My Dad

My Dad would have been 61 today.  

Do I miss him?  Erm...  Would you miss your lips if they got sliced off?  Would you miss your thumbs if they got chopped off?  Would you miss your ability to breathe air if oxygen was sucked away from you?  Durr...  What a stupid question that is!

My Dad was my hero and my nemesis all at the same time.  

Hero because:

• he was in the Navy and kept us safe from the baddies
• he made me laugh constantly
• he took the piss out of my mum ALL the time and lived to tell the tale
• he called my mum 'old trout' and didn't get slapped
• he called my Gran 'Faggot' (pile of old sticks)
• he could make anything out of anything
• he spliced a piece of rope and made me a woggle for my Girl Guides neckerchief
• he would pretend to be 'mental' in the shops to annoy my mum (un-PC but funny)
• he was the funniest drunk man on the planet (my mum would disagree)
• he always made sure me and/or Cath won ALL the fancy dress competitions
• he built a swing on the garden gate
• he stayed up all night to build our Sindy House (from Santa)
• he dressed up as Santa for the Brownies and even fooled my wee sister
• he built a 'sun trap' in our garden in Rosyth, complete with TV!
• he turned our loft into a cool place to hang out
• he almost killed the man who groped me in Littlewoods (a shop) when I was only 9
• he learned to walk again after having cancer, skin grafts and a spinal fusion in his 20's
• he had wheelchair races in the Navy hospital and got secretly drunk with the other patients
  
• he went back to fighting in wars after having recovered from cancer the first time
• he took us all to Disneyworld, like he promised, when he left the Navy
• he was still the most hilarious man on the planet even when he was dying of cancer
• he would have battered my ex-husband, his dad and any other member of his family I needed him to without question, hesitation or remorse...

in fact...

• he would not have let me marry Jonathan in the first place cos he'd have totally seen through him and not kept quiet about it!

Nemesis because:

• I was his little girl
• he wanted to keep me all wrapped up, warm and safe and I had other ideas!

EXHIBIT 1

My Dad was the champion of most things, but especially fancy dress competitions.  I don't think me or my sister ever came home from a competition without winning.  Was I always happy about this?  No.  Sometimes I felt like a complete knobhead (exhibit 1).  

EXHIBIT 2

Sometimes the costume was so cumbersome I couldn't move, dance, sit down, eat at the buffet, play 'pass the parcel' or go to the toilet (exhibit 2).  To be honest, these days, someone would probably phone Social Services!  Between us, my sister and I have probably been dressed up as everything under the sun but our funniest has to be the family portrait (exhibit 3) where we dressed up as ourselves.  

EXHIBIT 3

I've given up explaining to my friends that:

a) we are not boys 

b) we are not lesbians 

c) we chose those outfits ourselves

d) we asked for those haircuts

e) my Dad is not Joseph Fritzl

f)  my Mum is no relation to Rose West OR Myra Hindley

We used to go on holiday to Scarborough (when we were wee) and every Friday was 'fancy dress night' at the guest house we used to stay at (where we shared a bathroom with a mental family from Nottingham).  Our first year, we didn't know about this competition much to my Dad's annoyance.  We threw something together and, as a family, went as a casino.  Me and Cath were the dice (boxes from Wm. Lows, now Tesco) my mum was the glamorous(!) croupiere and my Dad was the roulette wheel.  

Each year thereafter we went on holiday prepared for the fancy dress extravaganza (exhibit 1).  I think our most triumphant year had to be the year my Dad decided we should all be a pelican crossing.  Me and Cath were the red/green men belicia beacons, my mum was the Green Cross Code Woman and my Dad?  Yep, you guessed it, he was the pelican, complete with fish hanging out of his gob - I'll post a picture when I can find one! 

EDIT 26/04/14: HUZZAH - Mama Raw found the pic so here you go:

My Dad was also a nippy pain in my arse once I hit 15/16.  He would lecture me about the most ridiculous things, for example, I had the gall to consistently leave the lid off the toothpaste and squeeze the tube from the middle.  Heinous, I know!  Instead of a quick clip round the ear and reminder not to do it cos the top gets crusty and minging, what I got was "you do realise we could all die from poisoning, and then where will you be?".  His thought process was:

• lid off
• toilet is flushed
• bits of shit get stuck to top of tube
• we put shit in our mouths
• we die

Of course, it was much more convoluted than that, I'm paraphrasing.  In total, the lecture lasted 4 hours and I'm sure included some sort of presentation on an OHP written on acetate sheets with china-graph pens (Powerpoint didn't exist back then)!  To be fair, he did usually have some sort of point!  It usually ended with me being threatened with the 'children's home' at the end of the road (which I must point out is actually a B&B for sailors families - I just didn't know that at the time and there were always kids hanging out there!)

Did I always like my Dad?  No.  There were times I wanted to punch his face in.  At one point, I thought he hated me so much I even asked my mum if he was my real dad.  This still cuts me to the quick when I think about it.  Of course he was my real Dad.  We are almost identical (except I don't have a beard, yet).  Why did I ask this question which I now know probably tore my mum apart?  I was 16!  My Dad annoyed the shit out of me.  My Dad wouldn't let me stay out late.  If I WAS a bit late my Dad would come looking for me in the car.  My Dad didn't want boys staying over.  My Dad didn't want me turning into a woman.  My Dad was doing his job.

My Dad got cancer again when I was sitting my Higher prelims.  I was 17.  My wee sister was 14.  It was the same cancer that came back to get him from 17 years ago. Why should one man have to go through that again?  This man fought for his country yet here he is again, fighting for his life.  My Dad had chemotherapy and major surgery to remove the cancerous areas.  He looked like he'd been bitten by a shark, in fact that's what he told people who asked as he felt it was more interesting.  The chemo and surgery didn't work.  It was now all about pain relief and quality of life.  

QUALITY OF LIFE?  Fuck off!  My Dad was in a wheelchair.  Me and my mum went to the hospital to learn how to administer his morphine and lift him in and out of his chair.  We learned how to clean him when he went to the toilet (in a commode).  When most of the people I went to school with were gatecrashing over 18 parties, I was at home helping my mum change a cathater bag.  Oh yeah, quality.  

But it was.  That time we had was precious.  We still laughed, we joked and we still took the piss.  Letting the cancer take your morale and sense of humour as well as your health was totally unacceptable to Mr Raw!  

My Dad put me in charge of wheelchair pushing and I was the only one allowed to negotiate him around the streets.  We had a home made horn (my gob) to get people to move out of our way and if Dad annoyed me, he would either find his wheels stuck in a grate in the street or he'd be left in the 'granny pants' section of a shit shop.

Was it all doom and gloom?  No, actually it wasn't, we are just not that type of family.  We had our sad moments but then we would give ourselves a hefty boot up the arse and get on with it.  We even charged people 10p to have a shot on our stairlift!

I spent my 18th birthday with my Dad putting holes in the hospital roof with champagne corks.  I spent my 19th birthday saying goodbye to my Dad.

• 29th May 1974: Helen Raw born at 9.25pm
• 29th May 1993: Alan Raw pronounced dead at 9.25am

My Dad was my mums rock, my Dad was my wee sisters shadow, my Dad was my best pal and my worst nightmare.  I only wish he had lived long enough to see my sister turn 16 so I could laugh knowingly as he became her worst nightmare.

***

Dad, 

We got on like a house on fire.  We had exactly the same sense of humour.  We had fights like nothing else on earth and mum had to referee.  You dressed me up like a tit for the sake of a shitty prize.

Oh what I would give to look like a tit with you one last time.  

Love you always and forever,

Tuppence xx

A titish pic, just for my Dad