Falling on an early summer Sunday, Father’s Day always involved my father playing cricket. It also meant my mother helping the other wives make the teas. As children, my sister and I had no option but to go along and find something to do.
Knowing it was Mother’s or Father’s Day in the 70s wasn’t as easy as it is now, especially if you lived in the country and didn’t pass a WHSmith’s or shop in a supermarket. Mostly we remembered, made cards, said something in the morning, and that was that.
After cricket came the pub. My father was invariably captain of the team, respected and well-liked, not a big drinker but a good storyteller with a voice that carried. He was also tall and handsome: both men and women liked to be in his company, his orbit, his halo.
Shorts
On this Father’s Day, in 1978, we’d missed whatever reminders there were and it was early evening when we found out. My mum panicked. We were taken into a corner of the pub and told that we were to go straight to my father and say happy Father’s Day and apologise. I recognised the expression on her face: she’d failed. Nothing was to upset my father, to ruin his day, or withhold what he believed life owed him.
