DAD, GREAVSEY AND ME!

I remember my Dad smiling at me when I was little. Thinking about it now, he actually smiled a lot, although at the time I don’t think I always saw it that way. He would come in tired from work but would always give me the thumbs up sign and play with me a little. Sometimes it would be some typical father/son play wrestling, sometimes it would be just a bit of kidding around. For instance, one of his typical moves would be to hold his hand sideways under my chin and say, “Get out of that without moving!” Looking back, one thing is clear. He always made time for me.

Kids always like to think that they can get one over on their parents, but on reflection I can now see that Dad was capable of some pretty slick moves where I was concerned. When I was five or six, I needed two heavy duty dental appointments, both extractions. I was scared of Dentists in general and our dentist Mr Cooper in particular but dad had a plan to get me through each time. If I promised to be a big brave boy, he would buy me a record at the Arcade music store in North Finchley, just round the corner from the dental surgery. I was as obsessed with music then as I am now and I jumped at the chance. He held my hand till the gas did its work in sending me to narcotic slumber. When I woke up, I was groggy, my mouth was sore, but so what! We were going to buy a record. The first time we got ‘I Remember You’ by Frank Ifield, the second time a Pat Boone recording. If you find it odd that an infant school boy would choose songs by a yodeling Australian and the whitest of all white singers then frankly, so do I. Dad’s genius was that he managed to coax me through two scary tooth extractions with the promise of buying records, and then managed to persuade me to get records HE wanted to buy in the first place. Nice one Dad!

Actually, my Dad was very generous, often to a fault, both with the money he had, and with his time. We were not well off by any means, but I generally got what I wanted for Christmas. When I was younger, there were train sets, Minnix Motors, Meccano, the usual boy things, later on when my interest in music became more aggressive than passive there were guitars. Right from the start I was always fascinated by guitars. I used to figure this was a disappointment to my Dad. He had been so good at playing football, it was his passion, and although I liked it a lot as well, it seemed like I had three left feet, not just two. I know he would have liked me to have followed in his tricky footsteps down the wing but it just wasn’t to be. I did love our sessions with a football outside of our house, or over on Hampstead Heath extension. “Keep your eye on the ball son, always keep your eye on the ball” he would say. I tried to do that, even when I had just tripped over the thing and had landed upside down on the grass.

When I was eleven he took things to the next level. Mum and dad had always taken me to movies, museums, zoos, etc, but from 1968 Dad began taking me to White Hart Lane to see the Spurs. To this day, I can remember the sights and sounds, the different quality of light within the stadium, the roar of the crowd as the Tannoy system played ‘Glory, Glory Tottenham Hotspur’ when the team ran out. My Dad pointed out one player in particular, who weaved his way to the Park Lane end goal with a football at his feet, blasting it into the net as he arrived, driving the crowd crazy. “That’s Jimmy Greaves” said dad. Any schoolboy with any kind of interest in football would have been able to spot Jimmy Greaves at a thousand paces, but it was cool because my dad wanted to share what he knew with me, and I liked that, it made me feel very secure. We had found our meeting point. I was never going to be the next Jimmy Greaves, but the two of us could share in watching the last season at Spurs of the real Jimmy. We were there against Newcastle United when Greavesy scored a wonder goal beating numerous defenders and dancing round the goalkeeper before running the ball into the goal. We saw other games, even other teams. We were at Norwich City’s first game in the first division for example. I think it was against Everton, although you would have to ask my cousin David to confirm that. We continued to go to matches together through to the 80s. When our local team Barnet joined the football league, we were there to witness it. A shambling middle aged man shuffled by us a few minutes after the game started. It was Jimmy Greaves again, a constant in our ever evolving universe. By that time I was as grown up as I was ever going to get and a lot of water had passed under the father/son bridge by then. We still found the time for footie though. When Dad no longer felt up to attending games, we still watched at home on TV, and he still loved to point out little playing tips to me, even though my botched ball juggling days were long since gone. Right up to the last few weeks we shared together in Finchley, almost four years ago now, we would always watch a game.

Through the years Dad always tried to help Janice and I when he could. As Mum became more immobile Dad took on many household roles that were new to him. He lived by the mantra that “As long as we have some eggs, bread, butter, milk and tea in, we’ll be ok.” Years after he was first diagnosed with dementia he could still be seen waiting in line for the 143 bus with his little cap on, en-route for Tescos, chatting to the old ladies from Basing Way that Mum and I used to describe as his ‘Harem’. Dementia is such a cruel condition, Dad used to be frustrated by his inability to do all the things he once took for granted, but every now and then he was still able to laugh at himself. One time he answered the phone, and a work friend of mine asked who he was speaking to. Dad paused for a moment or two before admitting, “Hang on, it’s on the tip of my brain.”

My wife Karmen met Dad for the first time in 2003. A year later, we were married in the USA, and she came back with me to Finchley for a few weeks afterwards. In that short time she and Dad, now sadly a widower, were able to get to know each other. she recalls when he would make tea, and ask her how many sugars she wanted. She would hold up the appropriate number of fingers and he would reply with a smile and a thumbs up sign. That thumbs up sign stayed with him the whole time I knew him. Karmen told me a few days ago that she knew Dad loved her because he told her so. Once I had moved to the USA, our contact was restricted to phone calls. We would both ask dad how he was and he would invariably tell us that he had “A bit of a cold.” The last phone conversation I had with Dad was last October on his Birthday. I told him I loved him and he told me he knew that. We had never had the kind of relationship where we said that kind of thing to each other before, but it was a loving relationship. Karmen and I loved you Dad, and we will miss you so much.

My Dad died in January, 2008