Year of the Cock

Saturday January 22nd

February 1st is the beginning of 2022’s Chinese New Year, ‘The Year of the Tiger.’ I only mention this because eighteen years ago, on January 22nd 2004, ‘The Year of the Monkey’ my father, aged 83, went to the monkey sanctuary in the sky.

This morning the old git took me out for breakfast to Deer Park. I had a cheese scone he had a blueberry muffin, I had an oaty milk cappuccino he had a strong black coffee. We were surrounded by dogs; spaniels, ridgebacks, poodles, loabradors. It was lovely, wagging tails and warm conversation.

I’d forgotten it was the anniversary of my father’s death, although I have been thinking about him. What a complex old bugger he was. I am very much my father’s daughter so I’ve lived seventy two years attempting to clear all the ancestral fuck ups directly linked to him.

He was angry, dyslexic, brutal, manipulative, charming, fierce and decidedly tricky. All his bad bits landed on me. My mother knew my Achilles heel. Should she need to attack me she only had to say, “You’re exactly like your father.”

So I changed the way I walked, changed the set of my jaw and disentangled myself from his controlling clutches.

The good bits about me also come from him, but I’m not sure what they are. Somebody once said that we take seven good things from the father, seven good things from the mother and the rest we create ourselves. He would be surprised how I rearranged his DNA. Any mention of spirituality would have him punching holes in the wall. Any mention of feminism or female cycles would have him throwing bagels at the windows. He was macho and intransigent, if he rolled his sleeves up you knew a battering was coming.

Despite all that I loved him – well you do don’t you? Even if you know marshmallows are wrong for you you still pop one in your mouth when it arrives at the end of a toasting fork. My father was a bit like that marshmallow, soft and squidgy until it burnt the roof of your fucking mouth off.

I have a photograph of him on my piano, wearing a spotted muffler – straight from the markets where he sold ‘levvers’. I’ve still got two genuine 60’s leather coats hanging in my cupboard. In the photo he’s got a crooked smile whilst looking directly into the camera, like every Jewish Mafia boss there ever was. Don’t cross the bastard or you’ll end up on your back. He brutalised my mother and probably lied his way into the after life with his wicked sense of humour. He may have been intimidating but he seduced women – and men – into his orbit.

I forgave him all his transgressions, well why not? I had no need to hold onto his bad behaviour, and watching my mother being eaten away by her attachment to him meant that I understood the need for forgiveness years ago.

In fact, I very nearly didn’t go to his bedside when he was dying. My editors on GFL insisted I went saying I would be sorry if I missed the moment. So we hired a taxi and sped off to Luton. I held is hand for eleven hours straight, smelling death on his broken breath. He did not die when I was in the room, but three hours later. While I lay curled up on the floor of my mother’s sitting room, he slipped away.

He left stolen hospital towels, miscellaneous Soviet artefacts – he was a Stalinist all his life – and the rest to his second wife whom he married secretly. His ashes were left at the undertaker’s for months until I threatened to retrieve them. The second Mrs. Barnett has them stashed away somewhere in her Luton semi.

She, a Christian, him a Jew, meant that the funeral service included ‘Amazing Grace’ and a pack of bewildered Jews who didn’t know Hymn number 27 from a bag of whelks. I’ve written about him over and over. The first time I wrote his story I was told it was too angry. Each successive draft the tone has changed, sometimes funny, sometimes sad. The old git told me that as we get older our trauma becomes more real. So there are times now when I can feel the slam of his heavy weight fist on my mother’s jaw. I crumple into the terror that my poor young self lived through. Finding happy memories from childhood takes a bit of time but there were some.

When I was asked to make a film about giving up smoking we went to Harley Street to a Dr. Pederson – a leading hypnotherapist, since retired. The camera rolled as he asked me to think of something lovely from my past. When I couldn’t he changed tack; he asked me to write my name. Under hypnosis I wrote JENNY FEAR. Nuff said.
I did however quit at 4.50pm on that day, thirty odd years ago, never to smoke again.

Today is cold and grey, leaves all over the lawn, muddy ground, fitting weather for the anniversary of my father’s death. I will light a candle and remember his good bits.
Like the time he defended me at a performance at the Edinburgh festival in 1969.
One of the actors was dressed in an army greatcoat walking through the audience. My good old dad thought he was an interloper, grabbed him by the lapels and chucked him out of the church hall. The rest of the cast, sitting crossed legged burning joss sticks, couldn’t remonstrate but I secretly laughed as Stephen Lowe, now a successful writer, was thrown out into the Edinburgh night. Had my father been educated you could say he would have done the very same thing as the show was shit.

RIP you old fucker.