Happy Father’s Day

Breakfast in bed. A pleasant lunch by the river and I am promised a final treat later today. All in all very good, only marred by the pain in the neck job of moving furniture into and around the house. I also called my father. We both view father’s day as a big commercial con so there is nothing more than an exchange of greetings but then we speak several times a week anyway and he has sent a letter every week or so to me for 20 years.

I have sent him my article on why I Iove Greece – that is my present for today. Or rather I have sent it to my step mother as Dad is not quite up with it in terms of internet usage. He still writes his books in longhand and then pays a step sibling to try to decipher his semi-legible writing and to type it out. No doubt my father will point out a couple of factual inaccuracies in the piece – I am not particularly strong on my grandmother’s family tree. Even without the frequent intermarriages in nineteen century Ireland it is all a bit confusing.

I have written before about how amazing my father was to bring up three children by himself after the death of my mother when I was eight. I am not sure that I could have coped. That’s a lie. I am absolutely sure I could not have coped. I was honoured to be his best man when he married my step-mother (not a wicked step mother, although we have occasionally had words) almost 25 years ago. I could not have asked for a better father. To all other father’s out there, I hope that you too have had an enjoyable day of being pampered.