Dads can be a little like a foreign country at times. As you venture in and begin to explore, a few areas of the land seem mysterious and intriguing; some locations, strangely familiar, warm and exciting. Other regions, rather irritating, annoying or confusing. 

The Dad-Map is, of course, never really settled: borders and landmarks can shift and change. Well-trodden paths can suddenly, unexpectedly, develop surprising new forks and turns. However you choose to navigate this terrain, there will always be someone else doing it differently, coming at it from another direction. 

What follows is no definitive guide, simply a brief tour of some of my own more memorable destinations. For me, I mostly tend to picture Dad located either at his desk in a study, or out walking, through a muddy field.

Let’s begin with the study. 

When we lived in the first home that I remember – on Quarrington Road in Horfield, Bristol, my Dad wasn’t always easily accessible. He tended to work in a room downstairs which he used as a study. Like our Mum, he was a second-hand and antiquarian bookseller – specialising in the Occult – unlike Mum, he didn’t have a shop. Dad sold at bookfairs, or through catalogues and therefore usually worked from home, or a store room he rented at a place called The Shrubbery. In the rest of the house us children were free to come and go as we pleased. Not here. Playing, squabbling, fighting, spilling stuff and dropping crumbs were not welcome. I don’t remember even Mum venturing inside that often. 

And no wonder: it was mostly filled with packed shelves of books – many rare or antiquarian – Tibetan prayer-wheels and various metal trinkets. Amongst other intriguing items were Tarot Cards and a starter pistol, from his middle-distance running days – which he believed was safely hidden in a desk draw. As well as the desk, there was another chair – usually festooned with papers, books and sleeping cats. Thick curtains made by Mum, covered with orange Chinese dragons, were usually closed. 

Together all these curious piles lent the room, and by extension the man within, an air of the forbidden and strange. Given that a lot of what he worked on inside involved cataloguing, or writing books about Hermetic Orders, Mystical Seers, Esoteric Societies, Kabbalists, Occult Mages et al, this was apt – not that I knew about, cared, let alone understood any of these activities at the time. Here though he would sit, day after day, one finger typing, rattling away at the latest page.  

On the occasions we were invited into Dad’s inner sanctum, it was usually for bedtime stories, read to me and my younger brother William. These included The Hobbit, Bevis by Richard Jeffries and George MacDonald’s The Princess and Curdie. 

More contemporary children’s titles, like Stig of the Dump, The Battle of Bubble and Squeak, The Dark is Rising, Flat Stanley, The King of the Copper Mountains, The Iron Man, The Shrinking of Treehorn, we’d have to find out about through school, or Mum. 

As for comics, like The Beano, Asterix, or later 2000 AD, these were not on Dad’s radar. 

Once in a while he’d also read us poems, he thought would appeal – usually atmospheric or spooky ones like The Listeners, by Walter De La Mare, or Kipling’s Road through the Woods. Apparently, I would tend to sit listening attentively, while Will rolled around pulling out books from shelves, chewing spines, or poking into corners better left alone. Our older half-brother Nick lived elsewhere, but often visited, and I suspect shared similar feelings about the place. 

Parts of Dad-land would stray into other areas of the house: Tolkien calendars, paperbacks and stamp magazines, or Jean-Michel Jarre cassettes. Some of this stuff I’d dismiss as dull, other things – like the monthly pictures of Gandalf, Hobbits and fantastic Middle Earth landscapes – drew me in and made me want to learn more. 

When I was 11 we moved into a bigger house in Bishopston, where Dad’s study was transferred, as far as I could see, more or less intact. Here our younger sisters – Laura and Melissa, growing out of being toddlers and babies, could join us more effectively in disturbing the peace. 

Occasionally we’d get so loud that Dad would emerge from behind his door to shout at us to stop. However, most of the time he somehow ignored the outside world. Being deaf in one ear probably helped in this regard. Although Dad’s early ’80s hearing-aids gave us another route to winding him up – because if you stood close by, you could hold a hand up near his ear and cause an irritating high-pitch feedback noise, which we found hysterical. Dad, less so. 

He’d also leave the room to come to the telephone in the hall, which in our age of smartphones now seems ridiculously quaint. One of us would have to answer and then fish Dad out to speak to some enthusiast, bookseller or other, wanting ‘Bob’. Very occasionally the caller would be someone exciting, such as Jimmy Page – who as well as being a Rock Star, collected occult material and books about Aleister Crowley. 

On other occasions when he wasn’t in his study, Dad would take us out, along with Mum, dragging us reluctantly away from the TV to look at Churches, Ruins, Castles, Museums, go on long walks, or worst of all, visit second-hand bookshops. As booksellers, readers and collectors our parents had no trouble spending what seemed like forever in some dusty corner of yet another boring bookshop in a small town somewhere in England. At the time we hated it; desperate for a toyshop, playground or the possibility of ice cream. 

At some point, in my pre-teens, Dad also introduced me to M R James Ghost stories, Sherlock Holmes, Terry Pratchett and Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. All of which I have continued to enjoy ever since. 

Perhaps inevitably, as a teenager and into my early twenties, I went through a period of not connecting with Dad. His interests and mine diverged. 

As far as he was concerned, I spent too much time plastering hair-gel on, poking at spots, or aimlessly wandering about in town with my friends, and not enough on more constructive activities such as homework.  

He didn’t care for the Cure, Sinead O’ Connor, or pop music in general – Buddy Holly and the odd random cheesy power ballad aside. He didn’t find The Young Ones or Black Adder funny. He called Billy Bragg, Billy Bag to annoy me. Dad had absolutely no feelings for football, especially, particularly, Bristol City (Wise man). Even though he took us to see the films, he wasn’t fussed about Star Wars. He did quite like Indiana Jones, though for Dad Harrison Ford had nothing on Clint Eastwood. If he spoke to me, it was to shout ‘Matthew’ until I appeared and then order me to go shopping, walk the dogs or some other tedious chore. 

He also wore boring pastel trousers, shirts with different coloured collars, made obscure pedantic points about all manner of things, hid the best chocolate biscuits and snacks in a special tin, which he’d move around and listened to the Archers with the volume up too high. And he could be infuriatingly inconsistent about certain things – for example, if I or any of my siblings put salt on a slug in the garden to make it writhe and die like a Vampire, he’d be furious and tell us off for being cruel. But, if say, red ants went anywhere near his veg, he’d be out with a freshly boiled kettle, scalding them to death. 

Worst of all would be bookfairs, or other places I’d been forced to accompany him to, so that I could help. There, weird, loud Americans, grey-skinned, shabbily dressed, unshaven, tall British men of a certain age and posh elderly ladies, would track him down and talk with him like he was some kind of famous personality. And he’d lap it up. How could these transatlantic mystic nerds and used bookseller bores find him interesting or engaging? The whole thing was just embarrassing.  

To the academics and researchers who consulted him, Dad was some kind of mystic sage. For those of us behind the scenes, we also knew him as the man in the dragon dressing gown, burning toast and farting. We’d seen the haunted face of the person charged with extracting weebles from his youngest daughter’s pooey potty.

I do though like the idea of the two worlds having collided, during one of his many phone calls. “Hello Bob, It’s Brad Cawelti, I have a question for you regarding your research into the ceremonial practice behind Raymond Faucet-Stillman’s ritual for the III Temple of Thoth…”

“I must apologise, my time is limited today. I’m rather busy attending to a shitty weeble. My hands are full and somewhat nightsoiled…”

Eventually, I grew up, a little, and began to accept that I could relate to Dad through the interests we shared. Those that we didn’t, we could leave aside. I also realised that, as well as his expertise in his various specialist subjects, Dad could be very witty and funny. Sometimes quite crude, but always well judged. One of my younger brother’s friends reminded us of part of Dad’s speech at Will’s wedding: 

“I passed a bookshop and noticed a cat lazing about in the window without a care in the world and I thought, ah yes, William, that’s why we’re here.”

I was lucky in the times I spent with Dad in my adult years. Despite differences, we still had many things we could talk about – sharing news about Ghost books, TV programmes, poetry or ranting about the state of politics. As my brother Nick puts it in his own moving tribute: “He was a life-long Liberal, but flying in the face of received wisdom, moved to the Left as he got older (though he claimed, characteristically, that it was everyone else who had moved to the Right)”.

I can appreciate now, better than in my youth, that many of my long-held enthusiasms were first spurred and encouraged by Dad. Ghosts, Trees, Birds, Tolkien, Old Churches, Second-hand bookshops, Ancient Ruins, Big Cats, Big foots, Yetis…

Together with my older brother Nick we went on several long walks in the UK and elsewhere, indulging in our shared love for wandering out of urban areas and into fields, woods and hills beyond. These included: Hadrian’s Wall, The Ridgeway, a lengthy chunk of the Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain and a stretch of The Appalachian Trail through New York state and Massachusetts. Whilst out on a path somewhere, we’d talk, bicker about and discuss all of the above topics and more. 

Dad, naturally continued to be stubbornly Dad, wherever we happened to be. At one point on the Appalachian Trail, walking during a cold and wet April, the three of us came across a deep puddle right across the official course of the path. Nick and I immediately started to look for ways around it. But Dad was reluctant to divert from the true path. He pulled out our Official Trail Map, pointing out where we were – somewhere in the region of East Mountain and Mount Everett in the Berkshires I think – and traced a finger over the line of the trail. We agreed that this was the place, but that there was to be no walking through the puddle – we’d have to loop around it. Somewhat grudgingly, Dad put the map back in his rucksack and remarked that: ‘Americans wouldn’t allow puddles to prevent walking on the correct line of the National Trail.’ We nodded and began looking for an alternative route. Grumbling only slightly, he followed us into the trees.

Just over seven years ago, Dad was diagnosed with a disease known as Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis – a hardening of the lungs. Doctors weren’t able to establish why he developed the condition. He never smoked. 

Dad, as was his way, doggedly carried on doing all the things he enjoyed for as long as he could. Writing, reading, watching Detective Shows and Natural History Programmes, lending expertise, help and advice to a wide range of people, causes and organisations. Scoffing cake, Turkish Delight, curries. 
He began to respond to hugs with less awkward stiffness and replied ‘I love you’ when it was said to him by close-family, rather than ‘Yes’ or ‘And you.’

He surprised and delighted his consultant and his family and friends, by surviving past his expected 3-5 years, by around another two and a half. Gradually and then suddenly, in the last few months, his lung capacity and with it his general health deteriorated. Dad could no longer go on long walks. Then even short dog walks were out. In recent weeks talking on the phone took too much energy. Eating became more necessity than pleasure. In latter months he became reliant on oxygen cannisters and then a special machine to breathe. After a time he needed a wheelchair, a further special chair and a hospital style bed at home. Much of the burden of care fell on my Mum and my sister Laura, who with some help from carers in the very last months, attended to most of his needs. 

In the early hours of Sunday 7^th June, after a day of talking with my Mum and his two daughters, sharing memories and stories, Dad died in his sleep. Following a bad turn the previous day, medics had wanted to take him into hospital, but Dad wouldn’t go. I suspect he knew what was coming and insisted on staying at home. 

The vicar had been to see him the day before – Dad was a committed Christian and church goer – they came to him, once he couldn’t get to St Quircus & Julietta himself. 

I think, I hope, at the end he was ready. 

Dad was by no means young – he made it to 83 – but his disease meant his last years were shadowed by a progressively ominous degeneration.

As my own eldest son, Sam, (who’s currently reading his grandfather’s book about Mysticism) said: ‘He lived a very accomplished life’. A father of five, grandfather to eleven, Dad loved children. He and Mum were married for just shy of 56 years. He published several books, gained a doctorate and was widely travelled. He enjoyed a full and productive time here. 

I’m not religious myself, but if Dad is right in his faith, I’d like to imagine he is somewhere else now, as you read, gossiping and joking merrily with his former bookseller colleagues, or more likely, with his head stuck in a book and a cat on his lap, trying hard to finish just one more chapter before falling asleep. 

The other day, I heard and then saw a green woodpecker. As with most birds and insect encounters, I thought, I must tell Dad. Then I remembered that I can’t. I reckon that habit will stick. And somehow, he’ll just know.

Cheers, Dad x

Further Reading

Tartarus Press Obituary