Our Paps - a tribute
We called our Dad ‘Paps’.
He would have been 85 today, and he’s been gone nearly 13 years.
It feels right to share some of him. There is so much to say - which I’m sure is the case for many of us who have lost someone that we love - and I still think that his eulogy that we read sums up our experience of him as our Paps the best.
So, I am sharing it here today.
As we are sure you all know, our Dad David – or Paps as us girls called him – was many things in his life, but perhaps most importantly to him and us, he was a wonderful husband and father.
We are speaking as four very lucky daughters when we tell you that he was an amazing Paps.
As we were reminiscing, we realised that so many of our very happy memories of times with him were simply very ordinary, normal times: playing on the beach, going to Bonfire Night together, playing What’s the Time Mr Wolf and running around Twesledown with him. We imagine that many people have similar memories of their fathers.
But this also made us appreciate how special that is in it’s own way – there is such a lot to be said for normal. We would like to share some of these memories with you all.
He was so devoted to us as our Paps. We always felt so very loved, not least because of his size, which meant his bear hugs were very comforting and strong. He would hug us and stroke our hair – even as we were grown up – because he was still bigger than us.
In the early days, Paps had a moustache. We all used to clamber onto his lap (there was just enough room!) and he would pretend to be asleep. Then we would take it in turns to touch the edge of his moustache very lightly. At one point he would suddenly shout “boo!” and we would all fall off, shrieking with laughter.
One of the best and most important things in the Farrar house is a sense of humour. And not just humour, but often, a sense of the ridiculous and extremely silly. Paps enjoyed listening to tapes of old comedy radio shows such as ‘I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again’, ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue’ and ‘The Two Ronnies’. The double entendre in some of these certainly appealed to his appreciation of more vulgar humour (as did his rugby joke books)! Us girls also enjoyed these tapes once we were a little bit older and Paps was delighted that this old fashioned stuff made us laugh so much too – and it was because it was so silly.
He loved watching most sports (much to Mum’s frustration!) but especially rugby, and he imparted his enthusiasm for this to all of us. We watched many games with him either on TV or live at Twickenham. Once at Twickenham, he had a card that said ‘Try’ that we were supposed to wave around when England scored a try. He got a little over zealous with waving this card at one point and accidentally hit the man in front of him on the head with it!
On another occasion with Lucy, he was so engrossed watching the match that as he was eating his packed lunch he bit all his mini tomatoes in half, oblivious to the fact he therefore ended up with all the pips and juice down his front!
As you all know he loved photography. When we were younger and walking back from town with him he would always stop and look in the window of Wellington Cameras, much to our boredom! Later on, he pretended to develop a fake ‘bad’ leg, which would always then ‘play up’ outside this shop! We got our own back though, by developing our own fake dodgy limbs which would play up outside the bakery!
We all teased him mercilessly in a good natured way. We called our parents “the olds”, would tell him when he was making what we called his ‘grumpy old man face’, and groan loudly when he started to tell a joke or a story that we had heard MANY times – we ended up saying that there should be a £10 fine on such jokes and some very long winded anecdotes!
When we knew the end was near people advised us to use the opportunity to tell him things we always wanted to, which was good advice but we didn’t need to, because none of us had any unfinished business or things unsaid. We always told him that we loved him and he always, always told us and he also told us how proud he was of us all. Again, we are reminded how lucky we are in this; to have had such a straightforward and extremely loving relationship with our Paps.
And so, whilst this is a very sad time for us all, I have tried very hard to remember that life is a gift… and what a truly wonderful gift we had in our Paps.
