21st-Century Yokel

getting little reports of it via text message from my mum. ‘Your dad’s black toenail is looking really bad now: I think it’s about to come off,’ she would tell me, but several days later there it would still be. My dad knew it would hold on for a bit longer still. He loves his early-morning swims and would, I am sure, have been reluctant to jeopardise his relationship with the authorities at the pool by defiling the water. Recently the pool had asked its regulars if they had any suggestions for things they’d like to change about the facilities. My dad came up with the following three:

1. A trompe l’œil panoramic landscape on the bottom of the pool to keep people amused when they were swimming with their heads down.

2. Mirrors on the ceiling, to enable swimmers doing backstroke to see where they were going and not crash into each other.

3. All-over-body airblade dryers for the changing rooms.

So far, there had been no response from the pool.

My parents and I spent that Christmas of 2015 at my house in Devon, where I was playing nurse to one of my cats, who was recovering from two large life-saving operations, having been attacked by a dog. My dad filled their car with several bags of firewood, which he’d very kindly collected for me. I felt bad taking this from him, as he stacked it in such beautiful formations, and I felt even worse when my mum explained the lengths he’d gone to in order to get some of it. ‘He lost a big branch in the river again, like last year,’ she told me. ‘He walked back across the field and asked me to come over and hold his legs for him while he reached over and got it. I’m sixty-five.’ Only just over a month had passed since the last time my dad had fallen into a large body of natural water: a lake in Lincolnshire into which he was dipping a jar in order to get goodies for his new garden wildlife pond.

‘I should have known he would never be a proper grown-up when he asked me to go sledging on our first date,’ said my mum.

After my dad and I had brought the logs in from the car, he went upstairs for a bath, taking the radio with him, and my mum and I attempted to catch up with each other over the booming sound of the Radio 4 News Quiz and my dad’s laughter. Half an hour later, I went upstairs to the toilet and found a trail of bubbles leading across the landing to the spare bedroom. ‘WATCH MY TOENAIL!’ my dad shouted, charging past me and down the stairs, barefoot. A few moments later he could be heard making loud quacking noises at my cats while throwing huge rolls of greasy cooked turkey at them: a treat he’d bought them from Asda the previous day. Afterwards, as he arrived in the living room, I noticed he’d taken his shirt off again. He looked like a man who’d been unexpectedly invited to compete in a wrestling match in the last three minutes.

‘CAN YOU PUT ROLLING NEWS ON THE TELLY FOR ME?’ he asked, handing me the TV remote. I noticed the toenail was still not fully off. It really did look like it was about to detach now, but recent events had told me not to get too excited. It could be months yet.

On the second morning of my parents’ stay I asked my dad if he wanted a cup of tea. My dad has not to my knowledge ever had a cup of tea, but I sometimes ask him if he wants one just to wind him up.

‘NO, I WANT A COFFEE,’ he said. ‘STRONG, WITH A BIT OF COLD WATER SO I DON’T BURN MY OESOPHAGUS. YOU’VE KNOWN ME THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS. YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT BY NOW.’

‘I’m forty,’ I said.

‘YEAH, BUT YOU DIDN’T REALLY KNOW ME FOR THE FIRST TWO YEARS.’

Increasingly, my dad’s visits to my home are about recreating the rituals he enjoys in his own as assiduously as possible: the extravagantly bubbly baths, the loud radio, the bars of chocolate hidden under sofa cushions so – in his own words – ‘THEY ARE FUN TO FIND LATER.’ He also likes to go for an early-morning swim at the friendly local pool, which has an old-fashioned Speedo clock and doesn’t appear to have been redecorated since the seventies. Today being Boxing Day, though, the pool was closed. We’d only got out for a very short walk the previous day, and I knew it would be important to exercise my dad, in much the same way it’s important to exercise a German shepherd, so I suggested that he, my mum and I went for a walk along the seafront at Dawlish. I offered to drive, but he declined and said we’d go in his and my mum’s car. I told my dad that I could easily navigate us to Dawlish from my house, just thirty-five minutes away, but he insisted on using his satnav.

After the female voice on the satnav had directed us down a farm track for the second time in ten minutes, my dad called her a bastard, told her to ‘FOOK OFF’ and permitted me to direct him the final quarter of the way. ‘THIS CAR’S GOT AUTOMATIC BRAKING ON IT,’ he said. ‘IT GIVES ME MORE CHANCE TO WATCH OUT FOR FOOKWITS AND LOONIES.’ As my dad drives, he tells stories from his life, slowing the car down dramatically as he gets to a climactic or highly descriptive point in the narrative, to the frustration of any drivers behind. On this occasion he told a story about an old man who recently went into a skid and flipped his Land Rover over on the main road not far from my parents’ village. A farmer had been first on the scene and, upon helping the old