A 99 with that?

Today is my Dad Edward’s 99th birthday.

In the old days on the ice cream vans, he would cheekily ask his customers whether they wanted a 99 with that, or just a flake. Both answers meant a flake, and this man’s mischievous patter sold a lot of flakes.

Here he is winning (and, quite frankly, cheating) at cards, last year.

I’ll tell a tiny story about him for his birthday.

Many people know about his achievements in public life and business on the Isle of Wight. He is much loved there, and the only Freeman of his town, Ryde.

Not so many know that both he and our Mum grew up without fathers. Edward’s dad, Antonio, died with an unknown fever in 1927, when Edward was only five years old.

So there was no role model, in our family, for how a father should be.

You’d think that would be a recipe for royally screwing up. But Dad was gentle and loving, a true family man, with great belief in, and ambition for, his kids. If I were half as good a father as he has been, my own kids would be lucky. Now and then he takes me to one side and advises me to be kinder, to take a breath when irritated, to see the big picture, and understand the smallness of the child. He’s always right.

Anyway, once when I was at university, we had a couple of games of Scrabble at home before I set off for a new term. He trounced me, and thought it was hilarious that he could beat me, an Oxford student, in a language which he had not learned as a child (after Glasgow, he was in Paris and then Italy until young adulthood). Furthermore, he had had only three years of school in his entire life, and those before the war in rural Italy. Waving me off, he gave me a card.

Unpacking at Oxford, my friend from a tough northern background came round to say hello. He spotted the card on my mantelpiece. Inside, my Dad had written “Sorry for beating you” and slipped in a fiver, which I had not yet pocketed. My friend was really worried. He looked at me with pity and concern, and asked me if I wanted to talk about it. “What?” I said, still unpacking. “Your Dad,” he said. “Your Dad beating you.”

My friend’s Dad, it turned out, had a temper. A violent temper. My friend was sorry that I too was suffering in this way – and being bought off with a lousy fiver, to boot.

Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. Machismo and aggression – much more common in those days of course – did not exist in our lives. Our Dad’s self-taught mode of fatherhood was all about gentleness, togetherness, and belief. It wasn’t perfect, of course, but the core of it was the open-armed safety of family, and massive, massive heart.

That little moment at Merton College, Oxford in 1988 made me realise that there are many kinds of fathers, and I was blessed with a great one.

Here, as a bonus flake in your ice cream (or a 99), is a mini life in pictures:

From abject poverty in Glasgow, Paris and rural Italy, to the Royal Army Medical Corps at Aldershot…