How the Truth Was Better than Any Advice My Dad Could Have Given Me

Growing up, my Dad was the coolest man on earth. Bell-bottomed jeans, tight white cotton tees and a dense beard to match the decade. I didn’t see him often, nor even regularly, and in between, I pined for him. It felt like my first experience of unrequited love.

Sure, I know now that he loved me deeply but he was too scared of being a father and all the tied down, daily drudgery he believed it to entail - so starkly contrasting it was with the free love, folk music and anti-establishment fervour that was all around…