In the deserts of Sudan/And the gardens of Japan/From Milan to Yucatan/Every woman, every man …

For some reason I awoke some thirty minutes ago with Ian Dury and the Blockheads’ 1979 classic Number One Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick burning a hole in my brain.

Though my memories of thirty years ago (and it’s nearly that now) are much dimmed and blended into a soggy mess by the passage of time, I can still recall a sense of the extraordinary strangeness, excitement & chaos that accompanied the legendary Assassins FC de Montevideo soccer team on their tour of Europe – an expedition in which for six or seven months I played a small & insignificant role as a junior in a PR agency.

Though he is planning to leave for Barcelona next week, son Roswell had yet to see his grandfather since his return from Greece a month ago and so yesterday I drove him down to the coast to correct this omission. After a pub lunch we pulled chairs around Roswell’s laptop whilst he gave a slide show of his photographs and played several pieces of video, one of a morning briefing he gave before his flotilla set off for a day’s sailing.

One of my father’s key attributes has always been his interest in other people – I remembering him once counselling me as a teenager not to be nervous of having to make polite conversation at drinks parties (“great opportunities to learn things – people love talking about themselves – make a point of actually listening to what people say - ask a new question every five minutes …”) – and, since he’s raced his own boat for forty two years and even sailed on the Norfolk Broads as a small boy before the Second World War, he has a strong bond with Roswell who since the age of about five has felt as comfortable on the water as he has on land. I just sat back and listened as the younger man fielded innumerable questions & comments from the older, few of which I related to or even understood, though this didn’t bother me in the slightest. I’d even go so far as admitting that my regard for my own son grew exponentially as I noted how respectful his grandfather was of his evident knowledge & skill.

One photograph that Roswell’s base manager had insisted he take (as a form of future employment reference) was of a ‘customer feedback’ form. In the comment box beside the ‘Name Of Flotilla Skipper’ (Roswell), this particular client had written “By a considerable margin the most professional skipper I’ve experienced in four consecutive years of [name of the company] holidays”.

For over two decades now I’ve regarded Roswell as the most contrary & irritating person I’ve ever come across … but now I beginning to worry that he’s perfectly normal and I’m the complete idiot.

Annoyingly it so happens that I have to ‘double click’ at the passenger and rear hatch doors of my new car before they will open. However, as we jumped into the vehicle to drive home after tea, I noticed that these glitches had disappeared – it turned out that Roswell had pressed some button or another.

“That’s great …” I said, “… Do you know I’ve had this car ten months now and never knew how to do change that setting …”

“Doesn’t surprise me in the slightest, Dad …” said my son, looking away as he belted himself into the passenger seat and (I thought) a slight hint of boredom & condescension in his voice.

On the way home Roswell lobbed me a vague question about the Led Zeppelin reunion concert, now less than ten days away. I gave him a quick potted history, adding that I’d seen a piece in the newspaper that morning that cited John Bonham’s drumming on When The Levee Breaks as some of the heaviest & finest ever recorded. He even allowed me to play it at volume 12 as we sped up the A316 in torrential rain towards the end of our journey home …

[For those who might be interested, there is an entry on Ian Dury in the ‘Viewpoint’ section today.]