A LIFE HARD LIVED

As I pass the half way point of my 74^th year I have equalled my late father’s age and I am reflecting on the hard life he led and the fortunate genes he bequeathed to me.

He was orphaned at a young age when his father was killed fighting at Gallipoli with the Manchesters in 1915 and his mother died soon after, probably of the Spanish flu. He and his brothers were forced to live on the streets of Gorton in Manchester and he slept rough until rescued by the Salvation Army and at the cost of a defective lung.

As a boy, he tended pit ponies at Bradford colliery and reached the peak of his work life as a cotton operative, until cheap Indian cotton killed the Lancashire trade. He became a tarmac layer, building runways during the Second World War, and after until ill health forced him to take an indoor job as a school caretaker.

He was a strong, silent type, never raising his hand to me nor my mother, even when as a smart-arsed teenager I mocked his illiteracy. At these times my mother would take me aside and point out that he was away working in the snow to provide for me and that despite his low wage, we had no debt, food on the table, a seaside holiday every year and my brother and I got a new suit and shoes every year at Whitsuntide (to look smart in the religious processions) He had little, never owning a house nor a car and his modest pleasures were the football pools, which he never won, his nightly pints at the local, joined by my mother for the last hour and his smokes-when things got tight he rolled his own recycling tobacco from the ‘dimps ‘ of his previous smokes. This, the Manchester smogs and coke dust from stoking school boilers to keep the kids warm did not help his one good lung.

He was a good man, a proud father and I have much to thank him for-except that I look more like him every day.