musical turns

My last post was about my father and it may be hugely significant that this one will be too. My dad and I have always had a difficult, combustible relationship and since I left home it has never been easy. Last night I took myself off to bed early to read my book and to catch up on sleep after a relentless week of work. As I was falling asleep I heard the children below me playing their guitars, singing and listening to youtube and for some reason, images of my father popped into my head.

Dad loves music and always had the radio on in the car. It was the light programme The Forces Sunday lunchtime programme being a favourite, later radio 2 or he would play records at home on the gramophone later upgraded to the stereogram. He listened to jazz, to Harry Secombe, Bing Crosby, Glen Miller and others, strange to me. He even bought a copy of the Pearl Fishers for one of the arias. He was totally untrained but sang and more often whistled his way through the day to Bing or Harry as easily as to Mario Lanza. I remember him attempting to teach me to whistle one Sunday morning while mum was making the roast. I stood straight backed next to the door jamb and pursed my lips watching him with fierce concentration. I wanted the sound to come from my lips - to be like my dad, to be able to join in with him when he whistled in the car with his right elbow sticking out of the wound down window, cigarette in hand. My mum sizzling and hissing, scraping the bottom of the roast tin, the radio on and dad staring at me, down at my level, saying' come on, you can do it, try' and me hissing and lisping in response. I can't whistle yet but when I try I see my dad's face willing me to do it.

Another memory is of winning the Odeon Saturday cinema club raffle. Oh heady days, mouth full of everlasting strip, looking at my ticket stub and realising I'd won! I had to go up onto the stage and got my prize from the manager - the new Beatles single 'I wanna hold your hand'. I was beside myself with excitement, a single, the Beatles, that I don't think I saw a second of the films, turning the record over and over in my hands, slipping it out and into its sleeve. My first record. I got home and told my mum, again making dinner, this time the Saturday steak and kidney pie, who looked up and was dismissive. She didn't like the Beatles. But dad picked me up threw me in the air and was so excited, joining with and increasing my elation at the prize. We didn't have a record player at the time and even though he promised to borrow one he never did and so the record languished on the dresser later being thrown out without me ever listening to it. When I hear it now I am back in the kitchen with my dad in the air, bursting with happiness.

My daughter sings. She even went through a phase when very young of operatically singing her way through her life. She would sing on the stairs announcing her arrival (I am coming down the stairs, I am dressed, the dog is there), sing her breakfast request (scrambled egg, Please!'), sing on the walk to play group (we have to stop to cross the road, here is Fay, hold our hands) and so on through the day. Since her discovery of mamma mia, she has taken singing very seriously, perhaps fuelled by the belief that there is indeed a Greek island where all the inhabitants always sing and never talk to each other like other mortals, and she now has singing lessons. We have singstar on the playstation and have a brilliant giggly time belting out old songs and competing with each other as to who can hit the highest note (her, of course). She also has guitar lessons (and did have piano too, but after a couple of years informed me that she knew how to play now and didn't need lessons any more) and is often in school plays and musicals, singing her way through life once more. I delight in this. I love to hear her, to have our house filled with song and sometimes, when allowed, I sing along too thinking of my dad, whistling and singing along to the radio.

Tales of my father

My father once walked out of my sister's house because she had served him lasagne for tea. He got up, pushed back his chair and announced that he hadn't survived the second world war to be served 'itie' rubbish. Poor girl, there she was innocuously dishing up for the family with grandad come for his tea. Like me she'd thought that years of annual golf dinners at the only Italian restaurant in town had prepared my father for the delights of Italian cuisine. But he had apparently always had the steak chips and peas and quietly pushed his mushrooms under his napkin.

The grandchildren sometimes get themselves 30 minutes of fun by asking grandad about the war. He was actually just too young to serve (and may be that explains aspects of his personality) but he did have a job as messenger boy for the Home Guard. He has great tales of derring do, mainly bicycle based, him dashing around the countryside with messages for various far flung outposts of dads' army. We had bombs drop near us but not near enough for genuine danger. It sounds like he had a lovely time and was most self important. Extra hot chocolate too.

After the war he did his national service and was lucky enough, I think, to go to the Far East - Singapore. There he lived on a big base with many other young men. In the photos they all look about 15 and he is so young, so innocent and so cheeky! I can tell that it was here that he was happiest, with his mates all serving a common cause. Paydays were spent in the city spending he wages. Cigarettes and a decent meal - steak, chips and peas. Of course. In all hi time there he never sampled an authentic meal (or 'foreign malarky' as he puts it). Such a waste. They played pool and cards and wrote letters home.

At the end of his National Service he went to a dance in the local dance hall and saw my mum. He went up to her and asked her to dance. She mentioned she hadn't seen him for a while, 'well I've been in Singapore for 2 years, in the RAF' 'oh I see, that'll be why then. Wondered where you were'. Two months after they were married and 9 months after that my sister was born. The wedding photo was taken but not developed. They couldn't afford it. After my mother's death my sister discovered the negatives and took them to the same photography shop that had taken them (44 years previously) and had them developed as a gift for dad. They now have pride of place on the sitting room wall. My parents. Never before seen by us like this. Two extremely young, extremely nervous strangers.

They lived with my maternal grandmother for a while and later with dad's mum. My mother hated her. She criticised and picked fault and generally made her life a misery. When mum was pregnant with baby number two, the council took pity on them and gave them a 2 bedroom flat. I was born there.We never had many photos taken, money being a small thing but never enough of it with four children to raise. He took photos I think but could never afford to have them developed. No pictures were displayed in our family home but a biscuit tin in the wardrobe was a box of delights to us. Photos of strange people dressed in fur trimmed coats next to flash cars, babies in huge high prams and then a photo of granny on her wedding day next to a fierce looking grandad. A couple of pictures of my father so young, so thin and so shy in his uniform or off duty vest and slacks. Smiling in the company of his friends in Singapore. Looking uncomfortable standing next to a 'sight'. Holding a cigarette, looking hopeful. A handful of photos of us children (around 5 of me and none of the youngest, poor soul) looking like refugees from the eastern bloc all in a line with our hand me downs on sitting on chairs with torn upholstery or else a checked picnic blanket.

After mum's death the four of us poured over these photos in the days after her death searching for clues to our family's past and maybe future. And now I think of it, no pictures of my parents together nor strangely, none of her at all. But on the wall of my father's home there shines the photograph of the two young hopefuls, shy and uncertain and together for ever.