Three times this week I have gone to buy a card then remembered he’s not here.

Not that he liked the fuss anyway, he’d always say, ‘don’t waste your money on me, you work hard enough for it’. My Dad was very hard to surprise and I spent a lot of my time thinking up things that would make him laugh or smile. The thing with life is that it’s a very long time and the older a person gets, they’ve pretty much got everything anyway and you have to be more and more inventive. One year I got him a Moonpig card, you know the ones where you can add in your own text, I think it was the newspaper theme. He kept that up for ages!

So it’s our first Father’s Day without him and not really sure of the etiquette? I think if we lived closer we’d all get together, but phone calls will have to make do today. I think we’re all still feeling a little shook up, my younger brother especially as he was very close to my Dad. My Dad was all about being proper, having manners, doing your best, that kind of thing and bloody hell do I miss his words of wisdom right now. But if I think back, my mind is loaded with so many already, there’s always one that will come to the forefront.

My Dad’s mum died a few years before I was born and he would often talk about her. ‘I don’t always feel sad about it you know’ He said, ‘I don’t feel the need to go and put flowers on her grave as when she was here I took her flowers every week’.

I took that on board and do make it a priority to appreciate the people around me, not that I always manage it!! I think we managed that when he was here. It was bit of a standing joke that every year when we were little we would get him a car wash kit. He must have had about 50 in the cupboard. I don’t think any of us ever clocked he used the car wash at the garage!!

He would open them and feign surprise that it was a Car Wash kit! ‘Just what I needed’ he would say. (Then go and stack with the other hundred)

So instead of buying a card or a car wash kit,  i’ve chased up friends, ‘have you bought a card?’, ‘don’t forget to buy a card!!’ and for you reading this, if you have forgot, remember to call and say Happy Father’s Day!!