Sunday 21st June 2009– It’s Fathers’ Day, Come and Meet my Mother

I've always had a beard.  Ever since I've needed to shave, I haven't, if you see what I mean.  When I started, when I was seventeen or so, and had been at it for about six or eight weeks, my father looked at me across the room and asked "are you growing a beard?"  I thought at the time he just hadn't been paying attention.  Of course, I now realise he was making the kind of joke I like to make.

Some years later, my mother gave me aftershave at Christmas.  I think she thought that the act of giving was what mattered: that the gift didn't have to have any utility at all; it was one of those nice things you gave men.  Mind you, it's possible she also liked to make the kind of jokes I like to make.

Apart from student Christmas jobs, I have never worked in retail.  And those student jobs were in the toy department.  If I had ever been put to the task of selling aftershave, sales would have plummeted immediately.  I would have refused any customer unable to justify such a frivolous purchase.

All of this is to make clear that I have no interest in the buying and selling of condiments for men.  And since this is the purpose of Father's Day, I have no interest in it, either.  By a stroke of good fortune, when it happened, I found myself 5000 miles away: far enough.

The Black Widow spider, to my way of thinking, has perfected the nature of fatherhood.  No nonsense there about shared responsibility, just a good set of teeth for the girls; and, of course, the ultimate Wagnerian liebestod for the boys.

But, hey, kids, I'll probably be back next year.  For a really useful gift, buy me a ticket to somewhere else.

 

I like to say that when you've discovered the paradox, you've discovered the truth.  I say it so often that maybe one day I'll believe it myself.  Anyway, on Fathers' Day, I got an invite to meet somebody's mother.  That was just too inappropriate to pass up. 

The somebody in question comes from a long line of Scottish seafarers, and is one of the men who pilots the big ships under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.  His mother, who I had met briefly up at the Glasgow presentation event, was brought up a few streets away from me in Penilee.  Although she's been here for fifty years, she still speaks with, to my ears, the same accent as me.

He's the first person I've met who can put on a Glasgow accent that would fool me.  And his teenage son can do a really good Sean Connery: with your back turned, you'd be fooled.  He got his father a bottle of the Glenlivet for Fathers' Day.  I told him that his father was just putting a brave face on it, but was really rather disappointed he didn't get some aftershave.  Let's hope he gets it right next year.