20
Before I left the room, from nowhere, a vivid memory resurfaced. I loved my father, admired, hero-worshipped; all of the textbook stuff.
I still do.
He taught me how to play snooker, hurling. He was a father of the old school. He did the unheard-of thing: he gave me his time, not in a hurried or impatient way but as if he loved to do so. My first hurley, he made it, cut from the ash tree. He honed, polished, tested it for weeks on end.
In our new era of prosperity, when fatherhood consists of McDonald s, Play Stations and shitpiles of cash, he taught me the virtue of patience. Only once did I ever see him “lose it”. With my mother he’d have been justified in a daily tirade, but he never reacted to her continuous verbal onslaught. Sad to say, but I’d have broken her back with the hur
