 (Flash Not Installed.) I miss I miss I miss… Your voracious appetite for the news Even some of your more dodgy political views Your stand-a-spoon-up-in-it treacle-thick tea You living every Marlon Brando movie The Godfather or the Good Father? “…make him an offer he can’t refuse…” Your limited capacity for holding your booze Trying ANY food Snails and quails eggs Tripe and frogs legs Wearing sweaty string vests Prickly beard and hairy chest Reading every bloody page in the Reader’s Digest I miss them all though I never thought I would Your singing that – let’s face it – was just NOT good “I did iiiiiiiiit myyyyyyyyyyyyy…way” But I’d give my right AND left arms to hear that today Bobby Charlton comb over hair, thinning and grey Year-on-year Duke Ellington shows That oh soooooo long Cyrano De Bergerac-style Jewish nose “A crag, a peninsular, a rock” Watching Mohammed Ali box, box, box Wow – could he box! Holes in threadbare socks That fungal nail infection in one of your toes Potato dust-filled Spitalfields Market clothes A temper like a terrorist bomb With fallout radiation Due to low levels of toleration Some obsessive fixations Knowing the capital of every single nation Georgia Guatemala French Polynesia Kiribati Kazakhstan You were a diamond geezer And Scrabble on Sunday afternoon Scrabble every Sunday afternoon Dragging me out of bed to see Armstrong on the moon 1969, June No - July Hell - why, why, why Did you have to die? Teaching me to ride my bike on the golf course Tongue-burning bottles of Horseradish sauce Carrying vegetables in Hessian sacks Back-of-a-lorry radios, cheap over-sized anoraks And bogus jewellery that fell to pieces Black Elastoplast for black people (I can’t begin to explain that in a poem) Getting excited about lawn mowing That mile-wide grin when my kids were born Ear splitting sneezes - “achooooooooooo!” Gone with the Wind The English Patient Crumbly `old Dutch’ cheeses Each year a new edition of the Pears Encyclopaedia Being there when I needed you A husband to a wife A father to his sons Loving your grandchildren with a hungry heart Hating every single record in the Top 40 chart Being with you and being apart Listening to your late night indigestion noises Through the bedroom wall I miss I miss I miss It all Seeing my concert in school Managing only backstroke in the swimming pool Just being tall Making a fool of yourself Getting closer through your ailing health And jazz Jazz Jazz And more jazz All that jazz Your greatest passion Never ever ever EVER following fashion First hearing you use the F word At 70 plus still ogling `birds’ Doing The Mirror crosswords Every day And not quite getting to grips with the idea that it’s cool for people to be gay
To me your paintings are priceless (but your poems are the worst) If only you could hear me recite this verse Sometimes you drove me nuts Crazy Maaaaaaad But you were the finest of the finest The Moet Chandon on the wine list Clearly the kindest I miss I miss I miss you Dad
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