In the living years

My dad was one of those rare people who literally nobody had a bad word to say about. Except his immediate family, and that was only in an affectionate kind of way. But everyone really did like him, and with good reason. He never thought of himself, and spent his whole life helping other people out, just because that was the way he was.

He was a very recognisable kind of guy - short even by my standards (whenever he had to give his height, he always put 5'6", which he readily admitted was a rough guess, because he'd never measured himself. I'd say he was a good couple of inches less than that), always somewhat on the chubby side, bald on top from a very early age, with wild curly hair, big sideburns and a moustache. Which he'd had since he was twenty and never considered changing. His taste in clothing was similarly unchanging through the years - brown suede boots, brown trousers and a white long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up, open at the neck. Yes, even in the middle of winter, outside in a blizzard. He didn't feel the cold, but whenever the temperature got a few degrees above freezing he was horribly uncomfortable. And on those rare occasions when he had to wear a tie (he owned two or three of them, all square, knitted wool ones that might have looked more or less passable in the early 1970s) he always looked like he was on the point of collapse. During his teaching days, he had a photo taken every year (18 of them in all), and they're all exactly the same - the hair a little more sparse every time, turning from jet black to grey to pure white by the time he was fifty, but exactly the same pose, with toothy grin and twinkle in his eyes.

I think I've mentioned his chronic earliness on here before - he'd always arrive somewhere two hours before the time he'd agreed, he didn't like to stay up much past seven o'clock at night and was always up and about by three in the morning. He lived his life in fast-forward, so I suppose it's not all that surprising that he's died (heart disease) at the age of 59.

As a teacher, everyone agrees, he was something truly exceptional. He taught at Clinton Park primary school from 1971 till 1990, teaching and inspiring nine and ten-year-olds for generations. He would walk through town and have dozens of people of all ages say 'hello, Mr Pridmore!' One of his real passions in life was teaching people to spell and punctuate properly - NOBODY left his class without learning how to use an apostrophe. He always said he could teach anyone how to do it right in twenty minutes, and despaired of the way so few people made the effort to teach it. Once a week in the afternoon, he'd get his guitar out and sing to the class - he had a large and eclectic range of songs, from Ilkley Moor Baht 'at to Ellen Vannin to Football Crazy. He was always trying to learn the piano, but never got very far. He used to take me and my brother to the park in Horncastle and spin us around on the roundabout which (by accident or design, I'm not sure) also bounced up and down wildly, and sing "Sons of the sea, bobbing up and down like this"

He was a Sheffield Wednesday fan, having grown up just down the road from Hillsborough, but cricket was his sport of choice. Just a couple of years ago, he finally splashed out on Sky Sports, so he could watch all the Test Matches. It's nice to know that the last one he watched was an England win. He didn't play any sports actively, having the genetic Pridmore dodgy legs, although he was surprisingly agile in short bursts - he still played badminton well enough to teach it to his classes, and he'd occasionally play backstop in rounders games and amaze everyone with his ability to catch the wildest bowl and throw it with pinpoint accuracy. He played snooker in his youth, very well or so he always told me, but gave it up when his eyesight got too bad. He still played pool occasionally, but found it wasn't enough of a challenge.

Steam trains were a major passion of his life. I'll never quite understand what the appeal was, although his own father worked on the railways for his entire life, so it's obviously a lifelong thing. Every Father's Day we went to the steam railway museum at Butterley for a Sunday dinner on the train (booked eight months in advance at least, so we always got the best seats and were the first to be served). A meal and three rides up and down the little line pulled by a steam train - what more could anyone want, he asked without the slightest trace of irony. He was a keen birdwatcher too, used to run the Young Ornithologists Club at the school (I came along on one or two outings and found it horribly boring). He went to various night school classes over the years, learning sculpture, heraldry, calligraphy, all kinds of strange things, and became very gifted at all of them. When he put his mind to it (which wasn't very often, sadly), he could write little funny stories that had everyone in hysterics.

He was a really, really great cook. You hadn't lived until you'd had his rabbit stew and dumplings (seriously, nobody in the world could make suet dumplings like his), or steak and kidney pud, or Sunday roast, or spaghetti bolognese, or chocolate cake. He never ate sweets or desserts himself, but he made a great cake - everyone was always asking for the recipe, but nobody could get it to turn out quite like his. I think it was the ancient oven he cooked in. The secret's died with him, anyway. And everything in huge servings - he had an enormous appetite and assumed everyone else did too.

Above all, he was a decent man who got things done and never once in his life had a thought that was selfish or mean. He raised me and my brother practically singlehandedly without a complaint (and we were really horrible teenagers, I'll tell you), and I think we both turned out okay. I owe a huge amount to him, and it just won't be the same without him around. The world really is poorer for his loss.

Oh, and I can't post a blog entry tonight without recording that Jenny sent me a card and a milk chocolate Happy Duck Lolly to make me feel better. It did, a whole lot.