DJ
1 Newsagent
I would begin work as soon as life allowed me to, although ironically it was death that gave me the green light to start work in the first place.
My father’s death when I was thirteen—although obviously devastating for a young boy who loved and respected his dad—did mean that I could, for the first time in my life, take on a paper round. Had my dad still been alive he would never have allowed such a thing.
‘Slave labour! No child of mine is working for a pittance like that,’ I can hear him saying it now. What Dad failed to realise was the fact that a paper round would elevate a kid of my current financial standing, i.e. almost zero (except for my pocket money), to relatively millionaire status.
My first job was for a newsagent called Ralph. He had an innate talent for impatience and was the sternest man I had come across thus far in my life, much more so than Mum or Dad or any of my teachers.
Ralph had just the one shop but if you ran it like he did, one shop was all you needed. It yielded enough for him to have one of the swellest houses in town—pretty damn large.
Chez Ralph and Mrs Ralph, whom I never met in all the years I knew him, was located in a place called Grappenhall, which is an area close to Warrington on the other side of the Manchester Ship Canal. To get there you have to cross one of two mighty bridges, the first being a huge clumping swing bridge, the second a towering cantilever bridge, both breathtakingly impressive for their time.
Grappenhall was generally accepted as the posh part of town, probably because they had their own cricket team and something akin to a village green, as well as lots of houses like Ralph’s, of course. Ralph’s grand pile, a testament to Victorian splendour, had both a drive in as well as out plus a vast stepped lawn at the rear.
One newsagent shop equals one very big, nice house, I made a mental note.
Ralph was firm but fair, something I have never had a problem with, but he could also be a real old grump—a ‘misery guts’ as they might say, usually at the expense of his own happiness. Don’t grumpy people realise it’s mostly them who lose out as a result of their moodiness?
And why would anyone do grumpy in the first place? Is it because they think it means the rest of us will take them more seriously, be less likely to try and take them for a ride perhaps? I have no idea why a person would choose to adopt such a posture. Surely it can’t be worth it, no matter what the upside. Surely they don’t enjoy being grumpy every day. It must be such a draining way to exist. I have never understood such grumps.
I still know people like Ralph today and it still bemuses me. What’s wrong with these guys? Have they never read A Christmas Carol and thought to do something about themselves before it’s all too late and the grim reaper comes a-knocking? Have they never watched It’s A Wonderful Life and realised we all want to be George Bailey because he’s a good guy and everyone loves him and we all want to be loved because it feels great?
Ralph’s emotional misgivings, however, although observed, were of little matter to me. Ralph had a paper round up for grabs and I was very much up for grabbing a paper round. He needed someone like me and I needed someone like him.
Alright, so having a paper round would mean having to get out of bed while most of the rest of the country was still asleep, but I was only lying in bed waiting to grow up anyway. I might as well grow up on the move and get paid for it into the bargain, then come the weekend I would be able to afford things! I would be able to buy almost anything I wanted, pasties from the pie shop, sweets and pop, tickets to the