The ‘oosbind has now become an old git.
He’s living with cancer and mild dementia, he’s as skinny as a chicken, and ever so slightly distant.
It is, however, all deal-able with because he’s still living.
A lot of his compatriots have died but he’s hanging in.
Thankfully he wasn’t always like this.
He was a sprightly, agile thespian.
I’ve had nearly 50 years of the youthful version of him.
My love life was chequered, to say the least.
Coming from a lunatic father my archetypes were skewered.
I had secret liaisons with rugby playing lads. My father never knew.
My first boyfriend was delicious. My father tried to marry us off.
I had a string of ridiculous relationships, all of which are good stories.
Astrologically there’s a phenomenon called ‘Saturn Return’. I know bugger all about the stars and their alignments, but I was told that aged 28 my Saturn would return and things would be change irrevocably’.
And so it was.
I was on the road with a theatre group. I was single, having just finished a relationship with a well know actor.
Once I got the fellers to say they loved me I would dump them. This geezer was dumped after I managed to squeeze out of him his undying affection.
Thank you father for making me an arsehole.
I was happily playing a solo hand. I was happy without the aggro that relationships cause. I had my own wage packet and a really interesting life. I was climbing up the career ladder, and needed nobody but myself.
We were touring in Sweden. Driving through the pine forests and eating knacker bread.
The people carrier drove me, the old git and various other members of the company round The Skagerrak and the Kattegat Sea.
We broke down in the middle of nowhere.
In a forest with huge Swedish pines.
It was a dark grey day – interesting I can remember all the details from 1976.
We were a merry band of travelling players.
I was sitting on the floor of the van, at the feet of the old git.
He put his hands on my head and bingo I was fucked.
I had seen him on stage six years earlier. A wonderful actor and good looking to boot.
We spent the rest of the tour talking. Always a good start to a relationship, although I didn’t know that then.
We ended the tour in Lund. A beautiful old city in the South of Sweden.
Eating knackerbread, a crumb fell on my lip, I was too embarrassed to move it openly. I thought, all those years ago, what the flaming Hell is going on. I didn’t know that falling in love made you venerable and weedy.
We got back to England. Had a few weeks off and then off we went to Amsterdam.
Sitting in the foyer of the Mickery theatre – no longer there – I felt his hands on my shoulders and bingo I was screwed again.
I hadn’t realised he was handsome, I was only interested in is ear-holes. Listening and supporting.
We walked the streets of Gutenburg. The lowering clouds and rain falling in Swedish buckets. We went to a vintage shop, I bought a grey dress with buttons down the back.
Walking in the rain was not a chore.I had found my soul mate so getting pissed on was romantic.
I was 28.
Good old Saturn had indeed returned, and everything was about to change.
I was now ready for a committed relationship.
That’s what I got.
A decent man who looked like my maternal grandpa.
A man of principle and silence.
The only person my father was scared of was the ‘oosbind. The head of my family knew he couldn’t get away with anything.
The old git and I set up home in 1977.
We played in a band together.
We performed at benefits and ate baked beans on toast in motorway cafés at 3.00 in the morning.
Watching him on stage and and I’d found a curly haired handsome Northerner.
That was all nearly fifty years ago.
We’ve had our fair share of shite, but even though he looks like this years turkey, I can still identify the Paul Newman in him, I say that because as a young man that’s who he looked like.
The passing of time, the living of life, the ending of uyouth, is hard.
But giving into it becomes a sublime oasis.
I don’t know how long I have with him but when I can control my anger and stop shouting at him for forgetting is Tuesday, we’ll live out the days with a smile. He’s not about to pop his clogs, and I don’t know how I’ll be when he decides to cut the mortal coil, but his legacy lingers on.
I’ve got photographs around the house of me and him. A young couple with energy and a future.
How speedy is the onset of old age.
We’ve managed it.
‘It takes a long time to become young’.
Pablo Picasso