Today my dad would have been 93.

Today my dad would have been 93.

Today my wonderful dad would have been 93. There are times when I feel sure that he's with us somewhere in spirit, still full of cheerful banter, breezy bonhomie and full of the joys of every season. Sadly though he passed the day after my birthday in 2005 and the sense of loss will always be numbing. But for all his mental health problems and a devastating illness through my teenage years, my dad was the best, the greatest, the most gentlemanly and the most loving. He was the kind of man who would think nothing of walking across a road to chat to a perfect stranger.

In an age, particularly recently, when human relationships and families have come under the most extreme scrutiny it may be good to know that in all of these disease-ridden moments in our lives, we can still remember our loved ones, our devoted ones, the ones who have always been constants in all moments of trouble, hardship, stress and unbearable pressure.

My dad was the warmest, loveliest and most compassionate father any son could ever have. Frustratingly, we had nothing in common with each other but throughout my early childhood, I adored and idolised him. He was the man who sacrificed his mental health because family meant the world to him. He was the one who always thought of others, his doting family, always put his family first and never spoke ill of those who were less fortunate or disadvantaged.

But for reasons which became patently obvious, I could never share any of his interests and maybe with a pang of regret, this was the only obstacle that prevented us from forming a deep, lasting and emotional attachment, a friendship and father and son relationship that should have been there from day one and yet never was. I'll always love him though because he was my dad.

How often would I rush out immediately when I knew he was about to turn the corner of our road and emerge elegantly dressed in his usual jacketed, smart shirted attire, cigarette tenderly fixed between his index finger and then reluctant ash falling to the ground in an act that came as naturally as breathing. Since he was a young teenager my dad would smoke, smoking quite heavily and although the smell was personally repulsive I would never have dreamt of stopping him from lighting up. It was at that moment that my dad had come from the hellhole that was his work.

Isn't it amazing how complicated relationships and family alliances can become and then we begin to wonder why without ever really touching the surface of this eternal conundrum? And yet we do count our lucky stars since we know without any doubt whatsoever that we will always love those who continue to mean so much to us.

We all look at that ever so crazy and dysfunctional family known in reality TV terms as the Kardashians that even the most extraordinary wealth and luxury still has the capacity to damage and hurt us.  Sometimes you find yourself utterly grateful for a life that remains grounded, sensible, well ordered, logical and practical. There comes a point when money although welcome, can still be more of a hindrance particularly when the bank balance reaches a million.

And this was very much my dad's take on life. He was never judgmental, never snooty, never condescending and always treated everybody as his equal. He was never greedy, never consumed with jealousy at the apparent affluence others might have had, delightfully contented with his life and his family. He would never resort to violence when peace and reconciliation were the obvious alternatives. Above all he was excessively kind and understanding, tolerant and free with his generosity. A humble, unassuming, proudly working class man with working class values.

I found myself reaching out for the good times I had with my dad because that represented redemption for me, a way of exorcising the demons that haunted him for much of his life. There was that aforementioned time at roughly 6 in the evening when he would walk towards me while waiting anxiously for his arrival. The days of workaday toil were at an end and there I would be ready to greet him rather like a Second World War child who couldn't wait to see their demobbed dad. 

At mealtimes there were the inevitable conversations about football and sport. But suddenly the kitchen would fall into a solemn hush, as my dad tried desperately to distance himself valiantly from any reference or discussion about football or any sport. How often he would grow ashen faced and outraged at the mere mention of the Beautiful Game. Why couldn't we turn the discourse to Harold Wilson, the white heat of technology, Vietnam, Richard Nixon or the imminent troubles in Northern Ireland when the IRA threatened to send the whole of England into a state of indefinite bedlam?

My dad would turn his attention to his only true hobby. Cars became his major pre-occupation and eventually the cause of his mental breakdown. There were dreadful times when my family feared that this self -destructive obsession would destroy him. He suffered from what is now referred to as bipolar disease, a mentally crippling disease that led to wild mood swings and a frightening inability to communicate with anybody.

I find myself writing this piece with the heaviest of hearts because this is not the way either my dad or I would ever have thought something like manic depression would ever drag him into a fiery pit of despair. We experienced what, as a family, we came to know as his highs and lows since this is how manic depression would manifest itself. There were those horrendous slumps into my dad's personal world of hell, the highs consisting of delusions of grandeur when he clearly convinced himself that he was in complete control and nobody could tell him what to do and the lows that you would rather not go into any chapter and verse about.

There was the time when my dad found a job as chauffeur in the West End of London. On one glorious Sunday lunchtime my dad was assigned to look after and act as a tour guide to an obscenely wealthy Saudia Arabian family. Guided to the family's palatial penthouse suite in Park Lane, the heart of London's brightly illuminated West End, our family was wined and dined in the kind of lavish splendour that none of us could ever have ever anticipated.

Then there was my dad's platonic relationship with the touristy West End of London, a highly illuminated, dazzling beacon of light in what seemed to be those darkest recesses of his life where everything looked hopeless and inconsolable. How my dad loved to take his sleek, grey Ford Cortina out for a run to those garish but astonishing colours that would flicker, flirt, flash and then fulminate in an explosion of Coca Cola red.

Piccadilly Circus had everything my dad was looking for when Sunday afternoons during the 1970s were reduced to lengthy power cuts. There were the hospitable cafes, the gregarious restaurants where families and friends would eat out under the red lights of the Aberdeen Steak House, the statue of Eros, full of love and affection and Wrigley's Spearmint chewing gum which would be comfortably juxtaposed with, strangely, Timex watches. My dad was not only deeply in love with my mum but the heart of the jumping, jiving, swinging West End of London.

There was a deep seated longing on my dad's part to feel special and important, a sense that he simply wanted to make sure that the pleasure he was deriving from his Sunday afternoon would be instantly transferred to us. We would spend endless hours on those very Sunday afternoons casually strolling and window shopping our way along Regent Street before retiring for tea at that famous Jewish rendezous the Lyons Corner House in Marble Arch. The 1960s now seem like eons ago but for my dad there was an intimate connection and rapport with a world that never failed to disappoint him.

There were the hilarious holidays to Spain in the primary school half term break in June, the navy jackets, Fred Perry shirts and ties donned for days of baking heat on Sundays by the seaside. For my dad formality and courtesy were almost essential regardless of the occasion but then there were those evenings when uproarious laughter would leave both my grandparents and family in a memorable state of elation.

Half way through a Jewish Passover( Pesach service), my grandpa would stand to recite the traditional prayers without ever imagining that the events that would follow were destined to leave my dad on the floor in a paroxysm of giggling. Suddenly my dear grandpa pa would slowly lose his trouser belt and then his trousers. The trousers would gently fall to the ground, slowly descending into an oblivion of ankles and socks.

But for my dad family meant everything. Even through my most traumatic teenage years when autism had yet to be diagnosed, my dad was always there for me. When my parents would just leave me to my lonely devices for a  Tuesday night out club with friends, he was deeply supportive, bewildered at times as to why my personal friendships had yet to be established and fantastically sympathetic even though he couldn't really understand what I was going through. 

Then there was my dad's enduring relationship with the West End, a place of fun, life, vitality, tireless activity, a world of epic escapism, his natural destination after the most turbulent period of his life. The West End was a glittering revelation where he came alive, eyes twinkling, smile permanently etched on his face during the grimmest  Sunday winter's night.

And finally there were the days at home, listening with rapture in his heart to Frank Sinatra's Double album of instantly recognisable standards 'Portrait of Sinatra. Now firmly ensconced within the bosom of his adoring family he would sit in the family garden, sun glasses glued to his eyes, bronze, sun tanned chest exposed to a British summer heatwave which may have been a rarity but still a treat to those who worshipped it in the way both of my parents used to long for it. There was Glen Miller, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Count Basie and a festival of jazz to caress my dad's ears.

Above all my dad never liked any fuss, any commotion or bother. He was a man with simple tastes in a world that would often become incomprehensible from time to time. He enjoyed straightforward food. ordinary food, food with little in the way of pretentious colours, tastes or smells. He drank little or no alcohol although he would indulge on holiday excursions. He smoked because he'd always smoked but there were none of those vices that the rest of the 1960s had embraced so willingly. Of course he didn't take drugs and looked on with horror at those who did.

Sons and daughters always look up to their father for those formative signs of encouragement and support. When they receive those first trophies for best actor or actress in the school play, win that precious award or certficate for having mastered the violin or recorder, dad is the one at the back who keeps pointing at their offspring and singling them out when the spotlight falls.

When my dad finally blows out the 93rd candle on his birthday cake I feel sure that he'll be insisting that he wants nothing in the way of approval or recognition. After asking him what he wanted for his birthday for the umpteeenth time he would re-assure me that all he really wanted was a packet of Polo mints and a cup of tea. Any of my enterprises or life projects would be followed by the inevitable good luck son statement. For this was my lovely, wonderful dad. Happy 93rd birthday dad. You'll always be in my heart.