How to sail to America and cook perfect rice!
Life, the universe and everything - according to my dad
My dad had a bit of a health scare this week so I’ve been spending a few days at his place. We haven’t spent so much time together since I left home at 17. And it’s making me think a lot about ageing, and our attitude towards it.
Dad, after a visit from a district nurse: ‘I bet she thought she’d be visiting some frail old man of ninety!’ (He is 88).
Dad, in shocked tones as we board a bus: ‘You don’t have a travel pass?’ ‘No, Dad.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because I’m not old enough!’
But mostly - despite clearly appearing over sixty - I’m still his daughter, and my extremely clever and chatty father enjoys telling me how things work. We cover topics as diverse as wartime rationing, maritime navigation and the effects of the industrial revolution on the north of England. I learn how tides work, how the moon landing happened and how people on boats communicate with harbour masters by means of a VHF radio. Dad has such a radio - even though he is unable to sail anymore - and leaves it switched on on the table while we are eating.
THIS IS BELFAST COASTGUARD! it blares out, causing me to choke on my spaghetti. COULD YOU GIVE ME YOUR LOCATION PLEASE, ALFRED? OVER. Then one evening the subject of ageing comes up - and I think, ‘Aha! Now I can tell Dad how something works.’
‘One of my friends has just had fillers,’ I announce. Keenly interested - Dad is interested in everything - he leans forward and asks what they are.
‘They’re injected into various areas of the face,’ I explain, ‘to make it look plumper and more youthful. And they can also be used to lift areas without surgery like a sort of scaffolding.’
You’d have thought I’d said, ‘And then my friend dipped her face in boiling lard.’ But then of course the idea of altering one's facial appearance seems ridiculous to Dad. A hardy and no-nonsense sort of man, he has no time for fripperies. His lifelong passion was sailing and eventually, when he reached his late forties, he finally managed to buy a 27-foot yacht on the east coast of Scotland.
On a nerve shredding holiday my parents and I travelled through lochs and canals to the west of Scotland, through the terrifying whirlpools of Corryvreckan, widely regarded as the most dangerous waters around mainland Britain (its name means ‘cauldron of the speckled seas’).
Some years later - in a friend’s bigger boat - Dad sailed from Scotland to the Caribbean. I’m ashamed to say that when Dad starts talking about trade winds I tend to faze off a bit, but this week my ears pricked up. In order to sail to America, Dad explained, you just head south ‘until the butter melts’, then turn right*.
How useful is that? I’m thrilled to know it and glad I listened for once. As adult offspring we can be guilty of shutting off our ears when our parents start talking about stuff. I know that sounds terrible. We can be nearly old enough for free public transport and still we’re batting off parental wisdom and advice, insisting that no, we don’t need an umbrella - only to get soaked when we run to the shops.
I’m fine! It was only lightly spitting!
However, as the days go on I discover things about Dad that I’d never known before. He learnt to cook, he tells me, as an architectural student in a flatshare in early 1950s Liverpool - from a book called Plat du Jour. Spag bol, goulash, ‘Mediterranean’ cod steaks - turns out he was an early adopter of what was then regarded as pretty exotic cuisine.
I admit to Dad that I’m rubbish at cooking rice. He looks as incredulous as when we’d been discussing facial fillers. ‘But it’s so easy,’ he says, going on to share the method given to him by Mrs Tang at his local Chinese restaurant in Liverpool in 1953:
For each person, two-thirds fill a small vessel (eg drinking glass) with long grain rice.
Put in pan with plenty of cold water.
Bring to boil, boil for thirteen minutes.
Keeping going until the butter melts NO NO THAT’S THE OTHER THING!
Meanwhile bring a kettle to the boil. Tip cooked rice into a sieve, pour a kettle of boiling water over it.
With my father watching keenly, and feeling somewhat pressurised, I follow these steps. ‘Is it okay?’ I ask nervously as we tuck in.
‘Perfect,’ Dad says.
Turns out he knows a thing or two after all.
Love,
Fiona xx
*Or was that turn left?
Never sailed a boat in my life, but your Dad's directions make perfect sense to me, reckon I could do it if only I wasn't so old.
Ageing - it's that thing that creeps up on us while we're busy getting on with life. One day you're walking past a mirror and catch a glimpse of an old biddy and scream - "Who the hell's that?" Looking back at you is a strange cross of your Granny and your Mum - what happened to the twenty something me that lurks within?
And then - your body decides to pay you back for all past misdemeanours, be it drinking, smoking or eating - bits start to drop off, malfunction or cause embarrasment - it really isn't funny, but I guess it's better than the alternative (as they say).
Amazed to read that while we down in London were thinking that Macaroni Cheese was exotic back in the 50's, there was your Dad up in Liverpool cooking up all manner of foreign culinary delights - Go Dad!
Hope all is well with your Dad now.
I love this. We sailed near the Corryvreckan on Venture West the other day and were chased by 'standing waves', which was amazing and also completely terrifying.