Father & Son

One late September morning I travelled with my Dad back to Portsmouth from France in his Morris Minor and recorded the journey.


As a child I thought the car was alive.

I'd recount its registration number over and over incase I became lost.  I thought if i'd say its name it would come to rescue me, TKB 917G, TKB 917G, TKB 917G, TKB... and then, in the distance its distinctive exhaust noise would be heard.  

I think of the car and my Dad as the same, one in fact.  The Morris is fallible, something I only discovered in my father after a long abstinence and that this realization was okay, perfect in its imperfection.

My Dad would check the oil before setting out, but I think he's generally just a bit nosey.

I remember my Dads hands always.  Huge like spades and rugged with evidence of labour, they always scared me as a child but now I see them as an just daft.

Time.  There's something about the speed of the car never going above 55mph.   The trucks would bully the car as they passed, but it didn't matter, were on a different journey.

My Dads boiled eggs are synonymous like the sound of the cars exhaust.

Always talking to people I wait aside until the car in front has stopped talking to him about the good old days of Ford plants, and how there is little graffiti in France.

It's hard to get him to pose or repeat a moment, he feels silly.

I took a picture of his shoes once and captioned them, "dads shoes" as they look like shoes that a dad would wear.  Since then he's bought new ones and says he's cool now.  He eats his packed lunch whilst looking into the sea and chunnering about what's on his to-do list.

The Morris struggles up the pier onto the ferry.  I think it must have seen this a 100 times in the 39 years I've known it.

We dance around trying to find the way to the deck.

When we get to the deck we drink French beer and eat crisps.  As he walked to the seats a girl thanked him as though he'd bought them for her, he's such a flirt.

The big man can eat, and has no fear in asking for what he wants.

I come out of the cabins toilet and catch him gazing out of the window.

Like serving mashed potato, he whacks his socks to unravel them from their form after being rolled off his foot.

I'm the only one in the family through the generations that doesn't have bad eyesight, he takes the watch off holds it at focal distance and goes through his to-do list.

Then sleep.  He catches me taking the photograph opening just one eye like a pirates parrot, always aware.  I ask him to close his eye and he smiles. click.

The ferry is slow, slower than the Morris in-fact, and after a game of cards we watch the shore come in and the boats go out.  The air is fresh and tainted with diesel and we breath, it, in, deeply, withit'sinevitability.

Terror.  The Morris doesn't like the night.  The indicator light flashes green illuminating its passengers like two animals caught in the headlights of its own doing.  The trucks push us around, it's late, I talk shit, and dad panics at the directions of my iPhone.  The old and the new.

I'm the ghost, the photographer, I realize I want to put down the camera and just remember, as the journey is coming to an end and I'm sad.  I love being with my Dad, I'll miss his irritations, his smell, his sense of direction by just asking people and driving there rather than asking the phone.

Saying goodbye is always hard but he and the car are a part of me, and as much as I document him, I document myself, it's more of a hello to love than a goodbye.



The End.

http://www.mmoc.org.uk/