The Old Man

In Memory of Philip J. Cox, March 3rd 1931 – Feb 11th 2001

Today would have been my Dad’s 89th birthday (Mythen is the name I write and perform under – it’s my Mum’s maiden name). He died from leukaemia just three weeks shy of his 70th. While I’d have liked to see him hit 70, by the time the disease had finished with him I wouldn’t have wanted him to linger a day longer. He had fought the good fight for 18 months or thereabouts.

Today is also the 28th anniversary of the day he drove me to the station to catch a bus to Dublin which was the first leg of my long journey to Australia. As I got on the bus, hesitating for a second or two,  he said “Off you go boy, I’d love to be ya”. So off I went. My intention was to go and spend between 6 and 12 months in Australia, on a working holiday visa, and then return home. I absolutely did not envisage living anywhere other than Ireland, and ideally Waterford, in the long term. Things have turned out a little differently of course. I did return to Waterford in February of 1993, after a year Down Under. By then though, Australia had gotten hold of me and  I stayed in Waterford only a year,  during which time I applied for, and obtained,  a permanent residence visa to return. And in February of 1994, I bid my folks a teary farewell at Cork airport and set off for the Wide Brown Land once more. I spent a few months in rural NSW before moving down to Melbourne where I lived for the next 11 years (almost), before coming to Singapore for “six months or so” (on an Australian passport – having become officially Fair Dinkum in 1996).  15 years later I am still on the Red Dot, with Permanent Resident status, a family, a mortgage and a cat – all the things which indicate that one is not leaving any time soon. None of this was part of the plan in March of 1992, insofar as there was a “plan” – there wasn’t really.

One thing I do wish I had done differently though, is travel back to Ireland more often than I did, especially once Dad got sick. After my return to Australia I didn’t go back for five years, until my brother got married in 1999. It was a few months after that that Dad got diagnosed, and I didn’t go back until Christmas of 2000 because by then we knew it was going to be his last one. I should have gone earlier, while he was still relatively healthier. These days we go once a year and I wish now I could have done that. There were circumstances that made it difficult though, but I suspect I could have found a way if I had tried a bit harder.

Incidentally, going off on a slight tangent, that first trip in ’92  involved a few hours waiting at Singapore’s Changi airport. It was the first time I had been any further from home than London, and it was all a bit surreal. I remember being in the airport bar and talking to some American businessman who was based in Singapore but was making one of many regular work trips to “KL”. I just nodded and said “cool” or something – I had no idea what or where KL was, I later discovered, of course, that it was Kuala Lumpur. I was struggling to get my head around the very idea that I was in South East Asia, albeit only in a transit lounge. I must say though – even in 1992, Changi airport was very impressive. Mind you I could only compare it to the two other international airports I had seen up to that point, namely Dublin and Heathrow – so maybe it wasn’t difficult to be impressed.

Anyway  – in honour of his birthday, I’d like to tell you a bit about the kind of  Dad that Phil was, for the benefit of readers who didn’t know him (those who did will attest that I could write on the subject for days on end. We were five very lucky kids indeed to have him). Firstly I have another extract (well actually two extracts that appear separately in the working manuscript but I’m pairing them up here) from my long abandoned and unfinished memoir. (See yesterday’s post if you don’t know what I am referring to)

From Chapter 2

“Wasn’t Christmas brilliant when you were a young kid? Well it was for me anyway. Our ritual was to go to first Mass at 8.30am, then home for breakfast before unlocking the front room where Santa (“Santy” as we called him), had left our presents. Interestingly it never occurred to me that the chimney dropped into a different room, but let’s not worry about that. No opening of presents was allowed till everyone had finished breakfast, which meant we had to sit there going spare while Mum and Dad finished their 28th cup of tea. Bear in mind that we had been up for hours by now, having first gone to Mass, which of course on Christmas Day went for well over an hour as opposed to a normal Sunday which was 40 minutes or so. Then we had to hunt for the key to the room, which Santy had hidden. It was nearly always engineered that I would find the key, as whoever found it got to open the door and go in first. I remember it landed in the bowl with my cornflakes one year. I remember many of the wonderful things Santy left for me during these years too, my first guitar (“tigtar”) which was a yellow plastic banjo with, I think, a picture of Mickey Mouse on it. A cowboy outfit, complete with Sheriff’s badge and TWO cap guns in holsters and a rifle! Not very PC anymore to give your child a toy gun is it? Much better to give them Duke Nukem 6 for their X-Box. (That said, my own son has something in the region of 16 Nerf guns now and enough ammunition for them to start a coup de maison.) A Lego set, brilliant stuff Lego. A bicycle with training wheels on (stabilisers we called them). A little pedal powered car called a Hot-Rod, this thing was the business – it was rock solid, made of steel and weighed a ton, not like the plastic “child safe” stuff you pay through the nose for nowadays. Some of these were things I had written to Santy and asked for, others, the Hot Rod for one, were surprises. Fair play to Mum and Dad, I still don’t know how they fed and clothed themselves and five of us, paid the mortgage and bills, and were able to afford this stuff at Christmas (although as was pointed out to me, for quite a number of years Dad worked two full time jobs – daytime at the E.S.B. office and then home for dinner and a nap before going out to do a night shift as an operator at the telephone exchange.)”

And from Chapter 4 – a few years later ( I was about 7 by this stage)

“The Christmas of the Bikes. That was brilliant. A major Coup de Grace on Mum and Dad’s part. None of us new what Santy was bringing this year (although I was probably the only one who still believed in him). When the Mass/breakfast/key hunt ritual was over, once again I was the one opening the door. There in the corner by the Christmas tree was a gleaming new Triumph 20 bicycle. Being only 7 I assumed this was for one of the older kids, and so I asked where my presents were. “Right there” says Dad and points to the bike, whereupon I screamed “A Triumph 20 all to meself???!!” I was ecstatic. The other kids didn’t share my enthusiasm understandably enough, they were quite envious. But once everyone was in the room, Dad closed the door, and behind the door were 4 more identical bikes. He’d gone and bought 5 of them in one hit. I think they were about 25 quid each – no small sum in 1974 or 75.  We were all stoked. We couldn’t wait for the Christmas holidays to be over so we could all cycle to school. Can you imagine letting a 7-year-old cycle to school in rush hour traffic now? ” Years later we found out that he had gone and bought them a week or two before, and must have brought them home while we were all at school. How he got them all home in his Vauxhall Viva I will never know, he must have made multiple trips to town and back. He then hid them in the attic. And on Christmas Eve night, when we were all asleep, he managed to climb into the attic, take the bikes down one by one, carry them down the stairs and put them in the room – without making a sound”

My other significant “My Dad Was a Legend” story concerns what I now do for a living, because without his backing and encouragement I wouldn’t be doing it. I left school in 1984, with what was, for the standards of the time, a relatively decent showing in my Leaving Cert Exams (A Level equivalent, more or less). During the summer months, between finishing school and starting college, we took a drive to Cork City one day, as Mum had a specialist doctor’s appointment. While she was at the appointment, Dad & I made a beeline for Crowley’s Music Shop, one of the best music shops in the country. I loved it because of the extensive collection of guitars on display – it was like an Aladdin’s Cave to me. Dad loved it because of the top of the line hi-fi gear they had, which he happily spent hours listening to, while I was tinkering around on some really sweet early 80’s Japanese built Yamaha acoustic guitars. Eventually he came over and just said “Which one?” I was like “What?” “Which one do you want to get?” says Dad. Somewhat stunned I reached for the cheapest one – the one that was a great guitar, but with no fancy binding or decorative inlays.  “Nah – says Dad – this one looks nicer – get this one” picking up a model two steps up on the price scale. 15 mins later we left the shop with my new pride and joy – a Yamaha FG-340 II. That guitar was my weapon for years, I busked with it, played my first gigs with it and I wish I still had it.

Now before I sign off – in case I am giving the impression that I reckon Dad was great just because he bought us stuff – that’s only a small part of the story. He had our backs in every way you can imagine. When I started doing gigs, before I could drive – he would ferry me all over the place to the gigs, and back home again. He was no soft touch either. I remember a night my brother got roughed up by some thug – he was only about 13, and the thug was 19 or 20. Old enough for Dad to immediately go out and drive around our housing estate looking for him. As my brother told me, when he found him, he got out of the car, walked straight up to him and nearly broke his fist off the guy’s jaw. Flattened him with one punch. That’s the only time he was ever even remotely violent. He was a gentleman in every way – but you did NOT mess with his family.

The photo features three blokes, all with the same nose! 🙂 Happy Birthday Phil. R.I.P.