Made in 1967.

My dad always told the story of the first time we met.

December 1967. Stepney Women’s Hospital.

He’d sit me down, grinning, and tell me how he trudged through the snow and ice that bright, bitterly cold day in London’s East End.

Said he had two jobs to do.

Get a Christmas tree… and see if that bloody awkward kid had finally shown its face.

So, dragging himself out of the pub, after buying a tree off a mate of a mate, that’s what he did.

Kid first, then tree.

Well it makes sense, don’t it? You ain’t going to schlep a fucking tree around all day.

He left it in the pub.

Then his eyes would light up, his favourite bit of the story.

He’d say he walked in, spoke to a couple of nurses, and got led over to a viewing window.

And there they were.

Half a dozen blonde-haired babies, all lying there peacefully in their little cots.

A proper picture. Beautiful, he always said.

Like a bloody nativity scene.

Then.

One screaming black-haired little bastard.

Doing his absolute nut.

The nurse picks him up, and my dad swore blind the kid was glaring straight at him, tiny fist clenched, kicking off already.

And he said, out loud:

“Please God… not that one.”

I think we both know how that turned out.

I’m sure Dad told that story because, deep down, he was proud of me, just could never have said it.

That’s the line I’m sticking to anyway.

Dads didn’t go to the birth in those days.

Not where I was from anyway.

Nowadays it’s all paternity leave and postnatal classes, baby yoga and cappuccino.

Not for him, any of that bollocks.

1967 was the first summer of love, hippies tuning in, turning on and dropping out, and he absolutely fucking hated every second of it.

A hell of a lot of kids being born when I was were in danger of being named Zodiac Moon Blossom or some other funky shit from across the pond.

Not me.

Richard David Yeglishiel.

Flippin’ eck, could my parents have chosen anything more boring?

He never said he was proud of me.

Not once.

But I do remember this.

I must have been four… maybe five.

He was downstairs with a couple of his mates, knocking through a wall to build a new kitchen. Proper job it was, noise, dust everywhere, blokes shouting over each other.

And for some reason he insisted I stay with him.

Not out the way. Not upstairs.

With him.

At one point he hands me a hammer, nods at the wall and goes,

“Oi Rich… knock that down for me, will ya.”

I’m there, this tiny little kid, giving it everything I’ve got, tapping away like I’m part of the job.

And all his mates are watching.

Laughing. Egging me on.

And he’s just standing there.

Watching.

Even when his mate chased me with the skeleton of a dead cat he’d found in one of the cellars, screaming, “Eat it, come here and eat it, Rich.”

My old man was full of memories about me, none of ’em flattering.

That just wasn’t his style.

I caught meningitis once as a baby, got rushed to the doctor and put in hospital straight away.

Another party piece of a story he loved to tell, me in nothing but a terry nappy, burning up with a temperature that could melt glass, Dad with his hands around the burning kid like a jacket spud, he’d say.

Three weeks in hospital, septicaemia, then he’d say, “That’s why you’re thick as shit, Rich,” laughing his head off.

“Not your fault or mine,” he’d say, laughing.

“Your brain just swelled up too big, that’s why you’ve got a funny-shaped head as well,” he’d say, chuckling away.

That always got a good laugh in the pub.

He’d always tell the story about meeting me the first time when we were in the pub.

I was just a little boy at the time, but I was old enough to know he was bragging about me, without bragging about me.

Of course, the more people laughed at him, the bigger and louder the stories got. Something I absolutely inherited off him.

Another of his favourites was when my uncle Bob’s Great Dane took exception to me wearing one of his T-shirt as makeshift pyjamas. He got hold of the shirt in his massive jaws and dragged me around the kitchen, to howls of laughter from everyone else in the room.

“You should have seen the look on the little bastard’s face” was always the punchline to that one.

To be fair, that one is one of my favourites also.

These days the kids would probably give me a brutal hiding for saying something like that.

It’s not how people roll these days.

I look at my grandkids getting “told off” and think, blimey, they have no idea what MY dad would have said.

Love ain’t expressed with a slap these days, and that can only be a good thing.

Things still slip out tho.

Funny thing is, you don’t notice it happening…

then one day you hear yourself saying something and think,

fucking hell… that’s him.

That was just how he was.

Everything was a joke, but not really.

If there was something real underneath it, you had to dig it out yourself.

I promised myself I’d never be like him.

And I’m mostly not.

But every now and then I’ll say something to my kids, meant as a joke…

And there he is.

The echo of my dad.