Selected by Peter Hinchliffe for “Open Writing”
Written by Jill Grant
My Dad. My hero. A loving, kind and decent man.
My first memories of him are riding on his shoulders (clutching his hair – ouch) and babbling “Ah! A-Dadda!” I was thirty at the time. (I jest, of course. I would be about eighteen months old and idolised him even then). And a little later, listening to our ancient Bakelite radio – the kind with a big dial for twiddling and an art-deco grille. Paul Robeson was on, singing “Ma Curly Headed Baby”. I wanted to know all about the man who owned such a wonderful voice and sang about babies like me. Dad told me Paul Robeson’s story. It stuck in my mind that his father was a slave, because I couldn’t comprehend a society that would treat a human being so appallingly. When I listened to that track again years later, I was amazed at how accurately I remembered it.
Dad and I used to joke that we started a conversation as soon as I was able to talk in sentences, and that it just never stopped. Well, it had to stop of course – but not until twenty four hours before his death. And in a sense it goes on, since I often talk to him even now, although he died in 1997. I’d like to think he hears me.
When I was a kid, we were like two little old men, ruminating about life in the tap room of a pub. The conversation ranged over many and varied topics from poetry to politics – with lots of music, of course. Dad was always interested in what I had to say, and never patronised me. Believe me, this was rare in my world, as the norm during my childhood was to believe that kids had neither sense nor feeling. Dad gave me something precious too – standards and values which he demonstrated by example. You could sum it up, I suppose as the Golden Rule – do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Dad’s disappointed look was a far worse punishment than any amount of cloutings from Mum. Luckily I never did anything really bad, as I loved him and wanted to shine in his eyes.
Dad was a man of high intelligence, but poverty and social inequality robbed him of his rightful place in the world. He was particularly brilliant at maths. He was very unlucky in that his parents were too poor to allow him to take up a scholarship to Newcastle Grammar School (“Let him have his chance; he’s brilliant” begged the head of Dad’s elementary school in Gateshead.). Then the war scuppered his chances of Olympic glory as a cyclist – he was champion cyclist and an Olympic trialist but the world decided to have a war instead. (He enlisted early out of a strong ideological hatred of the Nazis, didn’t expect to come back, and regarded any sacrifice he made as well worth it.)
Six years of his life – and his thanks was a cheap demob suit and a country fit for heroes, but few jobs. He knuckled down and did what he could to feed his family (my Mum and my brother. I came along in 1954). Mothers didn’t work outside the family in those days – a man was expected to earn all the wage, or he was despised.
Some may think he could have caught up with his education and gone on to university. Not so easy as it sounds, especially as Dad was a highly sensitive man and lacked self confidence, something he hid well, but which I could see very clearly. I used to seethe as a child at the sight of him kow-towing to jumped-up jacks in office who weren’t fit to clean his boots, just because they were “the better sort”. Baloney. As you may have gathered, I was radicalised early – this was only one reason, though. For the other, have a read of my article “Battle Maiden” to see how this mythical “better sort” behaved towards poor kids. Baloney, I say again.
So the stuffing had been knocked out of Dad and he channelled his ambitions into my brother and me, and grafted away to make sure we had our chance. Dad did a variety of jobs, including being an airline steward – and, God save the mark – a labourer. What a wicked waste of a mind. When I was a baby he found a steady job with a good employer – gold dust in the Fifties.
CAV was the factory in Rochester where my Dad worked for thirty years. He stood at a bench, working as a machine tool setter – a semi-skilled job which he did to the best of his ability. It would have been beneath his dignity to do less, but the job was beneath him in terms of his very high intelligence.
I once went to meet him from work and the foreman, Jack Revely invited me to meet him on the shop floor, to which I agreed. What struck me immediately was the noise. It was unbelievable. Then the smell of machine oil, which Dad carried on his clothes and which I associated with him. The oil was everywhere – in the air, underfoot, on Dad’s brown overall coat. This was Dad’s working environment for thirty years. He never complained or moaned. He did a punishing shift pattern of two weeks on the day shift, then two weeks on the night shift. It paid better. I reckon he survived it because he could always fall asleep at will (I used to call him Kipper) and because of his commitment to the work ethic.
Dad retired in 1983, and began to lead a life that fitted him. He had always been interested in the Spanish language and culture, and became fluent in the language. He spent a lot of time just mooching round Spain on his bike (if you can mooch on a bike) and became the first person to make a pilgrimage from Santander to Santiago de Compostela on a bike. When the Confraternity of St. James, an organisation for people who’ve made this pilgrimage was formed, he was a founder member and gave talks, illustrated with slides on this and his later bike trip to the Middle East. The other members could, I suppose, be described as the “better sort” – with a great deal more justice that the specimens I recalled from my childhood. Cultured, educated people who liked and appreciated Dad and in whose company he blossomed.
He was seventy eight when the lung cancer which had been making stealthy advances in his left lung made its presence felt. He was living with me by that time. From diagnosis to death was a mere two months. Before that, he had hidden his pain and fear from me so as to make my life easier. He could see I was in total denial about the nature of his illness. Once I knew, however I did everything I could to care for him and support him, including being there as he drew his last breath. How could I do less? I loved him.
You may have gathered that I am very proud of George Arthur Grant, my Dad. He took all the hard knocks life dished out to him without whining or complaining, and faced his final illness with exemplary courage.
To end on a happy note – My Dad the Maths Whizz! Watching him watching “Countdown”, and beating Carol Vorderman at the arithmetic part of the show – in his head – was one of the pleasures of my life.
Lucky me, to have had such a Dad; such a friend.
© Jill Grant 2010
This entry was posted by peter hinchliffe on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Open Writing.
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