Eulogy

“If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”

That’s one of the main lessons my dad taught me, along with “If you can’t say something good about somebody, don’t say owt!” and “You can’t fall: there’s nothing to stop you.” He told me that last one whenever I went up a ladder on the farm. I’m not sure I ever really believed it, but I did believe the one about doing your job right.

My dad had a number of different jobs in his life, although he always said that farming was more of a hobby. He got the farming bug when he was a boy, helping out on one of the local farms in Marsden. Around that time, he got blood poisoning after being bitten by his baby sister, and he had to stay off school… but ended up playing on the farm with his arm in a sling.

As he grew older, dad started playing for local football and cricket teams, and also joined Marsden Brass Band, playing baritone, euphonium, and in the end a tenor trombone, which was his favourite. He also ventured down the valley into enemy territory – Slawit! – where he occasionally played in a dance band, though he said that was much harder. No wonder he admired Glenn Miller.

Once in Slawit, he started hanging out at Nields Youth Club on a Friday night, which is where he met my mum. She came right up to him and introduced herself. Dad was speechless. His mates bet him half a crown he couldn’t get a date with her… but even though he won the bet, they never paid him. Still, he won a lot more than half a crown that night, and he knew it too.

When they met, dad was working as an apprentice joiner at Bagley’s Funeral Directors in Marsden. I heard a lot about Mr. Bagley when I was growing up, though I never met him. Often, I’d find my dad working in his shed or round the back on the farm, doing some amazing construction job that defied gravity and didn’t look possible for one man on his own. If ever I asked him how he’d done it, he’d reply: “Mr. Bagley helped me”. I used to look round to see where Mr. Bagley was hiding, but I couldn’t ever find him.

When he was 21, dad took a break from joinery to do his National Service… though they did allow him a week off to get married. When it came time to cut the wedding cake, dad sliced open his hand with the knife… the first of many hand injury stories we could tell, including the time my sister had to drive him to hospital after he got his hand trapped in the muck-spreader. Another time, I had to take him to A&E after he almost sliced his thumb off with a circular saw. In hospital, dad was less than complimentary about the junior doctor they sent to stitch him up… “He’s just a kid!”

There are a lot more stories to tell from my dad’s time on the farm… and I was surprised how many involved guns. Like the time Harry Bamforth, another local farmer, threatened dad with his shotgun for taking a hay cart along his lane… dad kept going, driving the tractor straight over Harry’s toes. 

Or what about the time my brother wanted to prove what a crack shot he was by shooting at the shovel my dad was leaning on? He missed. Killed a chicken instead. “Murderer!” 

And then there’s the time, not very long ago, when dad dug out his old shotgun one last time to shoot a large rat that had started visiting the farm. He dismantled the gun soon after shooting a hole in his grandson's car.

With all that shooting, it’s no wonder dad’s favourite actor was John Wayne. One of his favourite films was The Quiet Man… and I guess he could be something of a quiet man himself. And yet, if he had a job to do… like when he started working for British Car Auctions… he could get up on a stage and command the room. And like all the best auctioneers, he could talk really fast. I remember watching him do the charity auctions at my school. I felt so proud, seeing him do that, racing through the bids, then banging down his gavel after the final one. That’s something I took from him… it’s how I can stand up at his funeral and deliver this eulogy. Catch me afterwards though, and I probably won’t have anything to say to you. Much like my dad.

I’ve got two more stories to tell. Firstly, one about a crazy guy who used to drive round Holt Head in a rickety old van with a toilet strapped on the roof. One day he stopped and got chatting with my dad, and afterwards my brother asked what they’d been talking about.

“He wants to be a local councillor,” dad explained, “but to apply, he has to be a land owner. He wanted to know if I could sell him a plot of land, so he could register.”

My brother was shocked. “You’re not going to sell him anything, are you?”

“Why not? He seems alright. And he only wants to buy one square foot…”

Finally, there’s the time we lost Fly. Fly was a sheepdog, and the first pet I really knew, so when she died I was devastated. I cried for a week. In the end, dad took me out in the field where he’d buried her, and he gave me a hammer and a chisel and showed me how to chip her name into a big stone on the wall. Then he left me to it, making a headstone for the dog. I felt so much better after doing that.

“If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”

I hope I did this one right, dad.