A Tribute to my Dad

My dad was born in Ashford Hospital in

1954. After World War II finished, my

granddad came back from Africa, bought a

piece of land, and built a house on it.

Before the war started, my granddad used

to work as a builder, so he knew how to

build houses and do construction work. He

married a woman and they had 5 sons

together. One of those sons was my dad.

They didn't have much money, and they led

a very simple and frugal lifestyle. I

remember my dad telling me how poor they

were. They never had access to nice

things. They didn't have nice food. My dad

had a pretty tough childhood. For some

reason, granddad became very depressed,

and he also became physically violent

towards his wife and his children. My

granddad was pretty strict. He was a bit

like a slave driver. He would make the

kids do manual labor outside in the

garden. They had to dig holes, lay bricks,

sweep the garden, clean stuff, and if they

refused to, they would get beaten. I can

imagine it being pretty tough having a

father like that, but on the plus side, I

can also imagine that they learnt a lot of

useful skills, and I think that's why my

dad and my uncles are so good at DIY. He

would also often beat his wife. I don't

know how severely he did it, but it must

have been pretty bad because my

grandmother decided to divorce him and

left him, taking 2 of the oldest kids with

her, including my dad. The family was

split in 2. It was pretty heartbreaking

for them. For my dad and his older

brother, their lives were better than the

brothers who were left behind. The

brothers that were left behind had to

carry on with their lives of forced manual

labor and occasional beatings from their

abusive father. The house started to fall

into a dilapidated state as my grandfather

slipped further into his depression. He

lacked the willpower and the funds to

continue building it. My mum used to bring

me and my sister to come and visit him

quite often when we were kids. He just

seemed like a sad, lonely man who had

driven everyone away from him. I used to

hate coming to this house because it was

so dirty. It was kind of like an abandoned

house, but someone was living in it. The

furniture inside was all broken, dusty,

kind of worn-out looking. My granddad did

a good job building the house, but you

could kind of tell that he had given up on

it. After my grandmother left him, she

moved into a smaller semi-detached house

with my dad and his older brother. She

eventually remarried to a different man

and moved out to live with him. The house

was given to my dad, who was now an adult,

and his older brother moved to Australia.

My dad studied very hard to become a

mechanical engineer. He went to college

and graduated. After graduating, he was

accepted into a pretty decent company.

The company sent him all over the world to

do repair work on ships and Royal Navy

ships. He had to go to places like South

Korea, Malaysia, Bahrain, Dubai— pretty

much anywhere where the Navy had ships

docked. I remember when me and my sister

were kids and the company would send my

dad to some country and he would be gone

for weeks on end. When he came back, we

were so happy to see him again. My dad had

this close friend called Nick who worked

at the same company. Nick was Victoria's

dad. You might remember who Victoria is

from some of the videos I made in the

past. She was a girl I used to know, and I

had a big crush on her when I was a

teenager. Nick was married to a Malaysian

woman named Sue, and Sue was one of my

mum's closest friends. Sue was living in

England, and my mum decided to come to

England to visit Sue, and Nick and Sue

thought it would be a great idea to

introduce my dad to my mum. They went on a

few dates, but at the beginning my mum

wasn't really too impressed. She said that

my dad was very awkward, very quiet. It

seemed like he didn't know how to talk to

women. But I guess she must have liked him

because after a while they started a

relationship, and then a few months later

they got married. It was a simple

marriage. They had a little ceremony in

the back garden. A year later, my mum

became pregnant and I was born. My dad was

still working at that company, and he

still had to travel abroad, sometimes for

weeks. My mum used to tell me how lonely

she felt in that house in a foreign

country, just her and me together. It must

have been pretty scary for my mum. After a

few years, my mum had another baby, my

sister, and my dad was getting sent away

to different countries less and less, so

things started to settle down.

I think I was around 14 years old when my

granddad passed away. After he passed

away, me and my family moved into his

house. It must have been quite strange for

my dad moving back to his childhood home.

I was really upset about moving. I didn't

want to move into this smelly, old,

horrible house that my granddad used to

live in. I liked my old house where my

friends were. When we first moved into the

house, it was in a terrible state.

Everything was covered in a layer of dust.

There were dead insects everywhere, and

there was this weird musty smell that

lingered around. It was a bit like an

adventure. Me and my sister would go

exploring, run around the garden. We would

find weird things in the closets and

cupboards. My dad's company were having

financial problems, and he was laid off.

He didn't need to look for a new job

straight away because he had savings and

his severance pay. So he decided to spend

all of his time working on the house. He

spent every hour of every single day

working on the house, sawing wood, laying

bricks, knocking things down, painting

walls, laying carpet, everything to make

the house into what it is today. He built

a conservatory, a kitchen extension, he

renovated every single room. It was

non-stop, relentless. He was like some

kind of building machine, and nothing

could stop him. Me and my sister used to

help out now and then. It was pretty fun

actually. We got to dig holes, get messy.

He gave me a sledgehammer, told me to

knock down some walls. We had to knock

down a lot of sheds and outhouses my

granddad built that we no longer wanted.

There was always some kind of activity or

event or task going on. There were always

lots of jobs to be done, and my dad used

to give me and my sister a couple of

pounds for helping out, so there were lots

of opportunities to earn money. My dad

eventually found a new job, which meant he

had less time to spend on the house. He

would spend every weekend working on the

house, and this led to a few arguments

between him and my mum. My mum usually

wanted to go out, spend the weekend

together with us as a family, but my dad

wanted to spend all of his time working on

the house. I think my dad thought of it as

his duty, his obligation to finish what my

granddad started. To finish the house.

Sometimes I feel a little bit guilty for

not showing any interest in building or

DIY, and if anything were to happen to my

dad, the construction of this house would

come to an end. When my grandmother became

very ill, she moved back into the house

with us, and we lived together so we could

look after her. Must have been strange for

her coming back to, to this house after

being away for such a long time. She must

have had a lot of sad memories coming back

here. 2014 was a pretty scary year because

my dad caught the flu. It was pretty bad.

He had to go to hospital. But one good

thing came out of it. After he got the

flu, they did some checkups in the

hospital and they discovered that he had

prostate cancer. They caught it really

early on, so they managed to treat it

pretty effectively. If he didn't have the

flu, then he might not have gotten a

checkup and and he might not have found

out that he had prostate cancer until it

was too late. After he came out of the

hospital, he decided to change his

lifestyle and his diet. He stopped eating

junk food, he stopped eating processed

meat like sausages or bacon, and he

started taking vitamin D supplements. And

since then, he never had any major

problems. He didn't have to go to the

hospital again. We all thought that his

new diet and his increased vitamin D

intake would keep him healthy. And he was

healthy. He was out and about going to

work. He was still active in the garden on

weekends, and there were no problems

until— until last week. And if you

watched my last video, you should know

about what happened and what's going on.

I won't go into detail again about it. I

think I'll end this video here. That was

my dad's life story, I guess. I did miss

out on A few things that I didn't really

feel were important enough to mention. My

dad is probably the most caring, loving,

hardworking, sincere, honest person that

I've ever met. And if there's such a thing

as karma, this is why I don't believe in

karma, because how can something so tragic

and unfortunate happen to such a good

person? At the end of the day, good things

happen to bad people and bad things happen

to good people. There's no such thing as

karma. Me and my dad weren't really that

close, to be honest, mainly because we

have very different interests. He's very,

very practical. He likes things like DIY,

gardening, mechanics, circuit boards,

that kind of stuff. I'm more into creative

things like drawing or art,

computer games, and nerdy things like Star

Wars. So we didn't really have much in

common or much to talk about. We didn't do

much together either, mainly because he

was outside all the time and I was inside

playing video games or doing stuff on the

internet. I wish I showed more of an

interest in things he was interested in.

I wish we could have done more things

together. Sometimes I wonder if he feels

disappointed that I didn't really follow

in his footsteps in any way at all.