Maybe it was the blue moon over Nashville but I woke up last night around three a.m. and couldn’t get back
to sleep. Do you ever have those nights
when you fall asleep straight away, sleep heavily, wake thinking it’s morning
and you’ve had a great night’s sleep, only to discover you’ve been asleep just
for a couple of hours? And then you
can’t get back to sleep.
I went over a conversation I’d had yesterday with our
neighbour Nick about parents and residential homes. Britain is one of the worst countries for
putting our elderly into homes. I don’t have
that problem, I’m an orphan! I joke
about that but the reality is, I am, having lost both parents.
My father died at the same age I am today. His father, my grandfather, passed when my
Dad was only nine. I keep checking my
pulse!
My father was the most remarkable person I have ever
met. I have spoken about him before and
I know most of us think our parents are the best, and of course they are, but
last night I thought about some of the things my Dad had done.
In 1942, aged seventeen he left school early, lied about his
age and joined the R.A.F. Two months
later he found himself on the Queen Mary headed for New York to train as a
pilot. The R.A.F. couldn’t train pilots
in Britain as the Battle of Britain was going on so they sent potential pilots
abroad – South Africa or in my Dad’s case, America.
He had to stay in New York for a few weeks waiting for his
transfer, living on Central Park but the Harlem end. He used to frequent a few clubs in Harlem,
jazz clubs.
He was then transferred to a United States Air Force base in
San Antonio where he did indeed learn to fly with the USAF.
Like most people who have experienced war, my Dad would
never talk about his experiences but did once tell me about an incident that
happened. The plane he was flying in
Texas developed a fault and he had to eject.
He landed in a field, and hurt his ankle. Luckily for him a man was working in the
field and he helped my Dad, taking him back to his own home. The man was black, and the home was basically
a one-room shack. My Dad remembered
cartoons being on the wall as wallpaper.
The man’s family were there.
They fed my Dad and let him sleep.
When he felt better the man helped my Dad back towards the town but
would only accompany him so far – blacks weren’t allowed any further.
My Dad thanked him and started to walk back. As he turned a corner he came across the body
of a young black boy hanging from a tree.
This was real, not a film. When
my father got back to town he found out the reason – the young boy had deemed
to talk to a white girl.
Have we progressed since then? Yes, but not enough. Two days ago someone actually asked whether
‘blacks’ were allowed to use the swimming pool – not, you understand, that she
was racist! Right!
My Dad returned to Britain and became a pilot for the R.A.F.
flying Lancaster bombers. I’ve often
thought of the responsibility he must have felt, not yet twenty. He had a crew of six other men and they flew
over Berlin, Hamburg and other German towns.
He was one of the lucky ones, he survived the war, or did he? It stayed with him for the rest of his life,
regret, guilt perhaps, and I do believe it was the cause of his early passing.
In the last year of his life he and my Mum went to the old
air base in East England where his squadron was based.
My father was a very emotional man, one thing I’ve
inherited, and I remember when we went to Germany he deliberately tried to face
his demons, visiting the towns he had flown over in that Lancaster, towns that
were destroyed, life’s taken and lost. I
remember him crying, and I now in turn at that memory have tears in my eyes as
I type.
He was also a passionate man. Another thing I inherited from him was a love
of fast cars; the difference is he knew how to work on them, I know how to turn
the key and put petrol in! Well, maybe a
bit more but not much. He was an amateur
rally driver, racing around Wales and England at weekends, with my Mum often as
navigator. Unfortunately my experience
of my mother as a navigator is not a good one, she sent us not to the wrong
town but the wrong country when we travelled around Europe one year.
That was another example of my Dad. In 1967 he packed my Mum and a very young me
into his beloved new Ford Zephyr and took us around Europe for four weeks. In those days you were only allowed to take
twenty five pounds, forty dollars, in cash!!!! The rest has to be in
traveller’s checks.
There was no internet, no mobile phones, no sat nav, but,
even with my mother’s ‘help’, he managed to get us through Belgium, Germany,
Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg, Italy and France.
He was passionate about politics, being the agent for two
Cardiff Members of Parliament, Ian Grist and Stefan Terlezki. He was a strong believer in free
enterprise. On election day our house
became Battle H.Q. I remember our dining
table would be covered by the local election roll which listed every single
person in the area that was eligible to vote.
As the day progressed, with information obtained at the voting stations,
people’s names would be crossed off as they had voted. By late afternoon any potential Conservative
voter who hadn’t yet voted were visited and asked is they needed a lift to the
polling station. My friends and I roamed
the streets of Roath Park knocking on people’s doors, trying to encourage them
to come and vote. I used to love
election days.
Dad was the best people’s person I’ve met. I used to see people go out of their way to
talk with him, judges, barristers, politicians, mechanics, engineers, and of
course musicians - he could talk with anyone.
I can remember as a young teenager walking through Cardiff’s main street
and these guys with really long hair, tattoos etc., stopping him and talking to
him. I was scared but then amazed to see
them all laugh. It turned out my Dad and
Mum would frequent a club of one of his clients. The Revolution was a drug den in Cardiff,
playing heavy rock, but had a late licence, and live music, and that’s where he
and my mother used to go!
They also used to go to The Fantasia, which was owned by
another of his clients, (and my godfather), Annis. It was known to allow ‘gays’ be themselves
openly, at a time when it was still illegal in the U.K.
Towards the end of his life, emphysema struck and he found
it had to walk far. He used to have a
portable oxygen tank in the car and would have to slowly walk from the car to
wherever he was going. He had three
favourite haunts – the Royal Air Force Association club in Cardiff; the Pegasus
flying club at Cardiff Airport and the Captain’s Wife in Sully.
His big passion though, that he shared with my Mum, was
music. He was a huge jazz fan, loved
Sinatra, swing. The only person I have
ever asked for an autograph was Woody Herman.
It was my first visit to the States, I was seventeen, and I went to
Disneyland, and Herman was performing there, with his band, The Herd – not
Peter Frampton’s band I hasten to add!
When I got back to the UK I showed my Dad when Herman had written – it
was to my Dad and Herman congratulated him on raising a son who obviously had
great taste in music!
I’ve said before about my Dad taking my friends and I to
concerts, Oscar Peterson comes straight to mind, but I in turn introduced him
to the music I was listening to – early Springsteen, E.L.P. and Marc
Bolan. He was with me at the day long
concert at Cardiff City’s football ground, (the headliner was Bob Marley!) when
I met my idol Bolan who was there because his wife Gloria (Tainted Love) Jones
was performing. He and Bolan talked
about Elvis of all things.
He was also there when I met Davy Jones of the Monkees for
the first time. We were at the New
Theatre in Cardiff, and Davy was in a play.
They had a long talk about session musicians. Davy was a genuinely lovely person. I
remember that that night was the first time I was asked for my autograph!
Finally Dad came with me to Swansea to see The Who at
Swansea football ground. We stood in the
wings at the side of the stage watching them, Moon on drums was amazing, and on
form. A few weeks earlier my Dad had
taken me to see Buddy Rich in Bristol, another great showman. Rich used to come on from the wing, playing
his sticks along the floor until he reached his kit. It took him ten minutes to actually sit
behind his kit.
I had also taken my Dad to see Emerson Lake and Palmer,
again another tremendous group of individual musicians. I’ve since met Carl Palmer on a number of
occasions and I remember him telling me a great story just a few years
ago. Carl had I believe started seeing
Buddy Rich’s daughter. Carl, even though
he was Carl Palmer, was in awe of Rich, not just because he was his
girlfriend’s father, (which is bad enough), but because he was, well, Buddy
Rich. Carl had visited the house on a
couple of occasions and had met Rich obviously but they had not really talked
about music, or drumming. Then one day
Carl went and Rich came in to the room and simply said, “So, you wanna play
Carl?” Carl called his outstanding solo album
exactly that. Nice story.
I digress; my Dad had his faults, his weaknesses, women
being one of them. As a parent though I
think of him and wish I could be more like him.
If there is one thing in life that we are not prepared for, it is being
a parent.
He never shouted at me, he might raise his voice but that
was it. He never hit me, and I was never
afraid to go to him whenever I was in trouble.
I look at my own kids, in the crazy, pressurised world they are growing
up in, and wonder how he’d handle a situation?
Eh Bailey???
He also helped my friends, one ‘friend’ in particular, who
was in trouble with the police on a number of occasions – his parents never
found out, nor his then girlfriend, now his wife. The one time my judgement of character has
let me down.
He taught me to be independent, believe in myself, follow my
dreams. It is fair to say I would not be
the person I am if it wasn’t for him. He
was so open with his emotions, as I am, have always been.
My Dad also taught me that life is so short, so precious –
his passing so young a constant reminder for me of this. Live for the moment, make mistakes but have
no real regrets. My own saying – you
can’t have the highs if you don’t have the lows.
Life is indeed what you make it. We all have ghosts, and that’s what I
realised early this morning before finally getting back to sleep. My father’s ghosts killed him. I have never really written a song for him,
but the ghosts of Berlin and Hamburg haunted my Dad for the rest of his life. He followed his heart, fought for what he
believed in, in his country, but the cost to him was high and one that was
never really settled. He would have
experienced conflict within himself, conflict that he kept to himself. It makes me appreciate our forces so much
more.
More than anything though, those few hours early this
morning, and the ghosts and spirits and memories that occupy those dark hours
before daylight, simply made me appreciate my father even more than I already
did and made me realise just how much I owe him.
