The Boss

03-07-2011

For as far back as I can remember, which is pretty far back given how The Soup works, my Mam's dad, my grandfather, has always been called 'The Boss'. I never really knew why or how the name came about, only that everybody in the family refereed to him by the title. He was, simply, The Boss.

I inherited many things from him it would seem.

We have near identical hands, down to the lines on our knuckles and length of fingers. We both have uncanny memories for detail, recalling things with such clarity that people often wonder how we do it. I think he had a Soup of his own in that brain of his. I know I partly get my love of reading from him since he was the first person to ever put a book in my hands. True I was three, held the book upside down, and he carried the picture around with him wherever he went telling people I was a prodigy that was reading before I could walk.

Yea, I get my gift of lying and telling tall tales from him as well. But sure that's just proof that imaginations can be inherited also. He also carried a doctored (as in before photoshop or computers could be used to edit an image) picture of himself as a toddler with a massive schlong. So you can see that the dirty humour is probably attributed to him too.

When I was a lot younger, knee high to a grasshopper as the saying goes, I was part raised by himself and my Nan while both my parents worked. Back in the good old 80's where money was this wondrous thing that nobody had. As a result I was a lot closer to him than most people get with grandparents, a closeness that lasted throughout my life right up until half ten this morning.

Sadly The Boss is no longer with us. He passed away, by all accounts very peacefully, after being in hospital for a few weeks. Catching pneumonia at any age can be dangerous but catching it when you are eighty-seven isn't good at all. In the end the invisible bastard won out and my corner of the world dimmed a little.

Life goes on. Death is inevitable. Nobody can live forever. These are all things I know. While I know that at the moment its going to be tough and will continue to be tough for the next few days until after funeral, I know that I will get through it. Friends, family, the lady friend, all have been fantastic lending me support and a shoulder to cry on.

A shoulder to cry on at twenty eight. Do I care how that makes me look? You bet I don't. This was a great man to me and his passing brings with it a great sadness. I'm not saying he was the perfect embodiment of all things human, but he shaped and defined enough of me to be important to me.

So why post this up here? Because The Bauble is many things to me and right now it is a place where I can get these thoughts out of my head and keep them somewhere safe.

I'm doing my duties as a son and grandson and cousin and nephew, have no fear on that. But I wanted to just put these thoughts down before they disappeared in The Soup forever.

Even as I type this entry The Soup is doing what it does best, bringing up memories uncalled for as content to enter.

Such as the magic trick The Boss used to do every night with a square of purple plastic and a twenty pence piece. One second it was in the plastic, the next it disappeared before my eyes and was under a sugar pot or tea cup. Pure magic that to this day I still have no idea how he managed it.

Or when he would burst into a room with these glow in the dark fake eyes stuck in his head and his false teeth hanging out acting like a strange monster had taken over him.

When he took me fishing, which involves a lot of drinking in the pub that in my younger years I didn't know about, and then told Nan that "We caught one that was this big but had to let it go, it wasn't fair to the other fish."

The fact that at 81 I was still unable to beat him in an arm wrestle. The man was as strong as an ox!

When I randomly was on one of the buses he was bus conductor on at the tender age of five and was scared shitless because he was asking me where my ticket was. All because he had masterfully hidden his face from me so I had no idea who it was standing in front of me. Then giving me and the woman who was with me on the bus free tickets.

When he would sneak in a litre bottle of coke to the pub so that we could "top up" my drink under the table, because paying for over priced soft drinks was a crime he wouldn't commit.

When he called me a "heathen" after I explained to him I was a heretic.

When he would call me a heathen after he got back from mass, saying he had prayed for me over there because him and the "Big Man" are on good terms.

The little quotes from Shakespeare that he would fire out at me. Hell all the random information that he could call up at the drop of a hat.

The vegetable garden that was pretty much the entire back garden of his home.

His intense hatred for crows, forever pecking at his lettuce and cabbage.

His intense hatred of slugs who, he claimed, were getting smarter because they avoided his slug pellets and went straight for his crops.

His growing hatred for crows because they didn't attack the slugs instead of his vegetables. The conspiracy theories were endless.

Christmas time, both visiting him while Nan was alive, after she had passed, and when he came to my parents house.

His love of TK Red Lemonade and the ever present bottle in the fridge. So that there was always "minerals" around for the grandkids when they visited. It didn't matter if you were two or twenty, there was always red lemonade.

I could go on forever as The Soup keeps bringing up more and more memories, all of them fond. But I won't. This entry has achieved what I hoped it would, a permanent place on The Bauble for The Boss. My own little shrine for others to visit.

So to wrap it all up a little snap of the man himself:


The Man, The Myth, The Legend: The Boss

Blue_jester

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