Father's Day yesterday

Flora was all sour grapes. Father's Day. Well that sucked. It did every year. Mother's Day is even worse with its more entrenched traditions. It does help that now she was celebrating a husband on father's day, of course. Oh hell, I'll abandon the moniker and state my case here and say that I miss my dad and have done ever since the day I  took a call by the river Cam, aged 19. So I thought, I'll let him give you a story tonight or on this lovely summer afternoon. Just this once. I'm cheating, so don't sponsor me, just read it. I've taken it from his notebooks. If you've loved and lost, too, I hope it helps.He was writing about the landmarks of a year - those he remembered growing up on the Mendips. He is 'John' and 'Miss Constance' a hugely influential primary teacher - it was she who set him down the road to primary school teaching.

There were landmarks all through the year. In January, the families had a late night and all the chauffeurs had a busy time, because Miss Constance arranged for staff families to be taken to pantomimes at the Prince's Theatre in Bristol. It was a great occasion; always looked forward to and always enjoyed. John remembered the year of Aladdin particularly. Bold and striking stage settings; magnificent costumes; story lines and comic digressions which were easy to follow. And the principal boy - later to become a famous film actress - was very glamorous indeed. Window Twankey was uproarious with her washing scenes and saucy asides, and the wicked villain forgot about the magic lamp long enough to lead the audience in a good rousing song. His baritone soared out across the packed auditorium - "Many hearts have been broken ...... just because a word was spoken..." sang the villain. Then, gathering in the audience, "So be sure it is true when you say I love you..." they warbled happily: "It's a sin to tell a lie."

John, sunk in the red plush seat, was dazzled by the stunning shifts of light, colour and sound. All too soon it was over and they were motoring home through the starlight. Wrapped in the honeyed warmth of the car they drifted in and out of sleep as they went.

Every Good Friday Miss Constance sent each child an Easter egg. Much bigger than those in Harry's shop, or at the post office stores, they were in presentation boxes and wrapped in foil of bright, metallic colours. Excitedly, the children opened up the two halves to get at the sweets and chocolates that always filled the hollow eggs. These eggs usually lasted the whole of Easter week. Easter meant planting potatoes, and the baker delivering the Hot Cross Buns. It meant going to church a lot; but also time for Miss Constance's Easter eggs.

When mid-summer came they looked forward to the trip to Bristol in the warm, sweet-smelling late evening, to see the illuminations. From Bedminster Down they had the first, full view of Brunel's great Suspension bridge. It was floating in the air in the darkness, its every line clearly pointed up by hundreds of winking lights. Fifteen minutes later they were crossing and re-crossing the bridge, craning necks and peering up at the great chains - chains like no others they had ever seen, that held the great structure half way to Heaven.

There continues a detailed description of seeing the illuminations of Bristol, an intimate portrait of a rural family on a summer outing - just to look at the city with the lights on. Best not to lose that sense of wonder.

And for me?

Christmas: Advent is magical, the buses are Christmas buses as the interiors glow in the winter darkness; open fires and waiting; waiting. And Epiphany? January. Sliding into February. We are still watching and waiting. Since childhood, this is, though, the most melancholy part of the year for me. So I am in hope of snow and that air you can taste and feel revived by.

Spring and Easter: primroses and watching the lambs being born. Wales. Barefoot at home, outside, apart from when it's raining. Eating under the trees and Palm crosses Lilac and cowslips. Heading Stateside.

Summer: feet in a stream, peonies, swallows, swifts and house martins. And, as in the Louis MacNeice poems. 'Thalassa', "Round the corner, always, the sea."

Autumn. Warm wind; cool nights, arranging wood, the thankfulness that I never have to go to school again, toes up and pumpkin carve. Candles. All greeted thankfully.

Now, I don't know that this - in some fundamental ways - is so very different from the childhood of my father in the 1930s and 1940s.

How about your landmarks?