Authors Electric

Dad always worked with his hands. He’d been trained as a carpenter and joiner, but after the war he joined Mum’s family building firm and learned to be a plasterer. I think these jobs must require total absorption – getting the consistency and thickness perfectly right, making changes in body movement to accommodate to distance-from-core,   constantly judging the state of the receiving wall...and all on what looks like automatic pilot; a deeply-embedded skill. All the time he was working, he sang. He sang completely unselfconsciously, almost as if he didn’t know he was doing it. He’d had his voice trained as a child by a formidable aunt (she was an LRAM, spoken in a hushed whisper) until she threw him out for misbehaving. He had a fine tenor voice and had picked up snatches of Italian opera. They were my first foreign words, but not much use in general conversation: None shall sleep! Your tiny hand is frozen! On with the motley, the powder and the paint! Love me, Alfr...

My Dad and his sister, my favourite aunty Peg Last month Terry Pratchett departed for the black sandy desert ... He was greatly loved by his readers, as were the characters peopling the world he dreamed up to house them all. Want a copy? Hard to find these days, and it'll cost you ... Try HERE And his family will of course miss him greatly too ... which made me start thinking about my own Dad. When I was a kid he told me amazing bedtime stories which he'd made up. And of course, like all Dads, he knew about Everything. When I asked him why people on the underside of the Earth didn't fall off, his eyes lit up with excitement at finally being able to explain stuff like gravity to me. He started off by firstly explaining centrifugal force, demonstrating it by whirling a bucket full of water round his head. My Mum wasn't impressed because the place he chose to do this was the kitchen, but it enthralled me. Exciting though it was, unfortunately I still didn...