Bye Dad

Just to let you all know that John Kane, my father, died suddenly on Saturday 9th March, 8.50pm, from an attack of pneumonia, aged 77. We buried him yesterday in Coatbridge, the town of his birth and life. He leaves Mary Kane, his wife, myself and my two brothers, Gregory and Garry-John. If you want to know a little of what our Dad was like, pages 27-30 of The Play Ethic book will give you a flavour (but only a flavour) of him, and his influence on me in particular. I have posted the funeral eulogy to my father below, in extended post, if you want to know more.

Gregory and I wrote a song for him about 16 years ago (here's the clip). It was occasioned by his retiral day, in 1987, from British Rail as a long-term administrative worker (and when he left, first-rung manager). Bye dad, we love you.

WHITE COLLAR

Hero of the lucid memo
Rest your fountain pen
Office grace is giving way to glassy eyed young men
Champion of compromise
The world has changed for you
No need for the gentle touch when a rabbit punch will do

So rest your head upon a White Collar, snapped around your neck
So rest your head upon a White Collar, snapped around your neck

There were times when class and class had known the same stairwell
These are times when hatchet men are shuttled up from hell
Leaving Day was thick with jokes and how they knew you well
Friends and enemies agreed you were more than personnel

So rest your head upon a White Collar, snapped around your neck
Rest your head upon a White Collar, snapped around your neck
Rest your head, rest your weary head

Seems like we've begun again on the same side of the street
I have found this happy man when the system let him be

So rest your head upon a White Collar, snapped around your neck
Rest your head upon a White Collar snapped around your neck
Rest your head, rest your weary head
Rest your head, rest your weary head

Eulogy For John Kane

By his son, Pat Kane, representing the family

I've been asked to say a few words about John Kane, my mother's husband, our father. Just to give you a sense of who he was.

My father was born on the 24th Oct, 1929, to a blacksmith father, Patrick Kane, and mother Bridget Mary Kane, both from Irish backgrounds. He had one little brother James, and two twin sisters, May and Kathleen.

My father worked for 33 years in British Rail, starting as a wages clerk and rising to the first-rung of management, before computerisation thankfully put him out of his misery. Dad didn't live for work - he worked so that he could enjoy his life: and in the last twenty years, I know he enjoyed every bit of his retirement, with friends and bowls and learning Italian and great holidays with my Mum.

But there's one story that shows the measure of him as a family man. In 1967, John Kane had to literally make the ultimate choice. Like any green-blooded Coatbridge male, he'd been saving up enough money to go to see Celtic play in the European Cup Final in Lisbon.

Unfortunately, the house of my mother's dreams, 51 King Street, came up on the market at exactly the same time. Did our father decide to go and see the greatest sporting event ever – or did he use his resources to give his family the best start in life? What a choice – and you know he made the right one. Surely, no greater love hath a man for his family than spurning the best night ever in Lisbon…

My dad was a talented man, even though – as he would freely admit himself – he never really found the best way to express those talents. His greatest gift to his sons, maybe borne out of a little frustration with his own career-path, was to set us the highest standards for whatever it was we decided to do.

The first high standards my dad set for us was in football. John Kane was a great footballer. If you turn over your mass pamphlets, you'll see him in the full flush of his twenties, playing for Whifflet Amateurs; He even trialled for Sunderland while doing National Service. I have my own treasured memories of him taking Gregory, Garry-John and I down to the West End park in Coatbridge, on a long summer's evening, getting us to practice one thing above all: "trap the ball… trap the ball…"

I know it was a source of mild heartbreak to him that while Patrick had all of the enthusiasm and none of the skills, Gregory had all of the skills and none of the enthusiasm. (Garry John, as in so many things, had the perfect balance between the two extremes).

Our father also set us high standards in terms of education, ideas and ethics. In his usual wishy-washy, sentimental way, he would tell us, "All I ever wanted were three goldfish… but now all I want are three lawyers". He spoke for his generation when he drummed into us that with an education, with intelligence, you could go anywhere, and do anything.

The first thing you see when you go into our sitting room is a long shelf of Encyclopedia Britannicas: our father started buying the Britannica yearbooks in 1958, and the 2006 edition has just come in. Our father's house was an argumentative place – everyone watching the news, no-one without an opinion on events. And as recently as two Sundays ago, all that was still going on.

I guess it might have come from his experience as a Catholic in the West of Scotland in the 40's and 50's, but our Dad had a keen sense of injustice, the rights of the underdog. He once sat us down and made sure we watched the seventies' series Roots, about the history of American slavery - every single episode. We knew all about apartheid, the civil rights movement.

Dad often called himself a cynic, but it would be more accurate to say that he had a critical, skeptical mind. We tried many, many times to convince him that they did actually land on the moon; that it wasn't a Hollywood stage set, with actors in space suits… Till the end, we never convinced him.

Unfortunately, our father never got his three lawyers. But he did get three musicians – and that was another place where Dad's high standards rubbed off on his sons. If you never heard my Dad sing, you really missed something. He had a voice like Frank Sinatra – a voice that made women weak at the knees, and men grind their teeth.

As a singer, I owe my Dad everything: my earliest memory is of him holding me at the window, and me hearing him sing 'Fly Me To The Moon', as I was screaming my wee head off. And right after the football on a Saturday night, we all used to religiously watch The Oscar Peterson Show, featuring the great jazz pianist and his band. I'm sure this must have planted musical seeds in Gregory and Garry-John's heads, as they've both become accomplished musical players themselves.

It would be wrong to say that it was always easy to live under our father's standards – it wasn't - although he did mellow over the last few years, no doubt partly under the influence of his granddaughters Grace and Eleanor. But what John Kane gave his sons, without reserve, were three amazing gifts – knowledge, integrity and artistry. And for that we will always be grateful. That was his way of loving us.

The last thing, and of course the biggest thing, to say about our father this morning, was that he was the husband of Mary Kane, our mother. When people in the community used to say, "aye, that's John-Kane-the-midwife's-husband", he'd complain loudly. "What am I, a non-entity? A mere appendage?" And as my mother left us with him, as she went out on one of her many mercy missions as a nurse, he'd also say, "Feminism? Feminism?! Your mother invented feminism!"

But their 45 years of marriage, never stronger than at the end of my dad's life, tell you something else. There's a great line at the end of the movie Jerry Maguire, where Tom Cruise walks into a room full of women, and says to his wife, "you complete me".

Well, my mother completed my father, and my father completed my mother. They admired each other and they fancied each other. They worked through their problems, didn't abandon each other at the first hurdle. They combined their different talents and strengths, to help each other go forward into the future. And they had the wisdom to know what to change in each other, and what to leave well alone.

Recently and separately, both my brothers said to me, in so many words, "you know, Pat, it's amazing - they're more in love with each other now, than they've ever been". If you wanted to know how well John and Mary fit together, you would just have to see them on a dance-floor, check-to-cheek, doing the continental. Quite a sight.

So goodbye Dad, from Mum, Garry-John, Gregory and Pat, your sister Kathleen, your granddaughters Grace and Eleanor, and all your many relatives and friends. We loved you, we'll miss you, but we'll never, ever forget you. Whereever you are, and with a wee whisky in your hand, rest in peace.