Yesterday was my Dad’s birthday. In three days time, it will be the 11th anniversary of his death.

On Mum’s birthday, I talked about how music is an inheritance and the music that she ‘gave’ me. My relationship with my father was not easy and he’s been dead a while, sometimes it’s hard to remember that you get things from both your parents. I get my colouring and, according to my brother, my filthy temper from my Dad and Dad had a lovely full head of hair, even at 53! That’s not all I got though as this song proves.

This is the song that we played at Dad’s funeral, Ben remembered that Dad used to sing it and we hadn’t had any music at the church so we played this as people were leaving.

I had planned to use this for Sunday music as soon as I realised the date. When I Googled it, there it was, Joe Cocker at the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Concert. I remember watching this performance on the TV. It was 6 months after Dad died, I was sharing a flat with Christelle. We’d moved in in January, I remember sorting out flat stuff on the way back from the funeral ’cause C was in France and later, when Dad’s ashes were in a box on the living room floor, watching Christelle move them and say “Excuse me, Noel” as she moved them so she could clean the floor.

Anyway, it was a bank holiday, a bunch of us had been in Richmond for the day and had met my cousins Faye and Michelle for drinks. We’d come home and turned on the TV. The concert was on and as Joe Cocker was announced, I knew what he’d be singing.

It was the first time that my friends saw me cry for my father. At that point, I always called him Noel, never Dad and I was deep in denial about how much his death had hurt. It wasn’t as if I’d seen him much when he was alive and had exactly two days off after he died, one the day after to sort out the funeral and the day of the funeral itself. Apart from a brief moment in the church, I was doing one of the reading and nearly lost it, I’m not sure that anyone except Ma and Sarah saw me cry for Dad. You see no one ever really understood how difficult it was to be Noel’s daughter. Ma, who didn’t have an easy relationship with her Dad, maybe got it but everyone else pretty much thought I was a heartless bitch when it came to Noel and it was too complicated to explain.

I wanted a father that loved me more than the next pint, which was never going to be Noel. It would have been easy to look at my father and the damage he caused and see only that. Although that wasn’t all he was, he wasn’t a bad man, he wasn’t a good father or a good husband but he was himself. He was so damaged and he spread that damage without really understanding what he was doing. I can say that because he was my Dad and I miss what he could have been. He was, in his way, brilliant and he could have been a better father, a better husband, a better man. He just couldn’t see how to do it. When he was good, he was very, very good. He just wasn’t that good often enough and when I hear this song, I’m sad about that and about what we lost because of it. I’m also as time builds up, able to remember that that wasn’t all he was….