The Spectator's Notes | 6 June 2019

My father Richard, who died last month aged 88, was a profoundly impractical man. He could not drive a car, swim, whistle, use a mobile phone or computer, or play any ball game apart from croquet. One of his most common remarks was (he could not pronounce his ths), ‘Vis wretched fing [a door handle, a light switch, a well-wrapped parcel] doesn’t seem to work.’ When younger, he would sometimes go out with an unsafe 1840s shotgun in search of rabbits or pigeons, but the only thing he ever actually shot was his little toe, falling down a bank. Although he was extremely clean, he did not, until he married, know how to wash his hair, and would go to a barber for the purpose. Twenty years ago, he lived briefly in our house in Islington. At breakfast once, he announced he would be out all morning because he had to go to the post office to buy some stamps: he knew only one post office in London — in Trafalgar Square — and was unaware that other shops sell stamps.