Daddy Cool

 

Today at 2.53pm, 9^th August 2022, I got a phone call from Crete.

My father had died.

I had been expecting that call for a long time and even though I’d rehearsed it in my head, the sledgehammer still hit me full in the chest.

My father had a carer who came 4 hours a day and her manager called me to break the news. She was clearly upset and advised me not to call the carer directly just yet as the poor lady was “hysterical”. She had found my father alive and well in the morning when she turned up, given him a glass of water and then gone back a while later to find that he wouldn’t wake up. The local doctor pronounced him dead and later a funeral service came round to take him away. His funeral is this Thursday 11^th at 5pm and I will be flying out there for the shortest amount of time possible; landing at 8.45am and coming back to Italy at midnight. I don’t want to be around his house any more than I have to….at least not until my grief has worked its way through. Right now I just feel sad and empty, but I know I’ll cry later.

My father was born in 1935 in Warwick, England. He went to the same school, Westgate, that my mother later became the Headteacher of (life can throw up odd coincidences). At 15 he left school and became a stonemason’s apprentice before doing national service in the Royal Air Force and staying on for an extra term after, rising to the rank of Senior Aircraftsman. In the 1960s he took up Judo and became a black belt and an instructor. He trained British champion Neil Adams when he was a little boy, and was very proud when Neil later went on to become a world class fighter.

He married my mother in 1967 and in 1970 I was born, followed 3 years later by my brother. In 1994 they got divorced and he went travelling, living a dream of his of wandering, uninhibited around the world. Taking in Asia, Oceania and Europe he eventually settled in Plakias, Crete an idyllic fishing village with a big summer tourist trade. He lived there for the rest of his life, telling me many times how great the place was, which I finally got to see for myself in 2008.

As I sit and write this and the pain of his dying is still throbbing in my chest, I want to remember and honour him for the amazing things he did in his life.

There’s the usual things that I could come up with, rambling on about his compassion and his dignity but to me, my father was a special man because of both his gentle nature and the fact that he could handle himself, both verbally and physically.

When I was a little boy I didn’t like eating vegetables. Like most kids I fucking hated them. One day Dad fixed me with a stare at the dinner table and asked “Who’s your favourite, Batman or Robin?”

That was a silly question, Batman of course!

“Do you know why Robin is shorter than Batman?”

I had no idea.

“Because he doesn’t eat his sprouts!”

In the 1970s Doctor Who was the staple TV on a Saturday afternoon and one day Dad demonstrated the absolute mind-screw that was (at least to a 7-year old) the Tardis being bigger on the inside. He got me to hold up a round coaster and stood at the other end of the lounge.

“Can you cover the paper with the coaster?”

I nodded that I could.

He then walked up to me and put the paper right up to the coaster.

“Can you cover it now?”

Of course, I couldn’t

“That’s what the Tardis is like inside.

He once told me that a Mousaka was a “sack with a moo in it” and that Tarzan made that strange, warbling yell as he swung on vines because he’d just sat on a thistle.

When I was about 8, the local bully was picking on me in the alleyway near our house when a voice bellowed “YOU BASTARD!!!” and there was my Dad, marching up looking very pissed off.

“He...he was calling me names!” the bully stammered.

“Don’t you lie to me, I heard every word you said you little wretch!”. Dad then picked him up by the front of his T-shirt and lifted him off the ground, legs kicking in the air before letting him go. He landed with a thud on his arse and then ran off, never picking on me again.

Dad loved to paint and was a prolific painter of both oil and water colours. Some were just OK but others were superb and he was always a little frustrated that he was never able to sell them, eventually not trying, and just painting for pleasure.

He told me as I grew up to never get a tattoo. Him and my mother had images of me convening board meetings as a well-dressed CEO...or something like that. When he divorced my mother he got 3 tattoos done in about 2 years, one of which was the grim reaper.

When I was 14 he was dropping me off at a birthday party when a drunk man walked past and banged on the roof of the car. Dad ignored it but the guy did it again so Dad got out and they had a fight, in front of me and my 12-year old brother. Dad was rolling around on the pavement, laughing his head off and saying “You’ve been on the piss, haven’t you mate?!!” before punching and eventually choking the bloke into unconsciousness. This was all around school a few days later, due to it being witnessed by some local lads, one of whom practically pissed himself when I told him Dad was 50 years old.

In 2008 I resigned the police and while my mother was freaking, out my father’s only reaction was “Good. It must be such a relief for you to be free of those wankers”.

When he went travelling his unrestrained side, that he’d kept under wraps while married to my mother, came out….in a good way. He was a prolific drinker and could knock back the evil brew that is Raki by the glass. No one was known to have beaten him in Plakias in a drinking competition and he eventually earned the nicknames “Raki” and “Iron” Mike. He was popular with everyone and my first trip to Plakias had two bar staff in different pubs on my second night out saying “Why you not tell me you son of Mike?”

“Err...I didn’t know if you knew him!”

“Everyone knows your father. Here, take a drink with me”.

He used to love a mid-day drinking session, doing vodka and tonics and a few shots, saying “one for the ditch” as he necked the final one before braving the uphill walk back home. He’d sleep it off and then come back in the evening around 10pm and do it all again.

He also loved to dance when he’d had a few, and was often seen twirling on the dance floor of the local bars.

I vowed that I would show him a grandchild before he died but sadly that never happened. I flew out to see him in June 2022, just before I started work teaching in summer camps in Italy, and while he was very frail he still had his sense of humour and was mentally sharp. I hugged him goodbye the day I left and looked in his eyes and told him I loved him

I knew he would die in bed (his second choice after “dying with the sun on my back”) and his ending was peaceful. When I asked him what he wanted for a funeral he replied “Chuck me in the sea, I don’t care”.

I’m not religious but I’m spiritual and I believe in what some people call reincarnation. Dad lived each day to the full and was always an inspiration to me and while I miss him and this week will be hard, I know that wherever he goes next he’ll have a great time there too.

RIP Mike Manley, a fucking legend.