I'd like to introduce you all to Kermy. My photographic skills don't do him justice. My dad and I shared a love of The Muppets. Dad found a "make your own Kermit" in a magazine and when I was about 5, he set about making me Kermit, complete with half ping-pong balls for his eyes, and pipe cleaners for his fingers. Despite running his own business, supporting his wife, 3 kids and a handful of employees, I have a foggy distant memory of him on a Sunday evening, stationed at the dining room table, awkwardly navigating his way around my mum's sowing machine.
I've been thinking about him a lot his month, as March 2015 marks the 10th anniversary of him leaving us, very suddenly. !0 years already - bloody nora! I think about him a lot, anyway, because I constantly do and say things that remind myself of him. So I thought I'd share with you some of my favourite Pop quotes: things Pop said When I was a 24 year old single mum and getting grief in my corporate job for having to leave on time, yet again, he said: "You tell them 'Tony Blair wants me in work and if I wasn't in work the tax on your salary would be going to support me sitting at home on single parent benefit, so what would you prefer, huh?'" Parent/teacher meeting when my Art teacher complained to him how I spent all lesson talking to Shelly about drama, he said: "What specifically do you want me to do about it, you're the one in the classroom when this happens, I'm not." Whenever I rang to say I was stranded that the latest shitbox I was driving had broken down again, he'd say: "I'm on my way" When he was intensive care after having a heart-attack, he said: "I heard this guy fighting for his life in the night. They were trying to bring him back, and I was lying in bed thinking 'come on mate, you can do it, hang in there mate' but they lost him." A newspaper clipping found after he died, with a Spike Milligan suggested epitaph, saying: "Bugger, and I'd just got the hang of it." Me: Dad, I'm sending a card to your friends Val & Gordon, what's their surname? Dad: It's Bennett Card gets posted to Mr & Mrs Gordon Bennett. Their surname wasn't Bennett. After walking home from school in winter, he'd say "You've got a good colour on you. Good Irish cheeks there". Coming home from school after P.E as a 5 year old, he'd say "Good rugby playing legs there. Solid forward prop I'd say." (Paranoid about skirts/legs-out thing ever since!) "My grandma taught me how to thread a needle." "Every child should grow up knowing how to fix a bicycle puncture." "Stop that, or you'll get a thick ear."
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February 2018
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