‘We needed eight off the last ball and I were battin’ wi’ skipper.

He looked at me and said  ‘Looks like we’ve had it now, Levi’. I just winked and told him to leave it with me.

Bowler ran in and I hit it miles in the air. Six we ran, and as it came down, the fielder broke 2 fingers trying to catch it. We ran two while they were tending to him, game won, easy as that’. 

Forgive the apocryphal nature of the tale, but this was one I grew up with, told on a regular basis by my Dad, Levi. 

He passed away yesterday aged 95. Old age wasn’t kind to him, he saw off several bouts of pneumonia, handled increasing deafness badly and departed eyesight even worse, before cancer finally proved too hard a battle, even for one as tough as him. He was the last of a large and well-known Church Gresley family.

But the brain was active to the end, a political animal par excellence, an intelligent, feisty battler who suffered fools unwillingly but loved his family more than life itself. Especially Mum. The woman he took to watch Gresley Rovers for twelve months when they started dating, until she told him she didn’t really like football. It grew on her though and later they would watch it together, especially if it was Derby or England playing.

He was a collier for most of his working life, often taking the worst, most dangerous work, which paid more. His lungs in later life testified to that and he often came home with skin torn and body battered. A bad day for him was carrying a mate out badly injured, or dead. It gave me a sense of perspective when I began working, as my bad days simply bore no comparison. 

He loved big bands and dancing, he and Mum regulars at the local dance halls until the last twenty years. They were good dancers too, admired as such by their friends, loving the music and everything about the recreation that they gave up while my late sister and I were growing up. Holidays in Blackpool saw evenings in the Tower Ballroom and I can still close my eyes and see them gliding in their finery across the sprung floor.

He was always awful with names. ‘I saw your friend on telly last night’ he would say. I would rhyme off twenty likely names before he would offer any help. Usually something cryptic like ‘he was in that film with her that had the funny nose and that bloke with the wonky eye..’ No friend of mine, of course, merely someone I had once mentioned to him. It was often so, it was part of who he was, is, always will be.

From Mum, thankfully still with us, I learned tolerance, patience and the merits of good manners. From Dad, a dislike of unfairness, an intolerance of idiots and a love of music, politics and sport. Most types of music, all kinds of sport ‘but never bettin’, lad. Mugs game’, he told me often.

He took me to see Derby County for the first time in September 1966, after the World Cup win of that year. I chose playing Batman over seeing the trophy presentation, but it mattered not. For years we went to the Baseball Ground, saw the glory days, then stopped, when I went away to university then moved up to Scotland. I would later take him to the odd game, but the ‘enjoyment’ of cold stands and the climb into them had gone, for him at least. 

But every Saturday evening, the end of the game prompted the phone ringing and a dissection of it, as heard on BBC Radio Derby. Sometimes, it seemed, he enjoyed it even more when he could moan about them losing, and many managers were deemed ‘soft as greasepot’, his favoured term. But he loved a good win and would have enjoyed seeing how Derby fare under Paul Warne, of who he was a big fan.

He started me playing cricket in the back garden, which became the beach, or a field. He would lob me a few to hit, then try to get me out. He usually did. Then, in true competitive Dad style, he would encourage me to bowl different styles to get him out. I became the backyard Sobers, getting the ball to lift spitefully off the raised corner of a flagstone, even if I never did get him lbw… 

He was a good cricketer, a lively right arm bowler and big hitting left-hand bat. For a few years he starred in the inter-face colliery matches, where you retired at 25 runs and bowled two overs each. It was rare that he didn’t walk back with his 25 inside a couple of overs, or that he didn’t take two or three wickets. He stopped playing club cricket because he loved his family too much and turned down promotions at work that would have necessitated travel and time away from us kids and my Mum. Seventy years they were married, in any context impressive. To the end they were soul mates and doubtless will be again. 

He took great pride in my achievements and latterly introduced me to people as ‘my lad, he’s written books you know. Have you heard of blogging? He does one…’ I still don’t think some ever got my name. He wore a baseball cap everywhere that our children got for him, on holiday in Spain. It said ‘Peakfan’s Dad’.

He was equally proud of my time working at the Scottish Parliament, remaining impartial, no trace of my mining town background showing. But so too of his grandchildren, upon who he doted and of my wife. ‘You married a damn good ‘un’ he told me often. Always a good judge, he was.

When I played cricket he expected a call to recount the game, revelled in the good ones, merely asked after defeats ‘but did you enjoy it, lad?’ He retained his sight just long enough to read my two books with magnifying sheets and always wanted me to read him blog posts. ‘Bloody grand, son’ was his regular response.  He also loved listening to my radio interviews and recorded a few of them on his trusty radio cassette player.

He knew what he liked and liked what he knew.  Traditional English food, nothing too fancy, though five years ago he called me to say he had tried ‘one of them new-fangled things and it were lovely’. It was pizza. Later he ventured into lasagne territory and proclaimed it ‘all right’, no faint praise for a man who would see adverts on TV and claim ‘I wouldn’t give that belly room’.

We went to so many cricket matches together, many of them in his first car, a trusty Ford Anglia, but he didn’t enjoy T20. We only went to one, and he wanted to leave before the end of the first innings. ‘If they have to play music, why not Glenn Miller?’ said the man who maintained music died in the late 1950s. Even though he later admitted he would have walked out to bat to Whiter Shade of Pale by Procol Harum, a hit from 1967.

Now he has gone, and a light has gone from all of our lives. But not from our hearts, nor our minds. As a family we have so many memories of a man who would never back down and commanded respect in so many ways. 

I still recall arriving at a colliery match one evening with him. The first thing he said to the gathered players was ‘Gentlemen, I’ve got my lad with me tonight. I want no swearing’. There wasn’t, as they risked ‘the look’ had they done otherwise. 

Then there was the time when my wife partnered him at Pictionary against my Mum and I. Drawing ‘Bognor Regis’ was a challenge too far for my wife, much to Dad’s indignance. 

Ignoring her protestations that she had no idea who he was, he suggested she ‘could have drawn a toilet, then crossed it out and then a drawing of the West Bromwich Albion footballer Cyrille Regis, then a football’. All in sixty seconds..

We laughed last night about the Lonnie Donegan story. Dad ignoring our protestations that he was called ‘The King of Skiffle’ and insisting ‘he were a rock ‘n’ roller’. It went on for some time, before he told us he would settle it, as he had a book with a chapter on him. After ten minutes of hunting he found it and turned to the relevant chapter.

A chapter headed, to our great mirth, ‘Lonnie Donegan – King of Skiffle’

I only saw him tongue-tied once, when he and I met Les Jackson at Derby. He was Dad’s hero and he just stood grinning before accepting the proffered hand and saying ‘Les Jackson’, in the style of Family Guy’s Peter Griffin. For twenty minutes he was in his element, as two old miners swapped tales of cricket, collieries and mutual friends. 

No doubt he and his family, six brothers and two sisters who passed before him, will be catching up right now. 

But knowing Dad, it won’t be long before he is asking Cliff Gladwin and Les Jackson why they dispensed with third slip so early at Chesterfield in 1956. And telling them that they were wrong.

Rest in Peace, Dad. By crikey, you were loved. You were always there for us, always a sage sounding board, a willing pair of hands, our most staunch defender when it was needed. And great fun too.

You gave it all back, and then some. We had 64 years together and I will always be grateful for that.

Thank you for everything. From me and from all of us.

** Please excuse the self indulgence of this piece. But writing it has been cathartic, and I wanted my thoughts on this remarkable man and wonderful Dad out there.