All Purls. No Swine.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat: Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition; but to our daughters, there is something which there are no words to express. So said Joseph Addison, seventeenth-century essayist,… Continue reading Happy Father’s Day, 2024!
A gently revised revisit of a post from many years ago: Dear Dad, Sixteen years ago today I got the phone call that I’d been expecting for several months, but kept on hoping would never come. My sister told me that you were gone. I don’t think I’ve ever completely recovered. Oh, I’ve moved on… Continue reading Dear Dad–2023
It’s been 16 years since my father departed this earth, and I miss him every day. Most days, I still chat with him, even now. (He can sometimes be quite helpful with advice for my life’s little projects and problems. I’ve found that he’s not nearly as excitable as he once was, which can–on occasion–be… Continue reading Always My Dad–A Belated Fathers’ Day Post for 2023
Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition; but to our daughters, there is something which there are no words to express. So said Joseph Addison, seventeenth-century essayist, playwright, and politician… Continue reading Happy Fathers’ Day, 2023!
Today, the seventy-ninth anniversary of the D-Day invasion, I can't but think of one of my most iconic conversations with my late, great, darling Auntie Pat. It was in 2019, on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the day. Pat was approaching her ninety-sixth birthday, Donald Trump was the President of the United States, and the specter… Continue reading Operation Overlord: Seventy-Nine Years On
Seventy-nine years ago today, on June 4, 1944, my father marched into Rome, his British Army regiment having been seconded alongside Mark Clark's Fifth Army. (What Dad had to say, from a personal standpoint, about General Mark Clark doesn't bear thinking about.) My mother always pooh-poohed the whole thing (not unusual for Mum to do… Continue reading “His Holiness Will Receive You in a Few Moments–I could Have Dropped Dead!”
A few months ago, I was invited, by someone I've known slightly online for a number of years, to join a book club. Rather trepidatiously, I agreed, with the stipulation that I couldn't be much involved for several weeks due to some personal commitments around the same time as their weekly online meetings, commitments which… Continue reading Blessings from the Great Beyond: The Machine That Thinks Like a Man
One of the touchstones of my life has always been the story of how my dad met the Pope, in Rome, on June 5, 1944. Truth be told, my mother always pooh-poohed the whole thing a bit (not unusual for Mum to do something like that, especially for an event in which she wasn’t the main… Continue reading “His Holiness Will Receive You in a Few Moments. I could Have Dropped Dead!”
The year was 1956. I knew something was horribly wrong that night, when Ahmadu dropped the soup! Normally exquisitely self-possessed, immaculately groomed, and imperturbable, our man-servant and friend was disheveled, the color of cement, and shaking like a leaf with acute anxiety and palpable fear. Our little family—myself, Kay, and our imperious eighteen-month-old daughter, known… Continue reading Gagara Yasin
Most truly honoured, and as truly dear, If worth in me or ought I do appear, Who can of right better demand the same Than may your worthy self from whom it came? The principal might yield a greater sum, Yet handled ill, amounts but to this crumb; My stock's so small I know not… Continue reading “To Her Father with Some Verses”