Father's Day

If a girl’s relationship with her dad defines her adult relationships with men, this would explain why I have never been cheated on, never been dumped, never settled for anything less than being adored. My Dad is the cornerstone of who I am – I have a real, visceral sense of being “made” of him.

Dad was only 23 when I was born – when I see my baby photos, I am cradled by a skinny, long-haired man-boy – and he approached fatherhood with a sort of dedicated enthusiasm. We used to go on the beach before he went to work, clamber on haybales and see if we could get them to rock, go on endless bike rides, and when I was 8 began a campaign called “Brick the Elderly” from a disused railway bridge. (Disclaimer: no pensioners were harmed in the making of this memory.)

That’s not to say he only did the fun stuff – I was a very benign child but my sillier moments were stopped in their tracks with a warning “Suzy – you will get It”. We never found out what “It” was. He was also annoyingly insistent that I kept up my piano lessons, and used to teach me trigonometry on the back of table mats after tea. Actually, I didn’t mind that.

He has done some really magical things for me. At 17 I was called upon to watch a short video he had made, the final shot of which was a bright red Peugeot 205 parked outside his workshop – my first car, my dream car that we had joked about. On my 21^st birthday, a similar video of shots of the house and garden marked the various places he had stashed one thousand pound coins. How much better than a cheque is that! (On counting – and learning that pound coins are surprisingly heavy en masse – we found ourselves £30 short. Some were found in a deck shoe, some under a plant pot, which had missed the filming process.)

No-one is perfect, and Dad has infuriating traits like anyone else. Chief among these is absolute dedication to his Friday night routine, which means he won’t go away for the weekend and we have to do all the driving. He is addicted to “Deal or No Deal” and makes the family re-watch moments deemed particularly intense on Sky+. He is famously stingy when ordering takeaway food and once tried to impose a £6 a head limit.

The main thing I’m trying to share is that I have never for one second of my life doubted my Dad’s absolute love for me, which is a very powerful thing. Do you know that scene in Mrs Doubtfire when Robin Williams is trying to persuade the judge to let him see his kids?  “Ever since my children were born, the moment I looked at them, I was crazy about them. Once I held them, I was hooked .I`m addicted to my children, sir. I love them with all my heart. And the idea of someone telling me I can`t be with them, I can`t see them every day... It`s like someone saying I can`t have air.” – Dad turned to me and said “That’s how I am with you and your sister.” When I moved 140 miles away to University it was a wrench for both of us – it took me about a decade to get over the nagging feeling that I had ruined his life.

The thing is, the strongest relationships don’t rely on physical proximity and I don’t think I could be any closer to Dad if I only lived a mile away. The last time I had a general anaesthetic, Dad had said “Imagine me stroking the back of your hand like I used to do when you were little”, and it was indeed imagining that which calmed me down as the needle went in.

9.15am. He’s probably up by now. I need to go and make a Father’s Day phone call.