Father's Day
OK, it may not actually be the first Sunday of September, but in my house, 7th October is Father's Day. It has been since 1996 when my Dad died on this day. It was sudden, and yet not sudden. Dad had been sick since I was 3, but it wasn't a physical illness and it wasn't something that doctors ever got right. He'd had a bugger of a life, there's no other way of putting it really. He grew up with elderly parents, his Mum was 42, and his Dad 50 when he was born, and he was the youngest. His aunt lived with them and she was very disturbed from what she had witnessed during WW1 and earlier. His early life was plain miserable in many ways. At 13, he was a partisan fighter in Czechoslovakia, and his Mum hid two Jewish women in the house to protect them. His father was Jewish by birth, and the whole family was at risk. She was an amazing woman, and extremely strong. She did the right things. In marrying two women with the same birthday, he committed a very unusual