Hail to the Chief!

‘No story ever got worse for getting better’

Gaelic proverb

I read today that President Obama will soon give his state of the union address. No doubt it will cover weighty topics such as falling off Fiscal Cliffs and the like. I’m sure it will be a florid and supremely articulate speech but ultimately telling us only that we are up the proverbial without a paddle. Less state of the union more the state we are in.

There is not much that my father and the president have in common. Other than perhaps a mutual love of golf matched by their mutual lack of ability. However, my dad is a man that I respect enormously and love dearly. He is an immensely sensible, practical and stoical man.  An atheist Calvinist to his very core. Everything he does has been meticulously planned and thought through, as a result, things can take a while to get done, but he rarely makes mistakes.

Unfortunately, on the rare occasion that he does err it goes down in the family annuls. To be oft repeated and to get better with each telling…

The interior of my parents home has pretty much been built by my father, although there are glacial valleys that have been formed with greater speed. It has taken him the best part of 30 years to install the kitchen. But credit where credit is due, it is a fine kitchen. It has involved many trips to local DIY stores to get hundreds of pieces of wood. He has got this down to a fine art. He knows the exact size of the largest piece of wood he can get to fit in the car and the kitchen has been designed around that limitation. When he goes to the hardware store he follows the same regime. The wood is carefully measured (‘measure twice, cut once’ – an oft repeated maxim), then placed diagonally across the interior of the car to maximise the size of the wood that can be carried. The boot is then slowly lowered as far as possible, without closing, to check that the wood is in the correct place. Once it has been established that the boot can be safely closed, it is then slammed shut with vigour, gusto and a certain elan.

On this particular occasion, as usual, faither performed the door shutting ritual, scurried off round the car, got in the car seat, as usual, checked the car was in neutral, as usual; turned on the ignition, as usual; checked his mirrors, as usual and skooshed his windscreen. Only to be confused when he felt a refreshing spray on his face. At first he couldn’t work out where the spray was coming from. And then it slowly began to dawn on him that the windscreen of the car was not where it should be, but instead was scattered across the bonnet of the car. The merest milimeter of wood protruding beyond the window frame.

His reaction is not recorded for posterity, but my father rarely, if ever looses his temper. I imagine him taking a deep breath, closing his eyes and slowly letting his head fall and rest momentarily on the steering wheel. An oath may have been muttered, the wisdom of the gods questioned, but it would have been barely audible.

The only time that I have ever heard my dad swear is on the golf course. He is cursed with a terminal slice and on the worst of days when the 18^th tee shot of the round has been carved into the trees and the ball clatters like a pin ball through the woods, when the rest of us would gone home, or in tearful frustration, wrapped their clubs round their knee, or their playing partners neck, you may just catch him wearily shake his head and utter a profanity under his breath.

My dads eyesight is changing with age, its not getting any worse, infact you may argue that it is improving. He now only requires his glasses for close up work. For anything more than about 5ft of distance he will remove his glasses and go au natural (calm down mother, its only his glasses that he takes off). That poses its own difficulties when on the golf course. Although a tall man, when crouched, tiger like over the ball before a tee shot he is probably just a shade under 6ft. Thus he needs his glasses to see the ball, but once the blow is dealt he can't pick up the ball in flight with his glasses on. So an almighty kerfuffle ensues to take his glasses off before he looses the ball against the sky. After a shot he will invariably have no notion of where his ball has ended up. In his heart, he will know that in all probability, the ball has nestled in the jungle on the right of the fairway. But, ever the optimist he will hope that was the one in a hundred ball that makes its way on to the fairway. He will stand on the tee straining into the murky sky looking straight down the middle of the fairway in vain hope, one hand on his hip the other resting on his golf club, looking all the world like a champion a teapot impersonator.  He will then look round to me and ask expectantly…

‘I kinda lost the flight of that one against the sky, you didn’t happen to catch it did you?’

To which I always reply

‘Yup, went out right, Da'. Waaaay out right’

Dad will sniff, shake his head wearily and stoop to pick up his tee peg.

You have to understand that my fathers slice is a chronic and, alas, a degenerative condition. So 99.9% of the time that is infact the correct answer. Regardless of whether I managed to follow the ball or not.

There are occasions, and in my defence they are seldom, when the planets will align, there will be a stiffening right to left gale whipping off the sea, he will crack one off the meat of the bat and it will bisect the fairway…

‘I kinda lost the flight of that one against the sky, you didn’t happen to catch it did you?’

‘Yup, went out right, Da'. Waaaay out right’

And to his credit once he has waded through navel high gorse and knee high swamp looking for his ball, bravely risking the wild animals that tend to lurk in such wilderness and I have finally told him that it infact lies right slap in the middle of the fairway, he will smile, take it in good humour and have a wee chuckle to himself. He is just not a man who is quick to temper.

He has lived with my mother for over 40 years though, so if this patience didn’t come naturally, he most certainly has had to develop it. If it wasn’t for his looks he could have been a poster boy for Darwinism. Adapt or perish.

His adaption has taken many forms over the years, currently when things get too much in the house, he disappears into the garage for hours on end and comes out with the most wonderful wooden bowls.  Fashioned with care from exotic sounding woods such as zebranno or just with bits of wood, of unknown progeny that he has picked up whilst out walking (probably when he was searching for golf balls, its amazing what grows in some of that jungle like rough). Like the kitchen they take a good while to produce, but they are worth the wait.

There is no heating in the garage and during winter it can get punishingly cold. However dad still feels the need to get out from time to time and escape the madness of inside. My mother, realising the value of his retreat, has encouraged his hobby. I got a call from her asking advice on how she could make the garage a little more clement for the old man during the winter. I had expected her to be asking advice about how to rig up heaters for the garage or similar. But no, her question was to whether I knew where she would be able to buy him a set of thermal overalls. She might appreciate the value of his private space, but she also knows the value of money…

I took a call from my mother a couple of months ago.

‘What do you know about campervans?’ She demanded.

‘Erm… not much really, why?’

‘I’m thinking of getting one’

‘A campervan? Why on earth are you thinking of getting a campervan?’

‘To follow you round France’

‘What!?’

‘To follow you round France’

‘Yeah, I heard you. But since when are you going to follow me round France’?

‘Since I thought about getting a campervan, I reckon it’ll be a wheeze. Just like the old days when your dad and I travelled round Canada’

‘They’re not cheap’ I said. Trying to dissuade her.

‘That’s why I’m going to sell the car’.

I would have been better trying to stop a charging elephant with a stick of celery.

‘You’re going to sell the car?’

‘Why are you repeating everything I say, me boy?’

‘It’s incredulity’

‘I knew you’d like the idea’

‘I’m not sure that’s what incredulity means, Mum.’

‘There is a nice young man in Dairsie who can do me a good deal if I trade in the car’

 ‘But, you get car sick, it’s a long way to drive round France’ again, trying to dissuade her.

‘Och details, details’. Celery. Elephant.

‘What does dad say about this?’ I was getting desperate. It was my inheritance she was squandering, after all…

‘What’s he got to do with it?’

‘Well, its his car. I’m assuming your planning on bringing Dad too?’

‘Course he’s coming, you don’t think I’m driving up those hills do you? Don’t you worry about your Faither. He’s used to my great ideas. If he knows what’s good for him he’ll think it’s a great idea too’

‘…Right’

‘Don’t mention it to him though, I haven’t told him yet. Just waiting for the right time’

‘When its already a fait accompli?”

‘Precisely. We are of the same mind. I knew you’d think it was a good idea. I’m coming through to Glasgow tomorrow to look at a van that I think is a good deal. We can buy me lunch. You can tell me in more detail how much you love my idea’

And so we went to see a van in Glasgow and if truth be told, it was a cracking van. All mod cons, good little runner, just the ticket. Except it was decked out like the Scooby Doo van.

I'm not making this up... The Scooby Doo Van

Dad sidled up to me mid way through the viewing he was visibly pale and through the side of his mouth, muttered sotto voce:

‘It’s a bloody Scooby doo van. I'm going to have to drive round town in a bloody Scooby doo van. Do you know she’s going to sell the bloody car?’

‘Bloody’. Three times in as many sentences. I hadn’t heard that level of profanity since Faither ran out of golf balls trying to clear the water on the 16^th back in the 90s. Yup, he was shaken to the core, alright.

Fortunately the purchase of the Scooby Doo van fell through, however a van is currently on the high seas, inbound from Japan, and will be converted into a campervan by spring, ready for full sea trials before embarking on the long trip to and round France in the summer.

The Tifosi (The Emperors New Clothes) will now have their own means of transport.

There will be no State of the Nation address in castle Kemp this year, nor indeed any other.  But when I went home last, the table next to the TV was positively groaning. Piled high with the most exquisite hand turned bowls, salt cellars, pepper grinders, egg cups and other assorted wooden crafts. My dad may lack the soaring rhetoric of the president. But in his own way, he’s just as articulate.

From Glasgow,
N