McDad

The Song of the Landsman's Soul is for you, McDad. It's a bit shaky in places. Thank you to Martin for adding some lovely guitars.
It helped me to write some words down during the days of pacing around and waiting and feeling helpless in London.

McDad was perfectly in tune with nature in many ways. He worked in industrial medicine, treating people who had been made sick with working person's diseases in the coal, asbestos and diving industries.
He once asked the Coal Board to let us go down a mine when we were teenagers so we could see what horrible jobs people had to do to earn a living (the Coal Board refused). He didn't think it was at all romantic to have to wreck and ruin your body and mind as a member of the working class, doing vicious, dirty and repetitive jobs to serve society and make a living.
In the evenings and at weekends he would dig the garden and plant seeds, growing fruit, vegetables and flowers. So he spent his daytimes nurturing humans and the rest of his time nurturing plants.
I remember as a very young child sitting on his lap and sniffing the bonfire smoke on his gardening shirt on Sunday evenings as he sat with a cup of tea in the kitchen. He understood about the temporariness and vulnerability of nature, and that nothing material is permanent no matter how beautiful it is.

Thanks to the wonderful loving and caring nurses who made his last few days as comfortable and gentle as possible, and who cared for McMum and Sis at the same time.

I love you Dad.