Today is the 65th birthday of my Father: Raymond William Thomas – a.k.a. – Daddy Ray – a.k.a. The Bank of Ray – a.k.a. – The Special One. He’s not actually in town, he’s off on an unusually long stag weekend (not his, I hasten to add) that, from memory, involves booze and golf, probably in that order. I’m not sure that this is, in itself, a good idea. He is, after all, the only man I know who has nearly died in two separate golf buggy-related accidents (in chronological order: nearly driving a buggy off a cliff in fog and getting dragged across a golfing green after his shoe laces got caught in the axle). He is not, as you may already have gathered, a man to be safely left to his own devices.
He was also terribly spoiled child; the only off-spring of the eldest sister of a large Swindon family. As a boy he didn’t know that fried eggs had whites or that bacon had rind because his mother, my grandmother, cut them off before serving them to him (and he got bacon and eggs in post-war Britain as well. One of the family was a grocer. It’s not what you know, etc…) This practice of expecting his rinds and egg white to be removed for him lasted much, much less than a week into his marriage to my mother.
He’s also a terrible exaggerator and teller of tall tales. He’s famous for it. Baron Munchhausen doesn’t have a patch on him. What started out as an amusing and (mostly) true incident is stretched into a tragic-comic saga. As time passes each story grows and stretches to the point where the original truth is almost watered down to Homeopathic levels. It’s not without reason that one of my Mum’s catchphrases is:
“RAY!!! You are SUCH a liar!!!”
The best thing is that he never has any idea that he isn’t recounting anything other that the pure, unadorned truth.
As you can tell, he’s nothing like me at all…
So, yes, he’s a self-indulgent and accident prone dissembler. Oh and childish. Oh and a trouble-maker. Oh and a right two-pot screamer as well, as it comes to it.
But he’s also deeply and instinctively generous. He’s the first to reach into his pocket and the first to offer his time to anyone. He’s the life and soul of every gathering, mischievously bellowing: “Yaaaaaaaay!” at the top of his voice at a party if he feels that there’s a silence that needs filling. And for a man who has achieved huge success in his field, after leaving school without a grade to his name, he’s startlingly humble and never feels that he’s done enough. He adores my mother (ignoring the occasional cat fight) and he is, by any measure, a good man; not least because you’d never be able to convince him off the fact.
So that’s him, 65-not out. He’s my silly old Dad and I love him to pieces.
Don’t tell him that though for fuck’s sake, he’ll only think I’m after money.
The Flog 