‘IT WAS FOOKIN’ SPECTACULAR,’ my dad told everyone now, in the living room. ‘WE ALMOST GOT KILLED. YOU SHOULD HAVE COME. TOM DIDN’T LIKE IT AT ALL. I THOUGHT HE WAS GOING TO THROW HIMSELF IN FRONT OF ONE OF THE HORSES AS A PROTEST FOR A MOMENT, LIKE A SUFFRAGETTE. THEY’RE COMING OVER THE BACK FIELDS BY HERE IN A MINUTE. JO! GET THE CAT IN! HE’S ORANGE. THEY MIGHT MISTAKE HIM FOR A FOX.’
The conversation moved on, somehow, to owls. I told my cousin Fay about the noisy tawnies who roosted in the trees behind my house, which reminded her of the time that, upon the birth of her son, who is named Hal, a colleague of his father had sent the family a card which said, ‘Congratulations on the birth of your son, Owl!’ We talked also about Granny Pam, Fay’s dad’s mum, who nobody ever seemed to call Pam, always Granny Pam, and who lived in a high-rise flat in an area of Nottingham later to be even better known for gun crime than many other areas of Nottingham which were known for gun crime. I remember Granny Pam as a long skinny grin in a cloud of cigarette smoke, who – despite barely knowing me – always bought me amazing, imaginative Christmas presents, but Fay explained that Pam had a less-well-known vengeful side too, especially when it came to her parking space outside the flats.
‘She once got mugged and turned round and punched the mugger in the face with her keys inside her fist.’
‘Wow,’ I said.
‘Did I tell you about her lipstick?’ said Fay.
‘No,’ I said.
‘When I was a kid, if ever anyone nicked her parking space, she’d say to me, “Right! Get my lipstick!” Then we’d go outside and, while she put a chain across the space and padlocked the car in, she’d get me to write all over the car using her lipstick.’
I was keen to find out what Fay had written on the cars in question, but she didn’t get the chance to tell me, as the phone rang at this point. My dad picked it up. ‘HELLO?’ he said. ‘FOOK OFF, YOU BASTARD.’ He put the handset down and turned to us. ‘IT WAS ONE OF THOSE BASTARDS YOU GET SOMETIMES.’
Nobody was particularly surprised by this, as everyone in the room had known my dad for at least twenty-six years. He was in typically high spirits this festive season, although to be fair the season itself had little bearing on this. He’d got what he saw as the most indulgent bit of Christmas out of the way with typical alacrity on the morning of the day itself, eagerly shaking a bag next to my mum and me as we opened our presents, then packing the wrapping paper into it ready to be recycled. ‘RIGHT!’ he’d said as my mum carefully finished unwrapping the last of the usual huge mound of gifts she’d received from her friends. ‘LET’S ALL GET BACK TO WORK.’ This was standard behaviour on Christmas Day, at the dawn of which he had greeted me not with ‘MERRY CHRISTMAS’ but the bellowed instruction from his upstairs workroom: ‘THERE ARE SOME CRISPS AND MILK IN THE FRIDGE IF YOU WANT ANY!’ Boxing Day or one of the days immediately following it, such as today, was the time we reserved for getting together with the rest of the family. There’s not a lot of us, and this gathering was a particularly quiet one, as my other cousins, my uncle Paul and my auntie Jayne and Chris’s daughters from his first marriage were all otherwise engaged. The plan was to go on a short walk, for which my dad would be the guide, pointing out landmarks and bringing in stories from his past as a teacher in inner-city Nottingham: the one, for example, about the time he broke up a brawl in the playground and discovered that one of the youths he had separated and now held by the collar was in fact Mike, the head of English, who was not very tall. My dad nipped to the loo before we embarked on the walk. I noticed as he came back through the door that he was holding a piece of toast liberally coated with pesto and salt. I looked at him questioningly. ‘DON’T WORRY,’ he said. ‘I ALREADY HAD IT WHEN I WENT IN THERE.’
When my dad goes on walks or days out, he likes to incorporate a rest into his itinerary, during which he will find a patch of grass on which to lie ritualistically in a starfish position with his eyes closed. Those closest to him are accustomed to this now, but it can be a troubling image for people witnessing it for the first time. This summer Chris and Mal told me about a trip they’d been on with my mum and dad to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, during which some Japanese tourists found my dad lying in a starfish position with his eyes closed and prodded him to check he wasn’t dead. He was probably more tired than usual, having earlier air-boxed with a twelve-foot-tall statue made by the sculptor Tom Price. My mum took a photo of the boxing, on my dad’s request, so it could be added to our family collection of pics of my dad pretending to fight with exhibits on days out, alongside such classics as the time he pretended to wrestle a stuffed hyena at Creswell Crags Museum and Visitor Centre near Worksop. It was unlikely there would be any exhibits with which to stage quasi fights on today’s walk, and, although it provided no absolute guarantee, the icy ground made a starfish sleeping break improbable.
At the back door my dad took off Chris’s coat and returned it to him, enabling Chris to put it on over his
