That’s For You to Find Out

My Dad liked to pretend he was one of the Great Philosophers. I didn’t mind so much, because after all every man needs a hobby, but he refused to tell me which one he was pretending to be.

’Come on, Dad,’ I said. ’Spill the beans. Who are you?’

He was sat in front of the fire, dressed in these black Victorian clothes he’d had specially made, with his hands crossed over each other on the brass top of his cane, and with his chin resting upon them.

’Are you Schopenhauer? Maybe Nietzsche? Hume or Kant perhaps?

’That’s for you to find out,’ he said, without taking his eyes off the fire.

As far as I can remember, he spent a lot of time sitting in front of that fire. That was how he was being philosophical. Gazing into the flickering flames. When I walked into the front room of our pre-fab in Skegness, he wouldn’t turn to see me or acknowledge me or anything like that. Just be engrossed in his gazing.

Every so often he would open his mouth and just say the phrase, ’Profound Thoughts’, in a slow deep voice, all self-regarding and pompous. He’d let his voice trail off for dramatic effect, and then continue with his quiet reverie.

At the back of the room there was a blackboard on an easel. He got that from a primary school that was closed down due to an asbestos scare.

’Every Great Philosopher has a blackboard for his profound thoughts,’ he said. ’I must have one. If I have one, it shall prove I am a Philosopher. A Great one. With Profound Thoughts.’

I had to go with him to collect it. It was embarrassing, walking along the street with him dressed in his Victorian clobber. Barry Edwards from the estate laughed and started throwing stones. That would have been bad enough but I know for a fact that his Dad likes to pretend he’s Winston Churchill. I’ve seen Barry go out buying packs of cigars for him and a bowler hat but you won’t get him admitting that.

When we got the blackboard home my Dad was as pleased as punch. He got the chalk and wrote on it, ’Complex Sentences’, and stared at it for over an hour. Just sitting there, with a otherworldly smile on his face, staring into what he’d just written.

Every day he’d change that phrase on the blackboard. One day it would say, ’Long Words,’ the next day, ’Convoluted Discourse,’ and the next day, ’Sentences With Deep Meanings,’ And so on.

As for what was going on in that head of his, none of us had a clue.

To brighten the mood, he started a competition between me and my mother to find out who he was. This could have worked out okay but it failed on two counts.

First of all, the prize was all-expenses paid trip to the British Library to see their Philosophy section, which I’m afraid failed to excite.

Secondly my mother wasn’t all that interested because she was too busy pretending to be Margaret Thatcher. I would overhear her in the kitchen picking up the phone and pretending to talk to Ronald Reagan about how ’that naughty Arthur Scargill is giving me a bad time.’

However Dad did extend his philosophy kick outside the home. He struck up a correspondence with a maintenance fitter across the road who pretended to be someone called Professor Profundity. Whether this was a real person or someone fictitious I don’t know but he liked to dress up in a black academic gown and a mortar board and walk around his front garden every morning with his arms crossed behind his back.

The correspondence was a daily affair. Dad would settle down by the ink stand after breakfast, take a feathered quill pen and write a message on a piece of A4 paper that was headed with the words, ’High Brow College, Oxford’ in fancy type. Then he’d put it in an envelope, drip hot red wax over it, use a fifty pence piece and a hammer as a seal, and post it.

Posting it meant getting on his academic bike, cycling across the road, getting off his academic bike, putting the letter through the letterbox, and then coming back on his academic bike again.

Then he’d sit by the fire all day, waiting for Professor Profundity’s reply. I got the impression Dad would write some kind of academic question or complex problem in these letters, and it would be up to Professor Profundity’s exceptional powers of reasoning to come up with a satisfactory answer.

I also got the impression that the longer it took for Professor Profundity to reply, the better, because with every hour that passed with no reply my Dad would look up at the clock and smile smugly to himself.

I asked Dad what was in these letters, but he refused to reveal anything.

’No-one outside of High Brow College must know of this in-depth detailed discourse of discursive matters,’ he said, folding his arms. ’It is too complex for a feeble mind like yours to understand, and if anything it is better you do not know because if you did know, there is the danger your puny microscopic mind might explode with the gigantic enormity of it all. And that would mean a lot of ghastly stuff on the carpet. Besides, your mother’s too busy talking about ’No U-turns’ to be able to clean it up.’

Well that got me mad. My Dad was making out I was stupid.

That night I crept behind the front door as it was going dark. Dad was busy in the living-room staring at the pocket watch out of his waistcoat with a vacant smile.

After half an hour the letterbox opened and a white envelope was gently squeezed through. It was as though Professor Profundity valued the contents of his letter so much that he dared not push it through hastily in case it damaged the lucidity of his academic reply.

I waited while the footsteps faded away and took the envelope slowly out, making sure the flap didn’t close with a loud snap, and crept into my bedroom.

I closed the door behind me and hid behind the bed. Luckily there was no wax seal so I used the kettle I had borrowed from the kitchen to open it up with steam. This is what I read:

’Dear Mr Philosopher of High Brow College,

It is with great thanks that I thank you for thanking me for thanking you for the letter you sent thanking me for the letter I sent thanking you. You raise several philosophical questions of a complex nature that I have been delighted to focus the attentions of my considerable intellect upon for the last nine hours. I take great delight in replying to you with the answers I have reached.

Firstly, you asked me, ’Who can laugh the longest? Blondes or Brunettes?’ My answer is Brunettes.

Secondly, you asked me, ’What is the prettiest colour in a box of paints?’ My answer is yellow.

I thank you again for thanking me for thanking you.

Yours faithfully,

Professor Profundity, Esq.

P.S. Your windowsills need painting.’

I smiled sadly to myself, re-sealed the envelope, and put it on the hall mat.

At night-time, Dad liked to look at the sky – on his back, on top of the shed, looking up. For hours. In silence.

It was about this time that I passed my GCSE’s, but it meant nothing to my Dad. It was only his own achievements he was interested in; he would think it A Great Thing if he managed to bring the newspaper in from the front door when the paper boy had delivered it, but if you sailed around the world single handed on a piece of cardboard, he would just yawn.

One night, I saw him climb down off the shed roof. It was after midnight, and he had just been watching his favourite satellite move in from the north-west, passing slowly and sadly.

He looked at me in silence, like I shouldn’t have been there, like I shouldn’t have been born.

’There are no rules,’ he said.

I didn’t know at the time what he meant, but later I came to understand the importance of that statement. With the years I’ve learnt that Life has a habit of turning around, of spinning like a dancer on its heel on a statement, or an event, and that change brings the statement into full focus.

[end of extract]

Copyright © Paul Badger 2008

~ by Paul Badger on 25 April, 2008.