Category: Live-in parents

Corona Alf

It’s been an age since I had inspiration enough to string a whole blog together. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t through lack of material. The lapse of time in between notable Alf-related antics is never that great and I have taken note of many such skylarkings. It is more a combination of my time and efforts required elsewhere and the simple fact that I have become an almighty lockdown bore. Yoga…work…walk the dog…redecorate…repeat. I am loathe to admit that I have enjoyed the simplicity of my days which starkly contrasts with my usual feverish schedule. It hasn’t however been the stuff of fuel for the imagination.

Also, Alf has been locked down in Florida. He assures us he is taking good care, even pushing his shopping trolley from the wrong end at the supermarket to ensure he in using a less-handled area.

Here we are again on Father’s Day and the blog becomes a homage to Alf in lieu of the card that I should have posted a couple of weeks ago. I do not feel over-guilty in this regard since Alf is himself known for his tardy recognition of important dates and he wholeheartedly embraces it. In fact, I have been imagining a time where I announce to my friends and family that I will send cards and messages when I have something meaningful to say rather than when I am overstretched trying to send cards to everyone I love over the holidays and I will give gifts when I see something that makes me think of them rather than when I am panic buying under the pressure of time. In fact, I hereby proclaim that this is my way forward. Comments welcome.

Alf was disappointed not to have made it back to the Island by springtime as in previous years. He has usually spent weeks in the garden by this stage, repeating past successes, making changes to his previously less rewarding efforts and experimenting with new visions dreamt up over the winter. He seemed particularly pleased this year to have sourced some spaghetti squash seeds for me, something which we don’t see in this part of the world. Alf’s absence has been a source of mixed feelings for my husband, I think, who on one hand can usually count on Alf to help manage the garden when it is at it’s most weedy and bountiful but on the other hand he seems to be relishing in his complete domination over the land. Mwahahaha he is thinking as I watch him roamin’ in the gloamin’ in his blue crocks that came with the house.

It was also a bit of blow for Alf not to be getting use of the boat he bought over the winter. It has sadly spent more time in our drive, a breach of our deeds, than it has in the sea. No freshly caught smoked mackerel for us this summer.

Our contact with Alf over this unreal period of time has been via Messenger video for the most part, a medium which has thrown up frustration and hilarity in equal measures.

Unfortunately for me, when the world of video chat opened up for Alf, it cooincided with me having to get to grips with various means over which to hold virtual meetings while working from home. This meant I could be chairing a Group wide HR meeting by WebEx while Alf’s shaggy facebook profile repeatedly takes center stage on my phone while I decline his attempts to call, one after the other turning the air blue around me. Even though I am pretty sure it could not happen, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Alf would suddenly be linked in to my meeting. The temperature eeked upward on the Alfometer.

Thursday night for us has been family night for some time now and we attempted to carry on the tradition by lockdown. This has seen varying degrees of success. Unfortunately dinner time for us means mid-afternoon for Alf so he makes his calls from a tractor in the middle of an enourmous stretch of land.

At best, he is far from the camera. He looks around and we see the blue sky. There were several weeks where we were allowed a view of either Alf’s forehead or his chin. Father’s day love exhibit number 1 is that I refrained from using the word chin in its plural form. I jest really as that particular camera angle could, I’m sure, make even Eva Longoria look like a bullfrog on steroids.

The worst of the supper links with Alf saw him waving a hotdog around in front of the camera, an unsightly scene, his humour, that of a 13 year old, distracting from any potential chance to converse sensibly. My fault. I tried to get him to stop which for some reason inspires Alf to continue more vehemently.

Easter was a particular low, when Alf sent a joyous Easter message involving a photo of what can only be described as a double-fanny-bunny which managed to incorporate both the British and the American interpretation of the word fanny. I was not on the receiving end myself funnily enough, but I had messages throughout the day from those who were. I put myself metaphorically into my father’s size 10-wide docksiders that Sunday morning, to try understand his decision-making as he must have scrolled through his contact list:

Great-niece -heh heh heh, send

Ex-wife – double-fanny-bunny, send

Gorgeous, lovely friend of grand-daughter – double-fanny-bunny it is

Son-in-law – why not

Step-daughter – send

Friends of daughter – worldwide sendings of double-fanny-bunnies

Daughter of neice’s husband – Happy-double-fanny-bunny-Easter to you.

Grand-daughter – Nooooooo. She will lecture me.

Daughter – Definitely not. She has no sense of humour. (I do.) She has a stick up her arse. (I don’t.)

Shout out to my lovely cousin for telling him off on this occassion, in my stead.

My problem in conversation in company with Alf and others is that I shut Alf down while he is still being amusing, because I know that the laughs he recieves will encourage him to edge closer and closer to the line before eventually hopping, double-fanny-bunny style, right over it.

Happy Father’s Day Dad. I love you. Come home soon.

Alf away on Father’s Day

I haven’t posted in a while and I thought today would be an appropriate day to put fingertips to keyboard (definitely not as poetically pleasing as pen to paper). Alf is visiting family in the south of France so we are missing him on the day that celebrates fathers. I am aware that I give mine a hard time for most days out of the year, deservedly so in many instances, but today is the day to put aside all criticism, embrace Alf’s many qualities from which I have benefitted and sing his praises, forte, for all the world to hear.

Fuck that for a game of soldiers. That’s not what this blog is about. I took him out to lunch before he left.

Usually when I post a blog it has been bubbling away for some time and some brief notes have been made but in this case, I’ve got nothing. In an attempt to give some structure I am just going to plonk down whatever memories come to mind from the first that I can recall to the most recent, tattooed in my mind.

I have two early recollections from around the age of four. In one of these I am with my mother in our kitchen and Alf comes in and looks at me solemnly and says carefully “a friend of yours died today”. Oh no! My little brain whirrs. Amy! Lisa! Alf sees my horror and quickly puts me out of my misery. Our dog, Yankee has died. It was by far the worst event of my tiny life to date. Yet, somehow having allowed my mind to travel to unthinkable places with the feared loss of one of my four year old playmates, the passing of my beloved dog paled. I don’t think for a moment that this was Alf’s intention. I think he didn’t think about his opening line and how that would come across in isolation. Much like during his speech at my first wedding when he opened with “Megan is the easiest…” before taking a pregnant pause, leaving my new husband’s groomsman time to stand up and shout “That’s your wife he is talking about!” before Alf finishes his sentence “…person I know to get along with”.

My other early memory of Alf is of him coming home from work on the first day I was off from nursery school with chickenpox. I was very bored having completed my puzzle books and exhausted my surprisingly long attentions to Spirograph. Alf started slow, crouching down, moving his neck and raising his elbows. His eyes widen comedically as he typically embraces his role. By his second circuit around the room, it was clear he was regaling me with chicken impressions. My spots and I dissolved into fits of giggles, which encouraged many more laps. When I come up for air, my mother is standing in the doorway in her apron, smiling and shaking her head.

Birthday parties just didn’t happen for kids as they do now. At least where I live, it seems every child has a party every year. As a parent, you can easily spend half your weekend when your children are young, delivering them to parties and collecting them several hours later. Even worse, when they are very young, you have to stay to supervise! I had only a few birthday parties as a child but my brother and I were allowed summer parties occasionally. We were allowed 2o friends each so they must have been hard work for my parents. They were one hundred percent outdoor events. We had apple bobbing, hide and seek, we climbed trees, rode horses bareback, ate hot dogs and corn on the cob and Alf hosted the original slow bicycle race, the idea of which I confess made me slightly anxious. It was however, a great success with equal degrees of hilarity among my eleven year old friends and my brother’s seven year old pests.

When I got a bit older I was hired periodically to clean out Alf’s truck (the aforementioned semen mobile). I was allowed to keep whatever change I found as payment for my services. Alf spent a lot of time on the road with his mobile semen processing laboratory but it never ceased to amaze me how much I would find. There was loose change everywhere. It was in the cup holders, between the seat cushions, on the floor. I easily made away with more than twenty dollars. I was recounting this to Alf several years ago, so a good forty five years later. I saw something in his face as I retold my story and all at once I knew that he must have scattered all that change in advance. I imagine it would have given him great pleasure.

Once my parents divorced, Alf lived full time on his farm in upper state New York. He travelled the four hundred miles to see my brother and I on alternate weekends. We went to the movies, we stayed in hotels, we had long slow meals in restaurants, we went to the seaside and went beach combing. We were amused that Alf kept finding actual combs. I often had friends with me. In my pre-teens it continued and I would even encourage Alf to take us to the movies where I knew my boyfriend would be. The definition of boyfriend at the time was someone who said the words “Will you go out with me?”, to which you responded “Yes” and then you proceeded to never go anywhere at all together. I can imagine it was gut wrenching at the time to have made such an effort to visit, only to be met with your scheming daughter trying to spend time with someone else. Such is the selfish life of a girl of that age Alf but it is engrained in my mind forever that you carried on as you did and you can take some consolation in the fact that I was happy to be seen with you!

Recently Alf was putting things away in the cupboard behind the kitchen door. It is necessary for the kitchen door to be nearly closed when rummaging in that cupboard. My husband was passing as the dog pushed the kitchen door open further. “Hang on a minute”, shouted Alf. He closed the cupboard to make way for what he thought was a human, when he spots Tuka. “Oh it’s you.” “Jerk”, he mutters.

Over the years Alf has become a bit rough around the edges but he still has a big heart. My daughter is getting married this year and he has offered to forego any celebratory drinks to hire a van and give everyone lifts to and from the wedding. Yes please. Thank you. You’re the best.

Getting better at Living with Alf

It isn’t always easy living with Alf and I know he would say it isn’t always easy living with us. Before Alf came to live with us, I remember him suggesting that we discuss how it would all work before he moved in. We never actually had that conversation. As it happens, I don’t believe we would have been equipped enough to have had that talk then as it is difficult to anticipate how the ebb of one person’s life can imbalance the flow of another when suddenly put under one roof. It takes patience, understanding, empathy, love, acceptance and practice. It takes time. It takes friends who remind me how lucky I am that Alf has enough wits about him still to deliver the repeated smart-ass remarks.

I’m slowly learning not to sweat the small stuff or I wont be able to have his ear for the things that really matter to me.

My husband is learning to abandon his methodical and somewhat measured approach to fixing up the house and garden in order to occasionally work on some quick jobs that Alf finds gratifying. They are fundamentally different, my father and my husband. For my husband, think planning, aesthetics, pernickety and the speed of molasses going uphill. For Alf, it is all about practicality and aesthetics don’t get a look in. Think go, go, go, do, make do, oh shit, huh, ah well, never mind, done. I can imagine that in my husbands engineering career, his particular tendencies were crucial. I can equally see that living on a farm would require Alf’s alternative skills.

Alf is learning that he can’t say “Speak English will ya” to people who’s first language isn’t English without the rest of us taking a sharp intake of breath and wanting to hide under the table. I register 9.5 on the AAA scale and so does everyone else, even Lovely Lady I will wager who has previously seemed unshockable. Thankfully, the waiter on the receiving end of this comment is extremely gracious and he accepts Alf’s rambling explanation. Alf says it is out of habit, meant as a joke as he has, for years said it to people with colloquial accents (to a friend who is from Tennessee; to my husband who is from Glasgow). He has not given thought to how much worse that is for actual foreigners. He tells me he is learning. I take comfort in remembering the words of some comedian or another who said that it was a good thing discrimination doesn’t carry a prison sentence otherwise that would be where our parents and grandparents would dwell.

Alf misses his US friends albeit he is making friends here in Jersey. People are slowly coming to understand him, he says. He has commented that he can’t spread his wings very wide on a 9 x 5 island. When challenged this seems to be about driving on an open road, something he has always enjoyed in abundance. True, I think. Take some trips I say. Take the car on the ferry to England and visit family and friends.

We have introduced a family breakfast on a Saturday morning to talk about what’s going on for each of us. I hope that it will keep us aligned and feeling like we are on the same team. I have asked Alf outright if he would not try to wind me up further for his own entertainment when I am already under pressure. To save my husband’s sanity, Alf needs to take on board that he can’t cope with too many people in the kitchen at once. Family and friends all know and accept this. We tease him, naturally, but we respect his kitchen quirk and when it comes to the final stages of cooking and serving, we file out. We love him and we don’t want him to feel stressed. Alf loves us but he tends to dig his heels in. He feels he doesn’t need to answer to anyone at his age.

Speaking of Alf’s age, since my last chapter, he has reached the milestone of 80 years old. We are all basking in the afterglow of a full-on party weekend. He has said how lucky he feels to have such a wonderful family and great friends. He isn’t short of friends here really. Our friends are Alf’s friends.