Sparky Pa

My Dad passed away last Saturday evening. 

He’d been ill for over eight years and in these last few months we’d begun to prepare ourselves, but you’re never really prepared, are you? Losing someone is the most awful thing, but at the same time there’s a beauty to it, because your mind starts stirring up the good memories, too. The ones that make you ugly-snort while you’re crying, leaving people unsure whether to console you or join in with the laughter. 

Well let me tell you this: amidst all the sadness and the tears of the last few days, my little family have shared so many wonderful memories of my dear old Dad. And I want to share some of them here, too, because Dad was brilliant. Simply, wonderfully, beautifully brilliant. 

So let me tell you about this brilliant man who, depending on who you talk to went by David. Or Dave. Or DJ. Or Pa. And yes, even Sparky Pa every now and then. 

He had quite the life before Mum, my brother or I all came into the picture. He was a cheeky chap – something he got from my Nan (and something I’m grateful to say has been passed down to me too). As a teenager he once cut out a massive wooden template of a foot, coated it in white paint and stamped it across the roof of his college, emblazoning the words YETI FEET underneath it. I’ve seen the photographic proof of it. I was sure he got expelled for that, but in subsequent retellings of the story, he’d backtrack and say he just got a slap on the wrist. 

He once drove back to the UK from a holiday in Europe without a working clutch in his car. “How did you do it?” I asked. He looked at me like it was the most normal thing in the world and said “I took my foot of the accelerator and just forced it into gear.” As you do. 

I’ve always loved the story of how Dad met Mum. They both worked at Texaco, he a salesman and she a secretary, based out of an office in Twickenham. She was the only secretary who could read his handwriting (it was, by his own admission, awful), plus it helped that he had a ‘nice bum,’ apparently. Dad invited Mum to a party one night and she said yes, figuring she could change her mind later if she decided against it. Fortunately for me and my brother, she did go.

They got married in December 1974, and the following year my brother toddled along. Two years later I joined them. It’s always made me smile to see photos of Dad as a kid, because there’s a distinct resemblance between little him and little me. I am my father’s son, and proud of it. He often called me by my initials, TJ, which I always adored, though I knew I’d been naughty if he called me Timothy. 

I am my father's son

I remember family holidays to Cornwall where Dad would take us on long coastal walks, lugging his heavy camera bag containing an SLR camera and various lenses (this was in the days before compact digital cameras, let alone iPhones) to document the scenery and his knackered family slumped amongst it. On one walk I remember we encountered a gap in the path accompanied by a 40 foot drop to the sea below. Dad leapt across, followed by Simon, while Mum and I looked at each other with horror on our faces. Needless to say, without a care for health and safety we took a deep breath and leapt across, because where Dad went we followed. 

Another time, during a two-week holiday in the West Country where the sun failed to shine for 14 days straight, Dad drove us to the beach and then through a rain-streaked windscreen said “this is the beach we would’ve gone to if it hadn’t rained the entire time.” Nevertheless, other holidays did give us some beach time, with Dad memorably taking us to Vault Beach, a ‘local’s beach’ he’d discovered years before that was accessed via a long walk down a cliff through a field of stern looking cows and an accompanying minefield of odorous cowpats. 

Squad goals holiday snap

As I moved into my teenage years, Dad was always there to help me with homework and the maths and science topics I struggled to get my head around. Years later, long after my time at school, he’d patiently help me with another task I had huge difficulty completing: my tax return. With his glasses perched on his nose, he’d straddle that fine line of trying to educate me on how to do it myself, while effectively doing it for me so he could get back to watching Formula One. 

In fact, he did a lot for me that went above and beyond the regular call of fatherly duty – making Lego sets because I didn’t have the patience, and constructing a massive Playmobil galleon that my Nan bought for me one Christmas. After failing to find any instructions, he somehow put the whole thing together just by looking at the picture on the front of the box. And he remarkably didn’t flip the table over when, just as he clicked the final piece in place my Nan said “oh look Dave, the instructions are on the back of the box.” 

I think Christmas was one of Dad’s favourite times. Even in the era of smartphones with increasingly powerful cameras, he’d still race upstairs and get his digital camera, blinding us with blasts from its surprisingly bright flash. His cheeky sense of humour came out at Christmas, too; one year he gave Mum an Eternity Ring, but rather than wrap the small ring box as it came, he instead went to a builder’s merchant, bought two bricks, sandwiched it between them and then wrapped that. Another year, he put another present in a larger box, then filled that with expanding insulation foam. After half an hour of chipping away at it, Mum gave up and went off to cook the turkey, and Dad, hoist somewhat by his own petard, retired to the garage to hacksaw the impregnable foam casing apart. 

That garage. Oh, that garage. Dad was a man with an answer or a solution for everything, and quite often that solution was found in the garage. When I moved into my first house he prepared me a toolbox full of everything I might need, and even then there remained all manner of tools stashed here, there and everywhere on the walls of that garage. The sort of thing that the average person might throw out, Dad kept – and often found a use for it years later in the most surprising way. He was a whizz at fashioning things out of wood, from under-bed storage boxes to a beautifully made stereo cabinet. One year it snowed heavily, and in just a day Dad had made a toboggan that could fit me, him and my brother on it. And just a few years ago, even as the various conditions he was dealing with were taking their toll, he built a sturdy wooden step for the backdoor of the house, a project I think he really enjoyed. 

We used to play fight on a Sunday evening after dinner, me, Simon and Dad rolling around on the living room floor while Mum amassed enough washing for him to go do the drying up. One particularity rambunctious bout resulted in me chipping one of my front teeth a little bit; it’s so slight that a dentist could easily smooth it out, but I’ve never asked for it to be done because every time I feel it, it reminds me of those happy days. 

He loved cars and motor racing, from Formula One to MotoGP, and I know he treasured his days with Simon when they would go off to watch races at Brands Hatch and Silverstone. I always loved it when he was getting ready to choose a new company car and would bring home glossy brochures that we would pore over. Simon and I liked to think we influenced his decision based on the cars we thought would be right for him, especially those that gave us a rear armrest and – if we were particularly lucky! – rear headrests. I remember one time he was considering a Volvo and was given the opportunity to do a day-long test drive. I went with him, and I fondly remember that day, that seemingly normal, average, unremarkable day just pootling around West London in a borrowed car with my Pa. Of all the cars he had, I think he liked his sporty Orion Ghia Injection with a red stripe running around the bumpers and the red Sierra GLS best of all. Perhaps the Cortina and green Vauxhall Viva run a close second. 

I took this photo of Simon, Dad and Mum, and the red Sierra

When I passed my driving test and started looking for my first car, Dad came along with me to look at various motors within my budget. I remember test-driving an old Mini that felt like it was falling apart. He folded himself in behind the wheel, started it up, and drove it out onto a dual carriageway. “Oh this is awful,” he muttered as we listened to bits of filler falling out of the wheel arch. “It’s your money, but don’t waste it on this.” I didn’t hesitate to take his advice. A few years later in 2001 when I decided to buy one of the first brand new Minis, I was enough of an adult to test drive it and do all the paperwork myself – but I still took him along to the dealership the day after to show him what I was getting. He smiled as he took in the sight of the bright red Mini, getting in the driver’s side, looking at me and saying “this is like if I’d bought an MGB when I was your age.” Several months later when I collected my brand new Mini Cooper he sent me a text while I was sat waiting in the dealers that simply said ‘Enjoy, Cooperboy.’ 

It was a similar story when I decided to move out and buy my own place. I took Dad along for the second viewing of the house I ended up buying, and a big part of making that decision was because he gave it his stamp of approval. When I bought it, my entire family chipped in to help decorate; I made Dad take the kitchen cabinets off the wall so I could paint behind them rather than just around them, and he grumbled about it, said ‘bugger’ a lot, but did it anyway. He advised me NOT to paint my bedroom bright yellow because it would be too much – then painted my old bedroom that exact shade a few months later when he turned it into his office! 

Like all fathers and sons, we didn’t agree on everything, and we argued when I chose not to go to university. “You won’t get a job by watching Star Trek,” he admonished me – but when I did exactly that, he shook his head, laughed and congratulated me. Mum later told me that he delighted in telling work colleagues about his stubborn younger son who’d stamped his foot and forged his own path. I felt incredibly proud that he took that story, made it something to be celebrated, and shared it with anyone who’d listen. 

Dad had the most wonderful taste in music and I fondly remember him playing all manner of stuff in the car on journeys both long and short; Fleetwood Mac, Peter Gabriel, Crosby Stills and Nash, Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood (though he called him ‘Stevie’ like they were old friends). He made mixtapes of his favourite tracks and packed the glovebox and door pockets of his car with them. ‘Loving You’ by Minnie Riperton was his and Mum’s song early in their marriage, though in later years ‘True Companion’ by Marc Cohn took its place. 

He could go to sleep just about anywhere. We used to joke on a Saturday afternoon when he sat in his armchair and crossed his legs that he’d ‘assumed the position’ and we were right – in minutes he was out like a light. When he wasn’t snoozing he loved to read and I’d often see him with a paperback in his hands or, later, his Kindle; he read anything and everything and I always enjoyed talking books with him, telling him what I was reading and listening to him tell me about what he was currently devouring. Out of nowhere, years ago, he started writing these wonderfully witty poems and humorous messages. When Mum feared a Christmas present I’d asked for one year wouldn’t turn up until after the big day, Dad wrote a hilarious piece explaining how Santa was having supply chain issues to give in its place. Just two years ago he wrote a witty take on our family festivities titled ‘Christmas at the Lengoes’, printed out copies for all of us and put them in individually named envelopes boldly stamped with our names. 

A typical Christmas with the Lengoes

Dad loved his walks, but when he fell ill the opportunity to go explore different places disappeared. Still, he would take himself off for walks around his local area. One time, on a trip down from Cardiff in 2019 I found myself unexpectedly having to stay another day due to getting a puncture on a Sunday afternoon. With nothing else to do, I decided to go for a walk, and Dad asked if I minded him joining me. “I walk a little slower now,” he said, but while that may have been the case, we were out for well over an hour, walking down to the perimeter road by the airport, round to the church and the green, talking about this, that and everything in-between. It remains one of my favourite memories of time spent with him, just TJ and DJ out for a stroll. 

His world got smaller and smaller over the last few years, with his walks getting shorter and shorter, but he still did what he could when many others might have just given up. The last few years weren’t easy on him, but he never lost his sense of humour or that little glint in his eye when he was being cheeky. I have wonderful photos of him wearing silly Christmas hats, sticking his tongue out when he realised I was taking a picture, and in one particular favourite, pointing a replica Star Trek phaser at me. 

Phasers on stun

I feel so incredibly fortunate that I got to tell Dad how much he meant to me on the morning before he passed, just a few days after his 77th birthday. He was everything you could possibly want from a dad and more. Mum said it best: “He wasn’t much of a hugger, your Dad, but he loved you very much, that much is certain.” Life will be very different without Sparky Pa around, but my goodness, how terrifically fortunate we were to have him in our lives. 

Love you, Pa xxxx