Daddy

'Yes, sir, that's my baby, 
No, sir, don't mean maybe,
Yes, sir, that's my baby now.'


'Go to sleep, my baby, 
Close your pretty eyes...' 
(he always gets the next bit wrong)


'There is a lady sweet and kind
Was never face so pleased my mind
I did but see her passing by
And yet I love her 'til I die.'

'So far I've kept my sanity. I said I’d never and I never have played bowls. Are you still left-handed, lovey? Good girl.’ 

I tell him to finish his lunch. ‘Get double stuffed,’ he says. But that's how we talk.

A portrait of a parent is essentially a self-portrait. I draw five over a couple of hours and he says that being drawn is like being on holiday. I am too shy to ask him to hold his portraits for a photo like all my other sitters.

I last drew him when I was 13, for art homework. He is reading The Times, which was in broadsheet format then.

My drawing at the age of 13