Father In Law

He had no garments old or new that didn’t have a hole burnt through from sparks when he lit up his pipe and nearly set himself alight. Smoke rituals in his old car began when we set off not far to visit Truro’s small town charms on Wednesdays when from all the farms the ruddy faces and flat caps descended on the town perhaps to share a pint or tea with wives as antidote to lonely lives. He’d park the car in Lemon Street at bottom where we’d have a treat of cake and coffee laced with chat about a future he hoped that might see us settled close at hand with the grandchildren he had planned, yet though he knew I would away to Cumbrian hills upon the day I qualified children to teach he put the means within my reach of self belief and energy to be the man that i would be. Yet these foundations that he laid had in them no contentment made for him, who as a family man was separated by a span of tarmac miles the countries length to sap his age diminished strength on visits to those Northern climes laden with tokens of his time spent planning to express his joy in one small fair haired little boy, his first grandchild maintained the line of thread connecting binding time. So by degrees my first resolve to as a mountain man evolve became diluted by the pull to holiday in Cornwall, full of strengthened bond to sail and sea and his love of my family. In the rectory and its grounds we tested new life to be found where two small brother boys would know and feel the care that he’d bestow, new life on Cornwall's granite rock aside the shepherd of our flock