A belated Father’s Day piece about my dad

When I was 11, my first job was a paper round at the local newsagents. I was given the Tudor Avenue round, a road lined with 1930s semis with mock Tudor frontages, which stretched out into the distance like a vast runaway. I got £10 a week for my efforts, which seemed like a small fortune at the time (and kept me in Spectrum computer games for a good 18 months or so).

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The playlist that time forgot

Maybe it’s that the world is so fucked up right now and seemingly teetering on the brink of nuclear war (Donald Trump’s preference to being impeached), but I’ve been spending a lot of time wrapped in a warm, comforting blanket of nostalgia recently.

It all started when I heard Madonna’s ‘Borderline’ on the radio, which instantly triggered a memory of a school coach trip to Wales in 1986. Midway through the four hour journey from Watford to Criccieth, a girl I fancied suddenly reached over my seat, placed her Walkman headphones over my head, and pressed ‘play’, saying: “This is what you do to me.”

Memories

My grandma died a couple of weeks ago. She’d just turned 91, was in failing health, and died peacefully in a nursing home. There were no frenzied attempts at resuscitation, with medical professionals swarming around her bed to a discordant soundtrack of blips and bleeps from an array of lifesaving equipment. She just ate some porridge for breakfast, returned to her room, then slipped away.