How I Met Your Father

For Fathers Day, an open essay to my children who will probably never read it as they NEVER read anything I write and haven't even read my book.

To my children,

Tomorrow, here in the UK, it’s Fathers Day. I have a few reservations about parenting days, mostly because of the niche aspect (ie, the necessity of an in situ parent to celebrate) but also the commercial slant. Although that being said, always bear in mind that they are a very good opportunity to present a gift, preferably from the Selfridges website purchased with a link sent well in advance. Oh, and also a nice lunch that is not cooked or booked by me. Fathers Day was instigated purely off the back of Mothers Day (originally a celebration of the fourth Sunday of Lent when families returned to their ‘Mother’ church to be together as families) and is an excellent example of how women can’t have ANYTHING for themselves (bloody patriarchy, etc etc).

This modern day celebration of parenting days is firmly steeped in the last century when Hallmark and other similarly inclined companies saw potential for producing an abundance of Forever Friends bears and loving word adorned mugs, figurines, picture frames, cufflinks and little signs you can put on your desk saying PRESIDENT DAD. Gosh, I sound quite the raging cynic, sorry about that. This will be because I’ve just cleared out the cellar for the house move and found four boxes of accumulated themed gifting that has never been looked at since. Sigh. This would NEVER have happened with a Missoma necklace, I tell you.

But enough of my sceptical rantings and back to your Dad, and I met him on 26 February 1999 whilst celebrating my birthday. I was working for Cisco Systems at the time as an Executive Assistant to Duncan, a Vice President (Cisco was big into Vice Presidents) - there were few places better to be working in the late nineties than in the technology sector during the birth of 3G. Also, it was very laid back, Bill Gatesy casual which meant no smart work clothes and you could get away with wearing whatever you liked with no commentary. Jeans, for work! Revolutionary. There were also big bowls of fruit on every floor for you to feast on at leisure and the foyer was filled with huge Birds Of Paradise. My previous job had been at Country Casuals in an old fabric warehouse in Soho responding to complaint letters about pilling knitwear, so this was quite the upgrade, plus they gave you copious shares every time you got a pay rise which at that time, were worth their weight in gold bullions. Ah, the good old days.

Rather inconveniently, I was also, at the time, married to someone else. I had met my first husband ten years prior at only a few years older than Leo is now (mind blowing) and rather stupidly, thrown my nice Kensington Hotel job and everything else in for ‘love’. It was a poor move, in retrospect, but what is a life without experience? Eight years older than me and separated with two children, he bore a slight resemblance to David Cassidy in his Partridge Family years and had been, when I met him, my boss, this example being a very good reason as to why workplace romances should be banned. Especially when you are only 18 and easily swayed by gravadlax and champagne at Brutons Oyster Bar.

But I digress. It was my 28th birthday and my work colleagues and I decided to hit Break For The Border on Argyle Street. This was a popular after work venue of the time, where women wearing strapped belts adorned with tequila shots would peruse the premises to flog their wares for extortionate amounts of cash. You could also smoke actual cigarettes whilst slamming them back, a fact that I am sure you are barely able to comprehend whilst you puff on Pineapple vapes and stuff Blue Raspberry lip pillows against your gums. There was a dance floor too, sticky on your shoes, and everyone danced because no one had phones to look at. Your father had come as a guest of my friend Ashley and he was wearing a blue knitted Nicole Farhi jumper, black Armani jeans and looked strikingly similar to Chandler Bing. In fact, for many years he was told this fact regularly although nowadays he’s most commonly compared to Guy Garvey which doesn’t quite have the same kudos but still, could be worse.

Joe when we met in 1999. Not Chandler Bing.

Anyway, he ‘chatted me up’, a Gen X term that will mean nothing to you but is probably most akin to what you would consider ‘talking’. He was interesting, he was conversational, he was engaging and most of all, he was very funny. He made me laugh, a lot. Due to the fact that he worked as a motor industry graduate, he also drove a BMW Z3 convertible which was the epitome of glamour, particularly to me who at the time, had a bended wire coat hanger attaching the exhaust pipe to my Ford Sierra. He lived in a house in Caversham where he rented a room from his cousin, Kathryn, which looked permanently as if someone had ransacked it. In fact, months after meeting him, the downstairs of the house WAS actually ransacked by a burglar and when the Police arrived to take statements, they thought that his bedroom was the victim of the crime. True story.

The week after our first meeting, he called me on my work phone at the office to ask me out for dinner. There was a slight snag in the fact that I already had a husband, but he ranked pitifully low on the good spouse scale and was really not very nice to me at all. Although, he was apparently far nicer to other people, namely other women, a fact I only really discovered post departure but which made me immediately wish I had a) left him years before, but mostly, b) punched him in the face multiple times (although please note, kids, I am not condoning violence, unless someone really asks for it). I cast my marital status aside and your Dad took me to an Italian called Topo Gigio and I made him drink wine (he has never been a drinker) and we ordered burrata and tagliatelle and smoked copious cigarettes, talked over each other a lot and had a great time.

I felt like a different person. It was as if I were emerging from a sea of mud; my fogged brain cleared and I went home, packed my bags, left the marital home of misery and went back to my parents house in Eastcote. Your Great Great Uncle Harry was visiting, looking slightly perplexed, when I arrived at their front door with multiple bin bags and announced that I had ‘left the building’. Your Grandma replied that they’d never actually liked him that much but had never wanted to say anything in case they rocked the boat. Sigh.

I always say, when people ask me about your Dad, that he completely changed my life. Yes, this sounds a little dramatic and I can almost feel you channeling an Alexis ‘eww, David’, but it’s a solid fact. It’s very easy to stay in an uncomfortable situation if you can’t immediately see a way out. It’s very easy to just tolerate and put up with and live a static life when you don’t feel that there is an alternative. Sometimes you need a push to get you out, whether that be a friend or a family member or someone who sees YOU and not your situation. He saw me and I saw him and we made each other laugh and that pushed me out of one door and through another. He even took on my cat, Jarvis (named after Jarvis Cocker who you might even know now that all of our music has now become cool again) who had an inability to use a cat flap unless you propped it open with a pencil (Jarvis also had an ongoing feud with a local feral cat who COULD use the cat flap and would regularly enter under the cloak of darkness before committing dirty protests across the walls).

And that was that. I got divorced. We rented a flat, we bought a house (ten of them, in fact), we had three children, six cats, one dog and a Bearded Dragon (entirely driven by Max, could only eat live locust and had to be kept away from the cats). He asked me to marry him when I was four months pregnant and drying my hair and we got married in a registry office before having a party in his Mum, Judith’s, garden where your Grandpa fell into the pond whilst trying to take wedding photos (it was the BEST of days). We lived in multiple locations over multiple years, took you on as many holidays as we could afford and almost always gave in to your endless campaigns for whatever trend based shit that you’d plead for over the years. Some may say parental weakness; I’d say a want for an easy life. Ha.

Not my most glamorous moment at six months pregnant. If there were ever a case for vow renewal, this photo is it.

He was there when I was diagnosed with cancer and he was there when they told me the cancer had gone; in the middle bit, he did his best and he did it well (people always think it’s the one who is sick who feels the most trauma but the family of those inflicted carry a huge emotional burden). He’s been there when you were anxious, when you were worried, when you needed a lift, when you wanted help and he was there on the sidelines supporting you when you played football every Saturday and Sunday for 15 years. He was there when Ella vomited directly into his mouth after a bad IKEA meatball and when we thought Max had meningitis and had to be emergency admitted to hospital. And when Leo rolled down a hill and hurt his foot and I told him to stop crying, it was just a sprain, and went to the tapas bar with my friend Kate (your father took him to hospital and it was a broken ankle). ALL the times.

Yes yes, sometimes, he forgets the stop button. He is prone to taking a joke too far and is often deeply inappropriate in social situations whilst going down a comedy avenue. He has a concerning eternal love for Stone Island attire. His attempts at bed making are an outrage, he struggles to find the wash basket and has no idea how to work the oven. He’s been known to tell dinner guests that the party’s over at 11pm if he’s feeling a bit tired. He has not once picked up the dog poo from the lawn, nor emptied the cat litter tray (in fact, he has an irrational dislike of Flo mostly because, in typical British Shorthair fashion, she doesn’t give a flying fuck about anything and will lie in his way for him to trip over almost purposefully).

He is not perfect. But then, neither am I. I’m very glad and very lucky that my penchant for tequila meant that he was thrown into my life path and that him being part of you makes him part of yours. So, ignore your cynical Mother, order a last minute Moonpig card and go and wrap those BEST DAD cufflinks pronto.

Love, your Mum x

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