Peter Bennett

Peter James Bennett. James was Mum’s choice; she said it made Peter sound less abrupt when she was cross with me. There wasn’t a distinguished Uncle James behind it, as far as I know. I have always been Pete to friends and Peter on anything that needs signing.

14 April 1958. Mum said I arrived just after four in the afternoon. She was much clearer about missing her tea than she was about the exact minute.

Southmead Hospital, Bristol.

My dad was Arthur Bennett. My mum was Margaret Bennett; before she married she was Margaret Evans.

Dad was a motor mechanic. Mum stayed at home with me when I was small, then worked in school kitchens once Susan was old enough for school. She could get a hot dinner in front of forty children and still worry that Dad hadn’t eaten properly.

Spring, although apparently a rather wet bit of it. Mum told me the washing wouldn’t dry and Dad kept bringing visitors home without warning her. They were twenty-five and twenty-eight, and finding out as they went along. That part sounds familiar.

I remember them in the kitchen after Sunday lunch. Dad would be drying plates with a tea towel that had already done far too much work. Mum would tell him which cupboard things went in, although we had lived there for years.

They weren’t especially demonstrative. I rarely saw them kiss. But Dad put Mum’s cup out before his own, and she kept the last decent potato for him. They argued about money and whether something could be mended. Usually it could; occasionally Mum quietly bought a new one anyway.

Our home felt dependable. I didn’t appreciate how much effort that took until we had you and Daniel, and the washing machine broke in the same week as the car.

Dad was good with engines, uneasy with compliments and dreadful at asking for help. If something upset him, he generally found a job to do. He kept his shed beautifully organised and his feelings to himself.

He taught me to turn up when I’d said I would, to put tools away and to admit when a job wasn’t finished properly. I still hear his voice when I am tempted to leave a rough edge where nobody will see it.

I wanted to do one thing differently. When you were little, I tried to say that I loved you rather than expect you to work it out from a repaired bicycle. I didn’t always manage it. You did get quite a few repaired bicycles.

Mum had a quick eye for anyone being left out. She’d find them a chair, a plate or a perfectly ordinary question to answer. Nothing elaborate. You simply discovered that you were included.

She could also be sharp. If I came home full of myself, she was quite capable of correcting that before I’d taken my coat off. When you were born I understood her tiredness much better, and the way she could be furious with us at four o’clock and making our favourite tea by six. I wish I’d thanked her more while she could hear it.

I knew all four, though some much better than others. Ernest Bennett was Dad’s father, a railway labourer who could sit for an entire visit without removing his cap. His wife Alice, who’d been a Morgan, kept peppermints in a tin and remembered everyone’s business.

On Mum’s side there were Walter Evans and Edith, who’d been a Price. Walter worked in a warehouse. Edith had taken in sewing when the children were small, and still had a box of buttons I was allowed to sort. Their lives were mostly work, family and making things last. I liked visiting them, but I wasn’t a child who thought to ask sensible questions. I’d ask several now.

My sister Susan arrived in 1962, four years after me. I was old enough to think I knew everything and young enough to be terribly put out when she touched my things.

We fought over the back seat, the last biscuit and whose turn it was to go to the shop. We also covered for each other, badly. Mum could tell within seconds. Susan is still the person who remembers what I was like before I learnt to present myself as a responsible adult.

The wireless was on more often than the record player. Mum liked a tune she could sing while getting on with something, including the Beatles once they were on everywhere. Dad would say the old music was better, then whistle the new tunes. I don’t remember him acknowledging that.

Concorde. It was being built at Filton, a few miles from our house, and for years it was the only thing anyone in Bristol wanted to talk about. In April 1969 Dad took me to watch the first British one take off. We stood by the road with what felt like half the city, and I remember the noise more than the plane.

Dad, who never got excited about anything with an engine he hadn’t taken apart himself, didn’t say a word until it had gone. Then he said, ’Well.’ That was a lot, from him.

Saturday tea with the football results coming from the radio. Dad listening, Mum asking him to pass something, me waiting to find out whether I could have another slice of bread. It’s not a grand picture of the sixties. It’s the part I was actually in.

I think I was four or five. Dad had taken a wheel off the car and let me hold the nuts in an old tobacco tin. I can remember their weight, the black marks on his hands and being told not to lose one. I don’t remember what was wrong with the car. Being given an important job was the whole point.

A small terraced house in Easton, in east Bristol: number 27, with a bay window at the front, a kitchen at the back and stairs steep enough to make carrying anything awkward. The front room was kept tidier than the rooms we actually lived in.

There was a narrow garden, a washing line and Dad’s shed. In winter the windows steamed up. In summer you could hear three households at once through the open back doors. It felt quite large when I was small. I went back along the street years later and couldn’t believe how little space Mum had been managing.

The kitchen. Homework, arguments, shoe cleaning and birthday candles all ended up at that table. If somebody was quiet in the front room, you left them alone. If they were quiet in the kitchen, Mum noticed.

The radio, the scrape of Dad moving his chair and Mum calling up the stairs. If we were very lucky, Susan and I could get downstairs and occupy ourselves before anyone remembered there were jobs for us to do. Dad’s newspaper made a particular crackle when he folded it. I can still hear that.

Behind the shed, where there was just enough room for a child and not enough for an interested adult. I kept a biscuit tin there with bits of string, a marble and things I was sure would be useful. You can see where the workshop habit started.

For a while it was ’Professor’. I had explained to Susan, with great authority, why a kite would fly if I attached enough string. It didn’t. Dad used the name whenever I announced that I’d worked something out. Susan still brings it out on special occasions.

Taking the rubbish out, fetching things from the shop and helping Dad wash the car. I got a little pocket money, but it wasn’t a negotiated wage for each task. If I made that argument, Mum suggested I could begin paying for my dinner.

We had a scruffy terrier called Pip. He thought the postman was an enemy and the butcher was a close personal friend. I used to tell him things on the walk home that I wouldn’t have said at the table.

He died when I was fourteen. Dad dug a hole at the bottom of the garden, let me fill it in on my own, then went inside and left me there for as long as I needed. It is one of the kindest things he ever did, and he never mentioned it again.

In woodwork I made a pencil box with a sliding lid. It was not particularly straight, but the lid moved and the joints stayed together. Mr Harris put it on the desk and asked me to show the others how I’d done it.

I had spent a good deal of school feeling that I was nearly, but not quite, keeping up. That morning I knew the answer because I had made the thing. I took the box home in a paper bag so it wouldn’t get knocked about. Mum kept it in the drawer by her chair for nearly fifty years. When we cleared her house in 2019, Susan found it with two of Mum’s pencils still inside. It lives on our kitchen table now.

Mark and I moved the hands on the classroom clock so the lesson would finish early. We were pleased with our ingenuity for about three minutes. The teacher had a watch. We hadn’t thought of that.

A train driver. Then anything that let me use proper tools.

Jeans, a denim jacket and hair that got longer as Dad’s patience got shorter. Mum said I looked as though I’d been left out in the wind. I thought I looked rather good. Kate, who has seen the photographs, sides with Mum.

A football picture, a band poster Mark had given me and a page about motorcycles torn out of a magazine. Mum objected to the drawing pins rather than the content. Dad objected to the motorcycles.

Slade, as loud as the record player would go, until Mum banged on the ceiling with the broom handle. Mark had Led Zeppelin records that nobody else was allowed to touch.

A little cafe where we could make one drink last far longer than the owner wanted. Then we’d walk about, generally towards somewhere we’d already been. Having no particular plan was a large part of the attraction.

It seemed to mean not backing down and not letting anyone see that you were worried. I was not very good at either, but I did become quite good at pretending.

Some of that followed me into work and fatherhood. If something was difficult, I thought I should deal with it quietly. Your mum has spent years explaining the limits of that arrangement. I hope Daniel felt more free to say he was frightened or hurt. I hope you both did.

Mark Lewis. We were in the same year at school and usually on the same side of whatever minor trouble was available. He could get me to try things; I could occasionally persuade him to think first.

We took long walks, discussed cars neither of us could afford and ate an extraordinary number of chips. He was my best man. We still talk, although nowadays a successful adventure is finding somewhere to park and a cafe where we can hear each other.

By sixteen I wanted a trade, a wage and eventually a place of my own. I didn’t have an ambition to become a famous craftsman or own a large company. I wanted to be useful and not spend my whole life being told what to do.

The trade part worked out. The rest took longer. Being self-employed meant I answered to customers instead, and some of them were much more particular than any teacher.

A girl called Linda who sat two desks in front of me. I made her a wooden key ring and then spent a week finding reasons not to give it to her. When I finally did, she said thank you. I had not planned beyond that point.

The cinema, when I was sixteen. I had enough money for the tickets and a very careful amount left for the bus. I worried all evening about saying something foolish. In the end I hardly said anything at all.

Still Mark. Once we’d left school we had wages, so our plans became slightly more expensive without becoming any more sensible. We went camping with a borrowed tent that had a missing pole. The weather was kind enough to let us discover the problem in daylight.

That being keen on someone doesn’t make you good at listening to them. I used to think I had to be impressive. I was much easier company once I stopped explaining everything I knew.

In 1979, when I was twenty-one. I rented a room and carried most of my things over in the car. Mum gave me a saucepan and enough food to suggest she expected the shops to close permanently.

The first evening felt wonderful for about an hour. Then it felt quiet. I went home for Sunday lunch that week and tried to behave as though I was simply doing them a favour.

One room above a shop, with a narrow bed, a chest of drawers and a window that rattled when a lorry passed. The kitchen and bathroom were shared. My shelf in the fridge had my name on it in Dad’s handwriting.

Cooking something that wasn’t toast. Mum wrote down her stew recipe for me, leaving out the quantities because they were obvious to her. I rang to ask how much water ’enough’ meant. There was a long pause before she answered.

At first I divided my wage into rent, food, petrol and whatever was left. Whatever was left was often nothing. I’d buy a spare part and discover that I had somehow spent my supper on the car.

I got better at keeping a notebook. Your mum improved the system considerably when we began living together. She called it looking at the numbers before spending the money, which was a new approach for me.

An instructor called Mrs Harris, in a Ford Escort. No relation to my woodwork teacher, despite the name. She was calm until I tried to change gear halfway round a corner. Dad took me out for extra practice, but we agreed after two outings that professional help was best.

A pale blue Morris Minor, bought in 1978. It was already old and had various shades of pale blue where previous owners had dealt with the bodywork. Dad came to inspect it and produced a list of reasons not to buy it. Then he helped me buy it.

I started as a joinery apprentice at Bristol Joinery in 1974, at sixteen. I remember the pay as roughly twelve pounds a week; I wouldn’t swear to the exact figure now. I gave Mum something for my keep, bought a second-hand set of tools and thought the remaining money made me wealthy. It didn’t last until Friday.

I arrived early because Dad said early was better than rushing. My new boots were stiff and I had brought sandwiches Mum could have fed two men with. I spent the first morning sweeping and trying not to stand in anyone’s way.

Tom Hale, who showed me most things, handed me a board and asked me to mark a cut. I checked it three times. He looked at it once, said ’Right’, and went on with his work. I remember how relieved I was. There was no ceremony about becoming an adult. I was just expected back the next morning.

An apprentice I took on in the late nineties came back years later with a photograph of a staircase she’d made. Ruth had been painfully unsure of herself when she started. By then she was correcting me about a joint she’d chosen.

I was proud of plenty of finished work, but that visit stayed with me. She’d become good enough to make her own decisions and confident enough to explain them.

Losing my job in 1991. Work had been slowing down, but I still thought being reliable would somehow make my position safe. It didn’t. You were five, Daniel was one, and our bills hadn’t become any smaller.

For a few weeks I behaved as though finding work was a private test I had to pass. I’d leave early, come back tired and give your mum a shortened version of the day. She eventually put the kettle on and said she needed the actual version.

We wrote down what we had, what we owed and how long it might last. I took small repair jobs, asked former customers to pass my name on and did work that I would have turned my nose up at a year earlier. Dad lent me some tools. Mark helped clear a garage I could rent.

I became self-employed in 1992. It wasn’t a bold entrepreneurial leap. It was a lot of small jobs, invoices written at the kitchen table and your mum keeping track of the money. When I got the first proper order in that workshop, I went home with a bag of chips. We ate them off plates because she insisted that ordinary standards still applied.

During that winter after I lost my job, I kept waking up before dawn to do the same sums again. The sums didn’t improve through repetition.

I felt I had let everyone down. Your mum pointed out that she’d been working too, and hadn’t agreed that the entire family depended on my pride. That was hard to hear, and very useful. We needed money and a plan. We didn’t need me pretending I had to carry it all on my own.

Not as well as I’d like to claim. When you’re self-employed, an extra evening can always seem necessary. There was a school play I missed because I had promised to finish a job. You said it didn’t matter. I think it did.

Later I got better at putting family things in the diary first, rather than hoping work would leave room. I also learnt to say when I would be home, and then actually come home. That shouldn’t have needed learning, but it did.

I retired from regular paid work in 2023, at sixty-five. For the first few weeks I kept getting up at the usual time and wandering into the workshop as though someone might have left instructions overnight.

I miss the people and the satisfaction of finishing a difficult job. I don’t miss chasing invoices. I still mend things, make the occasional present and help if a neighbour is stuck. Your mum says retirement has mainly altered who is allowed to ask me for things.

At Mark and Helen’s flat in Bristol, in 1980. We were helping them move. Your mum was standing in the doorway deciding how to get a bookcase upstairs. Everyone else was offering opinions. She was measuring the doorway.

I thought she looked as though she knew exactly what she was doing. She spoke first: she asked whether I could hold the other end. We made quite a good team for the next six feet of staircase.

We went for a coffee on a Saturday, then walked longer than we’d intended. I remember trying to tell an amusing story and losing the important part halfway through. She laughed at the failure, which was encouraging.

I had wanted to take her somewhere impressive. We ended up eating a sandwich on a bench. That was much more our sort of occasion.

When Dad was ill for a few days and I had to cancel a weekend we’d planned. She didn’t make a performance of being understanding. She brought Mum some shopping and asked me whether I’d had lunch.

It wasn’t a sudden revelation with music playing. I began noticing that I wanted to tell her things before I wanted to tell anyone else.

We talked about it over supper towards the end of 1982. I had been preparing a proposal in my head and making it increasingly difficult. Kate asked whether we were ever going to look for somewhere to live together. I said I hoped we might get married.

She said that would probably help with the arrangements. There was a ring, chosen together afterwards. She still says she did most of the proposing.

17 September 1983, at a register office in Bristol. We had a small wedding, then a meal in a room above a pub. I was twenty-five and Kate was twenty-three.

Mark had the rings, though he checked his pocket so often that he made me nervous. Mum cried before the ceremony had properly begun. Dad looked uncomfortable in his suit and then shook my hand with both of his, which made me cry as well.

We didn’t have a huge budget. Kate’s dress was simple, and the flowers came from a local shop. What I remember best isn’t any of that. It is coming out through the door beside her and seeing everyone we knew waiting to tell us what a lovely day it was. It had started raining. They told us anyway.

Her hair. She had spent the whole morning taming it, and the rain undid it all before we reached the bottom of the steps. She laughed about it all afternoon. That’s the picture I’ve kept in my head.

We danced to ’Something’ by the Beatles. We were both rather stiff at first, and then Kate told me to stop looking at my feet.

The cake had developed a definite lean by the time it was cut. Nobody was hurt and everyone got a piece. Mark described that as an excellent result.

A week in Pembrokeshire, in a small guesthouse. It rained, cleared, then rained again. We walked on the coast, ate fish and chips and tried to dry our socks without offending the landlady.

We had one proper sunny afternoon. Kate fell asleep on the beach and I didn’t wake her until the tide started coming in. It was the first week in a long time when neither of us had to be anywhere for someone else. We’ve been back often, and still have friendly arguments about which bit of coast was ours.

A rented upstairs flat in St George, Bristol. We moved in shortly before the wedding. The kitchen was small, the heating had its own opinions and we could hear the downstairs television.

We bought our first house in 1987, after you were born. Moving to Bath came much later, in 2004, when you were eighteen and Daniel was fourteen.

A second-hand kitchen table. It had a burn mark in the top and was too big for the flat, but it was solid. I said I’d fix the mark. Kate said we could put a bowl over it for the time being. The bowl was there for years.

Kate told me one evening in 1985, while I was looking for a receipt. I put the papers down and asked if she was sure, which was not the most inspired response.

I was delighted. Then I was frightened. Then I wondered whether we ought to move the chest of drawers. It is extraordinary how quickly a very large event can turn into thinking about furniture.

I made a cot. Kate chose a design and kept reminding me that babies did not care about the joinery. I still checked every edge and finished it weeks before it was needed.

I spent four weekends on it, mostly because I wanted something useful to do while we waited. You and Daniel both slept in it. There is a photograph of you at about six months, holding on to the top rail while I point at the joint. A few months later you chewed that rail and left tooth marks in it. I never sanded them out.

It was late on 2 April 1986. I’d gone to bed and was sound asleep when Kate woke me and said it was time. I asked whether she meant now. She has not entirely forgiven that question.

You arrived the next morning, 3 April. Daniel followed on 4 February 1990. I was less surprised to be woken for him, although not noticeably better at finding the car keys.

You were much smaller than I had allowed for. When the midwife put you in my arms, I sat very still because I wasn’t sure how much movement was permitted.

I remember looking at your fingers and thinking that they were already complete little fingers. Kate was exhausted and watching us. I didn’t feel instantly wise or capable. I felt very fortunate, and deeply reluctant to hand you back.

Something along the lines of ’Hello, Emily. It’s me.’ I hadn’t worked out that you had no idea who ’me’ was. Your mum says I spoke more softly than she’d ever heard me speak before.

I had imagined a baby would be another part of our life, like a new job or a bigger house. Then you arrived and the order of everything changed.

I put aside evenings with friends, some grand plans for the car and the idea that tiredness was a temporary inconvenience. I missed those things sometimes. That doesn’t seem a terrible thing to admit. I loved being your dad and occasionally wanted a quiet hour at the same time.

As you grew up, I got some of my own time back. I never got back the old habit of thinking only as far ahead as my next day off. Even now, if you or Daniel ring at an unusual time, I notice.

The tiredness, and not knowing which small problem was actually a large one. We could both spend ten minutes trying to decide whether you were hungry and then forget whether we’d eaten ourselves.

The first time someone offered to bring a meal, I said we were managing. Kate took the telephone and accepted. I began to see the sense in letting people help.

Your mum did the feeds, as she was breastfeeding. I changed nappies, settled you and did the jobs around the house, more effectively some nights than others. I liked the early morning when you were fed and quiet, and I could sit with you before leaving for work. It was a very peaceful bit of an otherwise noisy arrangement.

When I lost my job, I thought being strong meant putting on a brave face so nobody worried. But you noticed I was at home more. You asked if I was on holiday.

I told you that work had changed and we were finding new work. It wasn’t the entire adult explanation, but it was true. Your mum helped me stop treating every question as evidence that I had failed. The useful things were fairly small: keeping the ordinary routine, taking you to school, making supper, answering the telephone even when I didn’t much feel like it.

Pembrokeshire in 1988, when you were two. We borrowed more equipment than we owned and spent a good deal of the journey discovering what we’d forgotten. You were interested in the sand and deeply suspicious of the sea.

We returned as you both grew up. The photograph here is from 1996, when you were ten and Daniel was six. You had just announced that you could walk all the way back from the beach. Daniel was examining his jacket rather than considering the distance. I don’t remember whether anyone completed the walk without asking to be carried.

Birthday breakfast pancakes. The first batch was a disaster when you were little, but you were delighted to have candles anywhere near breakfast. Daniel then insisted that birthdays required pancakes.

We carried on even when you were old enough to know I was not especially good at making them. Now Alice and Jamie expect them too. I am still learning not to turn one before it is ready.

My stew. It began as Mum’s recipe and gradually became whatever was left in the fridge. I used a heavy pan, onions, carrots, potatoes and usually beef. If we had dumplings, Daniel counted them before anyone was served.

You called it ’Dad’s brown dinner’. I took that as a compliment, partly because there weren’t many other options.

I rang Mum much more after you were born. Sometimes to ask something, sometimes just because I suddenly understood how much of her life she’d spent being responsible for somebody small.

I was kinder about Dad’s worry too. I’d once thought he was simply fond of telling me what could go wrong. Then I found myself listening for your key in the door. I still wish he’d been able to say what he was feeling, but I understood it better.

That you and Daniel get on as adults. You don’t have to agree with each other, and you certainly don’t, but you make room for one another. I enjoy sitting at the table and listening without being required to settle anything.

We went to church sometimes when I was small, and always for family occasions. Mum valued the people and the practical kindness as much as the services. Dad was less interested, though he wouldn’t have said so to her.

I don’t have a tidy account of what I believe now. I am grateful for people who help without making you pass a test first. I have met them in churches and in places with no religion attached.

Do what you’ve agreed to do. Pay people properly. If you have made a mistake, give the person affected enough information to deal with it. I don’t always find those rules convenient, which is probably why I need them.

Not making someone feel small because they know less than you. I remembered what it felt like at school and on my first day at work. When you asked a question, I tried to answer it properly.

I wasn’t always patient. If you’re remembering a particular occasion while you read that, you are probably right.

I try to ask what they mean before I explain why I disagree. Dad and I voted differently all our lives and still went to watch Rovers together most Saturdays. I think about that more than I used to.

Standing outside a little seaside shop with something melting faster than I could eat it. Mum would be holding several coats and telling us to move out of the doorway. Vanilla still does the job for me. I don’t need a complicated flavour to remember a good afternoon.

Freshly cut timber takes me back to the first workshop. Warm toast reminds me of getting you ready for school. As for music, almost anything lively by Slade will improve my mood, though Kate may choose to leave the room.

’I’ve got a bit of wood for that.’ Usually true. The difficulty is finding which bit, in which pile, and remembering why I was saving it. You and Daniel have been using the line against me for years.

A walk with Kate, then home before we feel obliged to buy an expensive meal. Tea, something to read and the radio on quietly. If you call in with the children, the reading can wait.

I like old hand tools. I don’t collect anything valuable, just things that have been well made and used. I can happily spend an afternoon cleaning up a plane and getting a good shaving from it, without having to make anything for anyone.

And I follow Bristol Rovers. Dad first took me to Eastville when I was eight. That’s sixty years of mostly disappointment, and I wouldn’t swap it.

Breakfast without looking at the clock. A little time at the bench, then a walk with your mum. You and the children coming over in the afternoon, ideally having warned us so we have enough biscuits.

Something easy for supper, the garden looking slightly less neglected and no telephone call about a leaking pipe. I used to give much bigger answers to this question.

Looking after Mum as she became less able to manage on her own. After a fall in 2018, the arrangements kept changing. Susan and I would think we’d found a routine, then something else would need doing.

I was good at practical jobs. I found it harder to sit with her when she was frightened, without immediately trying to fix something. Sometimes she wanted company, not a new handrail. Kate noticed that before I did.

I got impatient on a few days I would rather forget. I apologised, and Mum said she knew I was tired. It was generous of her. I don’t think doing your best always feels very admirable from the inside.

Dad died in 2008. Mum died in 2019. With Dad I kept busy: clearing things, making calls, dealing with the shed. I was grateful for instructions because I had no idea what to do when the instructions ran out.

With Mum it was different. I caught myself about to telephone her with something small, months after the funeral. There are still things I want to tell her.

Susan and I found ordinary things that helped. We kept a few objects we actually wanted, talked about them without always trying to be solemn and accepted meals and lifts from people who offered. We also disagreed about what to keep. Grief didn’t turn us into especially reasonable people.

I don’t think you finish missing someone. It takes up less of the day, and you can laugh about them without feeling you’re being disloyal. I was glad to reach that point.

Losing my independence, and something happening to one of you that I can’t help with. I still catch myself thinking that being older should have made me less frightened. It mostly means I recognise what I’m frightened of.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I’d taken a job up north when I was young. Better pay, a fresh start, all the things that sound attractive before you try to find a room.

I stayed in Bristol. That put me in Mark’s flat on the day your mum was helping move a bookcase. I don’t think every decision has a hidden purpose. I am simply pleased with that particular result.

You don’t have to pretend you understand every instruction first time. Ask again. Save a little money before the car makes a decision about it for you. And if Mum asks you to sit down for a cup of tea, sit down. You won’t always be able to.

I’d listen for longer before offering a solution. When you were a teenager, I could turn a difficult afternoon into a list of things you ought to do differently. You had usually worked most of them out already.

I’d also apologise sooner. I remember a row over coming home late when I spent two days maintaining that I was right about the principle. I may have been. I had still shouted at you, and that needed its own apology.

Don’t agree to something merely because you are afraid of being awkward. If you get into difficulty, tell someone while the difficulty is still small enough to explain. And look after the people who make everyday life easier for you; it is very easy to get used to them.

I would like Alice and Jamie to remember that I had time for them. That they could come into the workshop, ask what I was doing and get an answer, even if it wasn’t a particularly impressive job.

I don’t need them to think I was an exceptional man. Someone who was pleased to see them would be quite enough.

Another visit to the Welsh coast, with enough time to stop whenever the children find something interesting. I’d like to show the children the places in those old photographs. We will have to allow extra time for me and your mum to disagree about exactly where we stood.

The Scottish Highlands, by train if we can organise it without turning the journey into a military operation. I would like to go slowly and stay somewhere for more than one night. Mark is interested, which means I may have to negotiate the meaning of ’slowly’.

Drawing. I have drawn things for work all my life, but mostly so that someone knows where the cupboard will go. I’d like to draw a tree that doesn’t look as though it needs a hinge.

A proper wooden toy railway with Alice and Jamie. I could make it faster on my own, but that would rather defeat the purpose. We’ve started: Alice sands, Jamie paints, and I’ve been told the engine is going to be purple. Good.

I once went to a beginners’ dance class without telling anyone. I thought I could surprise Kate by being less hopeless at a wedding. The class was on Tuesdays in a church hall, and I spent most of it counting under my breath.

I went three times. I wasn’t transformed, but your mum noticed I was trying. She did eventually find out why I was suddenly busy on Tuesdays.

Come round, or ring. You don’t have to have a sensible explanation ready. We can make tea and work out what, if anything, needs doing. If you only need someone to listen, tell me before I start suggesting repairs.

You can ring me without having anything to report. You don’t need a birthday, a problem or a reason that stands up to examination.

I have enjoyed writing this for you, even the bits I put off. There are probably mistakes in the dates and Susan will certainly dispute some of the stories. Ask her. Ask your mum too. Then tell us something we haven’t heard about your own life.

Love, Dad.