On my father's birthday...

A year ago, I was waiting for the April 4th episode of Jazz Record Requests, hoping that Alyn Shipton had picked up my birthday request for my father, whom I had not seen for more than 13 months - the longest period in my life I had gone without seeing him.

It was a Duke Ellington track, one that he and I absolutely loved, and which I had first discovered at one of my father's 100 Club National Poetry Day gigs thanks to Wally Fawkes. The message said something along the lines of 'here's to listening to great music in packed rooms together again soon'.

Shipton played the request. Michael was thrilled with it - he'd been an assiduous listener to JRR for decades. We had a wonderful, joy-filled conversation on the phone afterwards. We were both looking forward to meeting up again later in the summer at a gig for Cerys Matthews in Manchester, after all that endless Covid angst and separation.

It was not to be. The last time I saw my father in person was two days before he died, in the hospital, a couple of days after the Manchester gig we were both supposed to have been at. Despite the fact that he was only half awake, much was said that needed to be said. He had apparently asked, on waking from his accident, about the gig, asked if I was going to go. Very much a 'show must go on' man, my father.

I went, I represented Horovitz for both our sakes, as best I could in the circumstances. I was immensely distracted, but I got through it and got back to London and saw him and sang to him (not very well, but he was always forgiving of that...) and held his hand.

The hospital had said he was recovering well, so I went home after weeks in London for a couple of days to sort a couple of things out and celebrate my girlfriend's birthday with her, thinking I would see him at the end of the week, and that all would be good, and that we'd have time to make up more yet that had been missed.

But they missed something, the doctors, and my glorious, awkward, hilarious, lovely father slipped away while I was out of town.

April 4th would have been his 87th birthday. I hate that I can't phone him up and sing Happy Birthday badly to him. I miss him dreadfully - even the 8am "OH MY GOD MY COMPUTER'S BROKEN CAN YOU LOG IN AND FIX IT?" calls. I miss wandering Portobello Road with him and arguing and agreeing about poetry and music and so much more.

So, my dear, beloved father, here's to you on what would have been your birthday. Whatever state of being you are in, may it be something like the paradise my mother wrote to you about shortly before her death, where we are "all walking hand in hand, loving one another".

And may it look something like this: