Andy Richardson: Words that bind us and love that binds father and son
My dad taught me how to write. He did so using the simplest technique: he made it fun. As kids, we’d finish our homework then sit down with our old man to write. There were letters to actors and sportsmen, authors and entertainers.
Our letters were polite and deferential. We wrote with gratitude and humility, hope rather than expectation. At the end of each letter, we’d ask whether it might be possible for the recipient to send us an autograph. And then my dad stick his hand in his pocket to buy a stamp and our letter would be dispatched.
Receiving replies was like being connected to a magical world. We’d get letters back from the guy who we’d seen on the TV, the footballer who’d scored an impossible goal or the cricketer who’d helped England to win the Ashes. Long before the time when social media made it possible to connect with film stars and statesmen, we were doing that from the sanctuary of our own home.
He told us stories, too. More magical than The Gruffalo, more inventive than Roald Dahl, he’d send us into the world of dreams by conjuring stories from the treasure trove that was his imagination.
We’d fight off sleep by pleading with him to tell us what happened next. And he’d gently tell us we’d have to wait until tomorrow.
We played with toys too, of course. But we also played with words. We’d hunt for the correct adjective so as to accurately articulate hopes and dreams. My father ignited a passion that burns brightly, that is my eternal flame.
At school, the other kids would rush through English lessons like sprinters doing drills. I’d tarry like a Sunday driver in a vintage car. Homework wasn’t to be scrawled on the back of a piece of A4 at 9.30pm. When our teacher asked us to write essays she was providing opportunity rather than labour. My imagination would run wild and 35-side novellas would be handed in at the end of each week, rather than half-page ramblings.
Most parents don’t morph into friends. Dad did. There was never any distance, nor reason to deny affection. There was never an unspoken truth nor reason to regret. And words – beautiful, daring, unconventional words – were one of the many things that bound us. As a teenager, I’d spend every weekend at sport: cricket, athletics, basketball or some other pursuit. I’d build scrapbooks of match reports, where I’d be the journalist assessing the quality of a performance. And he’d read those too, telling me where he agreed and where I might have written more vividly.
When it was time to leave school, exam passes successfully acquired, I started work on a newspaper: this one, curiously enough. In the absence of a Job Centre advert providing employment for the new Steinbeck, I took to writing about the politics of Walsall, the Under-19 team at WBA, the live bands at Dudley’s JB’s and the flotsam and jetsam of provincial life. He critiqued honestly and fairly, somehow remaining positive throughout.
London called as I landed a dream job: jetting around the world interviewing rock stars on the New Musical Express. And though he grew up on a diet of Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald – and, boy, what a diet that must have been – he found time to develop an interest in the Red Hot Chili Peppers or the death of Kurt Cobain; in the Blur versus Oasis fandango that was the high watermark for Britpop or the disappearance of one of my heroes, Richie Edwards, from Manic Street Preachers.
And then when I began to write and later publish books, he read the lot. The tables turned. This time, it wasn’t me writing letters to actors, I was meeting them, face-to-face, outlining why I’d like to ghostwrite their stories. And my dad was there in the room, the secret weapon; a man they couldn’t possibly refuse.
The next time I fill out a passport, I’m thinking of changing my job title from ‘writer’ to ‘dream chaser’, for that’s what life is really like. It’s a 24/7 creative ideas meeting where I think: ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful to do X’. And then I resolve to do it. Just as I resolved to write to actors and sportsmen when I was six.
There are more columns and interviews on the horizon, books that will be published in the next 12 months. And he’ll read every line, weighing my words for quality like a trader in precious metals. My inspiration and guide; O Captain, my Captain.
The writer Rachel C Lewis said you should tell the people you love that you love them. When it comes to my dad, I do that every day.
