As we stepped off the train at St Pancras in London, Dad loosened up almost instantly. He smiled, was chattier than he had been in days, and for the moment even seemed to be walking pain-free. The writing on all the signs was in English, the cars were on the right side of the road and, most importantly, it was not Paris. We could’ve pulled into Kabul Station and he’d have been happy.

There was also the sense that we were closer to the end of our journey than the beginning with only a week remaining, which gave us both something to look forward to.

It was my first time in London in a decade, not having visited since I unsuccessfully attempted to move there in 2001, giving up out of sheer misery. I arrived with high expectations, wanting to try to make it in stand-up in one of the world’s hubs of comedy. But I was beaten down, arriving in the middle of winter with absolutely no idea of what to expect. I couldn’t deal with the bleak conditions. Cold, overcast, wet, my tiny little mind blown by it getting dark at 3 pm. I slogged it out for two months before giving up, desperately missing home, depressed that a relationship had ended for this. Things weren’t helped by the lack of smiles from the Brits in almost every facet of life. It seemed they were all as depressed by the gloominess as I was, and I longed for a happy stranger to come walking off an aerobridge smiling and talking to everyone.

Dad and I would be staying in Camden Town, which was easy enough to get to from St Pancras as it was only a few Tube stops away. Dad seemed fine with the prospect of going underground, though we’d have to navigate Friday night peak hour to get there. That would have been enough of a pain with standard luggage, but Dad’s suitcase could easily have been attached to the back of the train and used as an extra carriage.

As we stepped onto the train, two guys in their mid-twenties saw us haul it on and immediately started ribbing Dad.

‘Sure it’s big enough, mate?’

‘You got a body in there?’

‘Is that your hotel room?’

Dad could not have loved this interaction any more if he’d tried. They were speaking English and they were giving him shit like people would back home. Dad had never been too serious about himself, always happy to have a laugh at his own expense. Whether it was his lack of tech know-how or being mocked by my mates for his homemade stick-man tattoo he did when he was fourteen, as long as it was good-natured he never minded.

It was the first time I’d seen him genuinely smile in over a week, and gave me confidence we’d finally found a place he might like.

The apartment in Camden Town was perfectly normal, which was another relief after Paris. Camden itself is a bit of an alternative area, with markets and a strong music scene. But it still has that London suburb vibe of tightly packed terrace houses surrounded by off-licences, betting establishments or chain pubs with names like the Slug & Lettuce, the Hungry Horse or the Soulless Rip-off.

As we left the apartment the next morning, I had high expectations. Dad seemed the most relaxed he’d been for the whole trip and London was going to have a higher hit rate of tourist attractions that he was aware of. He didn’t even seem to mind that we had to walk to the next station down the line as Camden Town station was closed because the markets were on. Which Dad was happy to stroll through, looking at T-shirts of bands he’d never heard of, never intending to buy anything on offer. But at least he’d walked through them. London really had made him a new man.

I felt comfortable too; the two months I’d spent unemployed in London meant I knew where I was going, not having to stop every three seconds to make sure we were on the right track. I felt in a better place mentally for London this time around, perhaps because I knew what to expect, and, more importantly, when I was leaving.

We arrived at Embankment station, and as we exited up the escalators, our London adventures began. We walked out of the station to be met by the Thames and, on the opposite bank, the London Eye. My ferris wheel history and Dad’s newly outed claustrophobia meant that we were never going to go for a ride on the Eye, so seeing it was enough for Dad.

He only had one thought about the giant wheel. ‘Why isn’t it on a park?’

It was an interesting question. The London Eye is located on the banks of the Thames and it’s over one hundred metres high, so it offers excellent views stretching over greater London (I assume). But Dad seemed to think those views would be spoiled by the Thames, the river earning one of his brutal two-word reviews: ‘It’s dirty.’ As though for some reason the people on the Eye would spend the whole time staring at the ground right below them.

I’m not sure what he was expecting; Melbourne’s Yarra River is offensively brown all year round, so it’s not as though he’s used to glacial-blue rivers cutting through a city. He must have left his goggles and speedos in his mobile wardrobe, so I don’t think he had plans to swim it, either. At least it didn’t smell like cat piss.

Fortunately for Dad, a lot of London’s tourist hotspots are in a big loop, fairly close to each other, so it was going to be an easy stroll to see most of them. We walked along the river to the iconic (to almost everyone but Dad) houses of parliament, Dad not taking it in as he was still distracted by the non-park Eye and filthy river.

Which brought us to Big Ben. Dad took it in for a bit, and then hit me with, ‘Didn’t think it’d be surrounded by buildings.’ I took this to mean he thought the clock should somehow stand alone, maybe in a park. For a man who happily cut down any tree that got anywhere near his property, he suddenly seemed to have a real thing for parks.

He followed up with, ‘Could’ve just looked at the Dimmeys clock.’ Now, while that Richmond landmark is iconic to some of the people of Melbourne, it’s barely a quarter of the size of Big Ben and it doesn’t draw in millions of visitors from around the world. It’s not like tourists get picked up from the airport and rush straight to Swan Street so they can witness for themselves this clocktower they’ve heard so much about (from Dad).

Then we were on to Buckingham Palace. Dad seemed fairly impressed by his first ever palace. Well, he wasn’t actively unimpressed, so I took that as a victory. He was happy to stay for a while, most likely resting up, as we agreed that it’s not a bad second home to have. His only gripe here was the same as pretty much every traveller: we couldn’t get close to the place itself due to fences, security, beefeaters and selfie-sticks. Our photos would be taken from a distance. I imagined he mainly wanted to get closer so he could see if the Queen had the special hinges on her windows too.

As the typical heavy English drizzle set upon us, I decided walking wasn’t on our agenda anymore as we’d end up drenched within the hour, so we jumped on the Tube to London Bridge station, with the intent of seeing Tower Bridge (the one most people assume is London Bridge). It was the first drawbridge Dad had seen in his life, and all he could think to ask was, ‘Why’s it that colour?’

The metal on the bridge was painted an inoffensive light blue, but perhaps his thinking was that bridges were grey and drab, and to paint them anything else was to misrepresent their bridginess. By then I’d given up trying to follow the logic of his needlessly articulated thoughts, so responded ‘don’t know’ and left it at that. We walked on, and I pointed out the Tower of London, giving him a brief description based on recollections of my tour through it last time I was here: a historic castle where they tortured the absolute shit out of people with some amazingly sharp and pointy implements. That was more than enough information for Dad to forget the moment we walked on.

 

I’d organised for us to have dinner with my Spanish friend Lorenzo, a finance guru I’d met when he was living in Melbourne. He and his Australian wife, Sara, an opera singer, had since moved to London. Lorenzo was a good mate who I’d spent many a Sunday afternoon with, enjoying his homemade paella while Sara practised banging out a few arias in their bedroom upstairs.

If you’ve never been around opera singing, it’s quite startling. It’s not something that can be done at half volume. She punched it out at full blast, quite the change from the sounds of Triple R that normally permeated Brunswick.

Lorenzo chose a fancy-ish establishment in Belsize Park that had the menu of a very upmarket pub. Dad loved it, not least because this almost-fine-dining restaurant had steak. And not steak the size of your fingernail served on a hydroponically grown salt-cured pea. But an actual, life-sized steak.

I filled Lorenzo and Sara in with what was going on back home with the group of friends they’d left behind. I only had to fill in the occasional blank for Dad – he knew my friends well, so I didn’t feel like talking about all of them left him out.

Dinner with other people was a good opportunity for me to hear what Dad thought about the trip. My fast walking came up far too often; apparently it was easier to tell complete strangers about the problem than me, his son, who was in a position to solve the problem. But he was effusive in his praise for the Autobahn, the workmanship of the cathedrals and beer for breakfast.

Then of course the inevitable came: Paris. I couldn’t disagree with his appraisal of the apartment. It would have taken someone recently released from prison to think it was in any way habitable, and even then they’d probably commit a crime just to get back to the cleanliness of a cell. At least Dad had proved capable of laughing about it, so his subsequent trauma seemed under control. He mentioned again that the city smelled like cat piss, which amused Lorenzo and Sara. They’d clearly failed to pick that up during their trip the previous year.

Then Dad surprised me by saying everyone in Paris had been rude. I knew he’d not had the best time, but I didn’t remember that part of it. I needed to know more.

‘Who was rude?’ I asked.

‘Everyone.’

‘When? Everyone was really helpful.’

I reminded him of the woman who, after I said ‘catacombs’ fifty times as slowly and with as little Australian accent as I possibly could, finally understood me enough to explain that they were closed for maintenance.

‘Oh yeah,’ he said.

‘And what about the guy that helped us out of that car park?’ I asked.

Again, Dad had to concede that a Parisian had helped us get out of trouble. I explained to Lorenzo and Sara that when we were leaving the car rental place to drive to Caen, our pass wouldn’t let us out, stopping everyone from behind us from exiting as well. When I hit the intercom button the voice at the other end only spoke French, leaving us in yet another incoherent stand-off. Then the guy behind us exited his car, asked what was happening and explained the situation to the guy on the intercom. The boom gate went up, we said thank you to this kind stranger, and were on our way. It couldn’t have been a more pleasant experience.

I dislike rudeness as much as the next person, but I couldn’t let Dad re-write history for the sake of hating Paris. I made a note to double-check with Mum what he told her upon our return, in case he created a story about us almost getting robbed but only being saved by the gaffer tape in his suitcase.

As we were served our dinner (Dad finally getting his well-done steak, which meant all our meals were delayed), he recounted with joy the afternoon tea in the suburbs of Munich that was basically conducted in the dark, and he talked Lorenzo and Sara through the Michelin-starred degustation, of course including the camembert ice-cream.

It was good to get some live feedback on how the trip had gone, and it gave me a sense that I hadn’t done such a bad job after all. During the last two weeks I’d felt like I had been making Dad do most things against his will, but it seemed he’d appreciated the sights and scenes of Europe at some level.

Though there’d been some tense moments, Dad seemed to be looking back at most of what we’d done with good humour and fondness. I mentally patted myself on the back, knowing I’d been vindicated in incessantly pressuring him into doing things he didn’t want to do.

Usually it’s the role of the parent to be firm with their kids, forcing them do something for their own good. Certainly that’s the way it had been for me. For so much of this trip the roles had been reversed, as time and again it fell to me to be the bad guy, forcing Dad to do all these things he was now joyfully recounting.

Despite my babysitting difficulties, I’d always liked to think I would be a fun dad rather than strict with my kids. I guess every parent thinks that at the beginning. Everyone starts out assuring themselves that they won’t be like their own parents, just taking things in their stride, unruffled, until they realise it’s kind of hard to retain a carefree sense of joy when someone is mashing playdough into the carpet.

I knew Uncle Adam was definitely fun. I’d swan in for a few hours, muck around, crack some gags, make some kids laugh, then walk away leaving behind me whatever mess I’d created. Be it sugar-based hyperactivity or accidentally teaching them inappropriate language (they’d learn it eventually anyway), I was carefree.

I never wanted to be the cause of trauma, but that did happen when I visited my friend Dave one Christmas. His son, Rafferty, had been given a trampoline, telling me it was from Santa. I was happy to live with this lie.

‘Daddy, Daddy, can Adam come on the trampoline with me?’ Raff asked Dave.

‘Yeah, if he wants to, of course he can,’ Dave replied. He looked at me to say, ‘You don’t have to but you’ll be letting a three-year-old down if you don’t.’ I knew that look well.

Rafferty climbed in and I followed, Dave zipping us in from the outside. I should have known right then that it wasn’t going to end well. Raff was from a different generation – a generation that had trampolines with nets around them, designed to keep children safe.

But life isn’t always safe. Old trampolines were a metaphor for life: if you got too close to the edge, if you tried too hard and got a bit ahead of yourself, life was going to give you a lesson. Everyone over thirty reading this learned as a child that gravity and faces don’t mix. My sister Michelle bounced herself off our neighbour’s trampoline and ended up faceplanting into the springs. She’s now one of the most conservative people I know, and I put it down to that experience.

Before I go on, I should point out Rafferty was a first-born. He didn’t have an older brother to torment him and teach him unwelcome life lessons. Like that a fist may strike your face at any moment. I’ll forever be in Jason’s debt for teaching me that one.

As we played around, Rafferty fell over. Not a big deal. Happens hundreds of times on a trampoline. Perhaps someone had given him a nudge, but with no CCTV cameras, there was simply no way to know for sure.

Now, what’s the one thing you should do when someone has fallen over on a trampoline?

[Pause while reader says, ‘DOUBLE BOUNCE!’]

That’s right, you double bounce them.

I found out the hard way you didn’t do that to a three-year-old. In my mind I figured if he’d been on a trampoline before, then he’d been double bounced. It’s a rite of passage.

Instead I discovered that hysterical laughter sounds exceptionally similar to hysterical crying. It took way too long for me to recognise those weren’t a snot bubble and urine stain of joy. If you’ve ever wanted to feel like an arsehole, or a bully, or an arsehole bully, then having a screaming child waiting for you to unzip a net so they can be released from your torment is a sure-fire recipe.

An activity that only minutes earlier was so much fun had suddenly turned into a torture session for Raff. I could still hear his sobs in the house as I climbed from the trampoline, shaking my head and letting out a sigh as a sign of apology to Dave.

 

Uncle Adam may not have always got it right, but Son Adam was on the right path. Buoyed by Dad’s storytelling at dinner the night before, for our next day in London I thought a fun excursion (I was starting to feel like a teacher dragging around an uninterested Year 8 kid) would be to visit Harrods, the luxury department store. I knew Dad would be aware of it, not least because of Mum’s love for Princess Di. Mum was devastated when she died, and wanted vast photo coverage of Buckingham Palace and anything else royal related we might stumble across. Harrods would also be a change of pace from seeing something historical or educational. And being modern, it would have escalators, which if we rode them properly would only have Dad counting to ‘one’.

We wandered the various departments of Harrods, surrounded by incredible luxury and wealth. Dad was just as blown away as in the duty-free store, this time marvelling at how expensive things he wouldn’t normally buy could be. He was completely in his element with so many price tags to inspect and comment on.

‘You should get Mum one of those tote bags. She’d love it,’ I suggested, pointing out a Harrods bag.

Dad looked at it for a second. ‘How much is thirty pounds?’

I did a quick calculation. ‘I don’t know, about fifty bucks.’

‘I’m not paying fifty dollars for a bag. Fifty dollars! For a bag!’

You’d think I had suggested he spend his money on a £900 Givenchy handbag. I argued that the tote bag wasn’t about the value for money, that he could afford it and that Mum would have really liked it. None of those arguments helped. He couldn’t justify spending that much money on a tote bag. And that was that.

It wasn’t until later that I thought perhaps I could have bought Mum the bag myself. But I figured I’d already given her the gift of getting Dad out of her hair for three weeks. Nothing in all of Harrods was as valuable as that.

After keeping our budget on track in Harrods, we spent the day roaming inner London as we had in the Tiergarten, with no destination. I hoped Dad wasn’t getting too attached to our strolls, because it certainly wasn’t going to happen when we got back to Melbourne.

We wandered around, the pace slow, as I pointed out Carnaby Street, Soho, Piccadilly Circus, Covent Garden, Leicester Square, Hyde Park, Trafalgar Square and more. Places he’d not be able to recount if his life depended on it. He saw them all.

Though Dad walked around without much complaint, I could see he was bored. If he wanted to walk around aimlessly, he could do that back home with Mum every Friday night at the Airport West Westfield. He didn’t need to be 17 000 kilometres away from home to do it.

We still had three more days in London and the tourist attraction tank was running low. I knew I’d have to really sell anything more I wanted Dad to do and spread things out to cover the remaining days. But I felt I had his trust, now that he’d had his first opportunity to regale people with tales about his trip to Europe. Whether he enjoyed it or not, on reflection he could see that everything we’d done had served a purpose: he had travel stories. Now it would be his turn to be the most annoying and boring person at a dinner party.

Over the last two weeks I’d also adapted the way I went about things. I’d learned to lower my expectations, to not expect Dad to be amazed by anything at all, and not to overload him with too many things in one day. I still pushed him, knowing he wouldn’t do anything if I didn’t get him out of his comfort zone, but we’d finally found a balance.

 

That balance included having more downtime in our accommodation. That evening in London, as I was reading my book, relaxing in our apartment, I heard Dad fiddling with the front door. Having moved on from the windows of Europe, he’d noticed a unique mechanism on that lock.

Again it was handle related. To paraphrase (read: I didn’t really listen to what Dad said), if you turned the handle down it opened like a normal door; if you turned it up it would semi-lock the door, only openable from the inside. ‘But still locked from the outside, Adam.’ If you turned the lock after that, it would lock the door from both inside and out.

It didn’t matter to me. I was inside, reading my book, happy he was playing with the lock and not annoying me by announcing the water pressure. For those who care, London had great water pressure. I’ll leave you to imagine what Paris’s water pressure had been like.

I managed about four pages of distracted reading while he was going CLICK, HANDLE TURN, CLICK CLICK, DOOR OPEN, DOOR CLOSE, HANDLE TURN, CLICK CLICK, DOOR OPEN, DOOR CLOSE, KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.

He’d locked himself out. I stood and put the book down, but paused, considering leaving the door shut, before going over and letting him in.

‘That’s a great lock.’

I responded, ‘That’s good.’

Now that Dad was back inside, I suggested a few things for us to do the next day. I knew they weren’t high on his list (i.e. he’d never heard of them), but we’d been to all the main sites and I was forced to offer up lesser-known ones. In my mind they were no less interesting, but I knew it was going to take something special on my part to get them over the line.

The Churchill War Rooms, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, Lord’s cricket ground – all were knocked back. I was so desperate I threw in the Tate Modern gallery, of course to no avail. I knew I’d reached the edge of my sanity when I suggested Madame Tussauds, even though I could think of nothing worse than looking at famous candles-in-waiting. Again, a resounding ‘no’.

I was proud of the level of patience I’d shown throughout the trip. I’d never been a patient person – people generally annoyed the hell out of me. But this time was different. I had a purpose. I was doing the trip for Dad. I wanted to say thanks for everything he had done for me throughout my life, and part of that was keeping my cool when I normally wouldn’t.

Life wasn’t built for people to get along every second of every day. Overseas trips are worse, small annoyances heightened by the stress and expectation of travel, plus the close quarters, tension building like the single drops of water on the forehead of a torture victim.

DRIP. Reminding Dad to get his Oyster travel card out every time we entered or exited a train station.

DRIP. When we were at the pub watching the soccer, and I asked, ‘Are you hungry?’ and he replied, ‘Yes and no.’

DRIP. Taking his Oyster pass from him and holding onto it for him, only handing it to him when he needed to use it, like you would for a child.

DRIP. Drowning his fish and chips in tartare sauce because, ‘I paid for it. Not giving it back.’

DRIP. ‘I probably should’ve worn these shoes in.’

I had never been in a proper argument with Dad. There was the occasional shouting match when I was younger, but that’s how we dealt with things in my childhood. There were no rational conversations to work things through. It went from nothing to shouting to over, like a summer storm. Though we both knew that living under his roof meant I could only push disagreements so far, anyway.

The most heated discussion we ever had was after I’d moved back home when comedy hadn’t bred instant success. I wasn’t really paying my way around the house. Dad had had enough, I dug my heels in, and luckily Mum was there to calm things down, sending us our separate ways before things got out of hand.

But Mum wasn’t here now. Every person has their limits, and after two and a half weeks of struggle, Dad relentlessly shutting down my suggestions had taken its toll. The dam wall burst.

‘Jesus, Dad, can you help me out here? I’m suggesting all this stuff and all you do is knock it back. You’re really starting to piss me off!’

Turned out Dad had his own dam, which had also been at bursting point.

‘I don’t want to do any of that! Maybe I’ll just go home tomorrow.’

I was ready to fire back, about to ask him exactly how he was going to organise that without me, when he cut me off. ‘I didn’t even want to do this stupid trip anyway.’

Dad = straw. Me = camel. My back = broken.

I lost it. I spoke to him in a way I never thought I would, or could. To anyone, let alone my dad. It was anger, it was hatred, it was pain. If there was such a thing as an eight-barrel shotgun (a double, double, double, double), I gave it to him with all eight barrels.

‘Are you fucking serious? YOU didn’t want to do this trip? The only reason I’m here is for you. I’d rather be overseas with my friends, not wasting my fucking time with you. This is bullshit! Fuck you! I am out of here!’

And before I did something stupid, like throw a punch or burst into tears, I stormed out.

Except Dad had locked the door. And I couldn’t work out how to open it. I stood in front of it twisting knobs, yanking handles, kicking at it, muttering to myself, ‘How does this fucking stupid fuck —’

All the while Dad stood behind me, giving me instructions, ‘Turn it that way. No, that way.’

Eventually I managed to open the door and leave the apartment, having completed the single worst storm-out humanity had ever known.

I stood in the street, adrenaline pumping through my veins, shaking as though I’d had too much cough medicine. I didn’t know what to do. This was as furious as I’d ever been with Dad.

My first thought was to walk back into the apartment, throwing in a few extra reasons why I was there in the first place and where I’d rather be. But I knew that wasn’t going to help. I’d said my piece, and though a thousand thoughts bounced around my head, none of them particularly nice, there was no point in piling more on.

I didn’t contemplate going straight back in to apologise either, as that would have been viewed as a sign of weakness. I couldn’t have risked that.

I walked through Camden absentmindedly, swearing and muttering to myself like the sufferer of either an unchecked mental illness or the debilitating effects of travelling with a parent. Because it was London, I found myself outside a pub within a hundred metres, as good a place as any to gather my thoughts. And seriously dull the pain.

Backing down from a fight had always been one of the hardest things for me to do. Firstly, I always think I’m right – I rarely shout in agreement. Mostly, though, I didn’t do it because backing down is not something that happened in my family, since we didn’t really fight in the first place. There had been shouting, but that would just be at us kids for not doing stuff: setting the table, taking the dog for a walk, homework. Nothing serious.

I’d only ever heard Mum swear at Dad once, calling him a ‘shithead’. I was stopped in my tracks, thinking, ‘Whoa, that is serious! He must’ve really done something wrong here.’ Mum swearing was cool, but I never found out the source of the trouble, as I knew to keep moving lest I cop some fire from her as well.

We didn’t talk about things. We’d always been an ‘actions, not words’ type of family. Saying ‘I love you’ was like putting sauce in the fridge – it simply wasn’t the done thing. It felt weird to even consider it. Maybe someone tried saying ‘I love you’ once, but like the sauce, it would have been shut down pretty quickly.

If there was ever any conflict, whatever happened at the flash-point was the final outcome and the disagreement was never spoken of again. That didn’t mean it was the end of things and I’d move on; to the contrary, I continued to dwell on whatever it was. But those feelings were pushed deep inside, and no one ever had to suffer the indignity of admitting they’d been wrong. It was just the way our family rolled.

As I ordered my third pint, I knew that had to change. If I went back in and pretended nothing had happened then we wouldn’t have solved anything. All it would do was plant the seed for a lifelong grudge between Dad and me. A grudge that would grow to the size of an oak tree by the time we got back to Australia.

Pretending nothing was wrong would also ensure that every time I thought about the fight in the future I’d become more and more bitter, knowing I’d held my tongue against my better judgement. It was now or never.

I felt sick as I approached the apartment, every possible scenario running through my head. Not one of them involved Dad saying sorry. Even in my fictions he was unrelenting. In my head he’d just sat down to watch TV the moment I’d walked out.

I knew what I said to him would have to be a balancing act. I had to be articulate, stay calm and not get sucked into raising my voice.

When I opened the surprisingly unlocked door, I found Dad sitting the couch. The TV wasn’t on. Perhaps he’d been thinking about it too. Or maybe he was still marvelling at the lock. It was hard to tell.

I apologised first. I explained my frustration at getting every one of my suggestions shot down without any consideration of the effort I’d put into them. I said I had tried really hard to make our trip enjoyable for him, and that it would be appreciated if he tried to help me. I wasn’t asking for him to suddenly lead a tour through the Imperial War Museum, but to at least try some of my ideas. Or consider them for at least ten seconds before knocking them back. I also reminded him that he’d agreed to the trip and wasn’t there under duress.

The flood gates open, I kept going, telling him that finding out he didn’t want to do the trip really hurt. I said I’d given up my time for this – for him – and I just wished he’d show some appreciation. I hadn’t wanted to say, ‘Hey, I hope you appreciate me doing this favour for you,’ because it was his example that had set me on a path in life where I considered actions to be stronger than words. But it seemed he wasn’t picking up on my actions, so I had to resort to words.

Dad apologised too. ‘Okay.’

Being fluent in Tommy Rozenbachs, I translated this as, ‘You’re right, I have been hard work on this trip. I’ll try harder to appreciate what a wonderful son you are. Thanks for being here, and this really does show me how much you love me and your gratitude for what I did for you growing up.’

That was the last conversation we ever had about that fight. Until then we’d been two bulls in a paddock, ready to butt heads, but we’d avoided further confrontation. I guess it might even be described as a nice moment.

Even though I felt like I was enabling him to be a quitter, I told him I’d look into getting us on an earlier flight home. He seemed pleased with that, even though we were giving up a marathon just as we’d spotted the finishing line. He wanted to go home, and I knew if we stayed any longer it would just end up causing me more frustration. Packing it in early was win–win.

I told him I’d get onto changing the flights as soon as possible, but nothing could be guaranteed. In the meantime, I suggested we should head back out, grab a beer and try to find something of interest to him for us to do the next day.

‘Come on,’ I said as we headed outside. ‘Let’s go yell at some cobblestones.’

As we walked to the pub, Dad brought up a topic from the day before, which let me know he had at least partially taken in what I’d said.

‘Why don’t we do that Frankenstein walking tour?’

For a split second I had no idea what he was talking about. Then I remembered to think like Tommy. ‘You mean Jack the Ripper?’

‘Same thing.’

I was proud of myself. I’d handled this extremely delicate situation with diplomacy I didn’t realise I had, which in turn made me feel like I was ready for fatherhood. I’d neither lost nor killed Dad, two fairly high prerequisites for becoming a parent (I assume).

I had even grown as a person in those three weeks, having found an inner peace I never knew existed. Before we left, I was the most impatient person you could ever meet. Supermarkets, cafes, roads; they’d all felt the wrath of my impatience. If someone missed the green arrow at a set of traffic lights, I’d be banging on their window, screaming, ‘You dickhead, you missed the arrow, what is wrong with you?!?!’ And that was just as a pedestrian.

As we made our way through Europe, avoiding a Dad-induced aneurysm every five minutes led me to a level of zen I hadn’t known was possible. Just like Dad teaching me to drive with incessant noise had made me a far better driver, three weeks of his insanity made me a calmer, better, more responsible person.

He did it. THE SON OF A BITCH DID IT.

 

We woke to the fortunate news we’d been moved to an earlier flight and that we’d be leaving that night. We didn’t make it the full twenty-one days I’d planned for us, but for the sake of our relationship, this was the better outcome.

Dad had a spring in his step, happy to take to the London streets one very last time. He’d be home soon.

We had lunch with Lorenzo at the 700-year-old Leadenhall Market in the financial district, a beautiful undercover market with an ornate roof. Dad added Spanish food to his list of things he’d never tried before, Lorenzo having taken us to a restaurant of his home country’s cuisine. Initially Dad didn’t think the serves of tapas were big enough, but in the end we managed to order enough of them to satisfy his hunger.

At the end of lunch I said goodbye to Lorenzo, and he laughingly wished us luck for the very short remainder of our journey. We both knew he wasn’t really joking.

With only a few hours to kill, our last London moments were spent walking around Covent Garden Market. It could have been anywhere, neither of us really paying attention to our surroundings, both just killing time until we were on that flight home. I could see Dad was tired, and I knew by this stage there was no point asking him how he was.

‘We should head back so we can pack and then head out to the airport. What do you reckon?’ I asked, pretending to give him an option.

‘No worries,’ he replied.

As we headed into Covent Garden Tube station, I’d forgotten it didn’t have escalators, so felt bad for making Dad trudge down one last set of steps. He was silent, and I figured this was the last thing he needed, but at least that would be it. He could relax at the airport and on the plane.

As we reached the platform I could see our train was already there. Reluctantly I said, ‘Sorry, Tommy, we’ve got to get on this train.’

We both bolted, Dad putting in one last effort to ensure we made it. We stood in the carriage, both getting our breath back, and after about fifteen seconds Dad leaned in and said, ‘Two hundred and five.’